keegomatic

keegomatic , 9 months ago

Collar.

keegomatic , 9 months ago

So is your comment. And mine. What do you think our brains do? Magic?

edit: This may sound inflammatory but I mean no offense

keegomatic , 9 months ago

I’m vaguely aware of Org-mode but only as an alternative to Markdown. Last time I looked into it, though (years ago), Markdown seemed like a much better option for me for various reasons. Do you have a good argument for why Org-mode is a better choice for common use cases than the relatively universal GitHub-flavored Markdown?

keegomatic , 10 months ago

I’ve been using Kagi. It works well. I like it. Costs money, but that’s a positive in my book.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

Ugh, has the second season gotten better? I watched the first two episodes of the second season and was really disappointed… enough that I stopped watching. I didn’t mind that they veered so far from the book the first season, because it was inevitable and they did a great job capturing the feeling.

But the second season is just bonkers and lots of sloppy writing so far. Totally unbelievable stunts for no reason other than suspense (that underwater scene and the mouth-to-mouth rebreathing, for example, was so stupid, and then they sit down and they’re like “phew, anyway”) and suddenly Hari is a split-consciousness main character and there’s forward time travel and no second foundation and two different types of non-psychohistory-developed psychic abilities and WE SEE THE IDENTITY OF THE MULE? Like, come on. In just two episodes they trashed some of the most compelling/thematic material and plot points of the original and turned it into a space-magic grab bag of action tropes.

I’m mostly just salty. Perfectly fine if you enjoy it personally. But maybe some of these points resonate with you and, knowing them, you can convince me to keep watching? Because I did really like the first season.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

Okay, thanks for the explanation. Maybe I will keep watching, then. That gives me a little hope!

keegomatic , 9 months ago

Hey, appreciate the update. That’s really too bad!

keegomatic , 10 months ago

This one I can really get behind

keegomatic , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

EDIT: for those downvoting me, I would be happy to engage in a civil discussion about why you think I’m wrong, and even change my mind if I’m mistaken.

This is extremely dumb for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it’s very clearly written with a certain bias.

A (the communist) is describing a tankie. But generally someone who identifies specifically as a communist is not authoritarian, they’re closer to anarchocommunism than the reverse.

B (the lefty antifascist) describes them as a subtype of A, but antifascists are diametrically opposed to tankies, ideologically. Also, “antifascist” is a word that has long been used to label a specific group of leftists… calling them “lefty antifascists” implies that there are also “right-wing antifascists,” trying to equivocate the sides by generalizing the word. Also, most importantly, the description is 100% bullshit.

C (the hard right) a single token addition of a very generic “hard” right person, to appear balanced. No making fun of this person like in the rest of the descriptions, just a list of facts… except “always an arsehole” which I would argue most of these people would enjoy reading about themselves because they would think it was funny and kind of true. Clearly the target audience.

D (the contrarian) this is the modern right wing lowest common denominator person, and an accurate description of the archetype, but no mention of left/right in this description. Wonder why?

E (the peacenik) what? Peacenik is just another historically left-wing-associated label. These people do not have a unified view of how to end the conflict, and certainly don’t frequently suggest ceding land to an invader. That’s a really stupid take on pacifism, and it’s just another dig at the left.

This is definitely dumb and probably just plain old propaganda.

keegomatic , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I can understand your viewpoint, but I don’t agree with it. I think you’re missing the signs that this was written to promote a right-wing narrative about leftists.

You say you think it’s written by a “well-meaning liberal perspective,” but none of the things you mention point to it being a liberal’s perspective, except for the implication that you are a well-meaning liberal and thus you identify with it. Coming from a liberal who interacts with mostly liberal people, and who has been friends with people on the left and right and talked philosophy with both: A, B, and E are just not written from the normal perspective of a left-leaning person.

By your explanation, you clearly understand the C and D roles best, which are the right-wing descriptions. Could it be that you are projecting a liberal perspective on something that is clearly a right-wing narrative because you are used to seeing this narrative, despite identifying as a liberal now?

keegomatic , 10 months ago

If you have not studied communism, and your main contact with communism is tankies on Lemmy and “communist” dictatorships in history, then I understand why you would think that.

But communists by and large are not tankies, and do not wish for states like the USSR, China, or North Korea. Those people typically identify as Marxist-Leninists (promoted mainly by Stalin after Lenin died), and yep they’re authoritarian, and they’re loud. And, despite the name, Marx himself would disapprove of this ideology for a number of reasons.

Read even just the first paragraph of the Wikipedia articles on ”Communism” and “Communist society.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).

Communists want no state; it is effectively a type of anarchist or radically democratic ideology, where the citizens all equally share power through common ownership of industry… the very opposite of authoritarianism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society

A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.

The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.

Communism is not an authoritarian philosophy. If you go talk to people in real life who identify as communists, you will tend to find communists as described in these articles. If you look on lemmy.ml, however, you’ll find lots of Marxist-Leninists (tankies) because that’s who the instance was made by… but that’s not really representative of communism as a whole, and many communists find that philosophy repulsive.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

Of course I’m biased. Everyone is. But am I wrong? My accusation was not that OP is biased, but that the meme itself was trying to secretly promote a right-wing narrative. I understand if you don’t trust me as a biased observer, but you can still read my points and decide whether they are factually correct or not.

If you think I’ve made an error, feel free to respond with a correction. I’m not here to flame anyone, just to point out that I see a vehicle for disinformation. I respect many philosophies on both the left and the right, even if I disagree with them, but regardless of “sides” everyone deserves to make informed decisions arrived at by their own reasoning. When you are manipulated without your knowledge, your ability to reason properly is taken away from you.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

Sorry, would you please point out which statements in my comment you feel are opinion and not fact?

keegomatic , 10 months ago

So, not interested in discussing?

keegomatic , 10 months ago

That’s interesting, which country? I’d be willing to bet that the government does not actually describe itself as communist, but instead as a Marxist-Leninist socialist government, because even they know that what they do is not communism.

I’m willing to bet that because most (if not all) “communist” states in the world actually describe themselves as socialist, not communist, following Marxism-Leninism or some variation thereof. As far as I know, all of them do. So, which one are you from?

keegomatic , 10 months ago

USSR

Yeah, this is precisely the kind of state I was talking about. Thanks for confirming. I’ve explained twice in responses to you, and you haven’t actually addressed my points, so maybe you don’t understand what I’m saying.

The whole premise of Marxism and variations is to remove individual rights and freedoms

If you think Marxism-Leninism actually represents what Marx laid out as communism, you are mistaken. Marxism-Leninism was just Stalin-branded autocratic socialism—Marx had no say in the name. Neither did Lenin, for that matter, unless I’m forgetting my history. This, again, is precisely what I was talking about.

It doesn’t matter how you spin it

I think you should go back and read my original comment and see that the whole point was to unravel the actual spin in this image. No matter how you spin it, this meme places an unwarranted amount of blame on Western leftists while describing each label inaccurately and with a traditionally right-wing slant.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

I’m not even a communist, but I have, actually, and you clearly haven’t. Doesn’t take much to understand the philosophy.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

You can repeat yourself all you want, but unless you can make an actual argument you kinda just look like an idiot

keegomatic , 10 months ago

Who!?

keegomatic , 10 months ago

I see this complaint a lot but honestly I don’t quite understand what the big deal is. Not everyone is subscribed to the same communities. Personally, I’d love a feature on kbin/lemmy that rolled up duplicate posts on the client, but it’s really not that annoying for me to see a couple dupes in my feed if they’re posted in relevant communities /shrug

keegomatic , 10 months ago

In my experience, this has always been a problem after a forum grows beyond a certain size. It’s not really a Reddit-exclusive thing. It’s also not related to karma/reputation-tracking, IMO.

Early adopters of a small, somewhat empty community are people who want to grow the community and encourage posting. Discussion is bright and careful in certain ways because it’s usually just a few commenters interacting with each other who all want the same thing.

Once a community grows big enough to support lurkers and a variety of topics, with multifaceted discussion happening naturally, you have a familiar effect happen: you know how people are disproportionately more likely to review a product or business if they had a negative experience than a positive one? Well, in a similar way, when there’s enough content to lurk (and not be one of the early enthusiasts who post in spite of a lack of content, as a duty to help the community grow), then lurkers are more likely to come out of the woodwork and join a discussion when they see something they disagree with or feel strongly about.

Honestly, though, it has a few silver linings. I grew up learning a lot from arguments online in various places. Sometimes they are handled well and sometimes they are handled poorly by the participants. Learn from both. It’s great to see two sides of an issue, even a petty one. It can teach you a ton about how to behave well, how to actually persuade someone on a topic, and how to avoid conflict in the first place. It can also teach you about a controversial topic you knew little about, and spark your curiosity to learn more (if only to refute something with citations) and sometimes change your opinion altogether.

The healthy/toxic dichotomy starts in your own mind. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself. So find those little positive nuggets where you can.

keegomatic , 10 months ago

Ever since Obama beat Clinton 15 years ago

Jesus I thought you were exaggerating and then I did the math

keegomatic , 11 months ago

our compound shows greatly consistent x-ray diffraction spectrum with the previously reported structure data

Uhh, doesn’t look like it to me. This paper’s X-ray diffraction spectrum looks pretty noisy compared to the one from the original paper, with some clear additional/different peaks in certain regions. That could potentially affect the result. I was under the impression from the original paper that a subtle compression of the lattice structure was pretty important to formation of quantum wells for superconductivity, so if the X-ray diff isn’t spot on I’ll wait for some more failures before calling it busted.

keegomatic , 11 months ago

Got a source? When I first read about this people were cautiously optimistic partly because the head researcher was well-respected.

keegomatic , 11 months ago

This is a really terrific explanation. The author puts some very technical concepts into accessible terms, but not so far from reality as to cloud the original concepts. Most other attempts I’ve seen at explaining LLMs or any other NN-based pop tech are either waaaay oversimplified, heavily abstracted, or are meant for a technical audience and are dry and opaque. I’m saving this for sure. Great read.

keegomatic , 11 months ago

I’m not saying this to be an asshole, because I’m happy that you got to the right conclusion eventually, but I have to clarify for history’s sake: if you thought Trump was playing 4D chess in 2015-2016 then you were being duped. Most of us understood what he was from the get-go. Claims of 4D chess have always been stupid.

Again, I’m happy that you figured it out. Everyone makes mistakes. But “we” didn’t think he was playing 4D chess. The hypothesis about Musk/Twitter above is hardly the same.

keegomatic , 11 months ago

Fair enough!

keegomatic , 11 months ago

I honestly only made it a few minutes in, and there is probably plenty of merit to the rest of her perspective. But… I just couldn’t get past the “AI doesn’t exist” part. I get that you don’t know or care about the difference and you associate the term “AI” with sci-fi-like artificial sentience/AGI, but “AI” has been used for decades to refer to things that mimic intelligence, not just full-on artificial general intelligence. Algorithms governing NPC behavior and pathfinding in video games is AI, and that’s a perfectly accurate description. SmarterChild was AI… even ELIZA was AI. Stuff like GAN models and LLMs are certainly AI. The goal posts for “intelligence” have moved farther and farther back with every innovation. The AI we have now was fantasy just 20 years ago. Even just five years ago, to most people.

keegomatic , 11 months ago

I’m in my early 30s and I learned metric pretty thoroughly as early as elementary school. Grew up in Massachusetts and went to public school, for what it’s worth.