volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
It's a cost-benefit analysis, really.
It's clearly a significant cost to you to do these transcriptions, but how much feedback do you get saying it's actually provided significant benefit to justify your taking on the cost?
It might very well be that you're spending this time on transcriptions that hardly anyone uses when you could be using your resources in better ways.
@rako seems to me your response comes across as belittling.
There's a real tone of "themming" and portraying disabled people in a paternalistic way, taking on the mantle of having to take care of people who didn't ask for that.
I noticed you phrasing of "The problem with disabled people"
oof!
volkris
boosted
note: I don't actually care if you think this is AI posted. I thought parts of it were amusing. AI or otherwise. I saw it on facebook, I personally didn't post this on facebook. and because we have children who want to act like their two, here's the original facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=122384516228009609&id=61550288282980 Feel free to block me if you want, I don't actually care. My bio says it all, If something I say/post/repost offends you, don't let the door hit you on the way out. This is simply The random shit I see on Facebook when I check it once in in an age! The man across the aisle thought the airplane Wi-Fi network was a distress signal.
And for about four minutes, I honestly understood why.
This happened on an Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to Portland, which is usually the kind of flight where everyone has either a Patagonia jacket, a laptop, or a reusable water bottle that looks like it has been on more hikes than I have.
I was in 12C.
Aisle seat.
Across from me in 12D was a man in his early sixties with reading glasses, a newspaper, and the intense energy of someone who still prints hotel confirmations.
He seemed nice.
A little serious.
The kind of man who says “the internet” like it’s a location.
We took off.
Totally normal.
Seatbelt sign went off.
People opened laptops.
Someone two rows up immediately started watching a movie without headphones, because apparently society is fragile.
I pulled out my phone to connect to the Wi-Fi.
That’s when the man across the aisle leaned over.
Him: “Excuse me.”
Me: “Yeah?”
Him: “Do you see that?”
Me: “See what?”
Him: “On the Wi-Fi.”
I looked at my phone.
There were several networks.
Alaska_WiFi.
Alaska_Guest.
Somebody’s hotspot called “NotYourHotspot.”
And one that said:
HELP_IM_STUCK_ON_A_PLANE
I stared at it.
He stared at it.
Then he whispered, “That seems bad.”
To be fair.
It did seem bad.
Me: “I think that’s probably somebody’s phone hotspot.”
Him: “Why would someone name it that?”
Me: “Because people are strange.”
Him: “Should we tell someone?”
Me: “I don’t think so.”
Him: “It says help.”
Now the woman in 12E, next to him, looks over.
Woman: “What says help?”
Him: “The Wi-Fi.”
Woman: “The Wi-Fi says help?”
Me: “A hotspot says help.”
Woman: “That feels different from regular help.”
The man holds up his phone like it’s evidence in a trial.
Him: “Look.”
Woman: “Oh.”
Me: “It’s probably a joke.”
Him: “Probably?”
Me: “Most likely.”
Woman: “I don’t love ‘most likely’ at 30,000 feet.”
Now the guy behind me leans forward.
Behind guy: “Did someone say help?”
Me: “No.”
Him: “The Wi-Fi did.”
Behind guy: “The Wi-Fi asked for help?”
Me: “The Wi-Fi did not ask for help. Someone named their hotspot weird.”
A college student across the aisle takes out one AirPod.
College student: “What’s the hotspot called?”
The man shows him.
College student: “Oh, that’s hilarious.”
Him: “It is not hilarious.”
College student: “It kind of is.”
Woman: “Could it be a crew code?”
Me: “I really don’t think the crew is using public Wi-Fi names to communicate.”
Behind guy: “You never know.”
This is how it spreads.
One concerned man.
One weird hotspot name.
One row of people with too much imagination.
Within sixty seconds, rows 11 through 13 are aware that someone’s phone is named HELP_IM_STUCK_ON_A_PLANE.
The flight attendant walks by with a trash bag.
The man raises his hand.
Him: “Excuse me.”
Flight attendant: “Yes?”
Him: “There’s something on the Wi-Fi.”
Flight attendant: “Okay.”
Him: “It says help.”
Flight attendant: “The Wi-Fi says help?”
Me: “It’s a hotspot.”
Flight attendant: “Ah.”
Him: “Do you know whose it is?”
Flight attendant: “No, sir.”
Him: “Shouldn’t we find out?”
Flight attendant: “I’m going to guess someone thought they were funny.”
The college student raises his hand slightly.
College student: “To be fair, they were.”
The man does not appreciate this.
Him: “What if someone is actually stuck?”
Flight attendant: “Sir, we are all technically stuck on the plane.”
College student: “That’s the joke.”
I had to look down.
I could not laugh.
The flight attendant stayed very calm.
Flight attendant: “I’ll make a quick announcement, okay?”
Him: “Thank you.”
Me: “Oh no.”
Woman: “This is going to get worse.”
The flight attendant walked to the front.
A second later, the speaker clicked on.
Flight attendant: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a small request. If your phone hotspot is named HELP_IM_STUCK_ON_A_PLANE, could you please rename it or turn it off? It is causing some concern in row 12.”
Silence.
Then half the plane started laughing.
Not quiet laughing.
Full-body, Sunday-night-airport-exhaustion laughing.
A hand slowly went up in row 18.
A guy in a beanie yelled, “My bad!”
The flight attendant looked down the aisle.
Flight attendant: “Thank you, sir.”
The man across the aisle turned bright red.
Him: “I was just being cautious.”
Me: “Honestly, fair.”
Woman: “It did say help.”
College student: “And we were on a plane.”
The guy from row 18 walked up later to use the bathroom and stopped by our row.
Beanie guy: “Sorry about that.”
Him: “You named your phone that?”
Beanie guy: “My brother did it last Thanksgiving and I forgot.”
Him: “For months?”
Beanie guy: “I don’t use hotspot much.”
Woman: “Your brother has caused aviation confusion.”
Beanie guy: “He’d be proud.”
The serious man looked like he wanted to be mad, but couldn’t fully get there.
Him: “You should change it.”
Beanie guy: “Already did.”
Me: “What is it now?”
Beanie guy: “Definitely_Not_A_Distress_Signal.”
The college student almost fell out of his seat.
The man just stared.
Him: “That is not better.”
Flight attendant, passing by: “It is a little better.”
After that, the whole section relaxed.
The man across the aisle eventually smiled, just a little.
He folded his newspaper, looked at me, and said, “I suppose I overreacted.”
Me: “Maybe a little.”
Woman: “But if it had been real, you would’ve been the hero.”
College student: “Row 12: cybersecurity division.”
Him: “I am not in cybersecurity.”
Me: “You are now.”
For the rest of the flight, every time the flight attendant passed, she gave him updates.
Flight attendant: “No further Wi-Fi emergencies.”
Him: “Very funny.”
Flight attendant: “We remain safely connected.”
Him: “You’re enjoying this.”
Flight attendant: “A little.”
When we landed in Portland, people stood up immediately because apparently airplane seats become lava after touchdown.
The guy from row 18 walked past us.
Beanie guy: “Safe travels, row 12.”
College student: “Stay vigilant.”
Woman: “Rename your phone.”
Him: “Please.”
As we walked off the plane, the flight attendant stood by the door.
She looked at the man and said, “Thank you for protecting the network.”
He tried not to smile.
Failed.
Him: “Somebody had to.”
And honestly?
He wasn’t wrong.
Because most of us saw a weird Wi-Fi name and thought, “That’s dumb.”
He saw it and thought, “Not on my watch.”
A little dramatic?
Yes.
But somewhere between San Francisco and Portland, one retired-looking guy with a newspaper briefly became the self-appointed sheriff of airplane Wi-Fi.
And I respect that.
No need to reach for conspiratorial explanations like that.
USA also exports trained doctors, but every medical system is shaped by everything from laws through available resources.
US deploying troops is independent, based on political consensus and national story about how expeditionary the military should be.
The US isn't afraid. It just has an awful lot of voters who think they can fix the world through bombing campaigns.
I always emphasize that a lack of tax increase is not a benefit. It's absence of an increased detriment.
The distinction has a lot of practicalities, direct and indirect, but they're commonly confused.
We'd do much better to be disciplined about how we percieve these.
As usual Krugman gets a lot wrong here, most importantly by giving Trump too much credit.
Firstly, it assumes coherence on Trump's part. What is a win to him? It is a loss because X and Y conditions weren't met. But no, Trump is a wet noodle without such basic standards and goals. He's been unable to lay out a win or loss condition.
Then there's this: "It’s far more likely that Hegseth and Trump have also been receiving false, optimistic reports"
Well that alone is Krugman pretty much undermining the rest of his piece. If they don't know what's going on, well, that's that. The rest of it comes to nothing.
It needs to be consistently pointed out that #Trump is such a loser incapable of managing much of anything. Here Krugman almost suggests that Trump is a fine manager with misguided goals.
He has no goals.
Meh. We're regularly seeing cases where the big money donors had bet on a losing candidate. Their influence is overstated.
To often folks completely leave voters out of the topic of voting.
It goes into conspiracy theory territory really. We should push back on it.
Similarly with topics involving the internet where conspiratorial talk can actually harm what we have.
A difference is that oil is a naturally occurring resource while electricity is not. You have to drill the oil where it is, while electricity can be generated anywhere.
If you go back a step and look at the resources needed to make the electricity the US has those pretty untapped already.
volkris
boosted
I often write about #USpol, but until today, I had never thought to browse the hashtag.
Friends, that is not a high-quality hashtag. Lots of nonsense, conspiracy theories, incoherent rambling, and misguided anger. I didn't encounter anything right-wing or conservative. I don't know if it's because those people avoid the Fediverse, eschew the hashtag, or are effectively blocked by my instance.
It's sad to find so many people on "my side" are not the brightest bulbs in life's marquee.
I think not relating to the search terms is part of the appeal :)
They say they're privacy focused? Well, they take privacy to the level that they don't consider search terms in what they show.
I think it's partly because Fediverse users have often actively and explicitly sought to reject folks of those different mindsets.
SO OFTEN I've seen talk about how this is supposed to be a safe space to get away from people with alternative perspectives.
And yes, there is also some blocking going on. Folks are proud of who they block to maintain their echo chamber here.
Without the pushback from different perspectives, the conspiracy theories and rambling are feel to thrive.
The problem is that the premise is completely wrong in the frist place. We've ALREADY taken that power away... the Supreme Court never had it to begin with, doesn't have it today, and cannot have it under the core design of the US government.
Yes, so much reporting keeps getting that factually wrong. We need better reporting, and we need to stop giving clicks to the outfits and politicians that promote that misinformation.
No, SCOTUS does not have power of the elected branches of government. That fact is core to so many of their rulings where they emphasize that they don't.
We need better civics understanding so folks don't fall for that sort of rhetoric.
What are GtS and Aktor?
I'm wondering what the context is in which you're working on that tradeoff.
What loophole? This is how the law is written and passed by the folks we elect and reelect. This is intentional, not some little detail discovered, some little crack in the system.
If you want to say colonizers write the laws, well ok then, but we need to be emphatic that these are the laws maintained by the folks we keep electing. If we want better laws we need to stop reelecting the same jerks that sanction what we have.
Well, they haven't been shy about rejecting Trump on major issues, so...
I don't think that framing of the argument captures it.
I hear Republicans constantly talking about ID other than passports. Heck, I get the impression Republicans are generally skeptical of passports themselves.
And everyone is similarly impacted? There's a common thread in Republican mindsets that similar impact is emphatically not important. They constantly talk about equality of opportunity above equality of outcome.
8-1, so it's not quite fair to say Thomas revives a lawsuit. The Court as a whole does.
That's not a fair reading of what happened or even how the SCOTUS works.
There are serious questions here involving doctrines of deference to states that have tendrils all over US law.
To frame it as people from different parties wanting to kill a person is just naive.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
volkris's choices:
