pixelscript

joined 2 years ago
[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

I'd argue this is at the root of all fringe theories and why they all seem to attract the same archetypes of people.

We are living in an era of history where long traditional societal norms are in rapid turnover. The "old ways of doing things" are dying off, and the new ways that replaced them are often a revolving door. Very little in the world at any given time feels stable and secure.

Institutional trust is breaking down. Interacting with the world in good faith is increasingly leaving you open to abuse by bad actors. Why trust anything, then? Trust is for rubes. You're an intelligent, free, and independent thinker. You should question anything and everything that is simply handed down to you. Especially if it is unintuitive. To not do so is to be railroaded.

And it's that last part in particular that identifies the most fertile candidates for a good conspiracy theory. Like, is the Earth round? It looks flat to me. Essentially all evidence you can throw at the notion falls either into at least one of, "I witnessed it, trust me bro", "hope you like letters in your math equations" (people who can't intuit math won't be impressed by any proofs), or "you can do this experiment at home, you just need / so you can watch for ". A depressing sum of people in the world will remain unconvinced by any demonstration that isn't simple, intuitive, and of an overwhelmingly obvious magnitude. Complex answers or answers that observe tiny effects are scams.

And just like that, we've abandoned rational thought and replaced it with trust-averse thought. We've invented the notion that the world is a hostile place where anyone trying to hand you something is an agenda-pusher trying to extract something of value from you. All of the world's major institutions are shams designed to keep you complacent in some sort of world order that is merely using you. To participate in it is to further your enslavement.

In that hellish headspace, conspiracy theories almost feel like a haven. Finally! A group of real thinkers who share your frustrations about the world! The underground movement working to free us all from the hostile system!

Except, no. At best it's just a bunch of people who are wrong indulging in a little harmless escapism. At worst it's a mass of people getting Immanuel Goldstien'd by the very kind of well-spoken swindler they're breaking their collective backs bending over to avoid in the first place. Regardless the form it takes, my hypothesis remains: proliferation of conspiracy theories is merely a symptom of a lack of trust.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

I don't really mind either way whether these posts are allowed to remain or should be culled.

If you keep them around, they will just keep shitting up the feed. The overall browsing quality of the community goes down, hindering the user experience. I don't think it's uncontroversial to say these posts have next to no value; they're essentially equivalent to birthday notifications or "I voted" stickers. Like... congrats! You and everyone else! Now what? Where's the discussion here?

On the other hand, I do want to think thrice about controlling this with moderation. All too often on Reddit I've see the trope of a sub that appears to be crawling, and you get the idea to join in with an enthusiastic post, only to get removedsmacked by automod because you posted this on the wrong day of the week, or this post type is outright banned because the community is sick of seeing it. It's sensible, yes. But ugh, what a demoralizing filter for newcomers. Overly curated subs/communities are not public forums, they are increasingly impenetrable cliques. That may not necessarily be a bad thing if we think the tradeoff is worth it. But we have to keep in mind what we become when we make that trade.

The one thing I will say willl absolutely not help anything at all is making a designated containment community for this specific kind of post. The whole complaint here is rooted in there being no discussion value for these types of posts. You think a community comprised entirely of those would be a community anyone would want to post in? It'd largely be the Lemmy equivalent of a donotreply@ email address. A dumping ground where unwanted posts go to die. And I don't know about anyone else, but somehow I find being directed to a designated dead-end forum by mods is an even bigger slap to the face than simply having my post removed.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

Huh?

I've built simple WebGL renders in Firefox several times. The websites for TWGL and three.js, the two most popular JS libraries for WebGL rendering that contain several demos, also load and work correctly and have for years. It clearly works in Firefox to a significant extent.

There must be something Firefox is not quite compliant with, or less performant at, than Chrome, though. If you look at Patreon's website since their logo change, it runs fine in Chrome but chugs in Firefox. I don't know if it's WebGL related but I wouldn't be surprised.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Supposedly a deeply unprofitable one. Which is a huge chunk of why no real competition has surfaced.

It's one thing to set up a proverbial store with prices so low you choke out the competition. It's another thing to essentially pay your customers to come in, either by literally paying them or by providing a service that they pay below actual cost for.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

I appreciate the gusto, but I find rally posts like this to be extremely irritating.

Do you really think the people who are saying he'll just get away with it all don't think all of these things? Do you think people dropped their morals on the issue and now think "this is fine" because it's the status quo?

Pray tell -- what can I do, today, as a drop in the fucking ocean, to ensure this specific white collar criminal gets summarily apprehended, convicted, and meaningfully punished for his crimes on a reasonable timescale? What reasonable, concrete action am I supposed to take that will do a damn thing about it that I'm not already doing by dutifully casting my ballots and boycotting support for people and causes I don't believe in at every opportunity?

I am convinced there is no such action. The dominos that matter in this specific case were already set long ago. All we can do at this point is make logical predictions about how they will fall. And from my point of view, "Donald Trump will not be meaningfully punished" is looking inevitable. I have no faith in the current stacking of the judicial system to declare an outcome I'd be content with. I and others like me are not happy about it. But we aren't deluding ourselves either. The train for proles like us doing anything about this now is long gone.

Now, I don't think it's hopeless on the grand scale. We can and should work to claw progress on the general form of this issue over time. There's lots we can still do about that. Activism, protesting, dragging people to polls, etc. But that will likely be a "plant a tree whose shade you will never sit in" kind of thing.

Regarding this specific man today, I think we are powerless to meaningfully affect the trajectories of these cases. Anything short of rioting in the streets, casting aside legal process, and marching on the courthouse demanding his head on a pike (in other words, stooping to the level of Jan 6th insurrectionists) is too slow and/or only theoretical. And I am very tired of cheerleaders trying to tell me otherwise when they offer no substantive plan of action.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Same. Like, it's your company, you don't know for certain when it was founded...?

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

It's Microsoft, intrusion of standards is their entire M.O.

It's the "extend" in "embrace, extend, extinguish".

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 64 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I believe in the adage of, "If it sits between you and the ground, don't skimp".

Shoes, socks, desk chairs, lounge chairs, sofas, car( seat)s, mattresses...

You spend too much time in or on all of these things to be uncomfortable.

I also see posted here the Adam Savage advice of buying cheap tools first, and then upgrade after you better understand your needs. I also think that's great advice you can apply to most things. Just not the above things.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Rythmbox. Syncs to my iPod Classic.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

I believe this most recent update to v0.19 was somewhat unique in the regard of login incompatibility across versions, as major breaking changes to authentication itself were the focus of it.

[–] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 years ago

They upgraded their orbital copyright laser cannon into an orbital trademark laser cannon. The beam is narrower and hits fewer targets, but it willl never expire and its firing range is even vaguer than before.

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