evergoe's recent activity

  1. Comment on What are your favourite fragrances, and why? in ~talk

    evergoe
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    Lalique Encre Noire. Smells like an inkwell or maybe moss deep in a forest. Love it for rainy days. Dior Fahrenheit. Smells like, uh, gasoline and cucumber? I promise it's really good. Tom Ford...
    • Lalique Encre Noire. Smells like an inkwell or maybe moss deep in a forest. Love it for rainy days.
    • Dior Fahrenheit. Smells like, uh, gasoline and cucumber? I promise it's really good.
    • Tom Ford Noir Extreme. Sort of at a loss for how to describe it. Smells sweet but in a really strange ephemeral way. My goat
    4 votes

  2. Comment on The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. in ~science

    evergoe
    Link
    In a bizarre and disturbing twist, it is convincingly argued by https://boxobark.ing/3mj42airv3s2o that this entire blog post may itself be written by AI. Given that I thought I could pretty...

    In a bizarre and disturbing twist, it is convincingly argued by https://boxobark.ing/3mj42airv3s2o that this entire blog post may itself be written by AI. Given that I thought I could pretty reliably detect AI writing, and that I thought the blog post in question was generally cogent and interesting, I'm not really sure how to react. At the very least, it would be remiss of me not to include this additional context for any readers later on in this increasingly macabre world.

    11 votes

  3. Comment on The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. in ~science

    evergoe
    Link Parent
    That's been on my mind a lot too. I'm pursuing study in pure math, which as a field has always prided itself on being uniquely accessible in the sense that all you need to do math research is pen...

    That's been on my mind a lot too. I'm pursuing study in pure math, which as a field has always prided itself on being uniquely accessible in the sense that all you need to do math research is pen and paper. It's seeming like lately you also may need a GPT Pro subscription...

    5 votes

  5. Comment on A Roman scroll that should be ash has just been read without ever being opened in ~humanities.history

    evergoe
    Link
    This is awesome! I was just thinking about this recently and wondering if they had made any progress over the past year. I'm a big fan of classical antiquity, and it's fun to imagine what could be...

    This is awesome! I was just thinking about this recently and wondering if they had made any progress over the past year.
    I'm a big fan of classical antiquity, and it's fun to imagine what could be in that collection waiting to be deciphered. My personal wishlist would be some of Aristotle's dialogues, more of Sappho's poetry, and Ptolemy's history of Alexander.

    12 votes

  6. Comment on What self-help / personal development books did you find valuable? in ~books

    evergoe
    Link
    In general I'm a little averse to the concept of a self-help book, but I have enjoyed a few books that I would describe as toeing the line between self-help and something else: How To Solve It by...

    In general I'm a little averse to the concept of a self-help book, but I have enjoyed a few books that I would describe as toeing the line between self-help and something else:

    • How To Solve It by George Polya. This is technically a book on how to solve problems in mathematics, but it really extends beyond that, and is a good primer on reasoning about problem-solving generally. There are lots of valuable insights and heuristics, and it's short enough that it's worth reading for most everyone.

    • How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren. This is just what it sounds like. It's a manual on how to approach reading complex texts and books in general, and it has a great Recommended Reading section at the end where the authors list off what is essentially a 'canon' of literature. IMO its problems are (a) since it dates from the mid-20th century, there is a predictable lack of diversity/variation among the recommendations, and (b) the book is probably a lot longer than it needs to be. Ironically, though, it has a section on judging the merits of when to skim a text versus when to give it full attention, so perhaps this affords an opportunity to apply those techniques immediately.

    • ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound. Obviously Ezra Pound is one of the great 20th century poets. This book has a flavor more or less akin to lecture notes for a course on literature. It's really delightful to essentially get instruction on aesthetic criticism directly from such a talented artist. If you read mainly contemporary works, this could be a great way to start developing an appreciation for classic literature and poetry.

    • The Craft of Research by... Booth et al. This is sort of a primer on conducting academic research. I don't really have much to say about it other than it's worthwhile if you expect to do research at some point. Has some good tips and may help spur you to think about the process of research on a more meta level.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech

    evergoe
    Link Parent
    I think Discord is still good in some respects. There are definitely still communities worth interacting with on there. One big reason I left is I'm just not a fan of the messaging format;...

    I think Discord is still good in some respects. There are definitely still communities worth interacting with on there. One big reason I left is I'm just not a fan of the messaging format; conversations get lost so easily that it feels like a very ephemeral medium. Small servers often have a slightly exclusive atmosphere, and in larger servers there's too much going on at once. The other reason is seeing the writing on the wall as far as the future goes for the platform; I think pursuant to the IPO it will be a long downward trend in terms of quality.

    6 votes

  8. Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech

    evergoe
    Link Parent
    Funnily that's probably a pretty great recommendation after all. I recall finding my way onto the homepage of a private tracker a few years ago, and being intimidated and vaguely impressed by the...

    Funnily that's probably a pretty great recommendation after all. I recall finding my way onto the homepage of a private tracker a few years ago, and being intimidated and vaguely impressed by the fact that to gain membership, you apparently needed to pass some kind of quiz on topics like encoding standards administered over IRC.
    I didn't end up going through the trouble at the time, but in the context of this thread that seems like a reliable way to select for genuinely interested people.

    2 votes

  9. What internet discussion sites remain?

    ~tech Ask
    I'm using the phrase 'internet discussion site' pretty informally, so I hope my meaning will become clearer as you continue reading. I got rid of Snapchat around 4 years ago now. At some point in...

    I'm using the phrase 'internet discussion site' pretty informally, so I hope my meaning will become clearer as you continue reading.

    I got rid of Snapchat around 4 years ago now. At some point in 2023 I noticed a sharp downtick in discussion quality on Twitter, and got rid of it as well. About two years ago, frustrated with the lack of human interaction and the vying for attention, I deleted Instagram. Near the end of 2025, I stopped using Discord. The final nail in the coffin has now arrived, since I'm unfortunately coming to the conclusion that Reddit is no longer worth visiting, leaving me almost entirely cordoned off from internet communication at a time when more humans are using it than ever before.
    I won't bother repeating my personal reasons for this exodus since I feel confident that most people on this website have feelings on the matter that at least approximate my own.
    Realistically this is a sign that it's time to prioritize interaction in the real world, and that's certainly a worthwhile thing to pursue. But bluntly society has restructured around the internet in a pretty substantial way, and I don't think it's an unreasonable ask to find various forms of forums on which more meaningful discussions can take place.
    Here is my personal survey of the current landscape:

    • tildes.net: Basically good. I really enjoy this website and I think in a lot of ways the 'bar/pub/cafe' model for a forum, where you can peer through the window but require permission to gain admission, is the only viable model for future online discussion places as the internet becomes ever more saturated with bots and bad actors.
    • lobste.rs: Also basically good, for the same reasons as tildes. In some aspects, limited by the fact that it has a particular focus. In other ways, that's a really good thing. Maybe in a perfect world there would be a lobste.rs equivalent for every hobby, and we would return to an early internet forum world.
    • Hacker News: Also basically good but perhaps a bit less so than the above two. I think most of the things posted on there are interesting, but a lot of the discussion has lately felt less insightful than it used to. I think a different tildes post noted this as well, but it's very caught up in the AI news cycle, often to an unfortunate degree.
    • Rateyourmusic: The core site is enjoyable, and the forums are usually fun to check in on every now and then. Certainly a worthwhile place to visit if you enjoy music.
    • Stackexchange networks: This is cheating since this is obviously many sites. I'm a mathematics student and I've found MSE and MathOverflow to be really wonderful places to learn and converse, albeit with some very arcane and strict rules for posting. The philosophy SE seems also generally of a high quality, and there are many other SE sites that I occasionally stumble into and am pleasantly surprised by. Unfortunately I expect its time is finite, since the UX has slowly but surely been degrading and the site traffic dropping.
    • Fediverse networks: These sites clearly have potential, but for whatever reason it's still just not there. I drop into lemmy and Mastodon occasionally, but the posts are rarely of high quality. In many ways they just feel like "Reddit/Twitter but with a different name".

    Surely these can't be all, right? It's a little soul-crushing to think how many people are online at any given time and how hard it is to find a place not drowning in noise. Maybe this is just my lament.

    98 votes

  10. Comment on Ageless Linux emerges to protest OS-level age verification laws in ~tech

    evergoe
    Link Parent
    So, I have the opposite reaction in reading that paragraph you quoted; I think that it is almost certainly written by a human, who probably very carefully chose their words, and has to do with the...

    So, I have the opposite reaction in reading that paragraph you quoted; I think that it is almost certainly written by a human, who probably very carefully chose their words, and has to do with the purpose of the Ageless Linux project in the first place. Namely, I get the impression their endgoal is to establish a legal precedent against the concept of age-verified OSes.
    I have no idea what the particulars of the bill that prompted this project are, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the bill makes some kind of reference to 'covered application stores', and so they might be trying to establish some kind of blanket protection against mandated age verification for "publicly available internet websites distributing and facilitating the download of applications to users of a general purpose computing device".
    I do, however, agree snippets of the project seem AI-generated. I would point out then that in this case it straight-up does not matter; this is not intended as an OS for actual use, it's intended as Supreme Court decision bait. If AI helps them get it up and running faster, then... whatever?

    10 votes