heraplem's recent activity
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
heraplem Link ParentI've seen a lot of people framing it this way, and I don't agree. These are exactly the kinds of things you find in certain self-aware and self-deprecating online queer spaces.And the evidence itself always came back to "If you read this, you are gay lmao” and “Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”. That is very much mocking of two liberal identities.
I've seen a lot of people framing it this way, and I don't agree. These are exactly the kinds of things you find in certain self-aware and self-deprecating online queer spaces.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
heraplem Link ParentExtremely unlikely. This sort of thing almost never happens, and it would be a colossally stupid thing to do in the age of smartphones. The shooter seems to have gotten away without anyone having...How possible is it that this might be some sort of play to deflect from further attention on the Epstein list?
Extremely unlikely. This sort of thing almost never happens, and it would be a colossally stupid thing to do in the age of smartphones. The shooter seems to have gotten away without anyone having taken any useful photos or videos of them, but all it would take is one person with a smartphone at the right time and place to completely screw the whole plan over. Also, the conspiracy would have to extend at least from the head of the FBI all the way down to campus police. Not remotely plausible.
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What's the most feasible way to exit modern society?
In short: the prospect of generative AI becoming increasingly prevalent has been gnawing away at me for a long time now. It's looking like there are no limits that will matter in the near future....
In short: the prospect of generative AI becoming increasingly prevalent has been gnawing away at me for a long time now. It's looking like there are no limits that will matter in the near future. But interfacing with generative AI in basically any capacity instills in me a kind of existential horror and revulsion that I don't think I can live with in my day-to-day life. Unfortunately, it seems that generative AI will soon become unavoidable in any white-collar career path, to say nothing of casual exposure in everyday life. I try as hard as possible to shield myself, but I doubt that will be realistically possible for much longer.
I'm in a graduate program, but I'm not confident that my field will still be relevant in five years. Even if it is, I'll almost certainly spend a lot of time interfacing with generative AI, the thought of which makes me nauseous.
Frankly, I'm so disgusted with what the world has become and what it is becoming that it's turning me into kind of a nasty person IRL.
So I'm musing on ways to get out. On finding a way to make enough money to stay alive while having as little contact with the digital world as possible.
Anyone have any experience/ideas?
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Comment on Explain Linux controversies to me in ~tech
heraplem Link ParentGnome 3 came out back when lots of UI designers were trying to create a unified UI that would work both for desktop and mobile. To my knowledge, no one has yet managed to do this in a satisfying...Gnome 3 came out back when lots of UI designers were trying to create a unified UI that would work both for desktop and mobile.
To my knowledge, no one has yet managed to do this in a satisfying way: basically all attempts so far have just ended up creating something only half-usable in both paradigms.
Gnome 3 is one of the better attempts. It works pretty well on desktop—if you like its defaults and have no desire to change anything. Because the "meta-controversy" with Gnome 3—and, IMO, the real source of the controversy—is that, compared to every other Linux DE/WM/compositor/whatever, it offers essentially no customizability. In addition to just being kind of frustrating, the lack of customizability goes against a general OSS cultural norm of making highly flexible and configurable software. In some ways, Gnome 3 feels more like a corporate product than an OSS project—people compare it to Apple, except Apple has more thought put into their stuff (or, well, supposedly they did at the time; from what I gather, macOS hadn't become the mess that it is today).
Also, and related, Gnome 3 has taken a very "my way or the highway" approach. It doesn't play nicely with software outside of its ecosystem; again, this breaks OSS cultural norms.
For what it's worth, the counterargument from the Gnome folks is that customizability and "openness" carries a maintenance burden, so reducing that stuff ensures Gnome's quality.
Of course, only greybeards care about this stuff anymore, because what ended up happening is that the Web just kind of ate everything UI-related.
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Comment on Explain Linux controversies to me in ~tech
heraplem (edited )Link ParentIt was both. KDE 4 was borderline unusable when it came out due to bugs, shoddy UI design, and general sluggishness. KDE 5 is basically a fixed version of KDE 4, and it's probably the best DE for...KDE 4 was controversial with some considering it unusable and some considering it promising.
It was both. KDE 4 was borderline unusable when it came out due to bugs, shoddy UI design, and general sluggishness. KDE 5 is basically a fixed version of KDE 4, and it's probably the best DE for your average user.
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Comment on Is the AI bubble about to burst? in ~tech
heraplem Link ParentThe chess analogy is imperfect because only human chess is economically viable. You can't sustain sponsorship for an engine chess league. People want to watch humans play chess, and it turns out...More and more and more domains will get chessified where you can use a computer to help learn, but you will never beat it.
The chess analogy is imperfect because only human chess is economically viable. You can't sustain sponsorship for an engine chess league. People want to watch humans play chess, and it turns out that they don't much care if computers are better.
In any domain where the product is the point, "you can use a computer to learn but you can't beat it" means that that domain ceases to become an economically viable human activity.
I need to focus on being as good as possible at review and quality assurance.
Going to be honest, that sounds like hell. I'm legitimately unsure I'll be able to live in that world.
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Comment on Can AI-generated photos be art? in ~arts
heraplem Link ParentMaybe my claim as stated is wrong, in the sense that there are, numerically, more people creating photorealistic art than there ever were in, say, the 1600s. I don't even know that I buy that, but...I used to lurk reddit a lot, especially fantasy art subs, and it was really common for artists to aim for photorealism.
Maybe my claim as stated is wrong, in the sense that there are, numerically, more people creating photorealistic art than there ever were in, say, the 1600s. I don't even know that I buy that, but I'll grant it for the argument's sake.
How about this, then: photorealistic art is, in a general sense, an artform in decline, or even already at the end stage of decline. It was once culturally dominant; but as photography became commonplace, it withered. People may still practice it, but: it does not experience significant innovation; it does not attract top talent; it does not command cultural respect; it has essentially no cultural capital; it does not grant status or prestige or fame; for the vast majority of practitioners, it is not a viable career path; it is not something that most people are interested in or spend time thinking about, except occasionally when an impressive example pops up on their feed. It is a vestige.
I really don't think AI is going to kill hand made art.
See, I'm not 100% sure that this is true, even in a fairly strict sense.
The thing about "photorealistic" art is that, in fact, it does not look exactly like a photograph. At the very least, it admits compositions that are unlikely to ever occur in reality. But it also just looks different. That's part of the joy of looking at it.
But what if photorealistic art could itself be perfectly imitated?
AI art may have a creepy (to me) "AI-ish" look right now, but will it always? Certainly, the AI companies want us to think that, before too long, AI art will be indistinguishable from human-made art. I lack the technical knowledge or insider connections to know whether that's true, but I wouldn't bet against it.
What happens in a world where you can perfectly imitate that style? What happens when so few people are left practicing that techniques are lost, or when so few people are paying attention that all social and financial motivators vanish? What happens when you encroach on the habitat of an endangered species?
People don't just make art in a vacuum. This idea that humans will always find a way to carry on any particular art form is just wrong. Remove the material conditions that allow an art form to flourish, and you can sap its vitality, or even kill it outright. There are plenty of art forms that no longer exist, or exist only in tiny isolated pockets.
Everything has to end sometime: why not now?
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Comment on Donald Trump administration sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles amid clashes over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in ~society
heraplem LinkUnfortunately, I think it's very likely that this outcome was always intended, or at least expected. I don't know for sure what the right thing to do is here, but I'm afraid that giving them an...Unfortunately, I think it's very likely that this outcome was always intended, or at least expected. I don't know for sure what the right thing to do is here, but I'm afraid that giving them an excuse to mobilize the military is a catastrophic mistake.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of June 2 in ~society
heraplem (edited )Link ParentThat article is fascinating. The guy's beliefs strike me as . . . incoherent? He believes several things that are, if not mutually contradictory, at least in extreme tension with each other. And...- Exemplary
That article is fascinating. The guy's beliefs strike me as . . . incoherent? He believes several things that are, if not mutually contradictory, at least in extreme tension with each other. And that's to say nothing of the tension between what he does and some of the things he believes. It's so all over the place, I can't engage with it as a whole; I can only engage piecewise.
Charitable:
The idea of human dignity really mattered to me. When you read stories of the US factories and the meat producers, it’s fucking nuts. . . . I think the same is true of populism. There are a lot of people in this country who are neglected and forgotten by this country-club-esque Democratic establishment that cares about the coasts and is smug and condescending towards the center of the country, which, I get it, is poorer and less educated. But they're still people. I feel genuine fury at that kind of neglect. The pitch is always, "Back to normal, let's keep things as they are." But things aren't good for a lot of people.
Good instincts, and it's frankly disgusting that the Dems have lost the plot so hard that people who think this way are not overwhelmingly voting for them.
By the way, this kind of thing is why I'm convinced that people shouldn't underestimate JD Vance. Vance is selling a vision that this guy will buy. Actually, I think it's very possible that this guy is getting the exact word "dignity" from JD Vance.
Uncharitable:
Like I don't actually care about the border being open; economic immigration doesn't bother me at all. But it should have been communicated that there's a lot of immigration happening.
Okay, I don't disagree that the Democratic leadership often comes across as disingenuous and inept. But, like, what the fuck. Mr. "I wouldn't even mind an open border" voted for the "Stop all immigration immediately" candidate???
Uncharitable:
I'm a fan of woke, but it became very Stalinist at some point.
Mr. "I'm a fan of woke" voted for the "Defund woke universities and deport woke immigrants and close woke government departments" candidate???
Uncharitable:
After everyone started to turn for Trump, I saw the TikTok where he stood up and said, "Fight." It was a moment of exhilaration. You had this fragile, clearly misplaced candidate in the shape of Joe Biden, and then you had this guy saying, "Fight," and I was like, "Oh my God, we have hope. We can actually take our country back."
. . . One thing that I'm hearing myself say is that not at any point am I thinking about policy. It's all aesthetics. I think Democratic stuff is bullshit because the aesthetics are wrong. There are some policies that I don't like, but ultimately, it felt like the wrong way to do things.
. . . One of my friends threw a liberal watch party, and I didn't attend because I knew that I'd be crying with happiness at getting our fucking culture back.
"Yeah, I voted based on vibes."
Uncharitable:
One was GDP at 0% growth, which is actually fine. I'm in favor of the European lifestyle; they're generally happy.
This seems like a frankly insane thing for a Silicon Valley founder who idolizes Peter Thiel to say.
Uncharitable:
I always think of politics as having a candidate of hope and a candidate of the status quo. I felt that Trump was the candidate of hope, weirdly enough.
. . . Trump has this unpredictability, the willingness to do shit that maybe you shouldn't do. That worked with his foreign policy. He knows how to empire.
. . . There's something about empire, about acceleration, like, "We can just do things, we can change things." Maybe we take Greenland, and that'd be fun and cool.
. . . Those are the specifics. Then there’s the general idea of, "We can do things." Just because things happen a certain way doesn't mean they always need to. The possibility that things can change is not an establishment Democratic belief. If you brought up, even as a joke, in 2022, "You should take Greenland," you'd get a three-month lecture on the ills of colonialism or something.
As much as I hate this, I think it's maybe the most revealing aspect of the interview. Trump was the candidate of fun and possibility. He was—forgive me—the "yes we can" candidate.
But this attitude fucking infuriates me. "Maybe we take Greenland, and that'd be fun and cool." ????????? This is a deeply unserious attitude to take about global politics. And yes, I realize that I'm falling into the liberal stereotype, but, like, there are good reasons to be careful with what you say! Actually, there are good reasons to be careful in general! This "Let's just try it and see what happens" attitude is mostly fine when the worst thing can happen is your startup failing, but the stakes are a little higher for great powers. And maybe you argue that there's an element of kayfabe to Trump's ramblings, and, well, maybe, but personally, I loathe that, and I'm extremely bitter that we live in that world. I miss the fact-based world. I want it back.
(Also, even in the case of a startup, "what happens" sometimes ends up as "oops, we radically restructured human cognition and social structures!", and frankly I think we should have reigned in Silicon Valley's carelessness long ago. It's probably too late now.)
Uncharitable:
At this point, when people say that Trump's going to be really bad on tariffs or immigration or democracy, what are you thinking? It’s liberal tears. It's literally, "The guy says stuff. I don't think he means it."
Look, look, he said the thing!
Neutral:
October 7 was the weirdest week of my life. . . . There was not quite the condemnation that you would expect from the Democratic establishment.
The Democrats are completely fucked on I/P. The left-wing base accuses them of supporting genocide; moderates (and, I guess, various "heterodox" people) accuse them of being sympathetic to terrorists. There appears to be no way to win.
Uncharitable:
If something 9/11-scale happens, you would expect that there wouldn't be an "Oh, however..." There was relativism.
The comparison to 9/11 is apt; I remember thinking back to 9/11 when October 7 happened. But then I immediately thought "Israel is going to make the exact same mistake we did." It drives me insane that apparently nobody learned a damn thing from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, by the way: there was relativism in the wake of 9/11. It was roundly condemned, because the ideological environment was much more unified back then, but there were people who said things like "It doesn't excuse what they did, but there are reasons why this happened."
Honestly, this is a very "woke" line of reasoning. It's one thing if you straight-up disagree with someone's arguments, but this sounds more like an issue with tone and timing. And, hey, I understand that there's a time and a place for that, but does the Republican Party agree?
Mixed:
Counterintuitively, I think it could have ended much sooner if they had been clear about their support of Israel and an aggressive but fast engagement. Then you wouldn't have the food insecurity that we're still dealing with. Hamas is a terrible, murderous government, but there are two fucking million people it rules over that need to live, who have dignity.
I will grant this: the Biden admin's engagement with Israel—and this was really a pattern with all of the Biden admin's foreign policy, including Ukraine—was far too timid and passive. The Biden admin appears to have made no attempt to set a "war agenda": they just let Israel do whatever it wanted. And (in my opinion) it was obvious from the beginning that Israel would overreach. Leaving aside the political pressures on and despicable character of Netanyahu himself, the stated war goal of destroying Hamas was and is absurd. You cannot wipe out an embedded militant group through ordinary military means. So long as that remains the goal, the war will remain a forever war.
However, I'm deeply suspicious of the argument that "Oh, we should have supported a war, but we should have made that support conditional on a limited war." I think the most likely outcome there is that Netanyahu says "Oh, yes, of course we will only pursue a limited war", right up until he hits that limit, and then he says "Well, actually, we can't stop here if we want to make Israel secure." This feels like reaching for a way to blame Democrats for being too soft and too hard on Palestine, which, like, what?
Extremely uncharitable:
The reason I love technology is that I think technology is individualizing. Before technology, you needed other people to do things for you, so it was a collectivist way to see the world. Now technology lets you do things on your own—that lets the people you connect with be a choice, not a need. That's more enhancing to the human spirit.
Case in point for why education in the humanities is important.
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Comment on Can AI-generated photos be art? in ~arts
heraplem Link ParentI mean, it is objectively true that, as cameras became increasingly common, the prevalence of photorealistic art diminished. In the modern era, virtually no one make photorealistic art..."obsolete" necessarily implies, if not requires, an imposed uselessness, though; that would only be true if once cameras were invented & affordable & commonplace, no one made art beside photographs.
I mean, it is objectively true that, as cameras became increasingly common, the prevalence of photorealistic art diminished. In the modern era, virtually no one make photorealistic art anymore---because why bother when cameras exist?
is a giant printed newspaper obsolete?
. . . Kind of, yeah? Virtually no one reads newspapers that way anymore. It's a vestige of a bygone era. If you started society from scratch at our current technological level, newspapers simply wouldn't exist.
I see genAI the same way. Whatever it can do, humans will, for all intents and purposes, stop doing. I think anyone who thinks otherwise is not paying attention to (fairly recent) history.
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Comment on GenAI is our polyester in ~tech
heraplem LinkI don't buy it. For every polyester, there's . . . well, everything else in contemporary mass media, food, furniture . . . hell, even clothing is not really a promising example: it is well known...I don't buy it. For every polyester, there's . . . well, everything else in contemporary mass media, food, furniture . . . hell, even clothing is not really a promising example: it is well known that the overall quality and durability of easily-accessible clothing has been going down for decades. Cheap always wins.
I need to find a way to leave society.
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Comment on Can AI-generated photos be art? in ~arts
heraplem Link ParentIt certainly at least changes it, doesn't it? In the same way that the existence of photography changes traditional realistic art. One could even say that photography obsoletes it---in which case,...does the existence of AI art subtract from human art? I don't think so.
It certainly at least changes it, doesn't it? In the same way that the existence of photography changes traditional realistic art. One could even say that photography obsoletes it---in which case, maybe the same could be said of human-made art in the near future?
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Comment on Elon Musk calls for US President Donald Trump to be impeached as extraordinary feud escalates in ~society
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Comment on Ukraine destroys more than forty military aircraft in a drone attack deep inside Russia in ~news
heraplem (edited )Link ParentI don't think it has to do with fascism generally, but with being anti-Russian specifically. The barbaric invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, which the USSR ultimately repulsed, is something of...it has negative connotations for Russians related to fascism rather than anti-semitism
I don't think it has to do with fascism generally, but with being anti-Russian specifically. The barbaric invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, which the USSR ultimately repulsed, is something of a founding myth for modern Russia. To get a sense of it, imagine if the American Revolutionary War had been fought less than a century ago; and it was a defensive total war against one of the most evil regimes in human history, whose objective was no less than the complete extermination of the people of your people; and it featured the deadliest battle in human history, a siege of a major city in which 250,000 civilians died. Russians call World War 2 the "Great Patriotic War", and they still hold yearly public celebrations in honor of victory over the Nazis.
To us, the Nazis represent human evil in, like, a generalized sense. To Russians, they also represent evil that specifically hates Russia and wants to destroy it.
(Of course, the Nazis marched right through Ukraine on their way to Stalingrad.)
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of June 2 in ~society
heraplem Link ParentTone-deaf? It's on purpose. It's le epic troleing as a political tactic.Tone-deaf? It's on purpose. It's le epic troleing as a political tactic.
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Comment on Victories and challenges: An A[u]DHD community and support fortnightly thread #1 in ~health.mental
heraplem LinkAfter finishing: Wow, this unintentionally turned into a dump. I guess I've been chewing on this stuff over the last few weeks. I have both an autism diagnosis and an ADHD diagnosis, but I'm not...After finishing: Wow, this unintentionally turned into a dump. I guess I've been chewing on this stuff over the last few weeks.
I have both an autism diagnosis and an ADHD diagnosis, but I'm not sure I believe either.
Autism is more likely. I got that diagnosis when I was ~20 years old, around a decade and a half ago now. I have at least one sibling who is definitely autistic. I experience significant social difficulties, and essentially all my "friendships" have always been neurodivergent people, many of whom were/are definitely autistic.
But, at the same time, I have certain traits that, in my experience, are uncommon among autistic people.
I've always been intensely aware of the fact that I'm somehow unusual. When I was younger, I tried my hardest to push it down and act "normal". In my experience, autistic people often (though not always) aren't so self-conscious, and aren't too bothered by being different, as long as they're able to find a niche that works for them.
As I've gotten older, I've mostly given up on actively trying to be normal. But I still feel like I can't just . . . be me. I don't even know who "me" is. In my experience, many autistic people have a "DGAF" attitude that helps them thrive among other neurodivergent people, or even among open-minded "normal" people. It's never worked that way for me. I never develop meaningful relationships; I never thrive anywhere.
In terms of actual problems in my life, I feel like the "schizoid" moniker fits better. And that's a scary thought, because that condition is pretty much untreatable, and the overall prognosis is poor.
As for ADHD: I definitely have some kind of executive dysfunction. I've always been disorganized and forgetful; my living spaces have always been messy; I've always zoned out while people were talking to me; I've never been able to keep a routine; focusing on things that don't personally interest me has always been extremely painful; even when focusing on things that do interest me, I rarely finish projects; etc.
But is that really ADHD? I've never been impulsive---if anything, I've always been highly inhibited. My attention span has been decimated by digital technology just like everyone else's, but it was fine when I was a kid, as long as I was focusing something that interested me---I was reading long books all the time, and in fact prided myself on being a literary person. Stimulants help somewhat with completing tasks, but they do very little for big-picture organization.
I feel like what I really am is avolitional. I have little-to-no willpower or endurance. Whenever something is not immediately interesting, I simply can't bring myself to expend even the tiniest amount of energy on it. I've gotten better with age about being able to take care of the bare minimum necessary to live, but it's still not easy. And this is honestly a terrible trait to have---not just for me personally, but for the people around me. It makes me seem uncaring. And, like, that's kind of not wrong, right? If I cared about people more, wouldn't I pay better attention to them, take more initiative in talking to them, more reliably fulfill my obligations, etc.?
Russell Barkeley, a well-known ADHD scholar, has proposed a condition called "cognitive disengagement syndrome" (formerly "sluggish cognitive tempo") that hits a lot of the same points. Not that that's much help, though---there isn't much literature on it; and from what literature does exist, the takeaway is basically "stimulants are still the best treatment we know of, but they don't work as well as they do for ADHD." Great.
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Comment on Google's new AI video tool floods internet with real-looking clips in ~tech
heraplem Link ParentGoing to be honest: what you've just described sounds like a nightmare to me. I'm not sure I could live in such a world.Going to be honest: what you've just described sounds like a nightmare to me. I'm not sure I could live in such a world.
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Comment on What are some good vegan substitutes for cheese? in ~food
heraplem (edited )LinkDepending on where you live, you may be able to find a specialty shop selling fermented nut cheeses. These are about as close to cheese as you can get while remaining vegan. They can substitute...Depending on where you live, you may be able to find a specialty shop selling fermented nut cheeses. These are about as close to cheese as you can get while remaining vegan. They can substitute pretty convincingly for very tangy cheeses---e.g., your typical goat cheese---or even brie. You aren't ever going to find convincing substitutes for cheeses that have more body; e.g., cheddar, gouda.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~society
heraplem (edited )Link ParentI'm sure he'd take a third term if he thought he could get away with it. But the legal and normative hurdles to that are pretty substantial. Even the median voter knows that a third Presidential...I'm sure he'd take a third term if he thought he could get away with it. But the legal and normative hurdles to that are pretty substantial. Even the median voter knows that a third Presidential term is flat-out illegal. And there's simply no legitimate way the Republicans could pass a Constitutional amendment to change that fact.
I've thought about ways that Trump could try to grab a third term, but nearly all of them involve a more-or-less complete breakdown of the legitimate political process, well beyond what we're currently experiencing. The prerequisites for it are bad enough that we should be worrying about them, not what comes after. (Also, the easiest paths to a third Trump term all involve Republicans winning in 2028, so we should be focused on that.)
On a side note, I think that it will be psychologically easier for Trump to let go of the Presidency if it's not because he lost, but simply because he got his turn, and now it's someone else's turn. (Though it is kind of sickening that this is the sort of thing we're hanging our hopes on.)
Let me ask you, and this is a legitimate question, because I'm not tuned in to the intricacies of right-wing online subcommunities: would you have identified them as groyper memes before the shooting? Or only afterward, when people started spreading this idea around? Because I strongly suspect that this is a memetic self-defense; i.e., what the kids call "cope".
Eh. Helldivers isn't the first video game I'd associate with extremely online queer spaces (I'd think of things like Disco Elysium, Fallout: New Vegas, Celeste, Ultrakill, Touhou, and Team Fortress 2), but it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to me. Extremely online queer spaces are heavily steeped in video game culture.
As for Bella Ciao, I'd never even heard of it before all this, so all I have to say there is that the song was originally associated with the Italian Resistance and was apparently having A Moment on TikTok before this, so I think it's more likely that it was being used with its original connotation. Same with the direct reference to fascism, actually.
I mean, let's look at it this way. Suppose the shooter actually is a groyper. I'd say, then, that he did a pretty poor job of getting his message across, engraving his bullets with two messages whose most straightforward interpretations are left-wing, and no explicitly right-wing messages.