It has to have good wizards that walk you through everything including setting up a domain and email.
i disagree honestly.
Part of the point behind self hosting is to empower people with the knowledge and capability that they can do this shit, and fix any problems that result.
You aren’t really getting people into right to repair, if they aren’t at least espousing it, and trying to engage in it themselves. Sure you can always go to a third party to do something at the end of the day, but with how broad right to repair is, there is almost certainly something in your life that you can fix and repair.
Like it’d be good that people are doing that, but you also need to remember that this is literally a turn key product, that literally every cloud provider sells, and every company ever who will try to force proprietary buggy garbage on you, will pretend is good, and functional. Will try to sell you, because you don’t know any better. I think it’s just a cultural difference. Car guys that spend time working on their car simply wouldn’t understand the average persons conceptual understanding of repairing vehicles, and vice versa. It’s the same here.
What you are suggesting here, is a sold, turn key solution, except fully open source, no bugs, no issues, and wide reaching community support. I don’t think that’s reasonably possible.
I think ultimately, we need to make learning, and accessing learning materials easy (we already do a great job at it) and we just need to get people interested in this shit, some people won’t. That’s fine, they probably know someone that is though. And at the end of the day, that’s probably good enough.
Agreed. Most people online think having a personal website on their own domain is too much of a hassle, they won’t have the knowledge or time to setup a homelab server.
We need more of the nice people you mention — with the tech knowhow and surplus of time — to maintain community services as alternatives to corporate platforms. I see a few co-op services around where member-owners pay a fee to have access to cloud storage and social platforms; that is one way to ensure the basic upkeep of such a community. I’m not sure how Chatons is financed but they certainly have a wide range of libre and private offerings!
Your desire to collapse all fact-finding into the concept of “science”
Well that’s a reach. I had to buy a new laptop charger and find facts about what voltage, etc. I needed… I certainly don’t consider that fact-finding exercise to be science, and I don’t think I said anything to suggest that.
But okay, I don’t have a textbook handy, but let’s see what we can find out about the Philosophy of Science:
Seems to pretty clearly indicate “lots of interesting and useful ideas, no consensus.” Peer review mentioned 0 times. The “Defining Science” section links to a page for the demarcation problem, so let’s go look at that.
“Despite this diversity of opinion, philosophers of science can largely agree on one thing: there is no single, simple way to define science!”
Re: Demarcation problem:
“Modern philosophers of science largely agree that there is no single, simple criterion that can be used to demarcate the boundaries of science.”
Starting to sound familiar. Lots of opinions from Aristotle to Cartwright, none of whom highlight peer review or acceptance by the institutions as criteria. The page does talk about empiricism, parsimony, falsification, etc. though, consistent with other sources.
Our knowledge of the natural world and the process through which that knowledge is built. The process of science relies on the testing of ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world. Science as a whole cannot be precisely defined but can be broadly described by a set of key characteristics. To learn more, visit .
The page heading sounds pretty prescriptive, and that’s about the closest I can find that claims “if it’s not peer reviewed, it’s not science.” The body (IMO rightfully) describes the importance of community involvement in science, but doesn’t say anything like “it’s not science unless it involves the community.”
Take this excerpt about Gregor Mendel:
However, even in such cases [as Gregor Mendel’s], research must ultimately involve the scientific community if that work is to have any impact on the progress of science.
So yes, sharing his findings with the world was why it was able to have an impact, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to interpret that he wasn’t doing science while he was working in isolation, or that it only became science retroactively after it was a) shared, and b) accepted.
Let’s take a look at another textbook and see what it says:
This chapter suggests that you can take two approaches to demarcation:
What makes a theory scientific or non-scientific?
What makes a “change in a scientific mosaic” scientific?
For theories - They’re clear that there are no clear universal demarcation criteria, but offer these suggestions:
Suggestion 1: An empirical theory is scientific if it is based on experience.
Suggestion 2: An empirical theory is considered scientific if it explains all the known facts of its domain.
Suggestion 3: An empirical theory is scientific if it explains, by and large, the known facts of its domain.
For changes - This pertains specifically to whether a change to “a scientific mosaic” is scientific or not, which necessarily pertains to a scientific community. But I’d argue that this analysis seems pretty clearly downstream of a priori participation in a scientific community, not attempting to define science as such.
Didn’t read the whole textbook, so I might still be missing something, but the focus in the chapter is still definitely on the properties of the inquiry, not on the scientific institutions surrounding it.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Also looked at the entries for Scientific Method and Pseudo-science, which seem to be consistent with the other sources
TL;DR/Conclusion
So I’m still getting a really strong signal that:
Science/non-science doesn’t have a clear demarcation line, and that problem is called the Demarcation Problem. It has a special name because it’s still a big deal.
Ideas about what is science vs. non-science focus mostly on the properties of the inquiry: Is it a testable, falsifiable hypothesis that can be investigated with empirical observations?
Scientific communities are still super important, and you can make statements about how scientific activity should interact with communities, but community involvement is not usually a factor in demarcation
Peer review is useful and stuff, but has little interaction with the science/non-science demarcation question… I don’t think it came up in any of the sources I looked at
So… Do I still seem misguided? Are Wikipedia and UC Berkeley and this textbook called “Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science” and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy all also misguided? Or am I just interpreting them wrong?
Like I started this investigation feeling 100% ready to learn that my concept of “what Science is” was misguided… But idk, I did a bunch of reading based on your suggestion, and I gotta say I feel pretty guided right now.
If you wanna throw something else to read my way though, I’ll happily have a look at it.
DATE:
May 29, 2024 at 04:00PM
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TITLE:
Zodiac signs irrelevant to psychological well-being, research confirms
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URL: https://www.psypost.org/zodiac-signs-irrelevant-to-psychological-well-being-research-confirms/
<p>A recent study set out to investigate whether the Western zodiac signs have any impact on various aspects of subjective well-being. Contrary to popular astrological beliefs, the research found no significant evidence linking zodiac signs to happiness, financial satisfaction, marital satisfaction, or overall health. The study has been published in the scientific journal <em><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/kykl.12395" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kyklos</a></em>.</p>
<p>Astrology has long suggested that the positions of celestial bodies at the time of one’s birth influence personality traits and life outcomes. Despite skepticism from the scientific community, astrology remains widely popular, with about 30% of Americans expressing belief in astrological influences. Previous studies attempting to validate or debunk these claims have often faced criticism for their small sample sizes and methodological weaknesses.</p>
<p>In his new study, Mohsen Joshanloo of Keimyung University and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Wellbeing Science aimed to address these issues by using a large, nationally representative sample and robust statistical methods to examine whether zodiac signs truly affect subjective well-being. He utilized data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a large, nationally representative survey of American adults.</p>
<p>This survey, conducted periodically since 1972, gathers extensive information on a wide range of topics, including attitudes, behaviors, and opinions of U.S. residents. For his study, Joshanloo focused on data from the four most recent waves of the GSS, specifically from the years 2016, 2018, 2021, and 2022, encompassing responses from 12,791 participants.</p>
<p>The sample was diverse, with an average age of around 50 years and a slight majority of female respondents (55%). Zodiac signs were derived from participants’ self-reported birth dates. Joshanloo analyzed eight key outcome variables related to well-being: general happiness, depressive symptoms, psychological distress, work satisfaction, financial satisfaction, life excitement, general health, and marital happiness.</p>
<p>Joshanloo employed a combination of statistical methods to ensure robust and reliable results. The primary method used was analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), which allows for the comparison of group means while controlling for the effects of other variables such as age, gender, and education. By including these covariates, the study aimed to isolate the unique effect of zodiac signs on the various well-being outcomes. For additional rigor, Joshanloo also conducted analysis of variance (ANOVA) without covariates and nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis tests to account for potential non-normal data distributions.</p>
<p>For seven out of the eight well-being outcomes, there was no statistically significant effect of zodiac signs. These outcomes included general happiness, depressive symptoms, psychological distress, work satisfaction, life excitement, general health, and marital happiness. The only exception was financial dissatisfaction, where a statistically significant effect was found. However, the effect size for this finding was negligible, indicating that the practical significance was minimal.</p>
<p>To further examine the robustness of his findings, Joshanloo conducted a post hoc analysis. He created a random variable and compared its predictive power to that of zodiac signs for the well-being outcomes. The results showed no significant differences between the predictive abilities of the zodiac signs and the random variable. This strongly suggested that zodiac signs do not meaningfully predict well-being, and any observed effects were likely due to chance.</p>
<p>The researcher explained that “the post hoc analysis revealed that the predictive power of zodiac signs is statistically indistinguishable from a randomly generated categorical variable. These results indicate that consulting astrological signs tells us just as little about a person’s level of well-being as simply putting them into a category based on a coin flip or rolling dice.”</p>
<p>Joshanloo’s study provides compelling evidence against the popular belief that zodiac signs influence various aspects of well-being. Despite the widespread cultural and historical significance of astrology, his findings align with previous research that has generally failed to support astrological claims. The negligible effect sizes across all outcomes indicate that knowing someone’s zodiac sign does not offer any meaningful insight into their levels of happiness, health, or satisfaction in different life domains.</p>
<p>“These findings underscore the urgent need to increase public awareness of the lack of scientific evidence supporting astrological beliefs through robust public education initiatives,” Joshanloo concluded. “Such initiatives can play a pivotal role in promoting scientific literacy and critical thinking skills, equipping individuals with the rational tools to make informed decisions and challenge pseudoscientific beliefs that lack empirical support.”</p>
<p>“In addition, the pernicious potential of astrological stereotypes to negatively influence perceptions of self and others should also be considered. Multidisciplinary stakeholders (e.g., psychologists, educators, and policy-makers) must work together to educate the public about the risks associated with astrological stereotypes and to promote a more evidence-based understanding of human personality and well-being.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12395">The sun’s position at birth is unrelated to subjective well-being: Debunking astrological claims</a>,” was published May 27, 2024.</p>
There are differing schools of thought regarding the vast amount of deities in Hinduism. One school, which is what most outsiders are aware of, is that each god is individual from one another and they have varying domains, powers and relationships, much like the ancient Roman and Greek gods. Another school suggests that all of the different gods are expressions of a singular God, much as how Christianity has the Holy Trinity who are three separate beings (Lord, Jesus, Holy Spirit) that are also simultaneously one being.
You’ll find that oftentimes outside of the context of a puja or a religious holiday Hindu people will often just refer to ‘God’ rather than a specific deity e.g. “Thank God” rather than “Thank Durga” or “God is watching over you” and not “Ganesh is watching over you”. I’m not sure if this reflects their school of thought on mono/polytheism or is just language simplification, but from what I’ve gathered from Indian communities here in Australia the ‘many gods; one God’ idea seems to be pretty prevalent.
I love how many of my fellow Americans crow about how we’re so much better than the “corrupt” nations of the world.
Our bribe culture is merely more expensive. It isn’t done at the peasant level as much solely because our owner class has cornered and legalized the bribe your own regulators market and made it too cost prohibitive for the peasants.
And when Americans “protest” by permit in designated protest zones, at designated protest times, deliberately out of the eyeline of those they’re protesting and allocated/placed so as not to disrupt, we might as well masturbate at home. Protest means disruption, and if Americans actually protested in a potentially effective way that disrupted traffic and commerce as it should, our militarized police would go China/Russia/etc on our ass to protect capital gains over human life.
Our answer to corruption isn’t to just turn a blind eye, it’s to legalize it for the owner class and make it their exclusive domain.
Honestly, this country had more humanity when the mafia ran it than today’s Wall Street reptiles. And that’s no endorsement of the Mafia of old, just further condemnation of the owner class that would bathe your children in lead saturated water if it made them an extra nickel that quarter. At least the mafia occasionally took care of the mother/child of the people they killed, and wouldn’t shut down their community’s parks and sabotage their community’s schools for a slightly larger take that quarter.
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...
The study isn’t about community safety or gun stats, they said the goal was to explore opinions. Opinions are therefore the data, the facts, of this domain. Are you seriously suggesting that researchers interested in opinions eschew opinions and use (barely relevant) stats instead? Because people don’t necessarily form opinions on facts. Which is why opinions are their own thing, and evidence is another thing. Two separate domains.
“80% of Americans think there should be more affordable housing in theory. 10% of Americans are willing to live near affordable housing.”
I can see where you’re coming from - however I disagree on the premise that “the reality is that (rationale) the control of AI is in the hands of the mega corps”. AI has been a research topic not done solely by huge corps, but by researchers who publish these findings. There are several options out there right now for consumer grade AI where you download models yourself, and run them locally. (Jan, Pytorch, TensorFlow, Horovod, Ray, H2O.ai, stable-horde, etc many of which are from FAANG, but are still, nevertheless, open source and usable by anyone - i’ve used several to make my own AI models)
Consumers and researchers alike have an interest in making this tech available to all. Not just businesses. The grand majority of the difficulty in training AI is obtaining datasets large enough with enough orthogonal ‘features’ to ensure its efficacy is appropriate. Namely, this means that tasks like image generation, editing and recognition (huge for medical sector, including finding cancers and other problems), documentation creation (to your credit), speech recognition and translation (huge for the differently-abled community and for globe-trotters alike), and education (I read from huge public research data sets, public domain books and novels, etc) are still definitely feasible for consumer-grade usage and operation. There’s also some really neat usages like federated tensorflow and distributed tensorflow which allows for, perhaps obviously, distributed computation opening the door for stronger models, run by anyone who will serve it.
I just do not see the point in admitting total defeat/failure for AI because some of the asshole greedy little pigs in the world are also monetizing/misusing the technology. The cat is out of the bag in my opinion, the best (not only) option forward, is to bolster consumer-grade implementations, encouraging things like self-hosting, local operation/execution, and creating minimally viable guidelines to protect consumers from each other. Seatbelts. Brakes. Legal recourse for those who harm others with said technology.
These aren’t well established where you can see the post was created in ’18. If they were established, you would seem them in the raw https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/master/CONTRIBUTING.md. You can see folks having issues with using Discourse as a mailing list since it doesn’t quite work as expected & still requires review by someone with merge access to the primary repository. There is a SourceHut one that actually has some activity & I believe was once listed under the one of the contributing guides, but I can’t remember where it was listed. I doubt many maintainers are properly checking their email too despite listing them on the maintainer.nix file. I would hedge to say that unless the community migrates away, you would see folks complaining the tread above about disliking that there is no pull requests with instead push to the default branch so we would asume all contributions in practices will be expected to be done thru MS GitHub. As it stands going thru the mailing list puts a lot of friction on everyone & wastes time of other maintainers that are expected to then raise a PR on your behalf for review. Say that PR does get opened on your behalf, now you want to follow it since it’s your patch… well too bad since MS GitHub has no way of subscribing to PR threads like it does some aspects of by adding .atom to the end of a URL. As such, if you really want the in-practice option to not be under Microsoft’s domain, you’ll need to remove Microsoft from being the primary forge, relegating it to a mirror or dropping it outright.
<p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2023.2260990" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sexual and Relationship Therapy</a></em> has revealed that individuals with high anxiety sensitivity—fear of arousal-related body sensations such as a rapid heartbeat—are more likely to experience sexual pain, decreased sexual satisfaction, and increased sexual distress. This finding suggests that anxiety sensitivity, which is already recognized as a risk factor across various psychological domains, also plays a significant role in sexual well-being.</p>
<p>Anxiety sensitivity refers to the fear of arousal-related bodily sensations that one interprets as harmful or dangerous. This includes physical reactions such as a rapid heartbeat, sweating, or dizziness, which individuals with high anxiety sensitivity might perceive as signs of impending disaster, like a heart attack or loss of control.</p>
<p>This trait is distinct from general anxiety, focusing instead on the fear of the symptoms of anxiety themselves, rather than the situational causes of anxiety. As such, anxiety sensitivity can exacerbate or contribute to the development of various anxiety disorders and impact behavioral responses across different contexts, including those related to physical health and sexual well-being.</p>
<p>Previous research has primarily focused on the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and psychological disorders like anxiety and depression, noting its impact on physical health and behavior. However, the overlap between physical sensations experienced during anxiety and those during sexual activity hinted that anxiety sensitivity might also influence sexual well-being.</p>
<p>Despite some earlier studies examining this link, their results were inconclusive, with limitations such as outdated measurement tools and a lack of diverse sample populations hindering progress.</p>
<p>Recognizing these gaps, researchers at the University of New Brunswick aimed to explore the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and various aspects of sexual well-being using a more reliable anxiety sensitivity measurement and a broader, more inclusive sample base. This approach was intended to provide a clearer understanding and address the inconsistencies found in previous research.</p>
<p>The study recruited a community-based sample of 170 men, 305 women, and 9 gender diverse individuals aged 19 to 60 through social media and online platforms. Participants completed an online survey measuring their anxiety sensitivity, sexual well-being — which included sexual function, pain, satisfaction, self-esteem, distress, and behavior — and psychological well-being.</p>
<p>The researchers found that heightened anxiety sensitivity was linked to reduced sexual well-being. The finding suggests that anxiety sensitivity not just as a psychological factor affecting mood and behavior, but also as a critical player in sexual health.</p>
<p>“Of particular importance, by including a broad age range and both men and women, this study demonstrates that the associations between anxiety sensitivity and sexual well-being extend to men and older individuals, not just young women (as in prior research),” the researchers explained.</p>
<p>Individuals with high anxiety sensitivity were more likely to have reported abstaining from sexual activities in the past or to engage in them less frequently, especially genital sexual activities as opposed to non-genital ones. Those with high anxiety sensitivity might avoid sexual activities that could trigger feared physiological arousal sensations.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the researchers observed gender differences in how anxiety sensitivity impacts sexual satisfaction. While both men and women with higher anxiety sensitivity reported more sexual pain and distress, the effect on sexual satisfaction was significantly pronounced in women only. This suggests that anxiety sensitivity may interfere with sexual satisfaction in gender-specific ways, possibly influenced by different psychological or social dynamics experienced by men and women.</p>
<p>To test the robustness of their findings, the researchers examined the role of anxiety sensitivity over and above the general psychological well-being of the participants, which includes symptoms of anxiety and depression. Even after accounting for these factors, anxiety sensitivity remained a unique predictor of sexual pain, dissatisfaction, and distress, confirming its specific relationship with sexual well-being.</p>
<p>However, despite its insightful findings, the study’s cross-sectional design does not allow for conclusions about causality—whether anxiety sensitivity causes poor sexual well-being or vice versa. Additionally, the reliance on self-reported data could lead to biases such as underreporting or overreporting of sensitive information.</p>
<p>Future research should consider longitudinal studies to better understand the directionality of these relationships and experimental designs to test interventions aimed at reducing anxiety sensitivity. Furthermore, expanding the range of sexual behaviors studied and including a more diverse set of participants in terms of sexual orientation and relationship status could enhance the generalizability of the findings.</p>
<p>“This study makes clear that anxiety sensitivity’s identity as a transdiagnostic risk factor extends into the sexual well-being domain. Our study revealed clear and direct associations between anxiety sensitivity and pain during sex, sexual satisfaction (for women but not men), and sexual distress. With this in mind, interventions that focus on reducing anxiety sensitivity (e.g. Norr et al., 2014; Olthuis et al., 2014) may have significant implications for improving sexual well-being,” the researchers wrote.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681994.2023.2260990" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Does anxiety sensitivity interfere with sexual wellbeing? Evidence from a community sample</a>,” was authored by Janine V. Olthuis , Emma M. Connell , Lucia F. O’Sullivan, and E. Sandra Byers.</p>
One of the more interesting paradigm shifts underway in the automotive industry is the move to software-defined vehicles.
Instead, you’ll find a small number of domain controllers—what the automotive industry is choosing to call “high performance compute” platforms—each responsible for a different set of activities.
You should expect to see this approach more often as automakers develop new platforms, and there are already examples from Audi, BMW, McLaren, and Porsche on the road or arriving shortly.
“The beauty of our concept is that you don’t even need to safety-qualify Linux itself,” said Moritz Neukirchner, a senior director at Elektrobit overseeing SDVs.
“So in the end, since we take Linux out of the certification path and make it usable in a safety-related context, we don’t have any problems in keeping up to speed with the developer community,” he explained.
And this is the kind of challenge that you’re being put up to if you want to participate in that speed of innovation of an open source community as rich as that of Linux and now want to combine this with safety-related applications," Neukirchner said.
The original article contains 688 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
My gf and I have had discussions about teaching morals to kids. In that vein, I asked myself, would I teach piracy to my kids? Yes, it’s technically illegal and carries inherent risks. But so does teenage sex carry the risks of teenage pregnancy, and so we have an obligation to children to teach them how to practice safe sex....
Media piracy is in the tradition of oyster piracy (stealing from landlords trying to control the oyster market) and the golden age (robbing the Spanish silver train that was exploiting the nations of the new world) in that it’s crime against unreasonable state regimes.
This is not to say underground media sharing has always had the moral high-ground, and it’s not even to say that fair copyright laws are unreasonable, but since the mid 20th century (since Disney, essentially) intellectual property law has not served the public in a community effort to build a robust public domain of ideas and content, rather has been used to do the opposite, to favor established businesses over new ones with complete disregard for the public.
But then there’s the technological matter, where DRM is used to obstruct of sharing (reasonable or otherwise, legal or otherwise). Here in the states it’s legal to use DRM to obstruct legal backups and sharing, but it’s not legal to bypass DRM to facilitate legal backups and sharing. It shows us that our regulatory agencies are captured, that our government serves rich companies and plutocrats rather than the public. The law runs contrary to the social contract.
We are in an age in which our language (English) only has words for wrongdoing that acknowledges two authorities: Sin (wrongness against the Church – allegedly against God) and Crime (wrongness against the state, in accordance to what laws are enforced by a legal system). When we talk about other entities that can be wrong, say, individuals, the community, the world population, ecosystems outside of human society, we have to make do with the words we have, e.g. sin against nature, crimes against humanity, and so on.
Intellectual property law is a construct that (according to the Constitution of the United States) was intended to do a thing that it has totally failed at, going as far as creating perverse incentives to misuse the law. And given the companies that produce the media we might pirate are poor at compensating artists and developers, or at recognizing licenses already established (say, your DVD copy of Ghostbusters when the new medium emerges), given they pirate each other’s content shamelessly, and will steal yours outright if you can’t outspend them in court, it has actually become more ethical to pirate content than to buy it legitimately.
But I’d teach my kids not just to pirate, but to recognize shoddy work from good work, and to not consume at all when they can, since consuming content benefits its producers, whether or not it’s acquired legally. (The MCU is about hero-team organizations who defend the status quo from all enemies, including the far left, and including those who want the human species to have a future. So they’re not really our heroes, are they? Batman runs around and beats up poor people, leaving the wealthy to continue to rule over the rest of us whose last resort is crime.
If we’re going to consume content, let’s use it to inspire the content we make ourselves, until commercial content is entirely unwanted and unnecessary. This is the future the MPAA and RIAA fear. Not everyone pirating their stuff, but everyone not bothered to pirate their stuff.
Seems like you're right. I tried it before without the actual domain ending in the magazine search which didn't work. I wish behavior like this and other stuff would be documented somewhere? Like, I still don't know what's the best way to universally link to communities / magazines or users that would work across the fediverse so that they continue using whatever platform they're on.
This list is a little old, so some of the links may not work anymore, but overall it’s still a pretty solid compendium for any budget concious Linux (or Windows) gamer!...
Russian military personnel arrived in Niamey to train their soldiers and set up an air defense system. Russia has been trying to build stronger ties with several African nations currently ruled by military juntas....
I haven’t been following it closely, but my impression is that this is bigger than that. Russia has been working on trying to kick the legs out from under French relations with African countries. Russia may not be doing so well in Ukraine, but in Africa, it looks like they’re making major advances.
Last week’s coup in Niger sent shockwaves across not only Africa’s Sahel region, but the international community at large. Niger had been the last pro-Western holdout in a region known as Africa’s “coup belt,” fueling concerns the military takeover could destabilize the region and hurt longstanding counterterrorism efforts there. Yet the sight of Nigeriens waving pro-Putin protest signs and Russian flags has left many in the West feeling uneasy. These images provide a sharp contrast for a Western public that has frequently been told that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “pariah around the world.”
This paradoxical list of visitors epitomises the growing security challenge confronting western countries in this part of Africa. On the battleground for great powers’ influence that Niger and its neighbours of the Sahel region have become, Russia is scoring impressive points.
Having learnt the hard way that their uncompromising stand with the junta in Niger was not paying off, the French could not hide a touch of schadenfreude on learning of the American misadventure in Niamey. Washington had tried a different tactic, waiting for two months to acknowledge that the coup in Niamey was indeed a coup. But whatever the approach, the stakes are clear for everybody: any vacuum left by western forces in the Sahel is filled by Russia, taking over the anti-terrorist fight with some short-term successes but also with its own methods — and agenda.
Stunned by Moscow’s powerful anti-western disinformation campaigns, observers note how Russia’s presence in Africa is being extended and reorganised in the “post-Prigozhin era”, as the Wagner mercenaries that the former Putin’s ally-turned-rebel used to lead are integrated by the ministry of defence. Africa is General Yevgurov’s domain: the deputy minister of defence makes frequent trips to the continent, often accompanied by General Andrei Averyanov of the military intelligence service GRU, a veteran of Afghanistan, Chechnya and Crimea.
In Mali, Russians reused the playbook from several other African countries (e.g., Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique). It just worked better in Mali, due to the circumstances. They prepared the ground through a disinformation campaign; when the opportunity arose (earlier than expected), Moscow offered an alternative to cooperation with the West that was tempting for leaders under pressure. The Russian package typically doesn’t include much economic support: no investments are to be expected. It provides some diplomatic backing, but the core is the protection of the regime, including limited arms supplies/sales, military advisers, and training. Yet, it’s not for free: African leaders are supposed to pay, often through the country’s mineral wealth.
Paris is pulling back, under pressure from Russian disinformation and Wagner Group mercenaries.
In recent months, France has also had to leave Mali and Central African Republic, raising fears of a domino effect across the continent as Macron winds down his country’s decade-long Barkhane operation to fight against jihadists in the Sahel.
The reasons for France’s waning influence in the Sahel region are multi-faceted, rooted in its colonial history and accelerated by local politics, but its troubles are also a consequence of Russia’s ambitions to expand its foothold on the continent, especially since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
As French troops are systematically ushered out, they are in some cases being replaced by mercenaries from Russia’s paramilitary organization Wagner Group — which is led by Vladimir Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin. In Burkina Faso, the country’s military leaders deny they have sealed a deal with the Wagner Group, but Russian mercenaries have been sighted in the country.
What we really need is a Schism, and for all the ml domains to defederate from the rest of the lemmyverse, and just become their own thing.
But due its size, it’s also full of regular people. !linux is a good Linux community. Why block the entire instance when the Mao fanboys are just active in certain politics communities?
Please mute or block this robot if the large volume of psychology & health research-related posts irritates you.
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This bot will be put back on limited status on Tues April 9th. Distributing it more widely for a few days so people can see and decide if they want to follow it.
DATE:
April 09, 2024 at 12:20AM
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TITLE:
Just a Game? Sport and Psychoanalytic Theory
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URL: https://ifp.nyu.edu/2024/journal-article-abstracts/s41282-024-00436-6/
.
<h3 class="a-plus-plus">Abstract</h3>
<p class="a-plus-plus">Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied.</p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41282-024-00436-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read the full article ›</a></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://ifp.nyu.edu/2024/journal-article-abstracts/s41282-024-00436-6/">Just a Game? Sport and Psychoanalytic Theory</a> was curated by <a href="https://ifp.nyu.edu">information for practice</a>.</p>
First of all, no it doesn’t. The fediverse is about servers communicating with each other, that doesn’t mean all servers, it just means that multiple servers communicate, and if a server is being problematic it will be blocked or limited, as another example a good amount of servers limit or block Mastodon.social and due to spam issues. Threads in this regard is no different, it just so happens to be a much bigger problem than Mastodon.social hence why there is much stronger efforts to defederate it.
especially when users can already block content from domains they dislike.
No, you are deliberately or unintentionally misrepresenting how domain blocks and indeed blocking in general works in Lemmy (Domain blocks target communities and do not hide users or their content), and even with Mastodon this doesn’t solve the biggest problems with threads, that being the extremely poor moderation and the EEE threat which are server wide problems and not user preference issues.
This isn’t the same thing, but I’m reminded of Minecraft.
Minecraft is a massively popular game. Notch once said he planned to make it open source when its popularity died down. But now Microsoft owns it.
Not only that, but Mojang accounts don’t work anymore. You have to have a Microsoft account to play it now. Even trying to download and play an older version of the game offline requires Microsoft to approve it. Microsoft is actively tightening the leash on the game because it makes them money. Open sourcing the game will likely never happen now. The best we can hope for it for versions to fall into public domain after 70-ish years.
That’s how I see Microsoft. They only care about what its beneficial for them to drive profits. Working on open source projects, and open sourcing a few of their tools to get the benefits of community adoption and code review is great, sure. But they’d sooner try to incorporate Linux into Windows to keep people in their surveillance ecosystem, than to open source Windows.
Remember when Windows 10 was the last version, until they changed their minds? Remember when they floated the idea of charging a recurring subscription to use Windows, before they silently dropped the idea? Remember when there was credible talk about the next version of Windows being cloud-based where they controlled all your data and you had no privacy? Hell, you have basically no privacy on Windows 10. Trying to reclaim some involves registry edits, special third party tools, and a constant battle with automatic updates reverting your changes.
I’ll say it again. Microsoft doesn’t care about OSS. It’s just currently beneficial for them to pretend they do.
Goggle seemed to care a lot about OSS, then started making everything in Android depend on their proprietary ecosystem to function. Now Google is using the dominant position they got by taking advantage of OSS adoption, and have been pushing privacy-invading standards and trying to get rid of ad blockers online, among many other things.
For these huge companies, OSS is just a tool to get more control and power. The moment it’s no longer useful, they’ll find ways to work around the license and enshitify everything again.
From news, to shitposting, to memes, to more shitposting, Lemmy feels vibrant, active, lighthearted, fun and even powerful. Mastodon feels like a fucking funeral.
In my experience, once when you find your way into the correct circles the microblog-verse makes the “shitposting” of Lemmy look like r/memes. I do agree that discoverability could be better though, it took me 4-5 months before I got the hang of it. And now I barely check Lemmy despite my Lemmy account being older than my earliest microblog account (under this name, anyway).
One important thing is that your instance matters quite a bit more than here. Starting on a large general purpose instance (especially if it’s mastodon.social) and just following Large Accounts and Nobody Else like most people recommend for some reason is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Instead, get on a smaller interest-specific instance (rule of thumb: the weirder the domain the better your experience will be!) and follow the local timeline (and on good software, the bubble/recommended timelines). And post stuff/interact with people. Don’t be that one person that does nothing but boost news bots and occasionally butt into replies of people asking rhetorical questions they already know the answer for.
(Perhaps Lemmy is better at news or whatever, I wouldn’t know as I block all news communities I can find – I just don’t see the point as all the discussion around most news ends up predictable, unproductive (not that internet communities necessarily need to be “productive”), and unnecessarily angry)
Also in a world with usable™ Misskey forks and Akkoma I think the limitations of Mastodon the software are really starting to show, and I urge anyone who’s been disappointed in Mastodon to try other microblog software. (Quotes are already a thing if you know where to look! So are emoji reactions, because people have more emotions than :star:)
<p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/3/pgae052/7618478" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PNAS Nexus</a></em> sheds light on the impact of text-to-image generative AI tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E on the artistic process. The researchers discovered that these AI systems tend to enhance artists’ productivity and lead to more favorable evaluations of their work by peers.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while the average novelty in AI-assisted artwork content declined over time, peak content novelty increased. The findings point to the possibility of “generative synesthesia,” a blending of human creativity and AI capabilities to unlock heightened levels of artistic expression.</p>
<p>The advent of generative AI has sparked a heated debate within artistic communities. While some view these technologies as a threat to the intrinsic human ability to create, others recognize their potential to augment human creativity. The research aimed to unravel whether AI adoption enables artists to produce more creative content and under what conditions it leads to more valuable artistic creations.</p>
<p>“In 2022, we witnessed the first truly high-fidelity generative algorithms that could produce creative artifacts that have traditionally been reserved for human faculties,” explained study author <a href="https://ericbzhou.github.io/index.html">Eric Zhou</a>, a PhD candidate in Information Systems at Boston University Questrom School of Business.</p>
<p>“I have several close friends who make a living off exercising their creative talents to produce digital artworks and video games, two domains which directly face the consequences of these technologies. Given I’ve been interested in generative AI and computational creativity, I was naturally drawn to studying how such technologies may be shaping the future of human creativity and expression and to identify under what conditions both traditional artists and AI-assisted artists can flourish.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers analyzed a large dataset from DeviantArt, one of the largest art-sharing platforms. The dataset included the complete publishing histories of over 53,000 users, which amounted to more than 4.3 million digital artworks. It included over 5,800 artists known to have adopted AI tools in their creative workflow from January 2022 to June 2023.</p>
<p>To measure the novelty of the artworks produced, the study borrowed the concept of “conceptual spaces,” a method that uses geometric representations in vector space to determine how much an artifact deviates from or aligns with existing works. This approach was complemented by advanced algorithms and models, such as BLIP-2 for content feature extraction and DINOv2 for visual feature extraction, to analyze the artworks’ content and visual elements thoroughly.</p>
<p>The researchers found that artists who adopted generative AI tools experienced a notable increase in productivity, with a 50% rise in the number of artworks produced in the month of adoption and a doubling of output in the subsequent month.</p>
<p>Over time, AI-assisted artworks began to receive more favorable evaluations from peers, indicating an increase in the perceived value and attractiveness of these creations within the artistic community. This suggested that generative AI tools were not only enhancing productivity but also contributing to the production of quality work that resonated with viewers.</p>
<p>However, the researchers also uncovered some nuanced effects of AI adoption on creativity. There was a general decline in the average novelty of content and visual elements among AI adopters — indicating a trend toward conformity in themes or styles — but peak content novelty actually increased. This implies that, despite a broader trend toward homogeneity, some artists were leveraging AI to push creative boundaries and explore new ideas at the forefront of artistic innovation.</p>
<p>“Although generative tools provide many immediate benefits in creative pursuits like boosting productivity by automating the visual realization of ideas and improving the visual fidelity of artists’ works, the works produced by AI-assisted artists are becoming increasingly similar in content and styles over time,” Zhou told PsyPost.</p>
<p>“Still, there is evidence that the human behind the algorithm exercises significant influence over whether they are jointly successful with generative tools. Specifically, individuals who can successfully identify novel ideas when assisted by AI are able to produce more meaningful artworks.”</p>
<p>“Thus, such tools allow artists to focus on the ideas they are representing rather than how they represent it, opening new avenues for creative exploration. We call this ‘generative synesthesia,’ where the unique talents of a creative enables them to explore and exploit exceedingly novel features with AI tools.”</p>
<p>The study, like all research, has some limitations, including its focus on digital art on a single platform and the potential for unobserved factors influencing artist productivity and creativity. Future research could expand to other forms of creative expression and explore the long-term effects of generative AI on artistic innovation.</p>
<p>“Not a major caveat, but we do not observe the exact workflow that AI artists follow when producing their artworks,” Zhou noted. “We should expect high degrees of variation, where some users might be indiscriminately generating generic content while others formulate intricate workflows that maximize the capabilities of available tools. Pointing in this direction, our evidence suggests that humans’ baseline creative talents – which is likely correlated with the ability to extract novel features from AI tools – are key indicators of success with the technology.”</p>
<p>“This article is the initial exploration among a series of research where we seek to explore the unintended consequences of text-to-image generative algorithms on creative pursuits, both in terms of implications on the natural expression of ideas and the actual labor market dynamics that result from such technologies,” Zhou added. “Our long-term goal is to provide guidance on how text-to-image generative AI can be leveraged for human enrichment while also exploring ways for traditional artists to continue to succeed.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae052">Generative artificial intelligence, human creativity, and art</a>,” was authored by Eric Zhou and Dokyun Lee.</p>
Trying to wrap my head around the fediverse. Is each instance like another person with a server? Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?...
each domain is hosted by individual groups. lemmy.world lemmy.ml sh.itjust.works individually managed and ran.
In simple terms, each individual server sends and receives content from all of the others and displays it to you. You can interact with lemmy.ml via lemmy.world, for example.
Any individual server could shutdown however content has been shared (federated) to other servers (instances) and stored so depending on content retention, it’s still available.
You can also run a server yourself.
Usually, servers are referred to as instances.
There are types in the fediverse, such as mastodon. Content is shared between them but displayed differently
In terms of commercial interest, facebook wants to eventually federate with their threads app.
Everything else is opensource and community funded, I believe
For anyone wondering if Threads and Facebook at large will be a fine neighbor in the space and compatible with other apps/services in the fediverse: they’re already automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed mastodon.social/
I could also just block the threads.net domain, no?
Nope domain blocking in Lemmy only does anything for communities. Plus blocking on Lemmy isn’t even really blocking, it’s a more extreme mute function that is deceptively called “block”.
Why You Should Self-Host Everything (dev.to)
✨️ Finish him. ✨️ (mander.xyz)
Part 1: mander.xyz/post/13579080
Prime Minister Narendra Modi convinced to be 'emissary of God', questions his biological origins (www.telegraphindia.com)
AT&T paid bribes to get two major pieces of legislation passed, US gov’t says (arstechnica.com)
Study reveals "widespread, bipartisan aversion" to neighbors owning AR-15 rifles (www.psypost.org)
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...
OpenAI Is ‘Exploring’ How to Responsibly Generate AI Porn (www.wired.com)
NixOS forked (aux.computer)
hachyderm.io/
The Man Who Killed Google Search (www.wheresyoured.at)
Edward Zitron has been reading all of google’s internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ’s antitrust case against google....
Linux is now an option for safety-minded software-defined vehicle developers (arstechnica.com)
Would you teach your kids how to pirate?
My gf and I have had discussions about teaching morals to kids. In that vein, I asked myself, would I teach piracy to my kids? Yes, it’s technically illegal and carries inherent risks. But so does teenage sex carry the risks of teenage pregnancy, and so we have an obligation to children to teach them how to practice safe sex....
fucking beautiful. almost a year into the 'verse and its starting to become more functional than that R place... better than i imagined. (cdn.catsweat.com)
The penultimate list of Free Linux games, with over 100 titles! (www.reddit.com)
This list is a little old, so some of the links may not work anymore, but overall it’s still a pretty solid compendium for any budget concious Linux (or Windows) gamer!...
Russia sends military trainers, troops to Niger (www.dw.com)
Russian military personnel arrived in Niamey to train their soldiers and set up an air defense system. Russia has been trying to build stronger ties with several African nations currently ruled by military juntas....
unsure why we are surprised lol (lemmy.cafe)
President Biden is now posting into the fediverse (www.theverge.com)
Embracer CEO says it's "way too early" for the company to "start talking about" acquiring new studios (www.eurogamer.net)
backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise (www.openwall.com)
Why is Lemmy, with a tiny fraction of Mastodon's MAU, more fun than Mastodon?
From news, to shitposting, to memes, to more shitposting, Lemmy feels vibrant, active, lighthearted, fun and even powerful. Mastodon feels like a fucking funeral.
Who owns the servers for Lemmy?
Trying to wrap my head around the fediverse. Is each instance like another person with a server? Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?...
Threads is automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed (mastodon.social)
For anyone wondering if Threads and Facebook at large will be a fine neighbor in the space and compatible with other apps/services in the fediverse: they’re already automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed mastodon.social/