OpenStars @ OpenStars @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

Next? I think you misspelled "current":-D

It probably depends on the magazine... but yeah, people are still people:-).

A lot of the contributors to Reddit refuse to move to Lemmy/Kbin, and at this point I do not blame them - e.g. my notifications have not been working for over a week now, plus 80% of the time whenever I try to upvote or boost something, it forgets who I am and I have to login again (actually it's not a probability thing: it seems if I do something within seconds of visiting a page it always works, while after a threshold is passed then it never works). Plus on kbin.social at least I believe there are no moderation tools at all. Given how hard I'm being trolled on Reddit (b/c I did not kowtow to a hardcore cadre of power aboosers), I could only imagine how horrible the experience would be if even mods could not remove things? (or... something? easily? at all? I do not know the details) This technology just was never ready for deployment at this stage, and especially kbin.social still seems to be in the alpha software stage. Ofc, even so I am still enjoying it more than Reddit, whenever I do get to speak with an intelligent person, like now:-).

You are not the only one to think these thoughts. Check out the article linked here if you want a fascinating read - I could not put it down! Except I had to, for breakfast then work, but doing so really bugged me!:-P It was just so PERFECTLY aligned with what I had been thinking myself also, which the Reddit protests had spawned in me: in short, Reddit's actions were evil, but it may have done us a lot of good actually... if we pay attention and learn from it all. i.e., the problem was never Reddit, but inside of us all along. Okay so Reddit is also a problem - or a whole series of them actually:-P - but also it is our natural inclination to go that "easy" route, which for-profit corporations are very much looking to exploit, but also there are free ways to reach that same end (which is not a good end).

On the flip side, it could be a Russian troll farm, and Reddit is not even aware of these efforts made on their behalf!?:-P

A perfect analogy is what is going on in Ukraine: the Russian soldiers, many of them not even FROM Russia at this point but rather from one of the controlled outlying neighboring areas, have literal guns pointed at their literal backs - but does this mean that they should not be shot?

No...and yes. Like if they are able to surrender, great (and purely strategically, that does more to help Ukraine than killing the soldier would, both on the global scale of goodwill rendered plus demoralizing the remaining people in Russia upon hearing not just that soldiers got shot "defending their country", but that they were traitors who abandoned the cause at the absolute earliest opportunity), but ultimately they will still kill you, your family, and everyone you've ever met if given the chance, so you can't like NOT shoot back.

That is why giving up your Freedom to Think is such a heinous crime. i.e., that is why religious extremism is such a heinous crime. e.g. that is why the Bible says that unthinking adherence to religious principles is such a heinous crime (I Thessalonians 5:21: "QUESTION EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be TRUE"). Or as the devil QOP would say, "go on, DO it, you know you want to, it'll be so much easier if you just GIVE IN and do what 'everybody' else is doing...".

The reason I am focusing so much on the precise nature of the crime is that if given half a chance, Democrats and liberals would do it too, just as Republicans and conservatives have. Vote for Biden to support workers? Yeah no he'll end the train strike just exactly like Reagan did. Vote for Dems to support gun control? Gun control when/where/why/who/how/NEVER? I am not saying the two sides are equal, but I am saying that they are of like nature - politics being what it is and all. And it would do no good at all for "us" to end up exactly like "them", believing whatever the media tells us just b/c it comes from a supposed source of authority.

On a bit of a tangent, but also getting back to the OP, there was only a single type of person that the Bible records Jesus as literally HATING, with a passionate burning type of HATE even - calling them "tombs", looking fInE on the outside but inside all full of rot & decay - and those people were the religious extremists of His day, who heaped heavy burdens on people without bothering to lift a finger to help them. I actually think that in many ways Jesus would be more or less fine with LGBTQIA+ - the self-discovering adherents at least even if not the lifestyle itself, e.g. how he hung out with common everyday "sinners" aka non-religious peeps all the time - but the hypocrites not so much, as there are some rather HARSH words said about them, involving death/destruction/judgement etc.

Looked at from this POV, showing up on Jan. 6 isn't looking so bad (e.g. hypothetical scenario: your mom & dad both went and brought you as a child along for the ride), whereas making the CHOICE to watch Fox News is that bad... if that makes any sense.

All very good points.

Except they won't. To quote my most favoritest person alive on planet Earth today (Jon Stewart): liberal media aims to be correct, while conservative media is effective. More than most people, he knows what we are up against.

To use another tact to explain what I mean: one tactic used by conservative media is to blame the other side - it is "them", it is "they", all the bad comes from "their" efforts. The opposite of that though is not simply to say the same thing in the reverse direction, but to question ourselves, and what we can do to make things better. It is hard, it is messy - and to be clear I don't mean that diagnoses of the problems faced are irrelevant, just that if we never move past that then that is where it all ends: in a click bait media title, no matter how well intended. If Hillary had done this, then Trump would never have gotten elected.

I cannot absolve anyone else of their actions, but neither should I ignore my own - and the same collectively for "my" side.

They have brains to think and eyes to see and ears to hear.

I am not so certain of that as I once was. Setting aside literal stuff like blind / deaf people and the like, they may "have" brains but cognitive dissonance means that they do not "use" them, when applied to certain matters. A good fraction of people listen to authority more than they listen to their own brains, trusting those they have chosen to lead them, even right off of a cliff. THAT was their choice, but then everything else that follows they are not even in control of their own actions anymore. Sure, blame them, okay, but THEN what, in terms of doing anything about it?

Or as another famous sayings goes: "This is fine".:-) :-(

Sheeple follow, it's just what they do, just like water flows downhill and stars burn brightly - they literally cannot do otherwise, no matter how much you might wish it so.

Both the Old and New Testaments have a LOT harsher criticism against improper leadership than about idiots doing idiotic things. e.g. let masses have their alcohol, easing the aches and pains of a farming existence, but a KING must be sober at practically all times. And better a large heavy stone be tied around your neck and be thrown into the sea (to sleep with the fishes) than to be caught leading the sheeple astray.

So it seems to me to confirm the attitudes of the Greek stoics, as the serenity prayer says (short version used by 12-step programs):

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference

In other words, it is more true to say that Hillary lost than that Trump won, and history may repeat itself again if Biden + Kamala loses and Trump takes office again (focusing on USA politics bc I think that's where "woke" is mostly from). As Obama says, a LOT of what influences our daily lives is not what happens dramatically in DC but rather unexciting (or at least less) local governments - state, city, whatever.

Can we, WILL we, try to do better than those who are not capable of or otherwise refuse to do anything more?

It is literally not - they sell licenses to large companies, and individual users are only an afterthought.

Free fireworks display:-)

Meh, but you saved the world so... there's that:-P.

You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain

Legend of Zelda's Navi would like to have a word with you... (BEEP BEEP!)

In the old SNES game Paladin's Quest, HP and MP share an identical pool. You could either hit with your weapon or use magic, depending on which would cost you more. Magic comes at a PRICE!:-P

Imagine how Jesus must feel. After telling people to stop listening to the over-religious "Karens" of his day who ignored the part of their "holy" scriptures (in quotes here to suggest that they actually felt otherwise about it:-) to show love to one another and instead focused on totally irrelevant things like mint taxes that they added themselves, and switch instead to giving two shits about people in pain and need.

Would the historical Jesus be pro-LGBTQ+ if he instead were to have come in modern times? Or if there were only two choices, would he rather choose murder aka "Pro-Life" and terrorism aka extremist fundamentalism?

People have a tendency to fall into all sorts of errors, especially uneducated ones... which makes sense? All we can do is take care of our own - e.g. never forget that more people voted against Hillary than for Trump (and likewise if he gets back in, it will be because more are voting against Kamala Harris or more likely refraining from voting at all due to Biden's extremely advanced age or whatever than for him again), i.e. the religious extremists are not 50% of our nation but more like 11% at best.

So kudos to you for not buying into the media hype trying to click bait us into fear, and continuing to love and wave that flag!:-D

I dunno, it seems like it accomplishes its primary purpose well enough? Too bad for you that purpose is to deliver ads to the user to see while doomscrolling...and nothing else.:-(

And succinctly! :-)

I haven't watched it yet, but knowing his past work I can already say: his profit motive may suggest otherwise. Engagement culture works for an extremely wide audience, and his base seems to be people that get pissed off by the things that he says, to some large measure potentially purely b/c it pisses them off? That is to say that it is hard to convince someone of something when their job depends on them not understanding it. Okay, now I am ready to go watch it!:-D

The number of users dropping in June when many bot accounts were removed, and then rising again at the same time that 1500 new servers were added, while MAU does not rise at the same rate, seems to suggest that many are in fact likely bots?

However, the MAU is rising, so that indeed is a sign of health even if the precise amount of traffic by humans is unknown.

And bot accounts serve useful purposes too, sometimes posting more worthwhile content than many humans.:-)

Some thoughts:

If there is something you see that is missing - particularly documentation - then perhaps that is an excellent place to start? The older devs may have just been waiting for someone like you to come along and could be ecstatic to hear that you want to make that. Maybe they used/continue to work together in a company or are old friends or sth and did not need that, so you could break the project wide open, making it easier for everyone who comes after you, possibly also changing the very culture of the project and encouraging the more senior devs to write documentation as well, as they make new things or solidify an existing foundation before extending into new territory. And there are so many forms of documentation - Pre/Post conditions, listing dependencies/interactions, plus overall description of assumptions made - that even if some of that exists, the project could perhaps still benefit from adding more, especially from the perspective of a newer team member.

Do not neglect the "people" side of things - maybe try to connect to some of the more senior devs on Discord or wherever they are first? Like on the plus side they could give you pointers, tell you what you can ignore, send you links to documentation that would have been hard to find on your own, etc. Seriously: imagine spending 6 months writing documentation for an enormously-complicated aspect of the code (like a major, central class + all of its dependencies), only to see the entire thing discarded & replaced, and you find out only then that it was always intended that way from the start. (still not a deal-breaker, b/c most of that "6 months" would be you learning stuff and getting familiar with generalities, so not entirely wasted, yet not entirely productive either if you could have been told to have picked a different entry point into the project) While on the minus side, if you see that they are just flat-out idiots, then you can abandon the project now and move on - that is a thing that can happen, and it is better to know ASAP than to only really be confronted by that a year or two in.:-(

Perhaps also consider your "fit" for the specific project. If you are good at many things, but not at the specific things involved there, then there will be a greater cost for you to work in that area, and you will spend more time "learning" and less time "contributing" (plus, how much time will people be willing to devote to helping you do the former, when you have done none of the latter yet?). Ngl, depending on the number and styles of languages involved - e.g. a script that calls an optimized C++ library that then feeds data into making an SQL query that uses a REGEXP into a database that has literally zero documentation anywhere... and so on - and your prior amount of experience with each of them, could take a good several YEARS to catch up, as only a side-project. Even if your expertise could help them - e.g. if you are great at UI/UX while the senior devs are more full-stack but almost exclusively focused on the back-end side - there is still the matter of you needing a way to deliver your contributions to them, i.e. understanding the existing codebase enough to be able to modify it to implement your ideas.

I hope this helps!:-)

It is a nice perspective, thanks for sharing it!:-)

Whoosh moment... but I see what you did there - and I for one, like it!:-P

Though tbf, I must be insane, b/c I legit just watch the ads. Okay so not watch watch them, or listen either tbh, but let them play out I mean... I watch fewer than one YT video per day, most often per week even, or sometimes per month, so that is just easier for me than anything else, and it feels good to know that I am supporting the content creators that way, which iirc YT does at least a halfway decent job of? (or I could be misremembering that, but I thought like not the best yet not the worst either, more solidly in the middle, median-wise if not average?) Like, it is literally the least I can offer:-D.

Unless I want to listen to music, in which case I just turn on blocking of the ads - I guess I am not all that perfect (or bat-shit insane - ain't nobody got time for dat!):-P.