volkris

@volkris@qoto.org

Since I guess everything is political these days, I'll identify as extremely liberal but without a home in US politics.

Mainly, there's so much misinformation out there that people in society have trouble even organizing into coherent political groupings. So I'd rather not talk about politics but instead focus on information and education. Nothing else matters until the bedrock of fact is buttressed.

But... people are always going to be wrong on the internet, as the saying goes.

So: Old man yells at clouds is a famous joke from The Simpsons, and it probably fairly describes what we do when venting on social media.

Just speaking into the void, since I figure it's an exercise in futility to conduct discussions on these platforms.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

volkris, to USpolitics

I think whenever I see a headline or a person making some claim about the first reaction needs to be, “Okay, section 230 of what? What do you think that refers to?”

So many people have no idea what section 230 actually says, or does, but at least this response would help weed out the most uninformed of the people spouting out about it.

volkris,

@LouisIngenthron I’d say that kind of proves my point. S230 exists outside of the CDA, and if I ask my question, “S230 of what?” then CDA is not the correct answer, and shows a misunderstanding of the state of play.

I also don’t think asking a trick question would help anything.

volkris,

@LouisIngenthron this question of regulation of internet activity is an administrative question!

And if a person doesn’t know how the administration works, then they’re in no position to judge or modify the administration.

That’s the point: asking what it’s a section of is a great way of putting a point on whether the person has the most basic familiarity with the thing they wish to attack and change.

So many don’t.

JohnBarentine, to space
@JohnBarentine@astrodon.social avatar

So, which is it?

"Musk's Starlink satellites disrupted by major solar storm" https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/11/musks-starlink-satellites-disrupted-by-major-solar-storm.html

or

"SpaceX Starlink satellites doing just fine after weekend solar storm, company says" https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-solar-storm-healthy-satellites ?

It can't be both. 🤷🏼‍♂️

volkris,

@JohnBarentine sure it can be both.

One possibility is that there was disruption that lowered performance by a few percent. Disrupted, but not terribly so.

Another possibility is that there was significant disruption over the weekend, but after that passed, now they’re fine.

wjmaggos, to Matrix
@wjmaggos@liberal.city avatar

Could become the groups functionality for the ? AKA could our identities be made to be shared between that service and etc? Both are FOSS and decentralized, right? Thanks.

volkris,

@wjmaggos that’s not really consistent with how ActivityPub is designed in its core.

It’s really designed around instances, not identities, so you’d run into problems trying to share identities across instances.

slcw, to random
@slcw@newsie.social avatar

If is allowed back in the , he and his team of pariahs and lunatics are planning to devalue the Dollar in some insane and misguided effort to boost American exports. But the move would send the US rate through the roof, and destabilize the . It's a plan supported by , so you know it's the exact wrong thing to do. Please consider the damage a Trump presidency would do, and commit to .

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-dollar-devaluation-robert-lighthizer-b2529784.html

volkris,

@slcw presidents don’t have that authority.

This is more sensationalism, and when the sky turned out not to be falling last time Trump was elected a lot of people lost faith in all of the folks who were running around with their hair on fire.

That’s not how the US government works.

dangillmor, to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

Elon Musk controls Twitter. He is a right-wing extremist who actively engages in and promotes lies and loathing. He has made it clear, again and again, that he hates the press (unless it's favorable to him). As NBC News explains, his site welcomes Nazis. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020

All of which makes me ask again, with growing despair, why journalists continue -- by actively participating on Musk's site -- to actively support this evil man's business.

volkris,

@dangillmor the answer is clear, though: so many folks using are able to look past those naive, reductionist perspectives that obsess over Musk and instead consider the broader picture of how use of Twitter benefits their enterprises.

It’s a cut of the nose to spite the face situation to give up the benefits of using a platform just because you have a personal issue with the personality associated with it.

freemo, to random
@freemo@qoto.org avatar

Just a reminder, third-parties are the only parties do not support Israel's genocide on Palestine and their war of aggression throughout the middle east. Both Trump and Biden have been the biggest supporters of Israel.. Anything other than a third-party vote this year is a vote in favor of genocide.

volkris,

@freemo you’re leaning heavily into a strawman argument here, a very common one.

A vote is an expression of a stance. What you’re proposing is that we should take various stances and just funnel them all into one stance that will in many cases be completely opposite to the voters’ own positions.

For example, I won’t vote for either Biden or Trump because I believe both parties need to nominate better candidates. They must if they want my vote. So many others share my position.

We hope that the parties, particularly the losing party, will take that position to heart in the future.

BUT as different people will frame our position as support for either candidate, instead of rejection for both, is to get our position exactly backwards AND miss the call to change, to put forward a better nominee.

The strawman argument of voting for something instead of rejection substitutes what we actually believe for something completely backwards of what we believe, missing the call for a solution in the process.

@hornblower

karlauerbach, to random
@karlauerbach@sfba.social avatar

While I am harping on the subject of internet social media based on self-publishing rather than large republishing companies like Fbook, Twitter, etc...

I am quite concerned about the raw records that form the history of our times simply vanishing, irretrievably, as people age and die.

In earlier days things were recorded with relative permanence on paper (or stone). Not so today - one's entire life's work can vanish in few microseconds.

Not just the media or the storage of today are impermanent, but we have created a clock-driven scythe in the form of ICANN's utterly stupid domain name renewal system. There are as many potential domain names as electrons in the universe, but ICANN rules require leasing them in 1 to 10 year increments, thus undermining much of the means of referencing our already weakly permanent digital creations.

(I won't harp on how impermanent and fragile are our database driven, dynamically constructed, web pages.)

volkris,

@karlauerbach sounds like a good time to bring up where content is located by its hash rather than some location or DNS record.

Really, it sounds like you’re trying to use DNS for something it was never intended for, and complaining that it doesn’t do well something that it was never supposed to do in the first place.

DNS was not supposed to be about permanence.

freemo, to random
@freemo@qoto.org avatar

Reality...

volkris,

@mapto I think what you're illustrating is NOT that the costs aren't included, but that you personally don't agree with the costs.

You want those people to place higher value on their resources than they do. Their valuation doesn't match your own, and you're insisting that you're right, wanting to impose your personal values on them.

Let's be clear about what you're doing here, including the way it has associations with colonialism.

The people in those poor countries need to be fixed in their valuation of their resources?

@freemo @avlcharlie

volkris,

@avlcharlie

My question then is what’s the one where greedy people hoard up all of the money and resources

I just want to point out how unrealistic this is in today’s world, despite how frequently it’s mythologized and theorized and used to promote political interests.

For someone to hoard up all of the money and resources is for that person to voluntarily accept a lower standard of living for themself, to act against their own interests, quite irrationally.

It’s to say, Sure I could buy these things and contract for that service, which would make my life better, but nah, I’ll just warehouse away my wealth instead of actually using it to make my own life better.

Modern society has built plenty of mechanisms to avoid getting stuck in such opportunity costs to the wealthy.

Scrooge McDuck and his swimming in his money vault was not a real option.

@freemo @mapto

volkris,

@freemo capitalism isn't a property of a government.

It's not only entirely possible for it to exist outside of any government context, but it's bound to exist there, given human nature and interests.

@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto

volkris,

@freemo I wouldn't say it's a property of governments any more than having secretaries operate Windows PCs is.

If that's really what you consider a property of governments, then I don't see what the value of emphasizing that property is.

volkris,

@avlcharlie

This is exactly my point!

Notice how he spent? Instead of hoarded?

Bezos could have hoarded that money, but then he’d have lost out on the benefits of buying this property, which is exactly how our society gives very enticing alternatives to hoarding.

Bezos will never fill his moneypit because he has so much benefit in actually spending the money instead.

@freemo @mapto

volkris,

@dashrandom but that’s simply not true

Capitalism will exist regardless of government. Government has no say over whether capitalism exists.

Capitalism is such a natural human institution that it has the same status as, say, language.

People will talk to each other regardless of what government thinks about it. Capitalism is such a fundamental element of life that we neither need government permission nor care what government thinks about it.

Humans do capitalism because capitalism is in our incentives. We don’t ask permission from government to do capitalism.

@avlcharlie @mapto @freemo

volkris,

@freemo you talk about governments passing laws, and that’s exactly it: governments are extremely limited in what they can do in reality. Yeah they can pass laws all day long, and they can devote more and more resources into trying to execute those laws, and yet governments cannot in reality perfectly implement law.

A government can outlaw anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop.

How’s that war on drugs going?

And so capitalism will remain no matter what government thinks of it, just like drug use.

Government can try to suppress it if it wants, but capitalism is so natural, so tied into the human experience, it will exist regardless of what a government official signs into law.

And really that emphasizes my point. That a government might choose to oppose and crack down on capitalism just highlights that capitalism exists outside of government. For government to have to oppose it means that it must exist without government in the first place, separate from government.

Just like drug use 🙂

@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto

volkris,

@freemo but that there would indeed be a market proves my point.

You say the market may not exist if if governments pass laws, and yet, there it is.

The rest gets into rabbitholes of what constitutes market freedom. I’d say that markets always react to influences, and government influence is not particularly different from any other.

A market will react to the influences of weather or tech advancement or government dictat or a viral video. No market is free from influence; that’s in fact the value of markets, the ability to respond to those influences.

I’d say the critical freedom is the ability of the participant to choose whether or not to accept a transaction, no matter the source of influences going into the transaction.

But at the end of the day, capitalism exists regardless of governments, requiring neither support nor sanction from government.

@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto

volkris,

@freemo if you go with the definition that a free market must be devoid of influence then there cannot be any market, ever, regardless of government since all markets function in the context of influence.

If you go with your definition, then markets cannot ever exist regardless of government.

It’s a useless definition.

@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto

volkris,

@freemo it's not factually true that people will always give everything they own to live even one more day suffer free.

I know plenty of counter examples personally, and they show up everywhere from politicians engaging in rhetoric about people choosing to forego prescription refills through public policy complaints about folks taking risks with regard to mask mandates.

So no, in reality we see that people DO make exactly those choices in very capitalistic ways.

@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto

freemo, to LGBT
@freemo@qoto.org avatar

I would love to undertand better the reason/psychology/development of some homosexual men to speak in that distinctive way of speaking that seems exclusive to gay men. Like it isnt an accent, and doesnt seem to occur naturally since its exclusive to that group. Do gay men make it a point to learn to speak that way at some point? If so why?

My best guess is as a way to show their orientation publicly to signal to other gay men, in an effort to creat connections or find companions that are also gay? But that would imply its a conscious thing they learnedto do at some point?

PS please no inconsiderate responses. Be respectful people.

volkris,

@freemo well, think about yourself. Do you ever find yourself speaking a different way around certain people as a conscious or unconscious way of relating to them, especially as a positive way of matching them, showing kinship?

I think that happens to a lot or even most of us.

We codeswitch as a way of engaging with other humans.

volkris,

@freemo sounds like you prefer to have a generic accent.

Which is itself the adoption of an accent--a generic one :)

ianRobinson, to USpolitics
@ianRobinson@mastodon.social avatar

I’m beginning to wonder if Judge Cannon wants to be removed by a more senior court as another delaying tactic. If she is removed and another judge appointed it’s bound to cause a delay as that judge gets up to speed?

The latest episode of The Legal Breakdown with Glenn Kirschner and Brian Tyler Cohen addresses Judge Cannon’s latest ruling.

https://youtu.be/OQqsYgTXMkQ

volkris,

@ianRobinson Occam’s razor would have us at least consider that maybe she is simply being honest with her opinions as expressed in orders, without any sort of conspiracy involved

hello, to threads
@hello@social.wedistribute.org avatar

In response to @potus enabling federation via the other day, a number of people asked: why can't the White House self-host their own Mastodon server?

Our writer @deadsuperhero dives in with some thoughts on the current hurdles

https://wedistribute.org/2024/04/us-government-hosted-fediverse/

volkris,

@janettespeyer I think it’s under appreciated that there are a TON of practical issues when it comes to how to be on fediverse, issues ranging from internal editorial processes through marketing matters through legal matters.

The hosting of one’s own instance falls into those issues.

It’s not as simple as a lot of people think.

@hello @deadsuperhero

wjmaggos, to Economics
@wjmaggos@liberal.city avatar

What do corporate board conversations about executive pay sound like? Do they really think that at the top they have to pay more to make the business run better, but that paying less makes perfect sense for all lower level employees? Or then what's with the lack of competition for the CEO jobs?

volkris,

@wjmaggos No I would reverse that.

It’s not that the society we take for granted requires that most people agree to go along, but the opposite: the society we see before us is required by what the people have agreed to go along WITH.

The society is what the people have come up with. It doesn’t require the people, but the people created it. It doesn’t exist separate from the people.

In the same vein, it’s not true that otherwise we need totalitarianism to make it function at all, because it doesn’t exist separate from us. We wouldn’t need totalitarianism to enact society, rather we would require a different society based on what we agreed to create in a distributed way.

Because politics is not power. We each contribute power as we see fit, with politics being just one expression of how we are ourselves organize our own use of our own power.

We don’t need this, we don’t need totalitarianism, we don’t need super bowl tickets, we don’t need Yoko Ono albums 🙂

We decide what we want from society collectively and what society ends up being is the reflection of what we all decide to do with our power.

It’s not the other way around.

@freeschool @volkris @amerika @JeffC1956

volkris,

The problem is that I think you guys are talking about philosophy when we are talking about application.

You can philosophize all you want about what might be or what could be or what should be, but at the end of the day, you might also be more concerned with what is as you may or may not be led into a jail cell.

And that is emphatically my point here. It doesn’t matter what politicians might say, the power rests with the jailer leading the person into the cell.

The abstract is not so important when it comes to that sort of thing.

@wjmaggos @JeffC1956

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