Notices by volkris@qoto.org

@kingrat Right.

For better or worse, we provide this housing and leave it up to presidents. He's just doing what we have for some reason decided to allow, so meh.

We don't have to provide presidents with housing. We don't have to give them this authority over the housing. But we do, so that they take advantage of what we allow, really on us.

Remember: the vice president is the president of the #Senate. The VP is in the legislative branch, not the executive branch.

People talk about #Trump as if he should be passing legislation to fund government when really it's not his call. The legislation is being blocked in the Senate, so the executive branch has nothing to do with it. Trump doesn't get a vote, so let's not inflate his ego by saying otherwise.

HOWEVER, JD #Vance actually does have authority in that chamber, in fact he's one of the few people that really does.

Yes, the #Democrats bear responsibility for voting to block the legislative procedure, but really, let's also lay this at Vance's feet. He should be pressing for a solution because that's his actual job.

I wish more Americans were informed about the VP's actual position in the US government.

#USPolitics #shutdown

@twrling What in the world? Pulled the rug out from lower federal courts? No, that's not how the US system works at all.

The Supreme Court sets the rules. Lower courts are bound to follow those rules. There's no pulling the rug out, there's just the constitutional order, effectively a supervisor telling the underlying what to do.

If your boss tells you to go count the cans in the store room instead of sitting on your phone, that's not pulling the rug out, that's managing.

@Hoss No, you're oversimplifying what money is and how it works, and so you miss the way that it dovetails with modern financial systems.

@juergen_hubert yeah, I think you're getting this exactly backwards.

#Mastodon/#ActivityPub makes it way too hard to move instances. It's unfortunately a core problem with this platform, but we shouldn't pretend it's not.

Other platforms like #BlueSky make it much easier, but #Fediverse is behind on this one.

We need to recognize that as a rough edge, a legit reason users might choose another platform.

@wjmaggos except #ActivityPub DOESN'T give the people total say over what stories go viral.

We see so much consternation over instance owners censoring what people can see, and that's one of the huge criticisms of this platform that needs to be emphasized.

YES, people can shut down hashtags and links here, and I think that's problematic.

We can't address it by denying that it exists, though.

#Bluesky doesn't just retain that resistance to being shut down. With its relays it does a better job of having the features you're promoting here.

BlueSky comes much closer to giving the people total control over what stories go viral. #Fediverse falls short, empowering instances over people.

@mmasnick.bsky.social

@QasimRashid It's absolutely not, though.

That's not how the government works, that's not how government finance works.

To say that those students don't need to pay for their share of the government budget isn't about letting them eat cake or whatever you think that means. It's about defunding government programs that our democratic process decided needed to be funded in that way.

No, you have that completely backwards.

@pkraus The federal government treats the loans as a source of revenue, effectively as a tax.

It's not about whether you pay any other tax, it's about saying they don't have to pay their taxes in this case even though the government was relying on those revenues to fund government programs.

@QasimRashid

@JapanProf

Here you're promoting conspiracy theories that just don't add up. Somebody is misleading you and you should stop listening to them.

Billionaires bought the Supreme Court? Well that doesn't make sense considering the Supreme Court ruling against billionaires over and over.

Thanks to technology billionaires no longer have to fear angry mobs? Well that's going to be news to the billionaires getting attacked physically and also losing market share to movements coming out of tick tock.

Somebody is feeding you some lies here, and you really should stop listening to those people.

@freemo

Both #Trump and #Harris are ridiculous candidates, and the parties need to be held accountable for that.

I can't help but keep thinking about how Harris has been openly talking about ignoring Congress, ignoring the law, ignoring the democratic process, to implement her preferences while claiming that Trump is the authoritarian even as he is also being bashed for promising to give up power, promising to relinquish power away from the federal government to the states.

This is the level of nonsense we have in #USPolitics these days. It's absolutely #Orwellian.

And beside all of that, this platform seems really eager to promote those propagandistic messages.

@jeffowski A problem is, both of the major US parties claim that the other party is the one one in violation of this stuff.

That's just Life in these modern times.

I’ve heard it said that if you don’t vote with whichever party then you are a coward. I think that’s exactly backwards, and even reflects poorly all the person making that argument. It doesn’t take much courage to go with the group.

Instead I go the other way: no matter which party you might prefer in general, it takes courage to say they nominated a moron, and fortunately the other party also nominated a loser, so no matter what the US is going to slog through these next few years.

In my opinion the courageous position is to say no, you nominated a moron, and I’m not going to give you my vote. We’re going to be okay I guess, whether you win or not, but I’m not going to let you assume that you have my vote if you insist on nominating a moron. You should have nominated someone better. You should have nominated someone worthy of my vote. Do better next time.

That’s the state of #USPolitics . As South Park said, big douche versus turd sandwich. So screw both #Democrats and #Republicans. Neither of you managed to nominate someone worth voting for, so I’m voting for my dog.

To give either party our votes is to sign on to their nomination of garbage people. Let’s not. Let’s say that they need to actually nominate worthwhile administrators.

But more practically, let’s focus on #Congress. No matter who wins this election, they’re going to suck, but we can still express ourselves through our representation in Congress, and that’s honestly how it should be anyway.

Check out your representatives. See how they have actually been voting, and vote them out if they have been letting you down. That’s really where our focus should be anyway.

Not on which jerk ends up in the Oval Office.

(But thank God #Biden is on his way out, as he has been terrible for #science in the US, which has not gotten nearly enough attention from the press.)

@persagen

All of these groups promoting conspiracy theories about the Federalist Society, as opposed to simply going through the reasoning in the opinions themselves, are really misleading the public, coming across as if they’ve never actually listened to any FedSoc content.

In reality, the Federalist Society is one of the most evenhanded outfits I know of, presenting both sides of debates, including pro-affirmative action speakers.

Seriously, go pull up their content and give their debates a listen. They are nothing like the evil right-wing monster so many are trying to frame them as.

@HistoPol

It’s just so funny to hear people talking about the right-wing conspiracy from the Federalist Society when I’ve spent years listening to their left-wing content.

The organization gives voice to so many speakers that are adamantly critical of the right wing. That’s in fact why I listen to them, because they call out the right-wing for being really off the rails.

So it comes across as gaslighting to someone like me.

Or more importantly, it comes across as taking advantage of people’s lack of familiarity to sell a sensationalized narrative while avoiding what’s really going on in the world.

@persagen

@icedquinn

Of course you can. They can impeach anybody for any reason. We elect our representatives, and the people that we choose to elect, we are hiring them to decide whether to impeach anybody. That’s one of the powers that they get with their offices.

If you think they should have impeached but they didn’t, then hold them accountable for that. If you think they should not have impeached but they did, again, hold them accountable for that.

The decision is purely up to them. They have that lever to pull if they want to and we hold them accountable for whether they do or they don’t.

@Phracker2Art @sj_zero

@icedquinn

No you can punish judges for being wrong. That’s why we have the impeachment option. It’s the entire point of that.

@Phracker2Art @sj_zero

@Phracker2Art No, that’s not how this works at all.

It’s really the opposite, in fact.

Recent rulings demand that laws be followed and not effectively repealed by the executive branch.

So much misinformation out there these days, and this is an example of it. It’s the exact opposite of what it sounds like you’ve heard, so you need to stop listening to those people that are lying to you.

@Rasp

The unavoidable problem is that healthcare requires people to work, input from workers, and so anyone stating that healthcare should be free runs into the issue of requiring people to work without compensation.

It runs into the issue of you’re going to fix me for free. You’re going to work for me for free.

You see how problematic that is?

@realcaseyrollins

@BeAware how about putting it this way: we here ARE broadcasting content that companies are free to use, and so many of us don’t know we’re doing that.

Do companies use it? Well I imagine so, and it might be largely undetectable. As Fediverse grows it seems like a goldmine for training AIs, collecting marketing stats, etc, all without encumbrances of TOS agreements.

But sure, you’re asking what has actually happened, and what’s actually happened is that all of these users are making content available to companies. That part’s true.

And my personal focus is that it’s being done without the consent or knowledge of so many users here.

@BeAware

It’s all in the ActivityPub protocol that I’ll link below. If you read it, it’s strikingly clear that there is no actual guarantee that your permissions will be honored. In fact, the standard uses the term “SHOULD” quite a lot when leaving servers free to ignore your privacy notation.

Are you familiar with the FRS radios? They had a feature called privacy codes, where a group of people would set the same code to communicate. BUT, really all of the comms were all on the same channel, but the codes simply filtered out what one wanted to hear.

So they provided no actual privacy, just the illusion of it.

Same thing here, unfortunately. The ActivityPub protocol is largely a broadcast protocol, sending content into the cloud with only suggestions as to who should see it.

You can believe that every link in the chain will behave and respect your wishes, but a scraper is free to ignore them and do what they want even if your post is marked private.

https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#outbox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Radio_Service