Whom's recent activity

  1. Comment on Tildes Game Giveaway Thread: June/July 2022 in ~games

    Whom
    (edited )
    Link
    I've got a key of Ultra Street Fighter IV if anyone would like it. First come first serve~

    I've got a key of Ultra Street Fighter IV if anyone would like it. First come first serve~

    1 vote

  2. Comment on What's the point of grammatical gender? in ~humanities

    Whom
    Link Parent
    I'm certainly no expert, but in the bit of linguistics I did take this seemed to be a pretty well-accepted concept. Natural language is extremely good at adaptation and creating new vocabulary and...

    I'm certainly no expert, but in the bit of linguistics I did take this seemed to be a pretty well-accepted concept. Natural language is extremely good at adaptation and creating new vocabulary and grammatical forms when needed and according to the intuitive rules of the language (or just taking loaning whatever it needs). For instance, a language which is only used in an isolated area without a term for a computer is not less capable of expressing things surrounding computers...it's perfectly capable, because a language is not just the vocabulary and grammar that exist at this moment. Gaps are filled on the fly, and as a result don't really exist.

    Newspeak was an interesting invention for science fiction, but it's not, uh, real. Raise a child in newspeak and you'll get a word for "unfair" the second you don't let them eat ice cream for breakfast :P

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Former YouTuber Lindsay Ellis says she’s learning to live with the trauma of being ‘canceled’ in ~life

    Whom
    Link Parent
    I think it's more complicated than that. What the right typically means by "cancel culture" is often very different from what the left means, and so much nuance is lost in conversations about it...
    • Exemplary

    I think it's more complicated than that. What the right typically means by "cancel culture" is often very different from what the left means, and so much nuance is lost in conversations about it specifically because of this .

    I think that for the most part, cancel culture as the right defines it does not exist. Their narrative tends to focus on white men being torn down and made to fear the progressive mobs who will destroy their lives the second they do something wrong. Or, depending on the outlet, they may claim that being anything other than a socialist queer activist will get your life ruined. This, of course, is absurd and being that kind of edgelord is more likely to get you a netflix special than ruin your life. It's branding that's often self-applied and highly profitable. The very people they claim are being ruined by mobs are the ones who in reality hold the most power.

    When the left talks about cancel culture, they tend to be talking about the unfeeling vitriol that social media creates. To us, cancel culture (and callout culture...there used to be a distinction but I think that's mostly faded by now) is often not politically motivated at all and comes directly from the business model of social media. Anger drives interaction and interaction is very very profitable, so the systems that connect us have moved more and more to encourage and amplify that anger, only putting a stop to it when it can hurt the platform.

    While all this stuff with Lindsay was going down, there was a lot of hand-wringing on the left about how to address this kind of thing. Lots of good, well-meaning people would downplay what was clearly cruel and disproportionate harassment. Lots of "that's pretty fucked up, but...". This was terrible and was much of what Lindsay out on her own during all of this, even from her political allies and fans. Having struggled with this myself, I think the reason is subtly different from "we don't want to give the right this victory" (though I'm sure there was some of that). Instead, I think a lot of us lacked the vocabulary to address this without sounding like we're making arguments that we aren't. I do think she was a victim of cancel culture as the left describes it, but I don't think we're living in an overly PC culture of fear. That was a very difficult thing to communicate, and trying to do so would require length and nuance that the platforms this all went down on would bury. Or worse, someone not acting in good faith would say something about all the work we were doing to justify the actions of a racist white woman, or whatever. And you know what? I get that. When you're angry, someone trying to slow down and talk about things reasonably may look like Stefan Molyneux dumping all his sympathy and excuses onto Elliot Rodger. It's not simple. How do we encourage cooling down and talking to each other decently without treading into tone policing? How do we have nuance without over-encouraging cold, emotionless distance from issues that hides their real emotional and practical weight?

    I don't know! And balancing all that in your head when you're weighing in on some internet drama is really fucking hard. So many of us took the middle road and Ellis suffered.

    There's plenty of overlap between the two approaches to the term and it's a big fuzzy mess. Personally, I've taken the route of letting the right having "cancel culture" and instead talking about how the internet amplifies and gives power to mob justice. I think clearing up the language could help a lot. Beyond that, I think the best we can do is actively doing everything we can to tear down the social media status quo and replacing it with healthier spaces that don't encourage being awful to each other.

    9 votes

  4. Comment on Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade; states can ban abortion in ~news

    Whom
    Link Parent
    Worth mentioning that here in Wisconsin we're most of the way there. There's an ancient law on the books which seems like a toss up if it'll be enforceable but until that's settled abortion...

    Worth mentioning that here in Wisconsin we're most of the way there. There's an ancient law on the books which seems like a toss up if it'll be enforceable but until that's settled abortion providers are stopping dead in their tracks.

    17 votes

  5. Comment on FDA orders all Juul e-cigarettes off the market in ~health

    Whom
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    What do you suggest we need beyond the age restriction? As much as I hate nicotine and the tobacco industry, I'm really skeptical of the idea that locking things down harder will do any good,...

    What do you suggest we need beyond the age restriction? As much as I hate nicotine and the tobacco industry, I'm really skeptical of the idea that locking things down harder will do any good, especially considering...well, everything about the war on drugs. I assume you aren't saying we should lock up people for smoking and vaping, but limiting access brings up problems of its own. I wouldn't mind seeing these companies wiped out and replaced with brutally uncool and boring government-produced equivalents, but that isn't gonna happen.

    I look at this as primarily an issue that comes down to social pressures and education. We made so much progress taking down smoking before vaping popped up, and I mostly see it as a setback that needs to be addressed the same way.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Where's all the Creative Commons-licensed fiction? in ~books

    Whom
    Link
    Licensing in general doesn't seem to be much of a topic of conversation among writers (at least, those who aren't doing contract work). All my poetry is either CC0 or sharealike depending on what...

    Licensing in general doesn't seem to be much of a topic of conversation among writers (at least, those who aren't doing contract work). All my poetry is either CC0 or sharealike depending on what I was leaning toward when I wrote them, and I've tried in the past to find a community of people with those principles and it's pretty difficult.

    I think your best bet is finding places where authors release work freely in a monetary sense, as I'm sure there will be kindred spirits there as well even if they aren't actively thinking about licensing. They may implicitly retain copyright for the moment, but that doesn't mean they don't share your values.

    I was going to say something about there being a long history of writing released gratis and tie that in somehow but really it was just an excuse to mention my favorite poet, Richard Brautigan, and his book Please Plant This Book:

    Please Plant This Book is Richard Brautigan's sixth poetry publication. It consists of a folded and glued folder containing eight seed packets. On the front of each is a poem. This was Brautigan's last self-publishing venture and came out in an edition of 6,000. The entire edition was offered for free distribution, and permission to reprint the collection was explicitly granted, as long as the new printing was also offered free-of-charge.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life in ~tech

    Whom
    Link Parent
    Reading this, it makes it sink in that we're not that far away from when informed but nontechnical laypersons are no longer able to judge this themselves and we all have to rely on what experts...

    Reading this, it makes it sink in that we're not that far away from when informed but nontechnical laypersons are no longer able to judge this themselves and we all have to rely on what experts tell us. I can still look at this conversation and tell what's going on with the leading inputs and such to conclude that there's no 'true' intelligence here, but all things considered this is a pretty damn convincing conversation and I can imagine this getting beyond my grasp in just a few years.

    I'm not looking forward to this. Partially because it's a massive avenue for conspiracy theories, partially because I don't trust corporations to handle things correctly or truthfully if this ever did occur, and partially because I simply don't like the thought of the ability to participate in this conversation slipping through my fingers.

    6 votes

  8. Comment on My students cheated... a lot in ~humanities

    Whom
    Link
    That was interesting, but I'm mostly just horrified that students can be held accountable for not reporting on others for cheating. That must create a terrible environment of distrust and is...

    That was interesting, but I'm mostly just horrified that students can be held accountable for not reporting on others for cheating. That must create a terrible environment of distrust and is probably a good chunk of why the cheating students were going on snitch hunts. Why wouldn't people snitch, after all? They're being pushed to at gunpoint.

    I know my thoughts on this stuff is unconventional (I don't have a problem with plagiarism and see most cheating as just effective communication and resource usage...and no, I didn't cheat to get my degree), but that rule seems extremely poorly thought out.

    15 votes

  9. Comment on Texas school shooting kills nineteen children, two adults in ~news

    Whom
    Link Parent
    Do we actually know this is true or is it just an assumption a lot of us make? I don't doubt that it's true, I've just never come across this claim being backed by anything.

    We know naming them is very likely to inspire copycats.

    Do we actually know this is true or is it just an assumption a lot of us make? I don't doubt that it's true, I've just never come across this claim being backed by anything.

    9 votes

  10. Comment on Even a mugger didn’t want my old Nokia. So why are so many people turning to ‘dumbphones’? in ~tech

    Whom
    Link
    I did this for a while and it did me a lot of good. I have pretty bad issues with attention and focus that were vastly improved in that time and have honesty stayed with me since. When I feel...

    I did this for a while and it did me a lot of good. I have pretty bad issues with attention and focus that were vastly improved in that time and have honesty stayed with me since. When I feel myself drifting back toward habits and thought patterns I don't like, I'll restrict myself in ways that feel similar.

    Re: Restricting smartphone usage to the level of a dumbphone, this is only kind of possible. On Android you can at least use minimal launchers that come close, but if you're stuck with an iPhone as I am right now, you're pretty much stuck with Apple's way of doing things. The best you can do is disable notifications.

    And sure, not everyone can do this. When I was doing it my only responsibility was college and for that it worked just fine. Helped, actually, as I found myself spending much more of my excess time in the library reading. Not everyone can do this and that's okay, but I don't think that's really a mark against minimizing your digital life in this way. If anything, I find that it shows the need for it and makes me want to do it more...something is wrong if only people with certain lifestyles can get by without these privacy-sapping, proprietary, and attention-grabbing devices. Our society should not be structured in a way that forces their use, and I see resisting that (even in a small, individualistic way) as a good thing.

    8 votes

  11. Comment on What's an achievable technological, scientific, or computational breakthrough that you're really looking forward in the next fifteen years? in ~tech

    Whom
    Link
    Flat panel displays that are fast enough, high resolution enough (filters could get REALLY sophisticated), and have black levels good enough to approximate both the quirks and the genuine...

    Flat panel displays that are fast enough, high resolution enough (filters could get REALLY sophisticated), and have black levels good enough to approximate both the quirks and the genuine advantages of CRT monitors. I swear I'm not holding on to these things for nostalgic value. I'm hoping OLEDs with black frame insertion or something get there eventually.

    Alternatively the revival of CRT technology in a modern form would do what I want, but that's highly unlikely to happen regardless of how desirable they are for enthusiasts. The expertise is quickly disappearing...I've seen some interviews with experts and honestly the people who could make this happen are all either out of the industry or dead.

    8 votes

  12. Comment on You're not losing fat because you're eating too much — even when you don't think you are in ~health

    Whom
    Link Parent
    I'd think that language would come with the territory when talking about vasectomies. That said, I'd personally use "AMAB" for this purpose.

    I'd think that language would come with the territory when talking about vasectomies. That said, I'd personally use "AMAB" for this purpose.

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Bill Gates is so over this pandemic in ~health.coronavirus

    Whom
    Link Parent
    Even if they weren't doing so in a health crisis of similar severity, lack of action in the past wouldn't change anything except that they should have been more vigilant back then.

    Even if they weren't doing so in a health crisis of similar severity, lack of action in the past wouldn't change anything except that they should have been more vigilant back then.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on NVIDIA releases open-source GPU kernel modules in ~tech

    Whom
    Link Parent
    I have no insight on this, but commenters elsewhere have suggested the work it would take to get it into the current state to open up would take far longer than they've had since then.

    I have no insight on this, but commenters elsewhere have suggested the work it would take to get it into the current state to open up would take far longer than they've had since then.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on MiSTer Playstation core officially released in ~games

    Whom
    Link Parent
    Saturn is also in the works!

    Saturn is also in the works!

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Leaked draft opinion show the Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights in ~news

    Whom
    Link
    Fuck this. Fuck this illegitimate state and everyone who brought us here. Ugh. /noise

    Fuck this. Fuck this illegitimate state and everyone who brought us here. Ugh. /noise

    19 votes

  20. Comment on Tech recommendations request: looking for a Linux-friendly 13" laptop in ~tech

    Whom
    Link Parent
    eBay has pretty damn good buyer protection nowadays, but I understand the anxiety there when you're buying out of your element. Also battery degradation is definitely a factor, but new batteries...

    eBay has pretty damn good buyer protection nowadays, but I understand the anxiety there when you're buying out of your element. Also battery degradation is definitely a factor, but new batteries are still sold and easily popped into place.

    3 votes