"People often use "court packing" to describe changes to the size of the Supreme Court, but it's better understood as any effort to manipulate the Court's membership for partisan ends. A political party that's engaged in court packing will usually violate norms that govern who is appointed (e.g., only appoint jurists who respect precedent) and how the appointment process works (e.g., no appointments during a presidential election).
"Seen from this perspective, the Barrett appointment is classic court packing. The president nominated a hardline conservative who appears to question major parts of U.S. constitutional law. And the Senate majority changed its procedural rules – invented to deny Merrick Garland a hearing – to ram through the nomination as people were voting."
You siding with the partisan politics of members of a supposedly-neutral court who were put there to make the court partisan, doesn't make it normal.
Ah yes, another attempt to pretend that the single Supreme Court justice nominated by the former (D) president was blocked for anything other than partisan political reasons and that Trump didn't add the most number of SC justices since Reagan, all of whom were put forward by the totally-not-partisan Federalist Society and one of whom actually cried about how much he loves beer while testifying during a job interview, which is definitely normal and the type of behavior we expect from a judge in the highest court.
Totally not court packing. Just business as usual.
Turns out the FAA has been stalking people for decades. Can we also add "getting arrested is kidnapping actually" to this list of arbitrary interpretations?
Content moderation and free speech are not mutually exclusive. Absolute free speech is not the only kind of free speech, nor is the definition of "free speech" the same globally.
> So here is a policy that everyone agrees with and increases safety on the platform. And they are not happy. It's such a funny situation.
Not upset, just confused that a free speech absolutist is banning people for exercising the version of free speech that he claims to be protecting.
If "we" is you, go ahead! You're free to judge whomever you want.
This is a fairly simple issue - a community of people who are pro-privacy and anti-surveillance have concerns about a former surveillance officer working for an organization which creates small, portable, popular computing devices.
If you haven't heard about law enforcement abuses of surveillance, here are some helpful links:
Some people do not support law enforcement and a large number of people using Mastodon are pro-privacy and anti-surveillance. RPI's cavalier response to their concerns about a former surveillance officer being hired by a company that creates computers is a cause for concern.
"Body positivity" is not about labeling everything as beautiful but rather not labeling people who may not match traditional standards of beauty as "ugly."
I'm aware that we don't have all the evidence yet - this is why there's a federal probe. So far, the quotes we see from employees (those competent scientists that you said you trust) suggest extreme malfeasance.
Regardless of your opinion of the current state of journalism or the "Eye of Sauron" or Trump or whatever else you're trying to drag into this conversation, Elon Musk's company is being investigated by the federal government after his employees have alleged widespread ethical abuses in his company.
As a counterpoint to your lament of geniuses being persecuted, I don't think Musk is particularly "excellent" in any way except being rich, which affords him opportunities and platforms far beyond the reach of the average person, including being able to hire the smartest people in the world who do the actual work in his companies.
Maybe you don't think it's a serious problem, but enough employees do and so does the federal government. It's not "tragic" in any way that Musk's companies are regulated the same way other companies in those domains are regulated. I find that Elon Musk doing something unethical/illegal is far more plausible than what you suggest - a conspiracy by journalists and the employees of Neuralink (again, the competent scientists which you claim to trust) to defame him.
Good thing you trust the competent scientists he's hired, because they're the ones blowing the whistle on Musk's operating practices. The lede: "Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid INTERNAL STAFF complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths." (emphasis mine)
"Millions of white working-class and middle-class Americans vote against their own economic interest by defending policies that hurt them while profiting the rich, including the 1% wealthiest Americans. Several factors help explain this peculiar dimension of U.S. politics: myopia fostered by anti-intellectualism; the relationship between religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism; blind faith in the American Dream; and how racism hinders economic solidarity."
"seeing the initial shots were fired by a group of armed black men, killing several white men at the police station"
This is a loose interpretation of the article which loses important context. The initial shot was fired when a white man attempted to wrestle a gun away from a black man. The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing. Your interpretation would lead a reader to believe that a group of armed black men began the entire event by murdering white men.