Lia's recent activity

  1. Comment on SpaceX stock tumbles 23% from its high as average investor sees gains wiped out in ~finance

    Lia
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    Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a rule (particular to SpaceX) that mandates retail investors to hold the bag for a while longer? Meaning they can't sell their stock at the moment....

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a rule (particular to SpaceX) that mandates retail investors to hold the bag for a while longer? Meaning they can't sell their stock at the moment. I'm interested in when they'll be able to do so - but not interested enough to actually look it up.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on "The therapeutic industry is platonic prostitution" in ~health.mental

    Lia
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    I apologise that I didn't read all of this. With that in mind, you may take this comment with a grain of salt. The human mind is capable of conceiving impossible things, such as a circle with four...

    I apologise that I didn't read all of this. With that in mind, you may take this comment with a grain of salt.

    The human mind is capable of conceiving impossible things, such as a circle with four corners, or something wonderfully positive, or utterly negative. The parts of this post that I read seem to represent the latter. It's a normal phenomenon but experiencing it feels awful, obviously. And it's probably no consolation that feelings (and the seemingly logical thoughts that arise from those feelings) are not facts.

    Some comments, nevertheless.

    We are all members of dysfunctional communities, groups, nations and organisations. Being socially connected does not shield us, it may even expose us more to particular types of dysfunction. Every family dynamic has unhealed wounds - some deeper than others but no one is immune to this. Every friendship and every romantic relationship is imperfect. So is every therapist, one way or another.

    We have the freedom, but also the responsibility, to interact in this imperfect environment with some sort of deliberation. You are free to take therapy or not, to change to another therapist or not, to make friends with someone or not, to spend time with family members or not, to choose what to share with whom, etc. What you can't have, ever, is a perfect connection that meets all of your needs and makes you happy. No one can. Even if it looks like to you that some people have it, in reality they do not.

    Only when you are a baby (and if you're also lucky) will you have your needs extensively catered to by someone who isn't getting paid to do so. As an adult, you can choose to pay for professional grade listening or not pay and not get the service. You can choose to be happy with the unprofessional listening your friends are able to give, or be disappointed that they aren't professionals.

    Personally, I've paid one psychiatrist and four therapists (excluding people directly related to diagnosing ADHD). I ditched the psychiatrist because he tried to cajole me to taking SSRI medication for what could potentially be tackled without, in a way that I didn't appreciate. I was disappointed in the first therapist because she wasn't on my level in terms of cognitive processing ability but I decided to focus on the positives of that connection and ended up finding it very helpful. Later when I needed more therapy, she had a long queue and I found another one. I was disappointed in him for several different reasons and only went for as long as it took me to find a replacement. I was disappointed in her because she was sort of like the first one but worse. There were positive elements to that connection though and I decided to explore them. This became probably my most significant therapeutic healing experience, but it's only clear to me in hindsight.

    I'm now with my fourth therapist whom I chose due to his ability to take in and process complex work related information, and I call him a career coach even though he is a licensed therapist because I don't spend as much time processing emotions as I've done before. I just need someone to verbally describe my career challenges and situations to who will retain some of the information and sometimes give insightful comments or ask a good question, without getting stuff wrong all the time.

    All these people have their shortcomings because they are people. I have benefited extensively from three out of five of these connections, even if the process was fundamentally transactional. When I see a really great film, is my enjoyment of it without value because it's not a documentary and therefore not real? I suppose I could choose to see it that way, but that choice would make my life much duller than it needs to be.

    If you've developed too grave allergies towards the idea of transactionality, maybe try Heidi Priebe's channel on YouTube for life advice? With an ad blocker, you can bring the transactional element close to zero. The channel is really good IMO and manages to avoid the usual pitfalls of negativity/ragebait/whathaveyou.

    Peace!

    10 votes

  3. Comment on Blog post: 'AI stole my face and made me a digital flesh puppet' - should I publish my life's work when extractive AI is rampant all over the internet? in ~life

    Lia
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    I've posted this in ~life rather than ~society because I want non-members to be able to read it. In this post a writer (or an aspiring one, don't know the person or details) shares what it feels...
    • Exemplary

    I've posted this in ~life rather than ~society because I want non-members to be able to read it.

    In this post a writer (or an aspiring one, don't know the person or details) shares what it feels like to have her social media presence scraped and turned into AI slop.

    This touches me as a fellow artist. I've been working on a project that I consider my life's work for a number of years now. Coincidentally, during those same years that I haven't published anything, the internet has become a Wild West hunting ground for creative content. Even publishing content offline means that if anyone in the world finds it relevant in any way, they will eventually put it online, one way or another, with or without the publishing artist's consent.

    I utterly despise the basic principle of the currently leading AI companies: that you can just extract other people's work and even identity (an artist's identity is necessarily present in their work to some degree or they are not really an artist), without acquiring permission to do so and profit from it, distort it, mangle it, tarnish it, basically do with it whatever you feel like. Their products and practices reflect this deeply problematic, colonialist attitude: violate vulnerable people without care, apologise later when the damage is already done and the profits are in your pocket. Unsurprisingly, these products have enabled like-minded individuals all over the world to assault anyone with an online presence in hopes of extracting value without having to learn how to produce valuable content themselves. People like that have always existed but as the author says, AI has made their activities frictionless.

    I'm not quite ready to publish yet, but I could push myself to get ready within the span of a few months. This has been the case for a couple of years now. I keep procrastinating and there are other reasons for it, most notably a tough situation wrt to my working environment that hasn't been completely resolved yet. However, I've started asking myself how I would feel if it suddenly did get resolved. Would I rush to publish? And I find myself feeling that it might be better to lay low a while longer.

    Maybe in a year or so the craziest exploitations will start getting punished and/or AI companies will start trying to get their costs covered and their rates will jump high enough that the laziest slop machinations aren't profitable anymore? That would leave higher level corporate operators who might still want to scrape and benefit from my work, but the fight would be more manageable: I could have a TOS that defines a cost for scraping and training AI with my content and if I ever saw a recognisable form of it anywhere, I could go after them with a lawyer. It wouldn't be fun, obviously, and I might not win, but at least I could try to actually do something to protect myself. At the moment, in this Wild West environment, the rogue actors are too ubiquitous and violations so frictionless and low cost that there's probably nothing I could do.

    Excerpts from the article (emphasis mine):

    Though my online presence was a byproduct of my writing career, the result was connecting with millions of women. Women whose feminist perspectives, like mine, pushed against the idea that we are consumable objects. This particular stance of mine made it especially grotesque to watch that process become literalized through AI.

    The first time I saw someone use my image for AI content, my visceral reaction was revulsion.

    Because what is this, really, if not the final form of objectification? The ultimate assault of my personhood.

    Someone took my likeness, stripped out my consciousness, and replaced it with algorithmic sludge. I became a Stepford Wife for the content economy. Except instead of one husband wanting a compliant robot wife, my identity is franchised to strangers. A taxidermy puppet with a chatbot inside.

    For years, creatives have been told the same thing: put everything online, post constantly, build a brand, grow an audience.

    And then we centralized all of culture onto, like… three websites.

    Three massive platforms where artists uploaded their personalities, faces, voices, writing, humor, emotional lives, and intellectual property. Not because we were naïve, but because opting out meant professional invisibility.

    And now all of that material has been mass-scraped, automated, repackaged, and fed into systems designed to imitate the very people who were told they had to participate in order to survive.

    I think that’s the real tragedy for artists: there was no meaningful way to refuse.

    The same internet infrastructure that promised democratization also quietly transformed human identity into extractable data.

    And now creatives like me are watching the machine wear their skin.

    I've felt the pressure of professional invisibility during the years I've gone without publishing work. I've been pushed by peers and professional organisations to keep publishing, I've been told I'll be irrelevant if I don't, etc. I stood my ground anyway because I'm doing something I find actually valuable, in a way that hasn't been done before, and that takes a lot of time to do well. I want the result to be as good as it possibly can be. The incentives to publish something this high effort are extremely negative at the moment because there are countless low effort, shitty people waiting to tear it into shreds in hopes that they can profit off of it somehow. Those people don't even understand what they're doing or the material they're tampering with, and because they don't understand, they have no respect for it.

    Would I be better off just getting another type of job until this unsustainable pillage of intellectual property and personhood collapses? I'm sure it will collapse sooner or later, given how unprofitable it is to enable it. I would absolutely hate it if my project became the last bit of content that got devoured by these everything machines before rules and appropriate pricing gets put in place, so that every brainless button-pusher on the planet can use a machine to regurgitate parts of it and I would be tormented with an endless stream of frankensteins, void of meaning and appearing in random contexts, for the rest of my life.

    For the record: I used to advocate against IPR and wasn't worried about people trying to copy my work. This was because there's only so much a single individual human can achieve - or damage - by copying. If they're really putting their mind and soul into it, they will develop their own voice and style even if the starting point is to copy someone else's work. If they don't, they will have wasted a lot of time and it'll be such a thankless effort that they'll drop it soon enough. Neither principle applies to AI: it's tireless and robotically prolific and will never develop a voice because for that, you need a personality.

    19 votes

  5. Comment on My partner says our relationship has always felt suffocating, but she does not know what she wants. What would you do? in ~life

    Lia
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    When you do nice things for her, is the motivation for doing them at least partially giving to get? As in: if I do this for her, she will think better of me / love me / appreciate me / do...

    When you do nice things for her, is the motivation for doing them at least partially giving to get? As in: if I do this for her, she will think better of me / love me / appreciate me / do something back that I like?

    Regarding the snapping about her phone, the scene seems pretty normal for a relationship that's going through a rough patch. We all snap sometimes, it's not an issue on its own. There's something about your dynamic though that makes her feel the way she describes. Sometimes when one person in a relationship is overly responsible (you in this case), it can serve to create a situation where the other has no space to be responsible at all, even if they want to. But that type of thing can't go on forever and I'm guessing you guys have arrived at the point where something must give.

    Wanting to help others is generally a good thing but there can be too much of a good thing. If you've learned to cope with stress and uncertainty by doing things for others, you may be unconsciously doing even more of that now that there's a feeling of dread hanging over your head. That may make her feel even more suffocated than she did before. She probably needs a lot of space and freedom if she is to ever learn what she wants, how she wants to do things in life, what her values are, etc. If you've been sort of parenting her a lot, there may not be space for her to do this learning because the "parent" is there all the time watching and potentially judging her for any mistakes she might make, or for flailing (deciding she likes something and then later realising she doesn't and changing opinions). Even if you're not actually judging, you witnessing everything may already be enough of a deterrent.

    But for yourself, you should be the main focus. You see your partner (probably correctly) as someone who doesn't know what she wants. But do you yourself know what you want? There's some reason for why you're too other-focused for your own good. For example, if it's daunting to figure out life for yourself, it can feel like a relief to focus on fixing someone else's life instead. It can provide the perfect escape.

    5 votes

  6. Comment on My partner says our relationship has always felt suffocating, but she does not know what she wants. What would you do? in ~life

    Lia
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    I don't think this advice is appropriate. Open relationships are relationships on hard mode, for most if not all people. Someone who has trouble figuring out what she wants is not fit for...

    I don't think this advice is appropriate.

    1. Open relationships are relationships on hard mode, for most if not all people. Someone who has trouble figuring out what she wants is not fit for something that requires even more active decision-making and negotiation than a closed two-person setup.

    2. It would be very unfair for the new people they'd be bringing into this. If they openly describe their situation, no healthy person will touch it and they end up worse off. If they lie about their situation to lure people in.. well, that's not ethical (and also not great for the mental health of the people doing the lying).

    14 votes

  7. Comment on My partner says our relationship has always felt suffocating, but she does not know what she wants. What would you do? in ~life

    Lia
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    I would have preferred to read something you wrote yourself, even if lacking structure, because I can't tell whose character is showing between the lines of this text and my comments may go off...

    I would have preferred to read something you wrote yourself, even if lacking structure, because I can't tell whose character is showing between the lines of this text and my comments may go off the mark for that reason. (I appreciate the transparency regarding LLM use though.)

    The main thing I got from this is that you are overly focused on what your partner is or isn't doing/feeling/wanting. This does not seem healthy and it's fairly likely a factor in why she feels suffocated. Not the only factor obviously, and it's good that she is starting therapy. But you should be mainly writing and asking about your own behaviour, not going into details about your partner. For example:

    even small thoughtful gestures, like making her a cup of tea, can be met with coldness or irritation

    How does something like this actually happen? Do you just go ahead and make her a cup of tea without asking whether she'd like one? Or did you mean that when you ask, the question is met with irritation? Or that you spontaneously make her a cup of tea, take it over to her, and she gets irritated about that?

    The latter isn't actually a thoughtful gesture. You don't know if she actually finds a cup of tea helpful in that moment. Assuming that she does and acting as if you can read her mind can feel very upsetting for the person this is done to.

    I know this example is very small and I don't know if it could be indicative of a broader behavioural pattern in your relationship. But if it were, that would explain why your partner is feeling suffocated and also why she is finding it very hard to talk to you about it.

    My advise:

    1. Stop all behaviours that you believe are "helping" or "serving" her.
    2. Absolutely stop telling her what she should or shouldn't be doing with her free time, even if you think some situation could turn sexual. If you can't trust her without going through her phone (even if she lets you), you guys don't have a healthy relationship.
    3. Start asking yourself what you want out of life and relationships. Consider therapy. Not couples' counceling, individual therapy for yourself.

    Edit: typos

    29 votes

  8. Comment on Patagonia sues drag queen Pattie Gonia for trademark infringement in ~lgbt

    Lia
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    Sure it is, but it is not normal to tamper with someone else's trademark the way this person has done, nor is it reasonable to call the resulting brand conflict "not a brand conflict, a...

    It's a normal thing to say.

    Sure it is, but it is not normal to tamper with someone else's trademark the way this person has done, nor is it reasonable to call the resulting brand conflict "not a brand conflict, a corporation trying to erase an activist". It is absolutely a brand conflict, deliberately set up by this person. Where is the energy to do this coming from? Why aren't they directing it against corporations who do bad things rather than one who seems very much aligned with their own agenda?

    I can almost see the LLM spurring this person on, telling them what to say.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Patagonia sues drag queen Pattie Gonia for trademark infringement in ~lgbt

    Lia
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    Wow, WTH is going on here? I totally get why Patagonia needs to sue and I do not understand what compelled Wiley to go this far. Why attack a company that is working towards the same goal as...

    Wow, WTH is going on here? I totally get why Patagonia needs to sue and I do not understand what compelled Wiley to go this far. Why attack a company that is working towards the same goal as yourself?

    Some people will just go as far as others let them, and it makes our world a worse place to live in.

    ...ETA: I could be wrong here, but Wiley's statement to the Guardian tastes like AI: 'This is not a brand conflict. This is a corporation trying to erase an activist.' Could it be that they've been using an LLM as an advisor without realising the sycophancy, which may have led them to think they can get away with something as dumb and selfish as this?

    (ETA 2: Why was this posted in ~lgbt ? Without knowing anything about the guidelines for posting there, it doesn't seem appropriate to me. I made the comment before realising what group the post was in.)

    10 votes

  10. Comment on Use AI this election in ~society

    Lia
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    Is there anything I've said that made you think I'm not assuming good faith? Are you being serious here? Telling people to use AI, especially in an election, especially in a very high stakes one,...

    I'd prefer for us to all to just assume good faith

    Is there anything I've said that made you think I'm not assuming good faith?

    But this isn't a controversial article, and it's not about a controversial topic.

    Are you being serious here? Telling people to use AI, especially in an election, especially in a very high stakes one, especially in a country that is actively propping up ethically dubious AI companies, is not controversial in your opinion?

    I have not read the article so I may have misunderstood what it's about from the title, but like I said, it would be better for the readers to clarify intent when choosing to post something like this form an author who is generally regarded controversial.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Use AI this election in ~society

    Lia
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    I like it when people include quotes and information about whatever they're posting here as a link. It's obviously not obligatory but it indicates a caring attitude towards the reader and I...

    I like it when people include quotes and information about whatever they're posting here as a link. It's obviously not obligatory but it indicates a caring attitude towards the reader and I appreciate that @skybrian does it regularly.

    In this case, given that there was time to post the excerpts, there probably would have been time to also say something like "This dude has some controversial opinions but I think this perspective of his is worth sharing anyway", or whatever. It would be similarly kind and caring.

    We obviously shouldn't and won't deliberately assume anything, but at the same time, the implication I mentioned is there and can't be escaped. You'll realise what I mean if you put your mind to it. You can probably even come up with examples that would feel brow-raising to yourself if someone posted an article without specifying they don't subscribe to everything that author stands for.

    6 votes

  12. Comment on Use AI this election in ~society

    Lia
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    In your opinion, is Mr. Alexander someone whose word should be taken without extra precaution, in most cases?

    In your opinion, is Mr. Alexander someone whose word should be taken without extra precaution, in most cases?

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Use AI this election in ~society

    Lia
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    Thanks for bringing to our attention that this person isn't to be taken seriously in all areas. I had no idea! I'm personally not against posting something that a questionable person said in case...

    Thanks for bringing to our attention that this person isn't to be taken seriously in all areas. I had no idea!

    I'm personally not against posting something that a questionable person said in case that particular thing is worth sharing, but it would be better for the readers if there was some sort of heads up in the opening post. Without it, the implication is that the source/author is generally respected by the person who posted the link.

    @skybrian

    2 votes

  14. Comment on If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you in ~tech

    Lia
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    I'm just going to tell you what I think without trying to convince you. Ever since I reached adulthood, my experience has been that there are two kinds of people. There are actual people with real...

    a conceit that there is something about humanity that is ineffable and cannot be replicated by a machine, and a deep seated fear that we aren’t nearly as ineffable as we think

    I'm just going to tell you what I think without trying to convince you.

    Ever since I reached adulthood, my experience has been that there are two kinds of people. There are actual people with real personalities, and there are NPC-type people that seem to function more like bots. The latter group's humanity indeed does not seem all that ineffable. That leaves the first group though, and if you ask me to define that type of humanity, I won't, because I believe it's one of the truths each of us must seek and find on our own to truly understand. Those who know, know, and can use that knowledge to their advantage. Those who don't (yet) know can choose to try to search for the answer, or focus on generating alternative endings to GoT. Or both!

    I don't have fear regarding my own ineffability but I do find it unsettling to see so many seemingly NPC-like people around. I've never been able to shed the fear that it can't be good for society. I could be wrong, but during the time I've been living with this fear, societies have become worse and many of these developments seem related to how many people accept all sorts of mechanistic, vacuous, soulless etc. deals without being able to tell them apart from the real thing.

    I think pretty soon we’re all going to be effed.

    Who's we?

    1 vote

  15. Comment on If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you in ~tech

    Lia
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    Does any of this matter? Is it better that AI won't make glaring mistakes but may still make mistakes we can't recognise and verify? Is it better if/when AI can convincingly emulate a particular,...

    Did they actually ask an LLM this question? Or did they imagine what an LLM would say based on their hazy memories of what an LLM once told them in 2025, or cobble together this response from recollections of other articles by other people who are angry about AI? Dare I ask — did they hallucinate this response?

    Does any of this matter? Is it better that AI won't make glaring mistakes but may still make mistakes we can't recognise and verify? Is it better if/when AI can convincingly emulate a particular, high quality human author?

    I didn't read the article either but the latter seems to be a key question here and the author's opinion seems to be 'No, it's worse'. And I agree with them, and I just hope it'll be so much worse that the thing collapses under its own weights, pun intended.

    17 votes

  16. Comment on Excerpts from actual one-star Amazon.com reviews of books from Time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present in ~books

    Lia
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    :D Which book was this a review of? (Yes, I'm too lazy to go see!)

    :D Which book was this a review of? (Yes, I'm too lazy to go see!)

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ in ~tech

    Lia
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    Thank you! That's the Bolt I am aware of. I went to click on this article and another one via a link with the word "Bolt" in it, and I still don't have any idea of what this company does. Except...

    Oh, not the estonian/european taxi/micromobility app Bolt.

    Thank you! That's the Bolt I am aware of.

    I went to click on this article and another one via a link with the word "Bolt" in it, and I still don't have any idea of what this company does. Except that it's "fintech". I give up.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on The 100 best novels of all time published in English in ~books

    Lia
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    Thanks, this gives me the additional perspective I needed!

    Thanks, this gives me the additional perspective I needed!

    1 vote

  19. Comment on New job advice in ~life

    Lia
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    Wow, I have no advice to give but I just wanted to say that this sounds like a very big challenge, but also very exciting, and I'm happy for you that you get to tackle it! You seem to be going in...

    Wow, I have no advice to give but I just wanted to say that this sounds like a very big challenge, but also very exciting, and I'm happy for you that you get to tackle it! You seem to be going in with a good mindset. You got this!

  20. Comment on The 100 best novels of all time published in English in ~books

    Lia
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    I knew I had this coming as soon as I posted the above. I'm not saying no single person out there can actually like Pride and Prejudice. And I too enjoy the dry humour in it, but I happen to enjoy...

    I knew I had this coming as soon as I posted the above. I'm not saying no single person out there can actually like Pride and Prejudice. And I too enjoy the dry humour in it, but I happen to enjoy the dry humour in both Eco's works (mentioned in the top comment) even more. As well as their stunning social critique (ping @wervenyt).

    What I'm asking is why is P&P almost always high up on these lists while my favourites often are not. Why do so many more people like, or say they like, the former when the others are in no way inferior? But I may not be fit to evaluate that from a native English speaker's perspective because to me, all of these are foreign language novels. Perhaps it's the more particular use of English that elevates P&P in many a native reader's eye?

    1 vote