FlowVoid @ FlowVoid @midwest.social

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2 yr. ago

You can have healthy and sustainable communities without high density housing or any of the comforts of urban living. In fact, humans have lived in low density rural communities for thousands of years.

That's a great idea, I hope other communities follow.

there's no 3rd party like there is with Lemmy and

3rd parties are not new. All these issues came up when Google, YouTube, etc started storing third party content. They still exist today because they followed the rules.

So there's no American users on lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, or even lemmy.world itself?

What? No, my point is that if you are American and host an instance, you'll probably be ok. Just like Google and YouTube.

If you are not American and host an instance, then all bets are off. If you are Swiss, then you are probably ok. If you are North Korean, then maybe the police are coming for you right now.

What is "hosting"? Your lemmy "home", lemmy.today for me, has a cached copy of all the content it's users view.

In the US, if you have copyrighted content on your server and the copyright holder says "Get rid of it", then you have to get rid of it. As long as you comply, you'll be ok. That's literally YouTube's business model.

If you refuse, then the cops might come for you. In the US, cops don't go after users who download copyrighted content, only those who make it available to others.

It's a service charge. That implies the money is going to the staff. So they are already getting approximately what they would have been tipped.

Now, maybe "service charge" is a lie and they aren't actually seeing that money. But if so, then the waitstaff are complicit in that lie, because they handed it to me. And if I'm supposed to assume they are lying then I'm certainly not tipping them.

Trash has been around far longer than corporations, and people have taken responsibility for their trash long before corporations existed.

Just replace "Lemmy instance" with "blog", and the answer is obvious.

"consider a Mexican user visiting a blog located in Germany to view Nazi content."

The user is subject to Mexican laws. The blog owner would be subject to German laws. The instance owner is likewise subject to German laws.

Adding additional parties doesn't change anything. For example, if a Mexican user on a Swiss VPN views content originating from a blog in Germany, then the user, the VPN, and the blog are all subject to laws of their own jurisdiction.

Those laws can regulate what content you can access, what content you can host, or both.

If you are American then your Lemmy instance is most likely be protected by section 230, and you probably don't have to worry too much about non-pirated content. If you live in another country or host pirated content in the US, then YMMV.

Or just reduce the need to drive, for example by encouraging remote work.

All ideals are false. The entire point of ideals is to strive to change the world to meet them.

And whether those efforts see fruition this year, this decade, or even in your lifetime, is beside the point. Ideals are a multigenerational project, with all the ups and downs that implies.

You seem to be implying that I don't want Democrats to win, but I can assure you that's not the case. I still do think that the extra votes in the EC are unimportant, and we should focus our efforts on things like voter suppression that have an actual impact.

I am especially concerned when Democrats are defeatist about elections (ie "The Constitution is hopelessly stacked against us in the EC"). Fair or not, the presidency is very winnable. So is the Senate: when was the last the time the GOP held a supermajority? They may have a rural advantage, but we have other advantages, including educated voters and women.

And I can think of two or three amendments that I would work towards (cough, Second Amendment!) before worrying about the EC.

He hasn't been charged with insurrection, so even if he's convicted the 14th amendment won't apply.

Two federal indictments, and one state (NY). Georgia will be the second state indictment.

You too have nothing to say about the actual story.

First, I'm using the common definition of battleground states, which is states that are currently considered winnable by both sides. That doesn't include New Hampshire, or any of the smallest states.

Second, arguable means you can make a good argument for something, so I think you just proved that it's arguable. It is not a slam dunk.

The only advantage of less populated states is that they get two "free" electors regardless of their population. This effect is strongest in small states, where it helps both parties equally.

Looking at all the states, the maximum advantage to a presidential candidate is the difference between the number of states they won times two. For example, if both candidates win 25 states, then the two "free" electors per state will cancel out and the electoral college will be determined solely by the number of representatives in the states that each side wins. Or to put it differently, if the Constitution were "fixed" so that electors were strictly awarded by population, then the winner would never change in a 25 to 25 split.

Of course, if one candidates wins 26 states and the other wins 24 states, then the first candidate could potentially get four "unfair" electors by winning more small states. But historically, the electoral college is won by much larger margins. The only modern candidate who might have won if the Constitution were "fixed" would have been Gore, and that was a highly unusual election. Otherwise, the small state advantage hasn't made a significant difference in our lifetime.

Doctors will never use a test that is only 90% accurate.

A more realistic scenario is to start with a simple test that has low false negative rate (<5%) but prone to obtain a false positive. If the test is negative then testing stops. If it is positive then they confirm the diagnosis with a more complex test with a low false positive rate.

Maine has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election in the past 30 years. It's true that it has a Republican Senator, but if that means it's a battleground state then by the same logic so are Montana and West Virginia. Those incumbents are popular despite their party, but when they finally leave the Senate they will be replaced by someone in the opposite party.

But you're right that Hawaii is not one of the ten smallest. It's eleventh. However, I left out New Hampshire, which voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election in the past 30 years except one. So of the eleven smallest states, six consistently send Democrats to the electoral college.

While it's still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC, the issue is more complicated than simply blaming the small states. Or for that matter the big states: the top ten include three red (FL, TX, OH), three blue (CA, NY, IL) and four battlegrounds (GA, NC, MI, PA).

You're right about Franken. But Kennedy's death didn't immediately end the supermajority, since his temporary replacement was also a Democrat.

The infrastructure bill was resurrected as the Inflation Reduction Act, which Manchin voted for.

Democrats do plenty, especially at the local level.

The problem is that some voters have barely the attention span necessary to watch an entire TikTok video. They start complaining unless they see something new in their feed every day so they can click "like".

But that's not how democracy works, in fact that's never been how it worked. To take just one example, abortion opponents developed a long term strategy that only came to fruition after several decades.

That's who you're up against: people who know how to play the long game. So if you are frustrated by a lack of short term gains, then you aren't cut out for American politics.

I was responding to someone who said that "empty" states have disproportionate power in the electoral college and Senate. Their emptiness does not give them undue power, regardless of what ignorant people think.

Democrats had a supermajority for only ten months, and in that time they managed to pass a major piece of legislation on a highly controversial topic.

If you expected more than one in that time frame, then you really don't understand how American politics works.