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
volkris
boosted
To give a bit more context for people outside of San Francisco, in addition to being guinea pigs for self-driving cars, SF has also become a testbed for the future of the surveillance state. In SF it's now legal for the police to monitor private surveillance cameras in real time: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/23/23368603/san-francisco-police-private-surveillance-cameras-vote
In addition to the well-known problem with Ring cameras, the SFPD have spun off and funded a "private" nonprofit to set up cameras: https://sfsafe.org/our-mission/.
The SFPD has a history of using these cameras to surveil totally legal protests despite claiming that department policy doesn't allow that:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/sfpd-obtained-live-access-business-camera-network-anticipation-tyre-nichols
Really, just look over all the EFF headlines for San Francisco, and then it'll be clear that we can't let the city be blanketed in surveillance bots.
Oh for heaven's sake...
Now we're doing the stupid pseudolegal "I don't consent to my content being used" thing here?
It wasn't legit when it was on any of the other platforms, and it's especially not legit on this platform where by posting something you are actively triggering a process by which the content is broadcast to others.
To declare that you don't consent to Meta getting your data really doesn't wash with this protocol that actively broadcasts it to them.
It's like yelling across your fence to your neighbor that you don't consent to his hearing you. You're the one yelling at him!
A distributed social network means even less control over where content goes.
Folks complaining about the #SCOTUS ruling on admissions based on what society should do are missing that the Court doesn't have authority to judge based on evaluations of what we should do.
It is to judge based on what our democratic process has said, by law, that we should do.
If we need to change the law, great! Maybe we do need to revisit and update the Civil rights act of 1964.
So let's yell at the Congress to get that done.
Yelling at SCOTUS for acts of the legislature that they don't have power over is, if anything, distraction from making progress on legal reforms that are apparently needed.
So much written about the #SCOTUS ruling on the independent state legislature theory is sensationalized way beyond recognition.
This case had absolutely nothing to do with legislatures throwing out or overruling votes.
It was purely focused on the prescription of "The Times, Places and Manner" of holding elections, which wouldn't include a legislature deciding to throw out an election that abided by the prescription.
It's just an example of how reporting on things like the Supreme Court is so misleading, so apparently intent on clickbait rather than real education.
As always, there is no substitute for actually going to the source to see what it says.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1271_3f14.pdf
volkris
boosted
The worst thing that ever happened in software engineering was when Kirk asked Scotty how long something would take and Scotty said thirty minutes and Kirk said you’ve got five and Scotty got it done in five and impressionable children watched this and grew up to become managers.
#Alito: a reasonable person wouldn't buy into the misleading ad hominem attacks ProPublica thrives on
Ah, but Sam, ProPublica doesn't sell to reasonable people, as the braying of #Fediverse demonstrates so well.
volkris
boosted
The International Standards Organization has defined a new time measurement, the fedisecond, which is the shortest humanly-measurable unit of time.
A fedisecond is defined as the interval between the announcement of an exciting new #fediverse application and the discovery that the project's lead architect and principal developer is actually Satan.
Another day in the multiverse of echo chambers:
Democrats smugly saying Republicans are freaking out about the #Trump indictment and Republicans smugly saying Democrats are freaking out about how he's succeeding despite them.
Know thy enemy, they say. Well, if either of these groups actually followed that advice, maybe we could settle some things.
Well, all ya can do is appreciate the absurdity.
volkris
boosted
what plant’s scientific name has the most Main Character energy? I put forward Acer Rubrum as a first bid
Accusations of greed are funny things.
The #Reddit drama follows an all too common pattern where people are accusing others of greed because they want something the other has.
Yeah, Reddit is so greedy for charging for providing its service, but *I demand their resources.*
It's not exactly taking a high road to describe someone as greedy while claiming those resources for oneself.
volkris
boosted
(please boost)
Okay...... WHY is our instance fediblocked in the first place? and why does that include our matrix instance getting removed from joinmatrix because "they decided to deem us as controversial"??
Our instance is a non-extremist, leftist comfy instance that accepts everyone, we have nearly 1000 users and I don't really understand why we are getting blocked everywhere. The worst thing is that there is no reason behind this and nobody is able to give us a single reason about why the """"council"""" decided to block us. This is stupid.
I'm considering buying a new domain at this point. We've been on fedi with based.social and miruku.cafe since 2020, and I've been using fedi since 2018 and this is just nonsense, I'm really pissed off. (meow)
This is really helpful! ... if it works
I've been really curious about how #lemmy integrates with the rest of ActivityPub but haven't had time to look deeply into it.
So far my instance doesn't have any posts from this particular lemmy... um... board? group? whatever it's called, but I'll have to try it out more in the future.
Yep.
An awful lot of people don't follow things like #SCOTUS opinions closely enough to know they're being sold a narrative that just doesn't match the record.
The liberal vs conservative description of the Supreme Court makes for dramatic headlines, but the decision record of the Court doesn't really match that naive narrative.
Earlier: @Brian_Riedl: "The 'conservative Supreme Court justices are partisan ideologues voting in lockstep' crowd sure is quiet today." #SCOTUS ...
volkris
boosted
Key phrase: "165 Democrats - more than the 149 Republicans who voted for it - backed the measure and pushed it through"
Listening to Republicans today debating among themselves over the #DebtCeiling deal, there's a big problem that the hardliners literally don't know how federal finances work, and so they vastly overestimate #GOP power in this situation.
If Biden can't borrow money to pay for programs that the #GOP likes, then he won't, and their favorite projects will be harmed. This *empowers* Biden, but they have no idea.
Today's debate on the right was all about the moderates trying to inform their young colleagues as to the actual rules of the game, to inform strategy, but the hardliners weren't interested in learning... unsurprisingly.
Just goes to show how important civics education is, especially for those actually in government.
volkris
boosted
Yeah, the rumours are true. #Calckey is changing its name.
A change in brand is never easy, but it’s better to do the change now rather than later.
I’ll tell you this, though. The brand will reflect the growth of the project.
What’s currently known as Calckey isn’t merely a Misskey fork anymore.
RE: https://calckey.social/notes/9f701jlpvp
Calckey is not going to be called "Calckey" for much longer, that's all I'll say... 😉
No, the #SCOTUS didn't weaken EPA power to enforce the Clean Water Act. That gets backwards what the argument actually is.
The issue is that the CWA didn't authorize this power in the first place, so the EPA was acting outside of the Act.
If we want the EPA to have this much expanded authority, fine, that's what the democratic process is for. Let's have those discussions about how it would work, and the tradeoffs involved.
But that the EPA wasn't enforcing CWA in these cases is the entire core of the argument that the Agency lost.
volkris
boosted
Post Editing is now available on @pixelfed !
This was the most wanted feature for me 💝
#pixelfed #fediverse #ThankYouDaniel #LongLiveFediverse #LongLivePixelfed
Far too few people are seeing this side of the story.
And politicians are being let off the hook as they are pointing fingers at others for the choices they themselves made.
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
