blind3rdeye @ blind3rdeye @lemm.ee

Posts

6

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617

Joined

2 yr. ago

I reckon polio is a good analogy. That illness doesn't seem so bad at first. Mild symptoms (or no symptoms at all), seems like you get better. It's much worse in a small number of cases - potentially causing paralysis and death. But a big issue is post-polio syndrome, which surfaces many years later in a large percentage of people.

fatigue is often the most disabling symptom; even slight exertion often produces disabling fatigue [...]

Covid is a bit like that. Most people who get it feel pretty rotten for a few days, and then its apparently over. But we've seen that for some people, covid causes permanent brain injuries resulting in chronic exhaustion and brain-fog. It's unclear precisely how common this this, but we know that repeated exposure increases the risk.

I know what you mean. Like, I understand that the vaccination is definitely worth taking. But feeling sick for a day after taking it saps the motivation to get it again. I want the vaccine, but it's so much harder to organise getting it again after having a negative experience like that. (Note, I've have a few covid vaccinations; and only once did I feel sick for a day because of it.)

There are poisons that can be absorbed through skin by contact.

I use to have a PayPal account. I used it to receive donations from some open-source projects that I was working on. And I passed most of the money on by re-donating it to other people who were also sharing high quality work that I liked. It was never very much money (like maybe a few hundred dollars in total over years); but I kind of enjoyed that.

But around 10 years ago, that PayPal account was blocked, because of who I'd sent money to. They didn't tell me specifically what the problem was, they just told me that it was 'suspicious' - and they (PayPal) demanded personal info from my to prove my identity before they would unlock the account. They wanted photos of drivers license and stuff like that.

Long story short, I eventually did get them to unblock the account (and I did not send them personal info); but that experience destroyed my confidence and trust in PayPal. So I drained the account, and haven't used them ever since. I very much don't like the idea that a company can just take my account (and money) hostage for totally arbitrary reasons and make demands based on that.

Surprisingly, this even applies to black holes (i.e. Hawking radiation).

if you are getting “punched down” (aka offended) by a joke posted on lemmy, by a random guy, you should realize that it is simply not that deep

I think you've misunderstood what punching down means. It has nothing to do with being offended. It's about the relationship between the person telling the joke and the subject of the joke. For example, it's generally fine for anyone to make jokes mocking rich people; but its not ok to make jokes mocking poor people unless you yourself are very obviously a poor person.

Probably anyone who ever gotten any pressure about handling last-names after marriage might care. It's definitely something that some people care about, and some people cop flack for their decision.

The joke is just a joke, but the problem is that this joke punches down. That's generally poor form.

shit

It stands to question that with a fraction of the users on Lemmy, why is the interaction/engagement considerably higher?

I think the answer is fairly clear. Lemmy's topics & votes system funnels condenses the user-base to focus on particular things at particular times. The total number of users may be smaller than Mastodon, but basically everyone on lemmy is looking at the top posts on the front page first, and then exploring to other stuff later; whereas on Mastodon everyone is just doing their own thing.

Focusing people on one topic means that there will be discussion at that topic at that time; and discussion leads to people checking back to read and reply to responses...

I routinely use both Mastodon and Lemmy. I see a lot more varied content on Mastodon, but it is more fleeting. i.e. very little discussion, and fairly short window of interaction with posts. Lemmy has a lot less 'stuff', but a lot more conversation.

I think the difference is interesting, but it definitely isn't something we should use to say which platform is doing better or anything like that.

I'd suggest "nothing" for the time being.

There are a lot of different people around here, and different people get angry about different things. So there's always going to be a lot of different bad things said about a large instance like lemmy.world. But whether or not those things are actually a real problem is for you to decide.

Lots of planes around (as well as fireworks).

Yeah. I've been interested in AI for most of my life. I've followed AI developments, and tinkered with a lot of AI stuff myself. I was pretty excited when ChatGPT first launched... but that excitement turned very sour after about a month.

I hate what the world has become. Money corrupts everything. We get the cheapest most exploitative version of every possible idea, and when it comes to AI - that's pretty big net negative on the world.

"Just pay everyone more" is nice idea - but obviously that would require a lot of additional money. Whereas "lower CEO pay and raise employee pay" does not require additional money.

We're no strangers to that meme. But you know the rules, and so do I.

This is not loss.

I didn't look at that until I saw your comment. And looking at it now, I see why I didn't notice it - it looks like a blurry mess. But yeah, even so blurry it is a massive hint. I reckon you can probably turn down the sensitivity on your moronometer though.

I get a bit like that when I'm not going outside enough. It sucks, because it also makes me not want to go outside (and I feel like I have no reason to).

I guess not. Its just that when I hear 'theoretical physics' I immediately think of particle physics (and related fields). I have this idea that in most branches of physics people just say the topic, eg. astronomy, material sciences, or whatever; and don't usually specify whether they are doing theoretical work or experimental/empirical work. But in particle physics ... my impression is that people are more likely to specify. Anyway, that's just my own bias I guess.

Fair enough.

I personally don't care about the broken clock thing, but a phrase that does annoy me is "if it ain't broke..." So I can emphasise with the idea that a popular simple proverb often oversimplifies and misrepresents and distorts what people are actually trying to discuss.

Is that because you're too young to have grown up with analogue clocks everywhere? (Clearly the phrase is wrong if a broken clock shows nothing at all...)

I think 〉 means a very hungry (or at least large mouthed) crocodile, and > is just a normal one.