Alex Vranas @Alex@vran.as

I would honestly consider a court removing a candidate from a ballot to be massive government overreach if we hadn't written this exact scenario into the Constitution 155 years ago.

The larger story is that 49 states have still failed uphold the 14th amendment requirement that Trump be removed, and we're reaching the three-year anniversary of J6.

Without a 2/3 vote of Congress to override this rule, it is illegal to put him on the ballot. Colorado is the only state obeying this law today.

Matrix is really strange. I like the idea, but there are some serious issues with the way it works. Kinda cool that you can basically roll your own Signal / Telegram server, but it's extremely heavyweight and really vulnerable to abuse.

It's also nice to follow over 1k accounts because that's the only way any content makes it to me. I actually filter some accounts out of my user timeline just to fluff up my federated timeline.

I still follow those accounts, I just have a more curated personal timeline.

One of the things that I thought was a downside to running a single-user instance is that not all of the comments load for popular posts. I really only see the people I follow, I have no other users filling in the blanks in my database.

But this makes it harder to get stuck in the weeds. If I want to see reactions to a post I can open the thread on its home server and see everything.

It's honestly a good filter to keep me from responding to posts that aren't productive to respond to.

It looks like it was just the couple I tried to join. the matrix chat and the free software chat seem to be targeted right now.

@matrix Was setting up a #Matrix Synapse server to play around with today of all days, only to find that joining a handful of rooms completely maxed out the CPU and RAM, mostly because it is downloading heaps of garbage from the matrix.org Synapse.

It looks like the @matrix flagship server is currently under attack by far-right trolls.

All of the larger rooms are currently flooding with pornspam and slurs.

That whole "defederate from every instance that federates with Threads" idea is dead-in-the-water at this point, right? I've heard this strategy come up several times since Meta announced planned ActivityPub support, and it has always sounded to me like community suicide.

Jones Soda now offers a mug with Jim Jones on it.

BUT...

You have to drink 25 cans of "Mary Jones" soda with 100mg THC each to be eligible.

“I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” said Cassidy, a former US navy pilot who has previously run for Congress unsuccessfully in Mississippi. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”

The Oath of Enlistment means nothing. It's nationalist theater.

A reminder that, despite the propaganda, veterans/troops are not the reason Americans have rights. If they are Republican, and many of them are, they are part of the fight to destroy the pillars of freedom this country was founded on until all that's left is a Christofacist Dictatorship.

Which is why military/police worship is such a popular Conservative aesthetic: They know who will carry out their will should they ever overthrow this nation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/15/satanic-temple-vandalism-iowa-state-capitol

The best part about running my own single-user instance right now is that nobody will ever care if I federate with Threads or not, because it won't affect anyone but me. I can just stay out of the drama and do what I want.

I will probably federate just to follow some of my IRL friends and family, but I'll also probably put some limits on what hits my global feed because I don't want brands on my feed anywhere.

Someone actually submitted this potato-quality AI generated image to the US copyright office.

It was rejected, because c'mon now...

She really was doing some overt infringement with her merchandise, so it was legally justified to send her a cease and desist and follow up with litigation. It sounds like the record label was targeting a number of unauthorized merchants in one lawsuit.

But she never had a real chance to defend herself, and the judgement against her is not proportionate to the actual damages.

Email is not a realistic solution to process serving. Nobody would expect something this important to be paperless.

So apparently federal courts in Illinois consider email to be sufficient to serve someone notice of a lawsuit, including for our-of-state defendants. Now we have a case of a woman in Florida facing a default judgement for copyright infringement because she missed her summons.

Apparently it was in the junk mail of a lesser-used inbox.

Kinda scary to think that getting behind on your email could cost you $250k. I don't think it should work that way...

https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/better-call-behnken/pinellas-woman-who-sold-luke-combs-themed-tumblers-owes-country-star-250000-judge-rules/