Hyperreality

I honestly think he wants to be arrested. It'd do his political campaign wonders to spend a few nights in jail and do a Hitler.

So perhaps it's for the best he's only being fined for now.

Obviously it's disgusting, us plebes would have been in jail a long time ago.

What happens when something requires maintenance in a month/week/day?

Insert more poop emojis.

Textbook statistics don’t really hold when you have a huge selection bias, as just about any poll does.

Meh. Often quite accurate, if you read the small print and caveats. It's not 1980. Good pollsters don't just do landline surveys, they correct for demographic factors, and are transparent about flaws and limitations.

IME the problem is usually how the media reports on said polling.

Probably inflation.

You don't need to poll everyone to get relatively accurate polling results.

I have a related degree, it is possible with the necessary caveats, margins of error and confidence intervals. Statistics is a wonderful thing.

This being said, I actually read the full 77 page document they linked to, and if I'm not mistaken the 55% comes from a 2021 telephone poll. Obviously phone only polls are likely to be biased, even if you correct for demographic factors like age.

Then again, inflation is a problem.

I have a related degree.

The study was conducted for CNN via web and telephone on the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel of U.S. adults ages 18 or older recruited using probability-based sampling techniques.

BUT...

In a January 2021 poll taken just before Trump left office and days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, 55% considered his time as president a failure.

Relevant bit:

Unless otherwise noted, results beginning with the August 3-6, 2017 survey and ending with the April 21-26, 2021 survey are from polls conducted by SSRS via telephone only

TLDR: doubt those polls are representative.

The darkly funny thing about this, is that he's probably saying this because there's an election coming up.

Clearly thinks this'll be a vote winner with their electorate.

The nasty party never really changes does it?

You can lay siege though. Bomb anything going out or in.

This is why (large) companies love hiring young people. They know they can get them to do stupid shit like this, because those new to employment don't yet know that being loyal, sacrificing their personal life, working unpaid overtime and going above and beyond often won't be properly rewarded. Once you're a bit older, you know there's no point.

My advice: if you're a fresh grad, go work for a big corp, do the 9-5 and don't bend over backwards. Make connections, then find a job somewhere else ASAP and get promoted that way.

It's obvious everywhere. If anything it's often worse in the fediverse, because communities are smaller and extremists are more able to dominate the discussion.

Here's the thing: no one's going to do anything about it, but technically this may amount to libel.

On reddit you're banned via private message, so no one knows why you'd been banned, even if the reason is bogus. If someone accuses you of something in a comment, you can defend yourself. You have the right to reply. But in the fediverse you're banned and if the mod does it for a made-up reason, that false reason is publicly viewable in the modlog without you being able to do anything about it. They've maliciously damaged your reputation without any recourse, right to defend yourself / right of reply.

Now imagine at one point OP's username is linked to their actual name. An employer does a google, finds they've been banned for homophobia. Some arsehole doxxes OP, and sends a picture of their being banned for homophobia to their employer. They're fired for allegedly being homophobic on social media. At that point, a good lawyer could potentially prove libel and damages caused. OP's clearly annoyed by all this. Now imagine someone with too much time and money on their hands.

It's real amateur hour shit. Sure being sued for libel is incredibly unlikely, but there are only downsides to not erring on the side of caution with stuff like this. Want to ban someone? Make up a generic or non-defamatory reason, or simply call them a dickhead, and go on with your day.

Stuff like this, the failure to respect GDPR/Privacy and NetzDG laws, a failure to properly deal with CSAM material... it's a ticking time bomb under the whole fediverse.