• 5 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Where do you get this idea?

    Where do you get the idea that it is at all possible to stand up on your soapbox in the town square, addressing every Tom, Dick, and Harry, yet keeping certain members of the public from hearing your speech?

    When I logout of my instance, you can’t distinguish me from any other anonymous user. I’m part of the anonymous masses. If you want to keep me from seeing your content, you can’t post it for the anonymous masses to see.

    Facebook (and other proprietary, centralized services) give the impression that this can be done, but the way they are doing it is by refusing to show content to anonymous users. You can’t do that with federated services.






  • Term limits in SCOTUS would increase the current president’s power to exert influence in the court. That sounds great, until we realize that about half the time, the president is a complete asshole who shouldn’t be in charge of a McDonald’s franchise, let alone the country.

    To reduce a president’s undue influence on the court, we need to strictly limit the number of justices they can add per term. If three justices reach their term limits, and two others die or retire, the president is flipping five justices. That’s a terrible idea.

    What we could do is eliminate the fixed size of the court. Eliminate the requirement that the court must consist of 9 people. Instead, the president appoints two justices per term, shortly after their first and third years in office. The court’s size will likely fluctuate between 10 and 15 justices.

    To further remove political influence, we could introduce a means of replenishing the court without political grandstanding. Should the court membership fall below 5 members due to some kind of disaster or tragedy, (or should the president fail to appoint or the Senate confirm a presidential appointment, or should too many members of the current court have a conflict of interest and not be eligible to hear a case) appellate court justices are elevated to the supreme court in order of seniority.










  • As an initial theory, it’s solid.

    But then we start asking if this is the best way to do it. Are there alternative ways of achieving the same - or better - safety margins? Could we reduce the risk of deep-water ditching by avoiding flight over deepwater? Could we restrict the distance from shore that aircraft are allowed to fly? Could we require additional redundancy (third, fourth engines, larger fuel reserves) for aircraft flying beyond glide distance to land? (We do both of these. Single engine planes require passengers and crew to be prepared to ditch before leaving glide range to land. Twin engine planes are restricted by ETOPS. Both are strictly limited on how far they can fly from shore.)

    Adding a third engine and 30 additional minutes of reserve fuel would achieve at least the same degree of safety against ditching, and vastly improve safety in all sorts of situation where a detachable cabin would not be beneficial. Do we improve a wide variety of safety measures, or do we have a reason to focus on this one particular type of incident?