balooga's recent activity
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Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes
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Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes
balooga Link ParentNot so different from DOGE et al. coming in suddenly and axing much of the administrative apparatus that has been quietly keeping Americans safe, healthy, educated, and innovative. In their...Not so different from DOGE et al. coming in suddenly and axing much of the administrative apparatus that has been quietly keeping Americans safe, healthy, educated, and innovative. In their ignorance, all they could perceive was “waste, fraud, and abuse.” (Sadly, this is my generous read that presumes the benefit of the doubt, that they were well-intentioned people acting in good faith… though I don’t believe that to be the case for these particular actors.)
Sure, in any org there are going to be inefficiencies. That’s just the human condition. Fraud and abuse too, but those should be excised with a scalpel, not a chainsaw. There’s a particular tunnel vision some people develop that just absolutely suppresses their ability to learn from others who have more experience or knowledge than them in certain areas. The Dunning-Kruger effect. From that stems ego, indignation, self-righteousness, and an unwillingness—not mere inability—to empathize. Most frustrating is that tendency to double down or get angry when someone suggests they might be wrong. They won’t hear it. Such a possibility is completely alien to them.
How do we make the world a more equitable place for all, when it is populated with so many such people?
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Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes
balooga Link ParentSpot on. I’ll just take this opportunity, since it’s more appropriate here than there, to say that I watched the #YesAllMen video and thought it was great. I upvoted it. However as a man (and it...non-participation is invisible
Spot on. I’ll just take this opportunity, since it’s more appropriate here than there, to say that I watched the #YesAllMen video and thought it was great. I upvoted it. However as a man (and it feels gauche to even use that phrase) I considered that no comment I could write would be useful there…
A simple message of agreement doesn’t really contribute anything to the conversation; typically if I’m going to comment on a post I want to engage critically with the material. And I realized that in a post about how men’s mistreatments of women are routinely downplayed, disbelieved, and laughed off it would be a very bad idea for me to pop in with that sort of “critical engagement.” I love sharing my perspective with people on Tildes and IRL. But when my perspective is that of the victimizer group (even if I myself am blameless and pure) I have the situational awareness to read the room and recognize that any well-intentioned counterpoint I might bring to the table would make me guilty of the same problem the video is about in the first place.
There were a couple nuanced things I considered commenting about. Not disagreements, just deeper-than-surface-level matters I would’ve intellectually enjoyed chatting about. But I have sense enough to see that what I perceive as an enjoyable harmless chat can easily be read as a callous attack on someone else’s agency or personhood. Because I don’t have any skin in the game. I’m not the one fighting to be heard and believed and valued. That’s what privilege and implicit bias are all about.
So I kept my mouth shut in that thread. I’ve been wrestling with how to be a male feminist and ally for decades and still screw it up all the time, but at least I can claim some level of, well maybe not wisdom but certainly maturity just by virtue of age. Twenty years ago I would’ve handled this situation differently — eh, it’s not a counterfactual, I did handle situations like this differently on message boards of that time when topics like this came up and I was more than eager to step in and mansplain about how things aren’t actually so bad. I regret that now.
I was sorry to see it happening here. I understand how it happened and I wouldn’t condemn the male participants in the thread too harshly, because I do believe their intentions were good, if misguided. I’m saddened to see community members made to feel unwelcome or driven away. I hope this was a learning experience for everyone. Especially my fellow men — take to heart the message of that video. If your kneejerk response to it is “the speaker telling us about her victimization is wrong, and I know better than her” then please do some introspection about that.
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Comment on What are your 'most-wanted' cover songs? in ~music
balooga LinkI’ve got a “soft” spot for ‘70s soft rock hits that don’t get much airplay these days. Understated songs with real earworm value, like Ventura Highway by America, Summer Breeze by Seals and...I’ve got a “soft” spot for ‘70s soft rock hits that don’t get much airplay these days. Understated songs with real earworm value, like Ventura Highway by America, Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts, What a Fool Believes by the Doobie Brothers, or Still the One by Orleans. Pretty much the eternal soundtrack of (white) boomer dads like mine.
I’d love to hear these reinterpreted in a melancholy bedroom pop / hyperpop style by some current artists like Oklou or BENEE or OVSKY. I think a little youth and diversity could breathe new life into these old songs, playing to their strengths while taking them in some unexpected directions too.
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Comment on What can be done about Linux being slopified? in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI can see that becoming true in the future. Maybe the near future. But right now I think the coding agents just have too limited context windows and too weak prompt adherence. They can’t keep a...So we never really care about the actual machine code anymore, maybe it is time we stopped caring about the source code too?
I can see that becoming true in the future. Maybe the near future. But right now I think the coding agents just have too limited context windows and too weak prompt adherence. They can’t keep a whole project vision and architecture in “mind” without slowly drifting away from it over time. They'll start introducing “alternative” implementations that are odds with how the project was intended to function. They'll undo optimizations that were lovingly crafted by people who did it that way for a reason. They'll deliver what they were prompted for, but at the cost of subtle regressions in other features they weren't prompted about.
If they were able to consistently avoid those pitfalls, I'd agree that the source code doesn't matter anymore. Until then, software that’s worked fine for years is going to start getting… flaky. Buggy. Not just functionally, but visually too. All that nice pixel-perfect UI that frontend guys like me (until I left the field last year) pored over to get the colors and margins and hover states and transition timings juuuust right and slick and professionally branded… the AI doesn't care about that. It'll produce something good enough at first glance. Missing polish in subtle ways, but close, and that'll ship. Then the next PR that touches the same components will drift a bit further. Just gradually getting crappier over time, until the user base jumps ship because the system is just unpleasant to use now and feels like nobody at the company cares about quality anymore.
It’s early yet. I don’t think those limitations are going to be with us forever. But in the meantime I think they’re going to be a landline for a lot of software projects. I’m watching intently to see how many well-regarded companies’ products just start devolving like this. My guess is once things get to a certain point it’s too late to reverse course because the whole codebase is poisoned, and that’s just the death sentence for that project.
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Comment on McDonalds and Star Trek's "Red Alert" sound in ~talk
balooga Link ParentIs this a recent (post-pandemic) change? I used to find McDonald’s dining rooms to be comfortable enough places to enjoy a meal, but I won’t go near them now. They have become consumer-hostile to...Is this a recent (post-pandemic) change? I used to find McDonald’s dining rooms to be comfortable enough places to enjoy a meal, but I won’t go near them now. They have become consumer-hostile to an almost satirical degree.
All ordering must now be done in the app or on a kiosk. The kiosks are slow, frustrating systems that multiply my ordering time compared to the efficiency of just telling an employee what I want. There is never anyone working up front, so if you need anything you have to wait awkwardly at the counter and hope to catch someone’s attention back in the kitchen — and they will usually ignore you or give you the gen-alpha stare. That the whole situation even needs to happen now is absurd but for some reason all of the napkins and ketchup packets and other things you might need, which used to be within easy reach near the drink station, are now locked away from customers behind the front counter. Also somehow the kitchen seems louder and more chaotic than ever, I guess with everyone rushing around to fulfill drive-thru and DoorDash orders, and anyone unfortunate enough to be dining in is just an afterthought to them.
I realize that’s not going to be the experience everywhere but in the areas I've been, the rapidness and unpleasantness of the transformation really stands out to me. The thought of klaxons blaring in the background doesn’t honestly seem out step with any of the rest of the changes McDonald’s has been rolling out, if you ask me.
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Comment on iPhone Duo sells out immediately, now backordered until next year in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI think VR’s ship has sailed. I’ve got a PSVR2. Its games look and feel pretty great, it’s comfortable to use… I really do like it. But it’s been months since I touched it! Why? Hard to say. I...I think VR’s ship has sailed. I’ve got a PSVR2. Its games look and feel pretty great, it’s comfortable to use… I really do like it. But it’s been months since I touched it! Why? Hard to say. I always enjoy my experience with it, but there’s a mental barrier that’s enough to prevent me from turning it on. Specifically: it feels like a hassle. I don’t want to move my coffee table out of the way to create a playable space in the room. I don’t want to fiddle with the headset fit or the lens focus. I don’t want to get the controllers and headphones set up. I don’t want to play standing up, extending my arms, moving around the room. I’m lazy.
In hindsight, it’s not really that much effort and I’m always glad to have done it… but when it’s my wind-down time at the end of the day and the choice is between that, and just plopping down on the couch to play a game on the TV, the latter wins every time. Apple’s clearly lost a ton on the Vision Pro, and don’t get me started on the embarrassing all-in pivot Zuckerberg made with the metaverse.
There could still be an exciting future for AR/VR someday but I’d guess we’ll need to wait another 25 years for a hardware leap that will get us to the other side of the inconvenience valley.
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Comment on Grand Theft Auto VI | Launch trailer in ~games
balooga Link ParentCan’t say I expected a thread about GTA VI to spark a debate about the labor theory of value vs. the subjective theory of value, but this is Tildes. As far as mainstream economics is concerned the...Can’t say I expected a thread about GTA VI to spark a debate about the labor theory of value vs. the subjective theory of value, but this is Tildes. As far as mainstream economics is concerned the matter has been settled for 150 years. Noah Smith has a pretty good article about it if anyone’s interested.
Long story short, stuff is worth whatever people are willing to spend on it, and the reasons behind their decisions are a beautiful tapestry of rational and irrational judgments.
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Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
balooga Link ParentMath derail: How many possible combinations of digits are there in a three-digit number? If the low end of the range is 000 and the high end is 999, you’ve already got the answer. Well— add one...Math derail: How many possible combinations of digits are there in a three-digit number? If the low end of the range is 000 and the high end is 999, you’ve already got the answer. Well— add one because you’re counting that zero as a possible value too, so… 1,000. Just struck me as funny that you asked AI to calculate the odds here, and I get it because probabilities can be surprisingly tricky to work out. But in this case it’s literally just counting!
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 12 in ~society
balooga Link ParentI didn’t realize Leavitt was out. Was there a story behind that one?I didn’t realize Leavitt was out. Was there a story behind that one?
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Comment on Metallica’s James Hetfield has a message for entertainers who bring their ‘bullshit‘ agenda to the stage in ~music
balooga Link Parent…and referring to denouncing genocide as “bullshit”? If you don’t want to mention politics, that’s fine, just don’t… mention… politics. But when you instead say that someone else’s politics are...…and referring to denouncing genocide as “bullshit”? If you don’t want to mention politics, that’s fine, just don’t… mention… politics. But when you instead say that someone else’s politics are BULLSHIT, that’s not a neutral statement, bro.
What he ended up saying is basically the opposite of what I presume he meant to say.
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Comment on Mass shooting at US Hindu temple prevented by jammed gun in ~news
balooga Link ParentGood on that coworker. Quietly keeping an eye on the situation, sounding the alarm when things escalated. An unsung hero. Of course that didn’t stop the shooter from showing up and attempting...Good on that coworker. Quietly keeping an eye on the situation, sounding the alarm when things escalated. An unsung hero.
Of course that didn’t stop the shooter from showing up and attempting murder, I guess that jammed gun is a hero too. WTF is wrong with people? Really relieved he failed to harm anyone.
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Comment on The state of AI video in ~tech
balooga LinkI pay close attention to the state of the tech and I agree it’s pretty damn good these days. MiniMax H3 is a phenomenal model. There are still limitations though… generation is time-consuming,...I pay close attention to the state of the tech and I agree it’s pretty damn good these days. MiniMax H3 is a phenomenal model.
There are still limitations though… generation is time-consuming, even with the beefiest hardware it takes minutes to produce just a few seconds of video output at high-quality settings. There’s been a lot of innovation in reducing that time but it always comes with a substantial quality hit. My interest is in cinema-quality realism, 4K@30fps (minimum) with visual fidelity approaching live action. And that just isn’t happening yet.
For a lot of use cases, lower quality is fine. YouTube shorts like this one are meant for rapid consumption, and people expect lower resolution and compression artifacts. Most people aren’t going to linger on this, analyzing it for AI tells. They watch once and swipe to the next thing. Which is fine for a silly MMA clip but becomes really concerning when it’s news or political content. Because the format conditions people to consume and move on (and each video is contextually disconnected from those before and after it) we’re having our critical thinking skills trained out of us. Media literacy is in trouble.
If you do rewatch the Seamus O’Grady video, and I suppose if you know what you’re looking for, you can spot plenty of tells. Most are in the text. For example, the logos for “cypso.com” (crypto.com) and “IUC LIGO” (BUD LIGHT) on the floor make it pretty obviously fake.
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Comment on Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew | Official trailer in ~movies
balooga Link ParentThis is the Narnia adaptation I didn’t know I needed! That would be so kickass. It’s never gonna happen but holy shit if it did.go directly to Last Battle. Change it so the faithless heathen heretics are Christian Nationalists would get my approval.
This is the Narnia adaptation I didn’t know I needed! That would be so kickass. It’s never gonna happen but holy shit if it did.
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Comment on Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew | Official trailer in ~movies
balooga Link ParentI keep rewatching the trailer and noticing substantial differences from the book. One major thing I haven’t seen anyone talking about is that it’s set in a different time period… the book’s earth...I keep rewatching the trailer and noticing substantial differences from the book. One major thing I haven’t seen anyone talking about is that it’s set in a different time period… the book’s earth scenes take place in Victorian London, Sherlock Holmes is mentioned by name and the streets are full of horse-drawn carriages, not automobiles. This change alone tells me the film isn’t meant to be a “faithful” adaptation of the source material. It’s a creative reimagining.
I think Greta Gerwig’s track record is strong enough that I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. One of her superpowers is finding new meanings and interpretations in existing works. There have been a million versions of Little Women, for example, but hers was really adept at finding new narrative strings to tug on, new lenses to look at the story through, without disrespecting the source material. I think she revealed a lot of richness in it that was previously untapped. I’d love for her to do the same with The Magician’s Nephew.
I suspect there’s going to be a lot of pearls clutched over authorial intent, and that’s a valid point. From what’s shown in the trailer and what I know of C.S. Lewis he himself would probably be appalled at the changes. This is Gerwig’s vision, not his. I think it’s going to rub a lot of purists the wrong way. C.S. Lewis is something of a saint in some circles, people are more likely to be up in arms about reinterpreting him than, say, Roald Dahl or A.A. Milne. Personally I’m open-minded about it. But I think it helps to level-set expectations about what kind of adaptation it’s going to be. People don’t like to be bait-and-switched.
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Comment on US Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed in ~society
balooga Link ParentI think you and @mat are right. I decided to look into this instead of just spouting off on the internet about things I’m uneducated on. Turns out there’s a good amount written about the ability...I think you and @mat are right. I decided to look into this instead of just spouting off on the internet about things I’m uneducated on. Turns out there’s a good amount written about the ability of experienced riflemen to differentiate between blanks and live rounds, by recoil feel alone. I stand corrected!
I’m opposed to the death penalty all around, but it’s still a morbidly interesting thing to think about; the ballistic physics, the psychology and ethics, and the debate about which execution methods are the most humane. I have a very visceral reaction to the thought of firing squads in general but on reflection I do think they’re one of the better options, presuming executions aren’t going away.
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Comment on Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew | Official trailer in ~movies
balooga Link ParentGreat invocation of the burning bush voice in The Prince of Egypt. I think I could get behind a different interpretation of Aslan than the mouth-talking corporeal Liam Neeson lion. Something like...Great invocation of the burning bush voice in The Prince of Egypt. I think I could get behind a different interpretation of Aslan than the mouth-talking corporeal Liam Neeson lion. Something like a lion-shaped supernatural visage with androgynous telepathic speech could be amazing.
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Comment on The dock on Mac, from OS 10 to macOS 27 in ~comp
balooga Link ParentYou started with a good one! I’ve been a Mac user since System 6 and I still look back to Snow Leopard as one of the best.You started with a good one! I’ve been a Mac user since System 6 and I still look back to Snow Leopard as one of the best.
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Comment on Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew | Official trailer in ~movies
balooga LinkThis was always my favorite book in the series, and I have yet to be disappointed by Greta Gerwig. Looks like a feast for the eyes! Color me excited. I’m not totally sold on the look of Jadis or...This was always my favorite book in the series, and I have yet to be disappointed by Greta Gerwig. Looks like a feast for the eyes! Color me excited.
I’m not totally sold on the look of Jadis or Charn but I’ll hold my judgment on those. The Wood Between the Worlds also looks pretty different from how I pictured it and honestly that might be the thing that annoys me the most at the end of the day, because I really like my version, because it’s identical to C.S. Lewis’s version. IDENTICAL!
I like Meryl Streep but I’m really hoping her involvement is more than stunt casting to trigger the culture war mob. As versatile a performer as she is, just seems like a weird pick for the voice of a talking, clearly male lion who is also the not-so-subtle stand-in for Christ in Narnia’s allegory. Seems like a gender swap that could be, but hopefully isn’t, intended from the outset as dumb ragebait. I will say Meryl Streep would probably make a great Jadis herself, but Tilda Swinton has already covered that ground and it would be a crime for anyone to ape her performance, so I’m sure it’s for the best to take the character in a different direction. I’m here for it.
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Comment on Being Heumann | Official trailer in ~movies
balooga LinkLooks like a fun retelling of some not-so-distant history more people should be familiar with. I also recommend the excellent documentary Crip Camp, and there’s a surprisingly good episode of...Looks like a fun retelling of some not-so-distant history more people should be familiar with. I also recommend the excellent documentary Crip Camp, and there’s a surprisingly good episode of Drunk History about Heumann and the disability rights movement too.
With all the work being done these days to disenfranchise… well, MOST PEOPLE if you sum up all the minority groups in the crosshairs… it’s as important as ever to keep these issues front of mind so they’re not scrubbed out of the new histories.
It might be worth considering whether this is a change in the Tildes user base in particular, or a symptom of the broader antisocial cultural swing happening around the world right now. It seems to me that we’re collectively in a moment of “woke backlash” and the Overton window is rapidly receding. Exclusionary and unempathetic voices are presently emboldened by political figures, influencers, religious leaders— we’re experiencing a frontal assault on human dignity, now greenlit explicitly or implicitly by the societal figureheads whose predecessors would’ve pushed back.
Personally I’m not surprised the effects from that are being felt here too. Nowhere is immune, it seems.