The more wealth inequality grows the less important 99% of the population is as consumers and the more important the 1% becomes.

Not as consumers, no. The 1% doesn’t consume more than the 90th percentile. They just park a higher percentage of their wealth in wealth-generating financial assets, which leech wealth from the rest of society.

We need a tax on all registered securities, (with exemption for the first $10 million owned by a natural person.) That tax should be paid not in cash, but in shares of the security: the IRS should slowly liquidate those shares over time, such that IRS sales never constitute more than 1% of total traded volume.

We further need the punitively-high top-tier tax rate we had for most of the 20th century. That tax rate pushed businesses to spend their excess income, turning it into other people’s paychecks. It discouraged the kind of wealth-hoarding investment that is stunting consumer spending.

Special characters suck in on-screen keyboards, and the bastards rarely gave us physical thumboards.

Real printers used real paper…

I would say that the software side all qualifies. You’re setting up the full software stack; that’s definitely self-“something”.

I, personally, would only consider it “self hosting” if I can take a sledge hammer to the bare metal without getting arrested.

But, I acknowledge that is an arbitrary, puritanical distinction. I don’t look down on VPS; they have specific pros and cons, and I use them myself. I just think that “self hosting” includes hardware factors, not just the software.

Parent comment is on mander.xyz. You are on dbzer0.com. The admins for either instance can prevent your account from interacting with the other.

If you start lemmy.ddash.com, the other admin can still block you, but you are the admin of your own instance. You are the second admin.

The reverse, probably: You should probably increase your contribution.

Consider the state of the market “now”. Consider the state of the market “later”, meaning some hypothetical time between now and your eventual retirement.

If the market is low “now”, and you think it will be high “later”, you should be buying now.

That’s the whole debate though. What is your responsibility as a citizen?

The only responsibilities on the individual that are prescribed by the constitution arise under the Sixth Amendment, and Article I, Section 8 parts 15 and 16: the Militia clauses.

You have no other constitutional responsibilities as a citizen.

A legislated law obligating you to apply legislated law in judging the accused would violate the accused’s 6th amendment right to a trial by a jury of his peers. Such a law would make you an agent of the government, not a layperson juror. The legislature can compel you to report for jury service; the legislature cannot impose any sort of responsibility to render a particular verdict.

You have no (relevant) legislative-law responsibilities as a citizen.

I’m so weary of talking about it ad-nauseam.

You have yet to talk about the most important part of the constitution. The first three words. You’ve completely ignored them all this time. Either you don’t understand them, or you think they are irrelevant. They are the sine qua non of this issue. Ultimately, those three words rebut every single point against nullification you have made, every ad-nauseating time you have made them.

Ultimately these questions about jury nullification are irrelevant because you’ll never have 12 jurors who think subverting the court process can achieve justice.

Injustice requires a unanimous verdict. The accused doesn’t need 12 for the trial to reach a just end. He only needs one. A hung jury is always a just jury.

Are you sure you’re not Joe Biden?

I never got beyond proof of concept, and definitely didn’t keep any documentation.

I used voip.ms as a VPN trunk provider. They handled the incoming and outgoing calls to/from the PSTN, connecting them to my server.

If you’re not familiar with Tasker, I wholeheartedly endorse it. I thought it was a little unintuitive at first, but I use it for all kinds of things now.

I had a setup with a remote Asterisk server, and a Tasker app on my phone.

If I pressed a button on the phone, it placed a call to the Asterisk server, which dumped the call into a recorded conference room.

That was simple enough. The fun part happened next. The cops are always shown telling stopped subjects to stop recording and hang up phones. They’ll take the phone out of your hand, and attempt to delete recordings. I wanted to address that.

I worked out a script on the Asterisk server where if the phone hung up, it would immediately dial back, and dump the call right back in the recorded conference room. Tasker on the phone would silently answer a call from that number.

That was about as far as I got. I had planned on some way of the asterisk server dialing a contact list and adding them to the conference.

I didn’t even know I needed to edit my prompt, but now I don’t know how I have lived with it for so long.

I would say that neurotypicality is a mental disability characterized, in part, by a limited ability to comprehend and tolerate neurodiversity.

We have a system for considering the justice of law. Citizens elect representatives who debate, create, and revise laws on their behalf.

That same system also explicitly enables the executive to pardon the accused outright, specifically exempting them from the laws created on behalf of the citizenry. The system itself tells us that legislated laws should not be considered sacrosanct. The very existence of the pardon tells us that the legislature must be considered fallible and demonstrates that justice should supersede adherence to legislated law.

The juror’s role is external to the system. Jurors are not representatives of the government, and owe no duties to that government, nor any part of that government. The juror’s duty is solely and exclusively to the accused.

Juries typically choose to accept legislated law. Justice normally demands it. Generally speaking, a jury should abide by the will of the legislature. But, they are not beholden. They are constitutionally empowered to determine that a particular law did not adequately consider the specific circumstances of the accused, and would be unjust to apply. They are constitutionally empowered to place their constitutional-law duty to find justice for the accused ahead of legislated-law.

Demanding that a jury obey the legislature without consideration of their greater constitutional obligation to the accused makes them a representative of the government, rather than a layperson jury.

Around here, we just call that “Sunday”.

It is absolutely a mixed bag. Ideally, jury nullification would never be used, because none of our laws would be unjust or improper to apply.

But, we have had “Fugitive Slave Acts” on our books for entirely too long in our history: acts that criminalized providing aid and assistance to escaped slaves, or failing to deliver them to their “owners”.

We cannot pretend our legislature has never been corrupt, or will never be corrupt in the future. Like the “Pardon”, Jury Nullification is an important check on an out-of-control legislature.

There were no founding fathers who wrote a document to include this “ultimate check”.

“We The People”. The first three words establish the philosophical model of the constitution. “We The People” willed it into existence.

The 6th Amendment guarantees the right to a trial by a jury of the accused’s peers. Not the judicial branch of the government. Not the government in general. It guarantees the right of the accused to take the case directly to a quorum of 12 members of “We The People”.

The founding fathers did write a document that included this ultimate check.

A judge would merely be a steward conducting proceedings and a jury would just mete out justice based on the vibe of the matters before them.

They do. Generally, the “vibe” is that legislated law is just and proper, and the jury should apply it as written. Generally, jury nullification is not a factor.

But we are contemplating the special case. Here, we are not constrained to the general case. Here, we are considerong the conditions under which the law itself is determined to be unjust, such as the “Fugitive Slave Laws” we actually had on our books. Here, we can consider a corrupt legislature enacting unjust laws.

Are we forced to jail an abolitionist for aiding and abetting a former slave in escaping his “owner”? Are We The People truly compelled to abide by the evil acts of a reprehensible legislature?

We are not.

The fact that justice won’t always be done is not in any way a justification for rendering the unjust verdict demanded by a corrupt legislature.

As I’ve said elsewhere, this is just made up poppycock that sounds nice.

What does the phrase “We The People” mean, as used in the preamble of the constitution?

This is basic, foundational stuff we are talking about here. The fundamental concepts of democracy. Those aren’t just fun, patriotic words; they have actual meanings. Our government does not arise from “divine right” or “ancestral claims”. It exists because We The People willed it into existence. We willed into existence the right of the accused to be judged not by agents of the government, but by the peers of the accused. The same “We The People” who conveyed a tiny portion of their powers to allow the United States government to come into existence are charged also with wielding their power in determining the guilt or innocence of the accused.

You suggestion that the jury is beholden to the legislature is offensive. Your suggestion that “We The People” are legally and constitutionally obligated to enforce unjust laws promulgated by a corrupt legislature is absolutely galling. Made up poppycock that sounds nice? This is a core tenet of democracy we are talking about here.

I have asked you, repeatedly, to provide the constitutional basis for your claims, as I have repeatedly provided for mine. The closest you have come to any sort of support for your position is this statement:

Any observer can see that the jury is in place to provide a check against the judiciary and the executive.

This observer does see both of those purposes. This observer also sees that the jury is in place to provide a check against the legislature as well.

This observer rejects your numerous doublethink comments about the “justice” that supposedly arises when a jury applies unjust legislation.

You seem to be suggesting that moral considerations are not relevant to legal proceedings, yet simultaneously arguing that jurors should refuse to convict on moral grounds.

This is correct. There is no paradox here; no hypocrisy.

“We The People” empower the constitution. The Constitution empowers the government. The government has only the law; it does not have any sort of moral code. The government cannot consider moral principals in the application of law.

The juror is not a member of the government. The juror is a member of “We The People”; a peer of the accused.

Where the juror is convinced that the legislature did not appropriately consider the specific circumstance of the accused, the juror is constitutionally permitted to return a “just” verdict, consistent with their own morality.

While a judge can be legally obligated to issue a ruling inconsistent with his own moral code, a jury is NEVER obligated to return a verdict they believe to be unjust.

Any observer can see that the jury is in place to provide a check against the judiciary and the executive.

You started with:

ensures that a corrupt court can not make arbitrary pronouncements of guilt.

And now you’ve added a check against a corrupt executive. 2/3 of the way there.

There’s a well established system with which to check the legislature.

There are well established system with which to check both the executive and the judicial branches, yet you have now acknowledged the jury serves as an additional check on both.

This doesn’t require jury nullification. The intention of the voting populace is encoded in these things called laws.

Actually, no. The “voting populace” is not the legislature. The legislature writes the laws.

You’ve acknowledged the possibility of corruption in the courts; you’ve acknowledged the possibility of corruption in the executive branch. Despite there being clear checks and balances on both branches, you’ve acknowledged that the jury also serves a role against these corruptions.

I’m going to ask again, though: What is the constitutional basis for the jury’s check on the judicial branch and the executive branch? What is the constitutional basis for any of the jury’s powers?

What constitutional basis is there for your claim that the jury must support the legislature?

You don’t like the idea of living in a broken society so you’re trying to support your belief that there’s a mechanism in place to fix it all. Of course a jury is supposed to enforce unjust laws.

Ok. Then let’s not fuck around with hypotheticals, and go straight to the “Fugitive Slave Act of 1850”.

A law enforcement agent in a northern, free state, who failed to arrest an escaped slave, faced 6 months imprisonment and a $38,000 fine (in 2025 dollars)

Obviously, this law was unjust. While it was on the books, we lived in a “broken society”.

You’re a northern juror. The accused is a cop who, you come to believe has not only failed to arrest an escaped slave, but went on to assist them in fleeing to Canada.

Do you stand by your assertion that you, the juror are “supposed to enforce unjust laws”?

Comically, in my first post I said that this is where these discussions usually end up.

The other day, I took a walk around my block, and I swear, every dog in the neighborhood picked that day to shit near the sidewalk. I didn’t actually see any shit, but I smelled hidden shit in front of the Jenkin’s place, at the corner store. I stopped to tie my shoe in front of the Smith’s home, and it was overpowering. One of those damn dogs even broke into my breezeway and shat somewhere that I still haven’t found. It wasn’t until I took off my shoes and went in the house that I stopped smelling shit.

Too subtle?

These discussions end up at the legislative branch, because you’ve accepted the other major roles of the juror. They are a check on judicial power over the accused. They are a check on executive power over the accused. The constitution does not explicitly provide these judicial and executive powers over the accused to the juror, nor does it explicitly deny them.

The constitution does not explicitly provide legislative powers over the accused to the juror, nor does it explicitly deny them. I asked above for the “constitutional basis” for the distinction between the jury’s executive, judicial, and legislative functions: There is none. There is no constitutional justification for the distinctions you are making here.

The juror is allowed to determine that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is the product of a corrupt legislature, and refuse to enforce it against the accused.

The juror is allowed to determine that the legislature failed to consider the accused’s specific circumstances when it was creating a law, and refuse to enforce that unjust law against the accused. This is a power that the jury possesses.

I wouldn’t say it that way, but I won’t say that is an inaccurate summarization.

Our other conversation is a far more productive avenue of approach.