all_summer_beauty's recent activity

  1. Comment on US Federal Government oversight of K - 12 education moved out of Department of Education to Department of Labor in ~society

    all_summer_beauty
    Link
    I agree, if we accept the premise. Given that it's a bullshit premise, I do not agree. Absolute clown shit. I'm aware that one of this administration's goals is to take agencies that benefit the...

    “If we consider K-12 education as really preparation for adult life, preparation to enter the workforce, nowhere is it better housed than at the Department of Labor that thinks about this night and day,” a senior department official said. [emphasis added]

    I agree, if we accept the premise. Given that it's a bullshit premise, I do not agree.

    On Tuesday morning, the agency’s official X account posted a video that opened with “The clock is ticking.”

    Absolute clown shit. I'm aware that one of this administration's goals is to take agencies that benefit the people and staff them with officials as hostile to those agencies' missions as possible, in order to eventually destroy them, but it's still just so fucking stupid to watch.

    Sorry for the less-than-Tildes-quality comment.

    21 votes

  2. Comment on Zen browser / chrome alternatives in ~tech

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Yeah I remembered about link previews, but I think I still like Zen's glance a bit better. Link previews feel a bit slow (though I am aware you can disable the summary if desired), and I usually...

    Yeah I remembered about link previews, but I think I still like Zen's glance a bit better. Link previews feel a bit slow (though I am aware you can disable the summary if desired), and I usually wish I could see more of the page than it shows you. In Zen, glance basically opens an ephemeral tab on top of your current one. So you can poke around for a few seconds and see what all's there, then quickly return to what you were doing when you're finished. I'm not sure I can articulate why that feels different than just opening a new tab, but it does. 🤷

    That's awesome that split tabs are at least on the to-do list, though! I use that all the time in Zen.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Zen browser / chrome alternatives in ~tech

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Well that's disappointing (the response to it too). The overall organization of Zen really vibes with me, and I love some of the unique features like split tabs, glance, and workspaces. Guess I...

    Firefox isn’t going to accidentally ship a backdoor either.

    Well that's disappointing (the response to it too).

    The overall organization of Zen really vibes with me, and I love some of the unique features like split tabs, glance, and workspaces. Guess I should start trying to work up a solution for those in vanilla Firefox.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on The spy who came in from the WiFi: Beware of radio network surveillance! in ~comp

    all_summer_beauty
    Link
    I'm so tired

    If you pass by a café that operates a WiFi network, you can be identified – even if you do not carry a smart phone with you. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have found out that it is possible to identify people solely through WiFi signals. They point out that this constitutes a significant risk to privacy. To infer the identity of persons, it is no longer necessary that they carry a smart phone or tablet on them. It takes nothing but WiFi devices communicating with each other in the person’s surroundings. This creates an image comparable to a camera shot, but based on radio waves. The research team calls for adequate privacy safeguards.

    I'm so tired

    9 votes

  5. Comment on An AI-generated country song is topping a Billboard chart, and that should infuriate us all in ~music

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    It's very much both. Music created by someone for themselves alone has just as much of a point as music created for millions. And in some cases, like educational ensemble settings, it's almost...

    Is the point of music the production process or that it is being enjoyed by the listeners?

    It's very much both. Music created by someone for themselves alone has just as much of a point as music created for millions. And in some cases, like educational ensemble settings, it's almost entirely about the process. Art-making is just as core to the human experience as art-appreciating. People get together and make music because they enjoy it, not necessarily because anyone else cares that they're doing it.

    Christopher Small talks about how "musicking" is an activity, one that involves not just the listeners or performers or writers/composers, but all of them together. He strongly argues against the popular convention of conceiving of music as discrete objects (songs or pieces) and firmly believes it should be understood as an event. That event may unfold in stages (writing, production, listening) rather than happening all at the same time, but it's still an event. It's about the doing of the thing, and that necessarily includes the creators.

    Part of his book Musicking: The Meanings of Performance and Listening is online if anyone wants to explore. The prelude is enough to get the gist, don't feel intimidated by the idea of diving into a whole book. It's good stuff.

    5 votes

  6. Comment on Facebook and Instagram are paradises for scammers, reveal Meta's internal documents in ~tech

  7. Comment on Brian Eno - A talk on generative music, artists, and culture in ~arts

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Thanks for sharing the links! I was going to add "It's Gonna Rain" but forgot. And that's great that there's a recording of the talk!

    Thanks for sharing the links! I was going to add "It's Gonna Rain" but forgot. And that's great that there's a recording of the talk!

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Brian Eno - A talk on generative music, artists, and culture in ~arts

    all_summer_beauty
    Link
    See also: How Generative Music Works (Maybe even start here if the linked talk feels too long!) If anyone can find a different copy of the text with fewer errors (see e.g. the final sentence),...

    Why does an idea like this grab my attention so much? I said at the beginning that what I thought was important about this idea was that it keeps opening out. This notion of a self-generating system, or organisms, keeps becoming a richer and richer idea for me. I see it happening in more and more places.

    I think what artists do, and what people who make culture do, is somehow produce simulators where new ideas like this can be explored. If you start to accept the idea of generative music, if you take home one of my not-available-in-the-foyer packs and play it at home, and you know that this is how this thing is made, you start to change your concept about how things can be organized. What you've done is moved into a new kind of metaphor. How things are made, and how they evolve. How they look after themselves.

    Evolving metaphors, in my opinion, is what artists do. They produce work that gives you the chance to experience in a safe environment, because nothing really happens to you when you looking at artwork, they give you the chance to experience what might be quite dangerous and radical new ideas. They give you a chance to step out of real life into simulator life. A metaphor is a way of explaining something that we've experienced in a set of terms, a different set of terms.

    My feeling about artists is that we are metaphor explorers of some kind. ... An object of culture does all of the following, it innovates, it recycles, it clearly and explicitly rejects, and it ignores. Any artist's work that is doing all those four things and is doing all those four things through the metaphors that dominate our thinking.

    See also: How Generative Music Works (Maybe even start here if the linked talk feels too long!)

    If anyone can find a different copy of the text with fewer errors (see e.g. the final sentence), please share!

    3 votes

  10. Comment on Hate-reading? in ~books

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Definitely. On a simple level, you absolutely cannot appreciate some things when you're young, even if you still enjoy experiencing them. But on a deeper level, it's not just a matter of childhood...

    so much of how we feel about it depends on who we are at the time.

    Definitely. On a simple level, you absolutely cannot appreciate some things when you're young, even if you still enjoy experiencing them. But on a deeper level, it's not just a matter of childhood vs adulthood - you continue to change throughout your life, and so does everything you bring to the table when engaging with a work of art.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Ahh, gotcha. I read about using FLACs as archival versions so that you could re-encode to other formats if needed and decided it didn't seem likely to be something I would need, but I didn't...

    I can re-encode to some newfangled format without compounding losses

    Ahh, gotcha. I read about using FLACs as archival versions so that you could re-encode to other formats if needed and decided it didn't seem likely to be something I would need, but I didn't consider the possibility of some newer, more efficient format coming along in the future. Wonder what the chances of that actually are.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Got it, that makes sense I suppose. Storage isn't exactly tight for me, but if I was to purchase and download my entire Spotify library as FLACs, I absolutely would not have space at the moment....

    Got it, that makes sense I suppose. Storage isn't exactly tight for me, but if I was to purchase and download my entire Spotify library as FLACs, I absolutely would not have space at the moment. So I'm just trying to plan ahead and be judicious.

  13. Comment on Rising cognitive disability as a public health concern among US adults, trends from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system, 2013–2023 in ~health.mental

    all_summer_beauty
    Link
    For anyone else wondering if they considered things like increased awareness of disabilities and reduced stigma, among other factors (from the "Discussion" section):
    • Exemplary

    For anyone else wondering if they considered things like increased awareness of disabilities and reduced stigma, among other factors (from the "Discussion" section):

    The significant increase in self-reported cognitive disability, particularly after 2016, suggests changing perceptions or experiences of cognitive challenges in the US population. This trend could be influenced by heightened awareness of mental and cognitive health, reduced stigma in discussing these issues, or actual increases in cognitive burdens related to social, economic, and health factors. Regardless of the underlying cause, the increase reflects a growing public health challenge that warrants attention.

    The increasing prevalence of self-reported cognitive disability among younger adults aged 18–39 is particularly striking and suggests a notable shift in demographic risk patterns. During the study period, the prevalence of self-reported cognitive disability nearly doubled in this group, a trend that was not observed in older adults. Younger individuals may be more likely to acknowledge and report cognitive difficulties due to increasing societal awareness and evolving norms around recognizing and discussing cognitive and functional challenges, beyond traditional mental health or affective symptoms. Furthermore, economic stressors, job market uncertainties, and changes in work environments, such as greater reliance on digital tools, may contribute to these trends.

    By contrast, the relatively stable or slightly declining prevalence of cognitive disability among community-dwelling older adults may reflect decades of progress in managing chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular conditions, which are known risk factors of cognitive decline. Better educational attainment and improved health care access among older generations may also contribute to this trend. However, it is important to note that BRFSS only surveys community-dwelling adults capable of completing a 20-minute phone interview; individuals with advanced dementia or those residing in nursing homes or other congregate care settings are systematically excluded. While this sampling frame has remained consistent over time, the overall prevalence of dementia is increasing nationally, suggesting that a growing proportion of older adults with the most substantial impairments are not captured in BRFSS estimates. Thus, the apparent stability in cognitive disability prevalence among older adults may partly reflect selective exclusion rather than true population-level improvement. Meanwhile, the rising trend among younger adults offsets these patterns, resulting in an overall increase in self-reported cognitive disability.

    10 votes

  14. Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    This is kind of offtopic, but if you don't mind, why did you decide to change to FLACs? Just a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole of learning more about the different encoding formats and...

    and switched it all to flac versions while I was at it

    This is kind of offtopic, but if you don't mind, why did you decide to change to FLACs? Just a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole of learning more about the different encoding formats and codecs because I'm looking to start building my own collection and wanted to determine what level of quality was actually worth paying for. The short version is that, after reading layman's explanations, one or two scientific studies, and doing my own tests, I decided that 320mbps MP3s were the most I needed to bother with. I get that MP3s are lossy and FLACs (more or less) hit the sweet spot of being lossless while also compressed, but I (and most others, from the sound of it) can rarely hear a difference. I'm no audio engineer, but most of my education and work has relied on and developed my critical listening abilities, so I'm definitely more practiced than most people. Maybe I missed something in my research?

    2 votes

  15. Comment on DM-ing with a stutter? in ~games.tabletop

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Yeah that's something else I was thinking - since we play via Discord anyway, the private mid-game communication would be right there. I don't know that he's an exceptionally speedy typist, but it...

    Yeah that's something else I was thinking - since we play via Discord anyway, the private mid-game communication would be right there. I don't know that he's an exceptionally speedy typist, but it would certainly help facilitate things either way!

  16. Comment on Hate-reading? in ~books

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Got it haha, that's totally fair! I was much younger when I read Name of the Wind so that might be why I didn't clock the Gary Stu-ishness. And I never actually read Wise Man's Fear (I was not...

    Got it haha, that's totally fair! I was much younger when I read Name of the Wind so that might be why I didn't clock the Gary Stu-ishness. And I never actually read Wise Man's Fear (I was not allowed to at the time lol) and eventually took it off my TBR when I realized the third was never coming. Sounds like I didn't miss much!

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Hate-reading? in ~books

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Was this because he still hasn't finished the damn series? Or other reasons specific to the book itself?

    Worst (betrayal): (. . .) Name of the Wind

    Was this because he still hasn't finished the damn series? Or other reasons specific to the book itself?

  18. Comment on DM-ing with a stutter? in ~games.tabletop

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    Interesting! Thanks for mentioning this, it's going on my list of things to suggest!

    Interesting! Thanks for mentioning this, it's going on my list of things to suggest!

    1 vote

  19. Comment on DM-ing with a stutter? in ~games.tabletop

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    That's fascinating, I wouldn't have thought of that. So the OOC voice conversations aren't necessarily related to the game? Or they mostly are? I feel like I would get too focused on what's...

    That's fascinating, I wouldn't have thought of that. So the OOC voice conversations aren't necessarily related to the game? Or they mostly are? I feel like I would get too focused on what's happening in the game and not really engage with things external to that, but who knows!

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Paid e-mail providers - your experiences, how you use them and how I would use it in ~tech

    all_summer_beauty
    Link Parent
    You can actually send encrypted emails to non-Tuta addresses, it just requires a significant extra step and is definitely not as convenient. You mark the email as encrypted and then enter a...

    You can actually send encrypted emails to non-Tuta addresses, it just requires a significant extra step and is definitely not as convenient. You mark the email as encrypted and then enter a password for the recipient to use to decrypt it. This means you have to communicate the password to the recipient somehow. A hassle compared to regular email for sure, but it is possible.