OpenStars

joined 2 years ago
[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 5 points 2 years ago

B/c he knows that he does not mean it, and his base knows that he does not mean it, but it still manages to communicate something regardless - "they bad".

Humanity today is genetically identical to those in ancient Greece, and many of us have spent less time schooling ourselves about how to e.g. avoid frauds than many of them did back then. ergo, "argument by authority" still works for us, as perhaps it did for them back then as well.

Your presupposition seems to be that humanity should somehow get better over time? At least it seems to relate to a common humanist theme, but if we want to get better, it is going to require effort on our part to make that happen. (apparently, having access to the entire repository of human knowledge at our fingertips is not sufficient, for those who cannot be bothered to learn from it - either by reading or just sitting passively as videos with pwetty graphics do all the work of spelling it all out for us, yet still that is less fun & engaging to people who would rather watch shiny motor vehicles with ads on them drive round & round in circles)

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 31 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Your words were all spelled correctly. Try again? :-P

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 3 points 2 years ago

POV: your project manager went in an "cleaned" it all up by removing them - your (sic) welcome! 😜

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 20 points 2 years ago

To anyone wondering, that is 69.3 degrees Fahrenheit (°F). So if it started from freezing it would make it "very hot", while if it were to start from lets say a perfect 70°F it would rise to ~140°F. And if it happened in the summertime when it was already 100, it would rise to 170°F - and how many people would even survive that? Maybe, if we had advanced warning and it were to only last a few hours - but what about things like crops & wildlife?

According to a recent poll, the number of Americans who outright deny climate change is down to just 15% of the population, but whether they "believe" in it or not may be indistinguishable from not believing - e.g. as this article discusses - since just like how they are "Pro-Life", the walk does not quite seem to match the talk.

To anyone feeling overwhelmed by all this: please don't be - there's only so much that any one person can do. Do what you can, and try to remain "aware", but this is bigger than all of us, and we will need to face it together, so you are not alone.:-)

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 4 points 2 years ago

I dunno, they might be the only creature to survive what will be left of Earth afterwards!? :-P

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 11 points 2 years ago

img

(Translation: Klingon/pIqaD: Qapla'!)

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 5 points 2 years ago (12 children)

I would actually prefer to be exposed to multiple POVs wherever possible, if it were delivered in a respectful manner. Likewise I enjoy learning more about various religions, and cultures, and all manner of things. However, I must draw the line against trolling behaviors. So for me, it is not just that they contain "content that I may not agree with", but that they outright encourage behaviors that have driven me and so many others away.

I got my start on Kbin.social, before it repeatedly kept going down for a week at a stretch, multiple times, and they had already defederated from those places, so fortunately I got to be exposed to the friendlier side of the Fediverse first, so I knew what was possible. But then after switching to try a couple of Lemmy instances, I gave serious thought to leaving the Fediverse entirely. There is so much else that I could do with my time, you know!? Read books, watch videos (like Hank & John Greene's Crash Course series on YouTube), go outside and touch grass - I don't need to be arguing with the emotional equivalent of toddlers online, acting as the recipient for their emo-venting aka vomiting all over me rather than having true conversations aka "communication".

That said, I might understand what you mean about the memes - if they violate the community rules then they are being disrespectful to the recipients who would have to spend time reading them, rather than enjoyable content. And if there is enough spamming of such, it inches closer to "trolling" behaviors, as in the same kind even if not quite degree. Though oftentimes people from that server also engage in actual trolling as well, in the form of responses that do not care about how the recipient would like to receive.

Anyway, I left Reddit over that shit, and I would leave the Fediverse too if it came down to it, though fortunately it works to just block those 2-3 places and the rest becomes a MUCH better place to play around in!:-)

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 3 points 2 years ago

Thank you - I do try to make shorter replies but when there is much to be said, I don't want to shirk from it either! And those videos are PACKED with info, so hopefully a peek at the content first helps tantalize learning the full depth of what they offer:-).

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 2 points 2 years ago

For many people - in the USA most conservatives seem to be adopting this mindset, see e.g. Elon Musk's vision for "X" - such forms of argumentation is not a negative, it is the point.

Just like talking with toddlers (b/c it relates to both a capacity, and in a sense also their past choices as to how they want to live their lives, and yet at some point those choices become instantiated into their day-to-day activities to the point where the choice no longer presents itself, much like an addiction where you once chose it, but now it chooses you), your only choice is to put up with it or leave. You cannot have a "human" conversation with people who are not humane (either b/c they cannot or will not be thus, the difference arguably becomes moot when there is no functional distinction b/t them).

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 5 points 2 years ago (18 children)

How much of that is due to it being one of the larger servers though? As well as one of the oldest. I don't know that much about it - there's the origin story but unlike searching for info about e.g. lemmy.world, I cannot readily find things about lemmy.ml like where it is located geographically. The closest description I've seen is here that only says "Server looks to be located in France". But who knows if that is true?

Anyway, you get to know the servers on Lemmy after awhile - like I've rarely if ever had an issue with anyone at all from mander.xyz, but then lemmy.world is a mixed bag (that one b/c it's so big), and lemmy.ml is decidedly lopsided. But it is not the only place that has trolls. Perhaps I will block it one day, but I did not want to take that extreme step without giving them as much of a chance as I could.

Which I did for both lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net as well - and ultimately decided that it was better for the sake of my sanity to block them than to leave Lemmy altogether (fortunately v.0.19 came out just then and made it possible and easy:-).

So now I want to tell people that they can DRAMATICALLY improve their experience on the Fediverse, just by blocking those 2-3 servers, in case it helps salvage their experience of it as well.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 19 points 2 years ago

Open source software may be a good model to look at. People contribute bc they want to, regardless of any monetary remuneration.

But it's hard, and a for-profit corporation can often move forward more quickly to develop an objectively better project. Except even though they *could", they (usually) don't, and really they have zero reason to, bc their goal is to make a profit, not a product. Reddit vs. Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/etc. is one such example.

But it gets complicated bc of all the counterexamples, like at one time Google really was awesome, and free, so most of the open source projects did not push hard to replace it, bc it worked so well for so many. Similar to Lemmy I suppose - before the Rexit it had existed for many years, but it wasn't until that shakeup that it was propelled forward extremely quickly by the influx of developers, e.g. who made the front end apps. Before that, the Reddit experience was fairly good even if not great, so not as many people bothered.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 1 points 2 years ago

Jon Stewart ironically fits that bill:-). Which brings up one reason why that tends not to happen: most people upon any brush with politics immediately want to get as far away from it as is humanly possible. Just running into Ted Cruz in the hallway may all be itself trigger that kind of flight response:-P.

So what "needs" to happen is not the same as what "will" happen. Always remember the implied second half of that type of sentence: "in order to survive, needs to happen". But not everyone gets what they need to survive, and the same holds true for nations.

Though the above two paragraphs may seem unlikely to be able to reconcile with what you said, there are ways - like a local project could be done by an NGO or even a non-/not-for-profit corporation, bypassing government entirely. Unfortunately, that power can be used to evil ends as well too:-(. But when it works - like Jon Stewart, and John Oliver - it can be extremely powerful!:-D

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