OpenStars

OpenStars , 3 months ago

(1) ngl that is amazing, a heart-warming story

(2) still fuck Elon Musk

OpenStars , 3 months ago

"So next, I want to try money: I am passing around a plate..."

OpenStars , 3 months ago

I dunno - don't underestimate just how jaw-dropping shockingly unintelligent many of them are.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

The hero we NEED. Now, can it tighten its own bolts? :-P

OpenStars , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

[Deleted - duplicate posting]

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Even volunteers. Yup. The amount of colleges and hospitals and everything else you can think of looking for e.g. older retirees who are bored, or young teens who need experience or whatever, they'll take it all. Without paying them a cent. Then when they get enough of those, they start to cut back on the paid staff. The poor volunteers do not even realize that by "helping" they are putting people out of real jobs:-(. [Edit: which then continues that cycle where they have to beg for more help b/c they are in such "need" and won't someone think of the poor children, or the people undergoing cancer treatment or whatever - don't you want to... "help"?] Meanwhile the managers are seen walking around in expensive italian shoes...

Even the most non-profit activities can be weaponized to become a tool to make moar money, if only you are willing to do that to people! 🤮

OpenStars , 3 months ago

"I speak alternative facts, making others do the work of figuring out what I meant."

vs.

"I have researched in-depth and know what I am talking about and why."

Tbf there are probably far-right people who are more like the latter. Just b/c I do not recall ever hearing those arguments does not mean that they don't exist!

OpenStars , 3 months ago

A fascinating series, I cannot agree more. His other works too like protagony/agency. I really hope he can find a way to do more like that, but as a more personal video from him mentioned (not on the channel iirc, search for his name instead) that depends on funding support.

To sum up: it is far easier to tear down than to build up. :-| Also, truth is often stranger than fiction, and much harder to pin down and truly understand.

Really I guess these are not merely two opposing sides of the same argument, but literally represent opposing worldviews.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Thanks. I have no time lately but perhaps I should research them directly and actively then, e.g. to find out things like if the COVID response was used to bring population numbers down as a means of control and possibly thought to be beneficial for the sake of mitigation of the effects of climate change. But probably I am giving too much credit for even that much level of strategic thought towards climate change effects for the survival of humanity and perhaps it is solely "we do not need the masses anymore so let's kill them off, or at least not help at all with saving them", i.e. think of myself first, only, and always, and nothing else.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Real (enough) to someone, I suppose.

Right up until they aren't anymore. e.g. when someone chooses not to take the vaccine, somehow MANY of those (I wonder if perhaps nearly all?) end up in hospitals, spreading their diseases to others and putting stress on the already-overworked system.

I legit would not judge someone who for whatever reasons decided to withdraw from society, like Amish, and not take the vaccine, but DO social distance for the sake of others, and then die but like... fully by their own, informed & rational choices according to their own valuation of priorities in their life. I fully respect that.

It is the hypocritical nature of those who are not informed, yet act to block others' access from knowledge and benefits of society, that I am against. These people will judge themselves later on, once they finally cannot escape into their fantasies quite so comfortably, except by then they have already dragged others along with them. In short: they are shocked, Shocked I tell you, SHOCKED to find that actions have consequences. But... they should not have been so shocked?! An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes.

TLDR: it is irresponsible, childish behavior, from adults who should know better.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

I remember those videos by mothers who killed their children by refusing to allow them to receive vaccinations. They were heart-rending stories told by those who KNEW, whereas before they only THOUGHT that they knew. Before it happened, they were obstinate and ignored all medical advice and did the exact opposite. After it happened... then they REALLY knew that they had screwed up. And they begged, pleading with other mothers not to do the same. They were ofc ignored, by those who similarly KNOW better, despite literally all of the evidence to the contrary.

Or you can go to old graveyards, and see grave after grave of infants who died young, from what are today easily-preventable diseases. Something like 4 out of 5 children died prior to 5 years of age iirc (or even if that is wrong, still more than half?), so much so that religious ceremonies still practiced today make that age a cutoff - like before that the child doesn't even have a name, but after that it suddenly is considered a likely candidate to grow up into a full person, thus is finally worthy of being officially given a name.

I do have empathy for people with mental illnesses who cannot handle processing in the real world, but I also have empathy for all the people who have DIED b/c of those dumb-shit behaviors. Especially when they push further and refuse to allow OTHERS to have the kind of care that they want. Like, choose for yourself sure, but you do not have the right to choose for someone else. That is not only merely unintelligent, but childish on their parts. At least, that is true in the best-case scenario, while the worst is that it is linked to authoritarianism, which sadly is the most likely one in many cases - e.g. these people would turn you in to the government, if that was asking, just exactly like if we were real, actual Nazis. Like, "hey, lookie here, this person took the vaccine!!" (or had an abortion, or even a miscarriage) Even they do not want to have to live in that kind of world - e.g. having to call someone by their preferred pronouns - but they will absolutely heap that burden upon you if they think that they themselves will be exempt, leopards-ate-my-face style.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Isn't this more of a self-pwn, where the mom was not already this way but needed to be forcibly converted into thus? :-P

OpenStars , 3 months ago

I was always told that they came from the one who smelt it? :-P

OpenStars , 3 months ago

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OpenStars , 3 months ago

Mexicans have it pretty good actually - most immigrants these days are people just passing through it from further south.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Somebody somewhere will eventually downvote it either way:-P.

Although there's also some truth to it, in being one of the reasons that people end up behind bars.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Too late - large corporations bought them all up and now there are none left:-(.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

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Fwiw, it wasn't always - the government used to have a top marginal tax rate of 90 fucking percent, and money was just handed out by outright socialist policies. Maybe that wasn't good either, especially when distributed primarily exclusively to white families, but dayum the pendulum sure has swung the other direction now that people learned that minorities might get some ever so small slice of that pie. Yeah, surely better to turn us all into slaves than for that to happen. (To be clear, I am joking, and actually unfortunately so bc with globalization and automation, the ultra wealthy don't really even need slaves at all, so better for the population to just fall to levels that they can more easily control.)

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Studies have shown that in places where porn is blocked, rape occurs at higher frequencies than in places where that is not the case, possibly due to higher levels of feelings of frustration and repression. This may be only one website now, but if others likewise follow the trend out of fear of litigation... then Texas may become a much more dangerous state to live in in the very near future, even compared to what it already is now.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

So long as the libterds get pwnd. Which they definitely did. By blocking my porn. You see the way it works is uh...

OpenStars , 3 months ago

If you do not want something - an abortion, a vaccine, porn, to own a gun, etc. - then the solution is simply: do not take it. Beyond that, why heap heavy burdens upon other people, rather than offering to help?

I am saying that "children watching people having sex" is not the issue here. Some few sickos aside, I think MOST people are agreement on that point. The issues are all the other issues surrounding that topic - e.g. who should be the ones held responsible for stopping that.

Like, why not the parents? It is exceedingly easy to block websites from a home router, and from devices such as ipads, so why should the website be the one upon whom all of the blame and burden should go to? Will Amazon be next, b/c it is possible to find sex toys on it? What about Wal-Mart, b/c you can purchase dangerous ammunition there? For that matter, any child can go into a gun show and see rifles and ammunition on display - why are those not banned? Children have even been known to be able to purchase those weapons, which are literally lethal - which is far worse than merely seeing some skin!!!!

Fwiw I think you mean well, but are missing the nuances of this discussion. Children will end up seeing porn - someway, somehow, I guarantee you that it is possible, b/c that is simply how the internet works. It is like playing whack-a-mole and you can't stop them all, especially like 90% of all domain names are already registered to porn and pirate websites. This law will not have the effect that it is intended to stop - and there is a goodly chance that it will make things worse actually, bc when people go off the well-trodden pathways, they will find themselves in the... darker corners of the internet.

Then again, I am not a lawmaker, so what do I know. I was just sharing my thoughts, in case they would be of interest to you.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

You can use Google. Oh wait...

OpenStars , 3 months ago

There might be a misunderstanding. I was talking about a correlation between areas where where porn is blocked i.e. repressive regimes and rape. Not necessarily a casual effect from one directly to the other, although that might not be able to be ruled out either.

Either way it is a question of fact, so not up to either of our mere opinions. Though I find that it is darn near impossible to find such things these days using Google - it refuses to show "relevant" results and instead tries to show only "recent" ones that it wants to promote, and DuckDuckGo is far too narrow to make that easy. So finding the full unvarnished truth is a research project that I do not want to undertake, though in case it helps to share my remembrance of having read such a thing once I thought I would offer. This is nowhere near my area of expertise so was only a comment not an authoritative statement of definitive fact.

Also there could be other factors involved - e.g. higher incidents of rape in neighborhoods that tend towards being poorer and more heavily religious in nature, e.g. within the United States that would be Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas, etc. I don't recall if the study checked for similar levels of poverty but with different religious leanings - if suitably comparable places could even be found.

So my statement was saying how sad it is that Texas is choosing to become more like e.g. Florida rather than more like e.g. California, or to remain more of its own separate thing as it has done in the past. Becoming "repressive" does not sound conducive to good health (especially women's health).

OpenStars , 3 months ago

That's... not just a Texas thing, and yeah, bc saturation may have long been passed on that one, so this is newer territory to expand authoritarianism into.

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As in, it was dangerous, but a look at its next door neighbor Mississippi should convince anyone that it can always become more so.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

If you find it, let us all here on Lemmy know - it looks like people are very interested (I know I would be to see a refresher). The sad part is how this stuff has been known for decades, but people just ignore it - e.g. "just grab 'em by the p$#&y". There are some, like John Oliver and Innuendo Studios, who are doing fantastic work to spread awareness of matters that need attention (and Jon Stewart is back, sort of:-), but ofc that won't reach the ears of people who refuse to listen, and instead choose to highly regard those who spread fear and chaos, most likely purely for profit reasons.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Looks like a fantasy/dream home! :-D

OpenStars , 3 months ago

This presumes that all people are informed. New people, by definition, are not that. Arguably their fault for (checks notes) getting on a social media site then?

I am saying that it is easy for a day-1 noob to feel "dunked on" based on this absolute rush of feedback, especially for e.g. someone on the wider Fediverse who was not even aware that hexbear was that way, so especially they had no chance to consent to that - no pop-up messages appeared, nothing really unless you hunt around dig and also scroll down to see it, underneath the community, they just saw a post and replied as normal but then WHABOOSH!

Also you did not explain how the person you were responding to was not merely "wrong" but rose to be fully "disingenuous". Sadly this is something I notice often with hexbear - the culture seems to value "fights", which ngl could be helpful if the goal were to use socratic discourse to achieve some end goal like Truth and/or Compassion, but far more often it looks to me, from the outside, like people who just enjoy fighting/dunking for its own sake.

You are free - and I will fight to the death for your rights to do precisely this - to do as you please, as it pertains to yourself, but when it crosses over to affect other people, then different rules come into play. Specifically, if people from hexbear will not control themselves, then that leaves others to have to do it for them - e.g. warn people what to expect from hexbear users. i.e., it is not "disingenuous" to say that hexbear users seem to be spoiling for a fight, if that is literally what happens.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Android does not work either. At a guess, desktops seem highly likely to be affected as well.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

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OpenStars , 3 months ago

To be fair, those are good faith arguments with the goal being to determine the real, objective truth. Hopefully.

That is not how this tool would be used, in the hands of people not trained in the art of socratic discourse. Just imagine how the situation in Gaza would end up being described.

Avoiding conflict is not always a useful aim.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

A mirror would accomplish the main stated aim of backing up information just as well if not better.

Whereas as you implied, allowing multiple sources of information seems vulnerable to disinformation campaigns, and even more simply bias.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

I am okay with bias in my social media.

Far less so in my encyclopedia.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

They baited you by saying "wikipedia", but then they switched to what looks like the wikia software. Notice how they are from lemmygrad? I hope you get my point.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

I would love to read both a marxist.wiki/article/communism and a libertarian.wiki/article/communism - opinions are great, fine & dandy, but at the end of the day, I don't want a marxist/grasshopper vs. a libertarian/grasshopper, and I DEFINITELY do not want a conservative/vaccine vs. a liberal/vaccine each feeding misinformation from a slightly different and both-sides-incorrect approach. The enormous EFFORTS that go into finding neutral and balanced information are worthwhile, imho, as is having a central repository that would not need to be individually updated hundreds or thousands of times.

A mirroring/backup process would just as easily perform the same stated goal of preserving human knowledge - and these are already done. Arguably the federation model works best for social media, a bit less so I am told for Mastodon, but I think would not work well at all for an encyclopedia style.

But don't mind me, I am simply grieving the death of facts and reason over here... - the fact that we would even want to contemplate different "alternative (sets of) facts" at all means that we already have lost something that was once good. :-(

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Are you sure that you meant that to respond to me - and not e.g. the xkcd comic one below?

Fwiw I totally agree with you, and I think that's a fantastic example that you brought forth - kudos b/c I think a specific example really does add something to this conversation. Just as it does so on many wikipedia pages. There are ways to phrase most things that can be agreed upon by most people, by wrapping it in the proper context.

At a guess then, they do not think that the language describing communism is extreme enough, and so want to bypass working together to achieve consensus and instead strike off and make their own internet. But I could be wrong. Then again, the burden of clearly explaining what they want to do is on them, so if so, I don't take all of that blame.:)

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Everyone has implicit biases. It takes a huge amount of effort to work past them and write content that is considered unbiased. The latter is a group effort to achieve consensus, which even in the hard sciences is often difficult, but Wikipedia has had fantastic successes there - e.g. look at any controversial subject (someone mentioned BP, and how half the page was about their "controversies", which does not say that they are true, nor false, but acknowledges that they exist all the same - most people, with the exclusion of the BP execs I am sure - would consider that to be a state that is unbiased).

In fact, the OP brings up a major source of bias to begin with: if someone wants to federate a blogging website, why would we even talk about it - just DO IT!:-) However, the name "Wikipedia" was mentioned b/c it is popular. This introduces a bias whereby the rest of the discussion will be predicated upon the lines of what Wikipedia is vs. what it is not. Even though the OP made it clear that "Wikipedia" is not the goal of that project at all. Even dragging its name into it has thus introduced a source of bias, rather than allowing everyone here to discuss the merits of this proposal on its own, as if made from scratch rather than a Wikipedia-clone ("good" connotations?) or Wikipedia-wanna-be ("bad" ones?) or Wikipedia-whatever.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

The question was:

are these people writing about the same website?!

I was pointing out how no, they are not the same website. The name of "Wikipedia" was thus improper as it lacked precision, compared to something like "the wikia software, following the WikiMedia protocols" (or whatever it would be).

The content therefore has nothing whatsoever to do with the question, that was asking about the Wikipedia website.

And btw, none of this bodes well for the project imho. The front-end work is clearly lacking, as OP even admitted, but more importantly all of this discussion lacks the type of "precision" that usually goes into a Wikipedia article. Obviously any person or AI can copy the existing Wikipedia website's content, but if all of this is a reflection of what would go into that copy, then it looks to me like it will quickly fall behind.

I would have been much more likely to have read a blog post to read about the relevant issues relating to communism if it did not try to ride on Wikipedia's coattails and just stood all on its own. But... as you can guess, I would be more of a fan of articles that are precise in the terminology used rather than ones that are all over the place.

And keep in mind that b/c what is being discussed is a "federated" model, ANYONE, who writes with ANY degree of precision, from the highest to the lowest level, will be federated around to everywhere. At which point it will become too difficult to find worthwhile content, as opposed to it being in one central location. The entire point of an encyclopedia is to be a one-stop place to look things up?

Alternative takes on communism would have, imho at least, been more widely distributed if they were written on a blog website and linked to from the actual Wikipedia pages. If the Wikipedia is too restrictive then... I understand why that could not happen, but nevertheless it is still going to be a major impediment. Which is all the more reason why imprecise language, scattered throughout the entire world, does not offer much of a viable alternative to the great Wikipedia? But... prove me wrong, I guess!? :-D

OpenStars , 3 months ago

The goal of academic research is to inform the best and brightest of the real information. For e.g. academic extensions to how nuclear power works, or for engineers to have a working basis to build a viable power plant, and so on.

The goal of an encyclopedia though is arguably different: to make people "feel" informed, without necessarily being so? Or at least to serve as a starting point for further studies, maybe?

Science marches ever onwards, and eventually that gets collected into textbooks, and even later into encyclopedias. Or maybe now we're working from a new model where it could skip that middle step? But science still seems leagues ahead of explanations to the masses, and whereas in science the infighting is purposeful and helpful (to a degree), the infighting of making something explainable in a clearer manner to more people is also purposeful and helpful, though federating seems to me to be giving up on making a centralized repository of knowledge, i.e. the very purpose of an "encyclopedia"?

Science reporting must be decentralized, but encyclopedias have a different purpose and so should not be, maybe? At least not at the level of Wikipedia.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

Fair. Though that capability - e.g. the identical wikia software, implementing the MediaWiki protocol - already exists. Maybe federating it would somehow improve it, though it would also open it up to have greater vulnerabilities especially when non-scientists get involved, e.g. a w/article/conservative/vaccine vs. a w/article/real/vaccine. Scientists can handle these controversies, but people who do not have the base knowledge with which to properly understand, e.g. ivermectin, are not going to be able to distinguish between the truth vs. the lies.

So the people that would put it to the best use don't absolutely need it - sure it would be nice but peer-reviewed articles already exist - while the ones for whom it would be most damaging are almost certainly going to be the primary target audience.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

I only do it once a day even - the flossing part before bed is by far the most important iirc.

OpenStars , 3 months ago

img

OpenStars , 3 months ago

NO - you would need a power level to be over 9000 for that.

This is half that. So you have only half control of the Universe. Like, you have to submit a request to your boss to use your power to do anything, but then he/she gets to either accept or deny your request. Requests must be submitted in triplicate and accompanied by a notary public cosignee signature. Other terms & conditions apply. Also, Huffman has veto power, and your requests may be lost or ignored at any time - but if YOU ever lose or ignore a reply in turn, then you are banned.

Yet one more reason to say: Viva la revolución!

OpenStars , 3 months ago

As long as we are still talking about Reddit, I want you to have Huffman's anus as well:-). Have you tried sending him a picture of you dressed up as Elon Musk? Maybe you could become friends with Musk first, by sending him a picture of you dressed up as Donald Trump? :-P

OpenStars , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Okay well if you want to talk more about it we can but obviously not if you need a break. I did warn you... that video is... a LOT to have to process! I have watched it many times and still can't quite put my finger on it.

If in part it seems like it is missing something, note that it is: judgement. The creator does not say whether these things are "good" or "bad", as almost every other YouTuber does these days, but simply presents the information for us to make up our own judgements. Wow, such respect accorded to us!

Fwiw I think you are right about a lot of what you said: the forces of Globalization and Automation are changing our world, and Democracy isn't as necessary as it once was, to have e.g. advances in science, technology, and so on. e.g. Boeing planes can literally fall out of the sky, and what do trillionaires care for the loss of a few more of the masses, among the billions of people already on this planet, when they have computers and possibly a single pilot to fly their fleet of tens of private jets anywhere and however they want?

Anyway, rest easy - these things won't be solved overnight, or possibly at all, but either way they are kinda out of our hands.