I don’t think that’s necessarily true. What I do think is true is that there’s a chance some AI thing will be a trillion dollar investment, and the most motivating thing for VCs is fear of missing out on a giant score.

A nonprofit open source profit ought to have different motivations though.

That’s pretty much what I wrote in the comment box. The options for the multiple choice questions don’t really acknowledge that as a preference people might have.

I don’t think many people have read RFC 5322 (I haven’t), but most non-technical people I know understand these things about email:

• There are different service providers, and people can email each other no matter which provider they use
• There are different email apps
• Some apps are tied to specific service providers and others are not

I do lament the overall level of tech literacy.

The average person understands email pretty well. Mastodon doesn’t require much more understanding than that, but could probably use some UX and messaging work.

That’s a bit of a circular reference: “it got popular because it got popular”. The question remains: why did BlueSky reach that threshold and Mastodon did not?

I’m inclined to agree that’s a problem. Everyone’s first encounter with a social media content recommendation algorithm was one designed to manipulate them into clicking ads, so it caused some backlash. Recommendation algorithms can be tuned to show things people care about and want to engage with.

Local elections also need to be partisan. Otherwise how the fuck do you know where any of the candidates even generally stand on the issues?

I’d rather parties have no official role so we’re actually voting for people to represent us. Candidates have a responsibility to get their message out, and voters have a responsibility to do some research.

The story buries the lede: there were 19 candidates on the ballot for mayor and 16-30 for each city council district. Several of the experts cited speculate that the number of candidates overwhelmed voters.

I always go over a sample ballot in advance and research each candidate. I would not have liked to do so for that election; local elections are difficult to research in general with many candidates getting minimal press and some not even bothering to put up websites.

What’s funny is I’m not a part of the terminally online left. It would be hard to deny the terminally online part while posting on Lemmy, but I lean more libertarian than left. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. Now some reader here probably thinks I’m a terrible person.

Trump’s 2016 election convinced me to compromise a lot and vote for team blue even if I had major differences of opinion of certain policies. His attempt to steal the 2020 election cemented that decision, as that’s a long-term threat to the continued existence of democracy in America.

I think the main thing I can take away from this is I’d be terrible at running a political campaign. I already knew that.

While I can understand how more traditional conservative messages resonate with people, Trump’s are outside my Overton window. I can see the mechanics of how it works, and I can empathize with people who feel like the current system is failing them, but not with those who feel like Trump is going to fix it.

I’m disappointed your comments are attracting downvotes. They are on-topic and well-reasoned.

I’m not going to cop to strawmanning here, but I will grant that people who are receptive to his messaging on immigration might hear it differently than I do.

Perhaps part of my difficulty understanding how someone could resonate with that messaging without being an irredeemable racist stems from it not being based in reality any time there are actual numbers available from law enforcement. Drug couriers are citizens far more often than they are immigrants. Illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than citizens. Noncitizens attempting to vote is rare and usually results in prosecution. “Open border” means something very different to me, e.g. intra-EU borders than it seems to mean to Trump.

Despite all that, Trump’s supporters feel like he’s telling them the truth about these issues and everyone who contradicts him is lying. The explanations that come to mind for me are… uncharitable. I’d like to hear alternatives.

It seems to me software designed to facilitate discussion shouldn’t have a downvote buttton. There should be a UI for marking comments as inappropriate, but it should require a second step saying why. Perhaps one of the reasons should even be “I disagree”, but that option should have no effect.

It’s not impossible to abuse of course, but it nudges people in the right direction. Those UI nudges can be pretty effective.

Not many, and those who come to mind weren’t receptive to that kind of messaging. Reasoning I’ve heard includes “Biden ruined the economy”, “vote R no matter who”, and “RFK and Tulsi Gabbard endorsed him”.

The statements I’ve heard from Trump himself are “illegal immigrants are going to steal your job, the election, and your cat”, and “trans people want to fuck your kid”, which are about groups of people with very little political power.

It’s definitely true that white collar, urban liberals sometimes punch down at rural, blue collar white people. It does hurt them politically.

I’m having trouble seeing anything Trump says about anyone other than high-level elected officials as punching up though. Attacks on the sitting president are punching up by definition, but the challenger always does that.

It seems more to me that he’s telling people who don’t feel good about their position in society that there’s someone below them. That was the message of slavery, of apartheid, and of Hitler. I find it hard not to condemn those who were receptive to it.

Persuadable voters seemed really focused on prices. It’s hard not to be condescending here. Eggs are expensive because of bird flu. Rent is high because not enough housing is being built, mostly limited by local issues. Gas is high because of Putin’s war. Anyone who thinks electing Trump will bring those prices down because they were lower last time he was president is fucking clueless.

I’m interested to see how much of a factor unenthusiastic Democrats were. Trump got about the same number of votes he did in 2020, but Harris got far fewer than Biden. It looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn’t vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.

A bit of that, a bit of ordinary inflation, and a bit of Putin’s war. I find it unlikely the current president had reasonable options to prevent any of that.

The trend is that when the economy is bad for the average person, it hurts the incumbent.

I don’t think the people whose votes swung the election in Trump’s favor know how tariffs work or what policies Musk has in mind. They don’t even know why eggs are expensive (bird flu); they just know things were cheaper last time Trump was president.

Of course that’s assuming there’s a free and fair election next time around.

Everyone with a reason or responsibility to inform the public about the economy has not been effective enough.

• Why are eggs expensive? There has been an ongoing bird flu outbreak for the past four years. Government policy might be able to mitigate the impact some, but the virus does not care who is president.
• Why is rent expensive? Not enough housing, mostly, with a bit of facilitated collusion thrown in. The president has little to do with the former; if anything, Trump is more likely to tolerate the latter.
• Why is gas expensive? A president does have a big role here, but it’s Putin, not Biden or Trump. It’s also not up a whole lot from 5-6 years ago.

Every antivaxer knows the Science shows vaccines work

Having debated a couple who are quite intelligent otherwise, I’m going to have to dispute that.

Sure, they know broadly that exposing the immune system to something that looks like a pathogen primes it to respond to that pathogen in the future, but they tend to be way off on the implications. I’ve heard it suggested that too many vaccines cause people to run out of immune memory. I’ve heard that all antibodies cause inflammation. I’ve heard that previous attempts to produce coronavirus vaccines killed the majority of test subjects years later.

None of those claims are true, and the only way they could be true is if everyone in the field of immunology is lying all the time.

I’d really like to know how many people didn’t hear Trump call Brad Raffensperger and try to get him to throw the election. I’m shocked anyone could listen to that and think it’s OK to give him power again regardless of their position on any of the issues.