ConstableJelly

Though creating a lemmy account is not that complex. Typically all you have to do is fill out a form on the websiten instructions included. The problem there is not the tech literacyn but the willingness of the people to even interact with systems they don’t know, like finding a home instance or understanding the concept of the fediverse. Most people could create a lemmy account, though also most people wouldn’t.

Spot on, it feels complicated because they don't understand what's being asked. I've said this before previously, but most people have no concept of frontends and backends. For most people, Twitter is just something that's on their phone, and it uses the internet to see what other people have in their Twitter apps on their phones.

Because internet usage and software generally is like 99.999% commercial, even the idea of closed and open source probably doesn't make sense to a lot of people. "Check out Mastodon, it's like Twitter but anyone can host it" would mean nothing to the average user. I'm on the absolute lower end of tech literacy in this community, so it's constantly apparent how much my Lemmy friends overestimate the general population.

Edit: To be clear, I say that non-critically. The tech industry has made it so astonishingly easy to interact with incredibly complicated systems, but they exploit the resulting ignorance for profit and market share because it severely limits our agency to choose something less antagonistic.

"You're not giving any context for your incredulity" might be the most helpful phrase I can remember hearing for communicating on the internet.

The couple times I've attempted a chargeback, my credit card company has sided with the business. The last time, we'd bought Switch controllers on sale from Walmart's website, but they were sold by a third party and the stick click button didn't work on them. We didn't notice for a couple months because we'd only used them for games that didn't use the stick click. We sent them to Nintendo for repair and they were returned unrepaired because they were counterfeit. We tried contacting Walmart 3 separate times after the seller failed to engage, after which point the return window was closed and the Walmart rep told me to dispute because their hands were tied.

So I did, and sent the product listing, my communication history with Walmart customer service, and the letter we received from Nintendo proving they were counterfeit. The credit card company reinstated the charge. I called them to ask why, and was told they asked Walmart to prove that the order had been fulfilled, and when they sent their evidence the chargeback was automatically canceled. I asked them to reopen it, and they did, and the supervisor told me that because the order was fulfilled and too much time had passed (probably around 6 months by then) there was nothing they could do.

Do not trust your credit card company to rectify malfeasance. The math is not on your side when they weigh the cost of pissing you off as an individual consumer versus the cost of pissing off a large business. They do not have your back.

I'm trying it now, and it's tough. Karlach is one of my all time favorite characters so being on her bad side in particular is rough. The main incentive is just seeing a fresher side to events the game overall after two nobler playthrough.

I'm no less ignorant than you are, but "returning home" isn't as easy as it sounds when your leaders and neighbors were at best complicit and at worst eager conspirators (excepting those who rebelled either openly or secretly) in your extermination. Jews have a rather long history of being...mistreated, for lack of a more appropriate term within reach, so the abstract idea of having a self-governed homeland where you can feel safe as a Jew seems to make some degree of sense in context.

But because Zionism is generally practiced by nationalists and religious zealots, and because colonialism was (and evidently is) still considered a-ok by the global power brokers when all this started, the tone of the occupation became "we're taking your space because we deserve it and you don't" rather than "may we please share your space in mutual benefit for our safe refuge."

I think that's a neat idea, but we could instead, collectively, just do better at following other cars at a safe distance. I know it's impractical to expect all drivers on the road everywhere to change their behavior, but it's also persistently frustrating as someone who has for years frequently been stuck in traffic to see 95% of drivers insist on following less than a car-length behind. Following too closely to enable decision-making or accommodate other drivers is the cause of like 98% of both traffic accidents and congestion, according to my completely anecdotal and made up research.

Exactly what I immediately thought of.

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/06a73aad-0ef6-4664-8247-25c19d84cae9

I'll tell you something about heroin for me. I did very very poorly in school, until I started doing narcotics. Then I went to the top of my class because my mind was so restless and turbulent and I could not sit still. […] I'd probably today be diagnosed as ADHD, I was bouncing off the walls. I couldn't sit still, I just wanted to get in the woods. […] I started doing heroin, I went to the top of my class. Suddenly I could sit still, I could read, and I could concentrate, I could listen to what people were saying, things made sense to me. […] It worked for me. And if it still worked, I'd still be doing it. […] It killed my brother, and it destroys your relationships. It hollows out your whole life. You have a one-dimensional life. I was a bundle of appetites and it was a full time job to feed them, with drugs and sex and alcohol and extreme behavior.

Is he implying that an ADHD diagnosis would have been frivolous for him because...he self-medicated with heroin and it worked out dandy?? Hasn't he publicly criticized the rate of ADHD diagnoses and related medications?

It was the fifth time that Mr. Braun had been arrested since Mr. Trump commuted his 10-year sentence just before leaving office in 2021, which was among a raft of last-minute clemencies granted to those with ties to the president. Mr. Braun’s sentence was commuted after his family used a connection with Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law who was a senior White House adviser, to get the matter before Mr. Trump.

That episode highlighted Mr. Trump’s ad hoc process for granting clemency, favoring defendants who have gained access to the White House, often with scant vetting of their criminal histories. At the end of his first term, Mr. Trump granted clemency to a number of allies and well-connected people, including his longtime strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Elliott Broidy, a top fund-raiser.

Love a new youtube rec.

This is a really cool idea though. I'm actually playing F.I.S.T. right now and I've absentmindedly noticed some neat details in the environment backgrounds. Might slow myself down to a stroll in one of the city areas and take a closer look.

Been thinking about this type of thing a lot, especially as my older child is reaching an age where his friends are being allowed to play things like Roblox. Finding myself needing to explain gambling-adjacent risks, design patterns intended to capture rather than entertain or delight, and general digital citizenship.

Because he doesn't have a ton of experience, I think he finds it unnatural to believe people like game makers might act deceptively or even maliciously. And I imagine he's skeptical that his attention could even be manipulated the way games try.

Even "educational" games like Prodigy, endorsed by and used in his school, are lousy with operant conditioning and flow state design (and by some credible accounts are not even educationally valuable). I drew a line immediately against spending money within games and he's so far been accepting of it. But the temptation is all over the place.

I think the argument is that even if you're not consciously noticing it, your brain picks it up and that's part of the unsettling feeling you get. Is that true? I don't know. I was unsettled as hell watching Hereditary, but there's a lot more unsettling content besides the quasi-noticeable woman in the corner of the ceiling.

I'm glad to see It Follows included in the essay though. Watching characters converse in the grass, in the sunlight, in a scenario that in almost all other horror movies would be a tension-relieving safe scene, until you notice another character, blurry and deep in the distance, walking robotically on a straight path toward the central characters, still gives me chills. It remains one of my favorite effects, and is a top-tier reason why I love horror movies even though I don't love feeling tense or scared.