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abff08f4813c

@ abff08f4813c @j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us

Posts
7
Comments
887
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • Union boss ignored university’s request to change polarising speech

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  • That's very true. But also kinda sad.

    The university did greenlight this (as they had enough advanced notice of the content to request he make a change, and refused to censor him when he refused). However, the spokesman also said,

    We regret that the speech was not more befitting of a graduation ceremony

    Which I optimistically take to mean that they didn't find it particularly relevant either.

  • Union boss ignored university’s request to change polarising speech

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  • Hey, I might be able to help you out here. I'm pretty sure this can be figured out if one has access to the underlying raw vote data. Which all instance admins do (more or less).

    So running this SQL query on my pyfedi instance,

    select username, sum(effect) from postreplyvote v inner join "user" u on u.id = v.authorid group by username order by sum(effect) asc;

    The first two rows,

    UniversalMonk | -23315 MediaBiasFactChecker | -19231

    So this account is indeed the most downvoted (or at least the most downvoted that my instance knows about). Interestingly enough the MediaBiasFactChecker bot is the 2nd most downvoted instance.

    Number 3 is a human afaik and shows up as -4147 so the margin between this account and the next most downvoted human is indeed a very large one.

  • McDonald’s tells U.S. restaurants it’s not a ‘political brand’ after Trump visit

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  • McD's might be unique in this regard, but they actually own the land the building is on for most franchises. So they'd have the authority to deny if they wanted to (at least in the standard agreement in the US).

    This was well explained in the biopic, The Founder https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/

    Sadly, it makes sense that corporate would not deny it in this case - the store was going to be closed so there was no impact on business (as compared to the store being closed for a more typical reason), and they'd probably fear the public relations backlash after seeing "McD refuses to allow store to be borrowed by GOP/MAGA campaign"

  • Jon Stewart Is Taking Trump’s ‘Enemy Within’ Threats Very Seriously

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  • Forgot the /s at the end

  • Viral attack on Walz features fake former student making false claim

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  • Paddington Bear given UK passport by Home Office | Paddington | The Guardian

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  • I mean, it's listed as his official birth place on his passport and all that, so...

    Though, if it somehow got updated to Columbia instead, I wouldn't be surprised.

  • South Korea could follow North into Russia-Ukraine war

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  • This is a good thing. In practice I imagine the Ukrainians and South Koreans will speak English to each other, which is fine, but sometimes you wonder how much is lost in translation.

  • US said seeking to install new Lebanese president, push aside weakened Hezbollah | The Times of Israel

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  • If you want to pretend laws arent laws, I dont know what to tell you.

    Fortunately, I have no desire to go there. (As an aside, I am still waiting for the explanation regarding the laws on sock puppetry.)

    You cant just declare that reality is meaningless unless it adheres to your current most convenient outcome

    Which is why I have done no such thing, and am puzzled as to why you'd claim otherwise. Quote please?

    We increasingly stand for nothing but a cult of personality as long as its slightly better than republicans,

    Well, tbf "we're better than that guy" is not really much of a personality cult. This is especially so when virtually anyone else is better than that guy.

    thats not the dem party or the “America” I grew up with.

    You must be far older than I. I only remember from the Clinton years, and Bill Clinton won in part because he was a fairly conservative Democrat from the midwestern state of Arkansas. So already in the early 90s Dems were aiming for centrist appeal.

    This is exactly the centrist rot at the core of the party.

    Well, it might be worth considering why the party chose to shift this way. The short answer is that the Electoral College grants too much voting power to the smaller states, which become the swing or battleground states, and so to win in the Electoral College and become President, those are the voters you have to cater to - and they happen to be not only more centralist, but probably more conservative than folks who live in huge east coast or west coast cities. See https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/22/13713148/electoral-college-democracy-race-white-voters for a more in-depth explanation.

    I hate it too, but considering what's at stake in this election, I'll support Harris or anyone else who has a shot at winning that's not the current GOP candidate. Though my hope is this:

    Harris wins and Dems get enough majority control of both houses (enough to get around likely no votes from maverick Dems like Joe Manchin), then the Senate majority leader (Schumer) can lower the bar for a filibuster to a bare majority.

    Then basically follow this plan https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review - the TLDR is to pass a new law post-filibuster removal to admit each neighborhood of DC as its own state, which would add 127 new Dem states in all.

    At this point there is now the required two-thirds majority of states required in the hands of the Dems, so a new constitution amendment dropping the Electoral College for a nationwide popular vote could be passed and ratified successfully.

    As a bonus, also pass another amendment requiring ranked choice voting - this allows us more choices. We can safely vote third party as our first choice for President in the future, while having the more moderate Dem a 2nd or 3rd choice, meaning that we vote 3rd party without fearing the spoiler effect would prop up a MAGA candidate into office again. Which would allow more folks to feel safe in supporting their third party, meaning that third parties now have a more realistic chance of actually making it to the highest office.

    Even if Dems don't hold the Senate in 2024, the Senate maps look much better in 2026. So if they can keep the House of Reps in 2026 and retake the Senate then in sufficient numbers, this could still happen under Harris.

    So in summary, the best hope of moving away from catering to centralist battleground state voters first requires getting Harris elected.

    Btw, in case you were wondering, I'm a far leftie who back in 2020, would have preferred Andrew Yang.. or failing that, Bernie Sanders. AOC wasn't eligible then, but she would have had my vote as well if it were possible.

  • Serbia's president thanks Putin for gas supplies and vows he'll never impose sanctions on Russia

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  • So what's the rationale for the EU to accept Serbia as a member again?

  • Tram workers in Edinburgh claim victory in dispute over toilet and rest breaks

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  • Wonder why the Scotsman went with a slightly misleading headline here. The Tram workers won their breaks, so it's not just a claimed victory, but an actual one.

    Anyways, good for the workers!

  • Biden to Propose That Insurers Cover Over-the-Counter Birth Control

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  • Well, I imagine that this is one reason why GOP leadership was against the ACA and tried to repeal it.

    You don't need to worry about covering either one if nothing is covered, after all. /s

  • Biden to Propose That Insurers Cover Over-the-Counter Birth Control

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  • Agreed, except remember this - he's not really a lame duck, he's on the same team as Harris so what he does now can splash on her.

    So, still yes, except use caution if there's a risk it might hurt Harris's campaign.

  • Israel’s wars are expensive. Paying the bill could force tough choices

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  • Thanks. Then ... I know who to write to, and what to say.

  • Dad of baby girl who died in the Channel says 'she slipped from my hand'

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  • Wow, this is really heartbreaking. I'd actually prefer that these folks get allowed from the Channel into land faster, even if it means that they are only being held in detention and immediately sent back on the first available plane, if it means preventing deaths of children like this.

  • A note on Universal Monk:

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  • I appreciate both the lenient approach and the transparency.

    If we wanted an echo chamber, we could have called this /m/VoteBlue or similar and established only pro-Harris posts and comments as a rule.

    I guess, despite the name, it can still become VoteBlue (after all, on a different website world politics used to be discussed on a sub called AnimeT... ) but I think it's worth asking - if a genuine and civil commenter of a conservative persuasion joined the sub, how willing would we be to actually engage with that person?

    See this example - a liberal who once clerked for a conservative Supreme Court justice (Scalia). https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/02/17/im-a-liberal-lawyer-clerking-for-scalia-taught-me-how-to-think-about-the-law/ (or https://archive.is/KauGu )

    Just because you have vastly different views and many disagreements with someone, doesn't mean that you can't engage in good faith with them, or have both sides get something meaningful from the engagement (even if part of the resolution is to continue to agree to disagree on some of the more salient points).

  • A note on Universal Monk:

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  • Hmm... that is a good take. (Somewhat scarily, that also seems to describe me really well.)

    Being on the spectrum could also explain a higher than typical screen time. I've been on these online communities in the past, and there are folks there who get online as the first thing they do when they wake up, and then go offline just right before bed. (There are good reasons for it of course - when you crave social interaction but the only medium that you can handle it is using a computer, then this sort of thing becomes more understandable.)

  • A note on Universal Monk:

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  • It's easy enough to limit for a local user posting. I guess the tricky part is what if this comes in through federation from an instance that doesn't support limiting. Probably just refuse the CREATE request with an appropriate error code (400?) and message (the "try again later one") and hope the user's home instance will report that back to the user.

  • [Question for admins] How do you feel about your users requesting content or account removal from other servers.

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  • So I'm not sure where I fit in. I run my own instance, but it's a single user instance that only serves me. Also, I currently don't run any magazines (communities) of my own.

    If I was the user on Instance A asking on Instance B ... well that means Instance A is my own, and I obviously wouldn't get in trouble with myself.

    If I was the admin on Instance B - a user from elsewhere was asking me to remove such content on mine - I'd go ahead and do it. Not worth the potential headache or ramifications that would come with refusing.

    I think in general, the admin on Instance A would not be upset with the user. If anything, in this situation the user is probably trying to delete their account and history, so the admins of Instance A would be thankful that the user went to instance B and saved the admins the headache of trying to contact other federated instances themselves to coordinate a manual deletion. (The only thing worse than dealing with a GDPR request is trying to get others to help you deal with a GDPR request - particularly without pay.)

  • A note on Universal Monk:

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  • I think we have the same view on this, except I don't have cognitive dissonance over the ban - the ban was for a repeating behaviour of reposting/repeat posts, rather than the person's stubbornness over the whole spoiler effect/FPTP means only two real choices thing.

    Also, it's temporary and just one magazine (rather than, say, the entire instance).