sparksbet's recent activity
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Comment on Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don't rewrite an Iran missile story in ~society
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Comment on Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton's CEO asked ChatGPT how to void $250 million contract, ignores lawyers, loses in court in ~games
sparksbet Link ParentI suspect they'll at least win damages and attorney's fees in the remainder of the litigation, at least based on what I saw of this decision. The judge did not seem to think highly of Krafton's...I suspect they'll at least win damages and attorney's fees in the remainder of the litigation, at least based on what I saw of this decision. The judge did not seem to think highly of Krafton's arguments in this case.
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
sparksbet Link ParentI don't enjoy romantasy much myself, but I find it telling that in this comment you seem to consider it incompatible with deeper ideas or more difficult fiction. Especially when your point of...I don't enjoy romantasy much myself, but I find it telling that in this comment you seem to consider it incompatible with deeper ideas or more difficult fiction. Especially when your point of comparison is Terry Pratchett, whose Discworld books began as a humorous pastiche of then-popular generic fantasy novels, I wonder why you don't consider that it's possible for some subset of romantasy novels to also "have something to say" and be "true art"?
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
sparksbet Link ParentI think the reason you see a lot of bad and/or generic fanfic out there is the same reason you see any bad art -- most art is bad and generic. Traditional publishing has gatekeeping based on...I think the reason you see a lot of bad and/or generic fanfic out there is the same reason you see any bad art -- most art is bad and generic. Traditional publishing has gatekeeping based on market factors that incentivize keeping out fiction that's not going to earn money, which sometimes correlates to higher quality work. But because it's essentially an investment from the publisher, they may be more rarely willing to take risks with more experimental things. Publishing fanfic on AO3, on the other hand, costs nothing, so while you see a lot more bad stuff than you would if there were some sort of gatekeeper, you also get the opportunity for experimentation that wouldn't be possible otherwise. I also don't read much fanfic in my spare time, but I think on the whole it has enriched the world of writing as a whole through its existence.
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
sparksbet Link ParentI don't think it's very empathetic to insult anyone on Tildes (or otherwise) who reads or writes fanfiction as being people who "hate words", and I don't think it's fair that one "side" be held to...I don't think it's very empathetic to insult anyone on Tildes (or otherwise) who reads or writes fanfiction as being people who "hate words", and I don't think it's fair that one "side" be held to some standard of being empathetic when the other side is the one making sweeping statements that denigrate people for writing a type of fiction they deem inferior. It's a double standard, and the fact that one party is "venting" doesn't automatically mean their comment doesn't include things that are wrong or insulting, and it doesn't make it wrong for someone else to point out when it is those things.
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Comment on ArXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year in ~science
sparksbet Link ParentThe "ech" in "tech" is usually pronounced in English with just a /k/ at the end and a short e, which is what I usually hear, but I'm surprised someone would mix that sound with the "ay" vowel!The "ech" in "tech" is usually pronounced in English with just a /k/ at the end and a short e, which is what I usually hear, but I'm surprised someone would mix that sound with the "ay" vowel!
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
sparksbet Link ParentI think you're being too charitable to a comment that literally said "fanfiction is literature for people who hate words". That's definitely denigrating all fanfiction.I think you're being too charitable to a comment that literally said "fanfiction is literature for people who hate words". That's definitely denigrating all fanfiction.
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentI think in principle you want to accommodate those who are disabled or have other barriers like ESL involved, but your descriptions in other comments of how you'd plan to present and implement...I think in principle you want to accommodate those who are disabled or have other barriers like ESL involved, but your descriptions in other comments of how you'd plan to present and implement this policy indicate that this would not be free of negative effects on some of these people in practice. How do these people get accomodation so that they're exceptions to this policy? Do they need to go through your university's accomodations office? Do they need to personally ask you and reveal potentially private information about their disability? Even if these things are not the case and you grant accommodations to anyone no questions asked, these are barriers that accomodations typically require and the prospect of them existing here will probably discourage some subset of students who need them from asking for accomodations at all -- they'll either suffer through the course as best they can and perform worse than they otherwise could, or they'll drop your course and lose out of the opportunity to become engaged and learn what you're teaching in the first place. This is going to be especially true for those who don't have a formal diagnosis, as they'll have more experience being denied accommodations (or less experience fighting for them) than other students. ESL students are in a different circumstance but they have similar pressures to not ask for accommodations when a professor places a rule like this in the syllabus, even if accommodations are available. The existence of the policy itself will discourage people from asking for "exceptions" as accommodations. You simply cannot make a blanket policy like this without collateral effects on some of the people. If you choose to implement this policy, you need to be well aware that you will be denying access to some disabled people, even if that's not your intention. There is no version of this policy that won't affect some of those people, and implementing this policy entails you believe its benefits are worth that.
It's true that different pedagogical styles help and harm different students differently. But I don't think it's remotely clear that the benefits of this one for some students outweigh the potential harms for others. And even if they're roughly equal, why would you choose the policy that demonstrates a paternalistic lack of faith in your own students rather than one that gives them even a small amount of freedom to discover for themselves what works best for them when it comes to how to best study and take notes? I would never have learned that I personally do better taking handwritten notes without doing different things for different courses (sometimes on different days in the same course) and discovering this through experience. I, like your students, am an adult who can make my own choices even if they result in me not maximizing how much information I retain, and the freedom to make my own choices rather than being forced to take notes in the style my professor believes is better based on some meta-analysis they read is part of being respected as an adult who can learn and engage with the material rather than as a naughty child who must be reigned in so that they aren't disruptive in class. I would chafe at that bit and I don't believe that the positive effects of handwritten notes would remotely equal the negative effects of me resenting you in terms of my engagement with your course and the material. And frankly I'm probably the best case scenario, as I'm a generally highly engaged student who does benefit from handwriting my notes. I don't think the effects on students who are typically more of a struggle to get engaged would be any better.
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Comment on ArXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year in ~science
sparksbet Link ParentEvery professor I had in undergrad (which was in the US) pronounced it like /lɑtɛk/, with the first vowel being an "ah" sound like the "a" in "father". I've heard different pronunciations of the...Every professor I had in undergrad (which was in the US) pronounced it like /lɑtɛk/, with the first vowel being an "ah" sound like the "a" in "father". I've heard different pronunciations of the final consonant since then, with some people doing a /ks/ and others doing a /x/ (like the ch in "Bach" or "loch") but I've never actually heard someone using the English "ay" sound for the first vowel when referring to the programming language.
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
sparksbet Link ParentI think most (but still not all) people who find specific retro game aesthetics cool are doing so from nostalgia, but I think pixel art has already started to move beyond that into an artistic...I think most (but still not all) people who find specific retro game aesthetics cool are doing so from nostalgia, but I think pixel art has already started to move beyond that into an artistic choice. The limited color palette would be the most notable feature of games for the original Gameboy, I think. I'm nearly 30 and my first handheld was still the Gameboy Color, and I think modern pixel art tends to only go for that specific type of limited color palette to appeal tl nostalgia (as opposed to other limited color palletes not directly tied to real-world console limitations). I think we're in the process of transition, in terms of timeline, when it comes to how pixel art interacts with nostalgia vs being an independent artistic choice.
And when it comes to the physical device rather than an artistic feature of the games, the lack of backlight would definitely shock modern kids I think. Talking about using an attached little lamp accessory to light up the screen in the car at night? I'll start sounding like my dad when he told us about how exciting it was when his brother got an answering machine. I wonder what the equivalent will be for this generation in 30 years.
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Comment on ArXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year in ~science
sparksbet Link ParentI didn't hear it mentioned much at all back when I was in the US, as it wasn't widely used by linguists outside of computational linguistics, but in studying ML and NLP in Germany I can't recall...I didn't hear it mentioned much at all back when I was in the US, as it wasn't widely used by linguists outside of computational linguistics, but in studying ML and NLP in Germany I can't recall ever having heard a "the" before it. But I find it believable enough that people would do that elsewhere. I've never heard someone pronounce "LaTeX" like the English word "latex" but I believe people who say that happens too lol
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentI don't think that citing that meta-analysis in response to someone saying they struggle with handwriting notes and do better when they can type amounts to just observing trends, but is instead...I don't think that citing that meta-analysis in response to someone saying they struggle with handwriting notes and do better when they can type amounts to just observing trends, but is instead giving advice to an individual who has already expressed their lived experience about how these methods affect their note-taking. Even if the research on this were rock-solid (and I'm not convinced it is), I think it may be worth imagining how frustrating a response that is so dismissive of your own experience with notetaking and your own brain would be, even if they pay lip-service to there being individual differences. I have friends with chronic illness who have the same experience with people constantly insisting they should try yoga even after they've mentioned that yoga would actually exacerbate their particular disabilities, so perhaps exercise isn't the worst comparison. It's tone-deaf, imo.
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentHandwritten notes being shown to improve outcomes on a population level does not entail that it's an improvement in every individual circumstance. You can't wave around results like that as though...Handwritten notes being shown to improve outcomes on a population level does not entail that it's an improvement in every individual circumstance. You can't wave around results like that as though they universally apply to individuals. That's not how science works. And I say this as someone for whom handwriting notes does improve things, personally.
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentEven as a student who does perform better when I limit myself to handwriting my notes and don't bring my laptop to class as a potential distraction, I don't think wholly banning them is...Outside of disability and English-second language individuals, what are some potentials pitfalls of this approach? Would you have liked this as a student, if you were one that used your computer to take notes?
Even as a student who does perform better when I limit myself to handwriting my notes and don't bring my laptop to class as a potential distraction, I don't think wholly banning them is acceptable. Firstly, you cannot ignore disability and ESL as these will be hugely salient in almost any class you're in. Secondly, even people without a disability may have valid reasons they prefer to take notes on a digital device -- much like how I use subtitles despite not being hard of hearing. Just because they're a disability aid doesn't mean they can't often be helpful to people who aren't disabled too.
Thirdly, frankly, in a 400-course it feels incredibly patronizing and like being treated like a child. If it's a seminar and is more discussion focused anyway, I can see a no-laptops policy making sense (although even then, that's disruptive to those who save the readings as digital pdfs rather than printing them out, which was common in my field and has similar concerns when it comes to disability), but for a lecture or similar course where you're expected to take notes, it comes across as treating students like little children who are only allowed to do what you trust them to do. I remember when I first attended a college course as part of post-secondary enrollment, I was in awe of the fact that I was allowed to pull my laptop out when needed without the teachers acting like cops about it, because that was all I knew from the strict rules in high school. Being treated like an adult who could make their own choices about how they learned made me respect my professors more, and I eventually came to my own conclusions about what note-taking methods worked best for me. If I had been forced to take "analogue" notes by my professors, I would have resented it and never learned the ways that they work better for me personally, and/or would have avoided taking notes at all out of spite. And I'm a student whose disability means I benefit from taking handwritten notes. Imagine how much worse this feeling of overbearing patronization would be when compounded by a disability that makes it harder with handwritten notes.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparksbet Link ParentI think that the episode the show ended on is actually a really solid ending tbh. That it's just a regular mid-season episode makes that all the more a happy coincidence. But I found Serenity...I think that the episode the show ended on is actually a really solid ending tbh. That it's just a regular mid-season episode makes that all the more a happy coincidence.
But I found Serenity pretty mid-at-best compared to the show and disliked it as a continuation/ending so.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparksbet Link ParentA future in which China is so influential that it's part of the lingua franca but in which there are inexplicably no Chinese people is at minimum questionable worldbuilding, though.A future in which China is so influential that it's part of the lingua franca but in which there are inexplicably no Chinese people is at minimum questionable worldbuilding, though.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparksbet Link ParentAs a youth (10+ years ago), I followed the cast of Firefly on Twitter. I promise if you had done that, you would not be wondering. Even back then, before most of the major controversies afaik, it...but I’m not familiar with Adam Baldwin being problematic. What’s that about?
As a youth (10+ years ago), I followed the cast of Firefly on Twitter. I promise if you had done that, you would not be wondering. Even back then, before most of the major controversies afaik, it was pretty loud conservative nonsense.
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Comment on ArXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year in ~science
sparksbet Link ParentFwiw, my experience is the opposite -- I don't think I've ever heard people use "the" with it. Wonder if that's regional or field-dependent.Fwiw, my experience is the opposite -- I don't think I've ever heard people use "the" with it. Wonder if that's regional or field-dependent.
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Comment on Digg has shutdown (again) in ~tech
sparksbet Link ParentThey aren't all that uncommon in published writing or writing that's intended to be formal -- you'll find them on Wikipedia, which has a section of its style guide for various kinds of dashes....They aren't all that uncommon in published writing or writing that's intended to be formal -- you'll find them on Wikipedia, which has a section of its style guide for various kinds of dashes. They're also reasonably common in fiction and thus fanfiction -- published fiction will be deliberately typeset with them, but word processors also typically automatically convert the multiple-hyphen kind that I use when I type into proper em-dashes. I used a bunch of (pseudo) em dashes in this comment without trying bc that's how I generally write, and I'm deliberately not going back to edit them into sentence breaks the way I would if I'd noticed how many I used in a comment that isn't about them lol
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
sparksbet Link ParentI think the most spoiler-free way is just to say that color symbolism is a big part of Blue Prince in terms of both its puzzles and its lore, and in particular the colors red and blue are very...I think the most spoiler-free way is just to say that color symbolism is a big part of Blue Prince in terms of both its puzzles and its lore, and in particular the colors red and blue are very important. Honestly this is already probably a little closer to spoilery than I'd like.
Definitely try it out tho. It's not for everyone but it is a really well-crafted game.
I agree that these are all very conceptually similar, but atm prediction markets are deliberately dodging gambling laws by insisting it isn't gambling.