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kentpitman

@[email protected]

Philosopher/Technologist/Writer. Progressive independent focused on Climate, democracy, and social justice.

#Climate #Justice #Democracy #Politics #Society
#Technology #Ethics #Philosophy #Writing
#Programming #Lisp #Poetry #Haiku

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@kentpitman@climatejustice.social avatar kentpitman , to random
          • REMINDER - - - - -
            Impeachment is STILL an option.

Maybe not over the tariffs [1] per se. But absolutely because the insane stink of this may be the smelling salts some GOP holdouts need to stop looking the other way on the felon's MANY impeachable crimes, not wanting the smell to rub off.

Plus the outcomes of the Wisconsin and Florida votes [2] could give them hope a primary threat can be beat. And they might FINALLY feel their greatest security is not as Friends of The Felon. Even though Dems lost the special elections, it was not by much. The GOP needs to read the room.

And the Dems need to throw them a lifeline if they try to act sanely. It would be terrible to lose democracy over a gripe about a few individuals who took way too long to see reason but finally did, and angry Dems thinking it was more important to see that injustice righted than Democracy saved. Politics is messy, and right now it matters to save the Constitution.

Well, not that I think impeaching the felon would put the Constitution in the clear. Vance is still a VERY dangerous guy [3] who wants an empire, not a republic. But one problem at a time.

It's really time for an impeachment.

Or even use of the 25th amendment, though on different grounds. The fact that he launched a trade war with penguins is one. [4] The biz about tariffs on smuggled fentanyl is another. [5]

Keywords

Notes

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2xpev2l3o

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/republicans-florida-special-wisconsin-supreme-court-midterms-029963

[3] https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2024/10/vance-notice.html

[4] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tariffs-trade-war-global-penguins-not-putin-1235309637/

[5] https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lltfuf5pgk2y

@FantasticalEconomics@geekdom.social avatar FantasticalEconomics , to AcademicChatter group

This is what fascism looks like.

As someone arrested at a campus protest last spring, I have major qualms with how the Biden administration handled campus dissent. But it was nothing compared to what we are in for now.

Our reaction to this statement will help decide if Trump's regeime is able to consolidate power to form the strong-man dictatorship he envisions. Our reaction should be to protest in force across every campus while wearing MASKS.

academicchatter@a.gup.pe icon AcademicChatter group

Screenshot a Trump "truth" social post reading: "All Federal finding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they can't. American students will be permanently worked or, depending on on the crying, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter."
ALT
kentpitman ,
@kentpitman@climatejustice.social avatar

@FantasticalEconomics academicchatter@a.gup.pe icon AcademicChatter group

So.... the felon wants to cut funding for schools allowing illegal protests, and he's issuing edicts about how protesters are to be treated.

But, uh, ... there is constitutional protection for

«…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.»

So if anyone's funding is cut, that's a violation of the Constitution that he has sworn an oath to protect and defend.

Seems grounds for impeachment to me.

Let's use upcoming special elections to change the balance of power in the House.

kentpitman ,
@kentpitman@climatejustice.social avatar

@Pineywoozle @FantasticalEconomics academicchatter@a.gup.pe icon AcademicChatter group

Oh, there are lots of reasons. But some might say J6 has been tried. He could be impeached for violations of the emoluments clause, too. I'm not fussy. I was just pointing out an option. :)

There are special elections enough to change the House before the midterms. If a few GOP senators too afraid to ask could be convinced to step down, there could be Senate special elections, too.

I don't mind trying at the midterms, but that's a LONG time out, and he will have done a lot of damage to the voting system by then, if not to the Constitution itself (which is part of their game plan). It matters to be acting quickly.

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services avatar FediTips , (edited ) to random

People who use screen readers, do you prefer hashtags to all be at the end of a post, or do you prefer hashtags to be mixed in with the main text?

(This is a poll for sight impaired people only, please do not vote if you are sighted. I only included the third option because so many people vote without reading posts properly, and I didn't want sighted people skewing the results.)

kentpitman ,
@kentpitman@climatejustice.social avatar

@FediTips

I'm not sight impaired yet, so I'm not voting, but has a technologist, I'm forced to wonder why we can't solve this problem with better tooling.

It seems like having the word hashtag appear randomly in an audio stream would be disruptive, and like there should be a user option for a screen reader to not voice them, or mark them in another ways, like a subtle changing emphasis.

To me that seems separate from the problem of aggregating them. There should be a command that asks for a list of the tags without requiring reading and that finds them no matter where they are.

So I guess it's useful to talk about writing style because it could be implemented without a change to software. But I do think the software should aspire to more.

I also tend to think both of these issues would be useful for sighted people as well. At Mastodon, I usually put tags at the end of what I write because unlike on the bird site, there are more characters available and I don't have to worry so much about compression.

I personally find hashtags as visually intrusive as others might find them intrusive in audio. But just because one posts text with hashtags in it doesn't mean we couldn't have an option to visually suppress them, or move them to the end collected in a single place. (For that matter, the hashtag could be removed and the color could be changed, which would be the approximate visual equivalent have a shift in intonation when reading.)

On first joining the bird site in 2012, I wrote this haiku:

I'd hoped for haiku
There's room for real beauty here,
Squandered on hash tags.