abff08f4813c

Also aren’t you the dude defending UM to me yesterday? What’s your deal?

"Defending" is a bit strong.

I think these two comments explain it better than I did for myself last time around,

The response here is not about whether their behavior was socially acceptable, but whether it was an indication of a fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something.

https://lemmy.world/comment/13011607

I get that, but hear me out… it’s just as likely that they’re an obsessive ... who can’t stand letting someone have the last word.

https://lemmy.world/comment/13010767

Basically I was saying your stats, while useful, could be read in a way that did not quite support the "fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something" line of thinking, and that folks should use more critical thinking before making accusations like that.

I realize now that I may have come off snarky asking if /m/politics is leftist. The whole fediverse is, but what I was specifically asking was how we go about dealing with people whose opinions we disagree with.

Conservatives now are a minority in US politics (even though the Electoral College and overall makeup of the states distorts and amplifies their powers in getting to the White House and in the Senate, and gerrymandering doing the same for the House of Res) - but they are still a significant minority.

I kinda viewed it as a test, at least for myself. If I can't even get along with a self proclaimed socialist who merely can't give up the love of voting third party, what hope do I have with making peace with an actual conservative? And what happens if we can't make peace as a country?

That's why I was asking if /m/politics was open to engagement with conservative views (which no one answered).

So that number three spot is suspect to me too. I would’ve assumed a lot of users over time would have broken -4000.

There are two explanations that come to my mind.

I've only been running my own instance for a couple of months at this point, and so I only have the history from then on. Anything older and my instance wouldn't know about it since it didn't exist to receive that info.

The second one - we're seeing changes now with the downvoting process. I personally use pyfedi ( flagship instance is at piefed.social ) - and pyfedi is, erm, opinionated. For example, by design, it automatically hides posts and comments in it's UI if the downvotes are too negative (by default a score of -20 or greater, though this is configurable by the admin). Pyfedi also implemented anonymous downvoting, but users whose reputation are too low (based on how many downvotes they are getting) won't be able to use this feature.

In short, being downvoted all the time is starting to bite. So my guess is that folks who do this might be changing accounts in order to avoid too negative a score in an attempt to avoid some of these consequences.

This is a bit new to me, as I actually have never tried a DM since I started self-hosting an instance (and as far as I know, no one has tried to DM me).

But from https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/117834 it seems that DMs on Lemmy are indeed federated - albeit to the minimum required (your instance and the instance of the person you are DMing - so for example, with me being on a single user instance, I would never see these get federated over unless someone was trying to DM me). So they don't get federated outward if DMs are going on between users on the same instance.

Fortunately that also points to a workaround - using Element.io and Matrix to send secure messages between users (when you don't want even the instance admins or Element.io or Matrix admins to see the message contents).

My only experience sending DMs on the fediverse was with a kbin.social account, but from what I recall that was for local users only (so I could DM someone else who had a kbin.social account but not someone who had a mastodon.social account, for example).

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.

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 user_name, sum(effect) from post_reply_vote v inner join "user" u on u.id = v.author_id group by user_name 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.

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"

Forgot the /s at the end

North Korea already has a high defection rate. This ... this is going to do the exact opposite of slowing that down.

Brilliant! I agree.

I think the first step is Harris getting elected and Dems retaking the Senate in 2026. Then go with the 127 DC states plan - https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review - this gives the required two thirds majority to pass any required constitutional amendments to implement the above.

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.

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.

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.