@hynek@mastodon.social“What if AI Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This?” – a pretty good summary for those who don't want to read Gary Marcus’s rather… elaborate… treatizes.
> I think it’s safe, at least for now, to turn your attention away from the tech titans’ increasingly hyperbolic claims
🧘♂️
https://ca…
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialOoooh! The current Printables contest is for 3D printed bike gear!
#3Dprinting
@servelan@newsie.socialPam Bondi Needs a Free Speech Tutorial - WSJ - The Attorney General seems to think ‘hate speech’ is illegal. Charlie Kirk knew better.
https://archive.ph/yWKEU
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSome developers say GPT-5 excels at technical reasoning and planning coding tasks and is cost-effective, but Claude Opus and Sonnet still produce better code (Lauren Goode/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/gpt-5-coding-review-software-engineering/
@shacker@zirk.usMy recent Lightroom article was meant to help Classic users discover what they might be missing out on by sticking with Classic, and to entertain the concept of a future "convergence." I recently had a request to run it on Medium as well as the original Substack:
https://medium.com/@shacker/give…
@jamesthebard@social.linux.pizzaSo, I think I'm done for the evening. Managed to get the dice roller working as intended with the `lark` parser which is a Christmas miracle. I'll clean it up tomorrow and make it look a bit better code-wise, but I'm pretty happy it does what it says it does. I'll probably roll this into the Pathfinder 2E TUI character sheet.
```
$ python main.py
Roll to parse: (3d8 2d6 15)[lightning] (4d10)[piercing] 3d8
===============================================…
@x_tof@verkehrswende.social
@emd@cosocial.caI’m very disappointed in Carney, he’s actually a Conservative. I don’t think Poilievre would have been better, but at least I wouldn’t have been lied to.
#CdnPoli
https://mstdn.ca/@AlisonCreekside/1148
@hex@kolektiva.socialI keep saying the same thing over and over with my kids: you don't make decisions with your voice, you make them with your body.
"I want to go to the park."
"Ok, put your shoes on."
"I want to go on my play date."
"Put on a jacket and get in the bike."
"I don't want to be late to school."
"I don't control time, if you don't want to be late you have to brush your teeth."
There's a fundamental truth underlying this concept though, one that I hadn't really thought about. On some level, I feel as though, any choice you can't make with your body isn't a real choice. If you're begging someone to do something for you, it's ultimately not something you control.
As I'm compelled, by threat of violence against my family, to pay for war against my comrades and to kill people I don't even know, I think about that. How far is our concept of freedom from the police state we are taught to imagine as the global beacon of liberty. My participation in the violence had always been compulsory.
Perhaps we could do better than just #NoKings.
#USPol
@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scotIt's very confusing having a parent at the beginning of the end. Mum's been in hospital for a week, needing to be stabilised before she can be moved elsewhere for palliative care. She has a terminal neurodegenerative illness and has suddenly deteriorated very rapidly.
I think I feel survivor's guilt. I want her suffering to be over but is that saying I want her to die? I can also see how much better my dad is in himself now he's not caring for her at home. Confusing is …
@migueldeicaza@mastodon.socialInterestingn post and replies.
I think that Apple’s incentives are just not aligned with developers in niche segments - purely a matter of scaling and managing the teams.
In most cases open source alternatives are vastly better.
But the question remains, how can you finance the maintenance and evolution in the long term - volunteer work is not sustainable.
It is remarkable that after 25 years we still haven’t found a viable and scalable funding model for this.
@raiders@darktundra.xyzWill Raiders Hit Their Ceiling or Floor? https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-eric-mangini-pete-carroll-ashton-jeanty-preseason-geno-smith
@penguin42@mastodon.org.ukOK, this is more what I was expecting from my Sweet Peas; I think there's a couple of different varieties in this really high grade LIdl pack of sweet peas. Next year I should get some from better #gardening supplier.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 19 (a bit late): Alice Oseman
As I said I've got 14 authors to fit into two days. Probably just going to extend to 30? But Oseman gets this spot as an absolute legend of queer fiction in both novel & graphic novel form, and an excellent example of the many truths queer writers have to share with non-queer people that can make everyone's lives better. Her writing is very kind, despite in many instances dealing with some dark stuff.
I started out on Heartstopper, which is just so lovely and fun to read, and then made my way through several of her novels. The one I'll highlight here which I think it's her greatest triumph is "Loveless", which is semi-autobiographical and was at least my first (but no longer only) experience with the "platonic romance" sub-genre. It not only helped me work through some crufty internal doubts about aro/ace identities that I'd never really examined, but in the process helped improve my understanding of friendship, period. Heck, it's probably a nice novel for anyone questioning any sort of identity or dealing with loneliness, and it's just super-enjoyable as a story regardless of the philosophical value.
To cheat a bit more here on my author count, I recently read "Dear Wendy" by Ann Zhao, which shouts out "Loveless" and offers a more expository exploration of aro/ace identities, but "Loveless" is a book with more heart and better writing overall, including the neat plotting and great pacing. I think there are also parallels with Becky Albertalli's work, though I think I like Oseman slightly more. Certainly both excel at writing queer romance (and romance-adjacent) stuff with happy endings (#OwnVoices wins again with all three authors).
In any case, Oseman is excellent and if you're not up for reading a novel, Heartstopper is a graphic novel series that's easy to jump into and very kind to its adorable main characters.
I think I've now decided to continue to 30, which is a relief, so I'm tagging this (and the next post that rounds out 20) two ways.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen
@matematico314@social.linux.pizza#LB Eu acho que realmente preciso ler Terry Pratchett rs.
https://frikiverse.zone/@terrybot/115036206410170877
@portaloffreedom@social.linux.pizzaThat patch to "detect fascism" is a nice piece of satire, but I think it has a bit too much of a broad audience and therefore I think it is not really good.
I therefore I have a proposal for a better utility that does not label projects or people, and instead tackles the problem at the root: a questionaire at boot. During the boot process it will ask you if you support queer rights, if you support trans rights, if you think white people are getting replaced or if you think pe…
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzMailbag: Should players speak up? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-should-players-speak-up
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.comObvious you’re all welcome to speak of whatever you want, and I just have to get better at muting the right words.
But boy, I’ve heard infinitely more about the dead douche since his death, than I ever did when he was alive. And I can’t help but think that’s a shame. He doesn’t deserve a space in my consciousness, and I don’t believe he deserves one in yours either.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialTL;DR: what if nationalism, not anarchy, is futile?
Since I had the pleasure of seeing the "what would anarchists do against a warlord?" argument again in my timeline, I'll present again my extremely simple proposed solution:
Convince the followers of the warlord that they're better off joining you in freedom, then kill or exile the warlord once they're alone or vastly outnumbered.
Remember that even in our own historical moment where nothing close to large-scale free society has existed in living memory, the warlord's promise of "help me oppress others and you'll be richly rewarded" is a lie that many understand is historically a bad bet. Many, many people currently take that bet, for a variety of reasons, and they're enough to coerce through fear an even larger number of others. But although we imagine, just as the medieval peasants might have imagined of monarchy, that such a structure is both the natural order of things and much too strong to possibly fail, in reality it takes an enormous amount of energy, coordination, and luck for these structures to persist! Nations crumble every day, and none has survived more than a couple *hundred* years, compared to pre-nation societies which persisted for *tends of thousands of years* if not more. I'm this bubbling froth of hierarchies, the notion that hierarchy is inevitable is certainly popular, but since there's clearly a bit of an ulterior motive to make (and teach) that claim, I'm not sure we should trust it.
So what I believe could form the preconditions for future anarchist societies to avoid the "warlord problem" is merely: a widespread common sense belief that letting anyone else have authority over you is morally suspect. Given such a belief, a warlord will have a hard time building any following at all, and their opponents will have an easy time getting their supporters to defect. In fact, we're already partway there, relative to the situation a couple hundred years ago. At that time, someone could claim "you need to obey my orders and fight and die for me because the Queen was my mother" and that was actually a quite successful strategy. Nowadays, this strategy is only still working in a few isolated places, and the idea that one could *start a new monarchy* or even resurrect a defunct one seems absurd. So why can't that same transformation from "this is just how the world works" to "haha, how did anyone ever believe *that*? also happen to nationalism in general? I don't see an obvious reason why not.
Now I think one popular counterargument to this is: if you think non-state societies can win out with these tactics, why didn't they work for American tribes in the face of the European colonizers? (Or insert your favorite example of colonialism here.) I think I can imagine a variety of reasons, from the fact that many of those societies didn't try this tactic (and/or were hierarchical themselves), to the impacts of disease weakening those societies pre-contact, to the fact that with much-greater communication and education possibilities it might work better now, to the fact that most of those tribes are *still* around, and a future in which they persist longer than the colonist ideologies actually seems likely to me, despite the fact that so much cultural destruction has taken place. In fact, if the modern day descendants of the colonized tribes sow the seeds of a future society free of colonialism, that's the ultimate demonstration of the futility of hierarchical domination (I just read "Theory of Water" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson).
I guess the TL;DR on this is: what if nationalism is actually as futile as monarchy, and we're just unfortunately living in the brief period during which it is ascendant?
@maxheadroom@hub.uckermark.socialSome people say we've not learned from the mistakes of the Nazi era. Unfortunately I think people did learn. But not the thinks we hoped they've learned to turn things for the better for the majority of people.
Instead they learned that if you're complicit with the dictator you will benefit from it. And after the violent removes of the dictator you'll get away with it and continue to profit. Just like we saw with the likes of Degussa, Bertelsmann, Volkswagen and all the…
@UP8@mastodon.socialOur friend Lenny has this shaggy orange cat who we took care of when he was off on vacation -- I think my cat photos are better than most of what gets posted to LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-houle-a18809320/
@kurtsh@mastodon.social"When the safety rotates down, just rip the seam. It's not that hard. C'mon, we can do better."
Not a Tom Brady fan but i laugh everytime I watch this. 😂
▶️ You think you want Seven Rings Knowledge. You very do not.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KffXrGVAU0
@frankel@mastodon.topWhy Japanese Developers Write Code Completely Differently (And Why It Works Better)
https://medium.com/@sohail_saifi/why-japanese-developers-write-code-completely-differently-and-why-it-works-better-de…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialTL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzMailbag: Should players speak up? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-should-players-speak-up
@aral@mastodon.ar.alWait, no, Jeff Atwood? The Jeff Atwood? Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realised! My goodness, what was I thinking? Please, tell me, does your God accept penance? How does one make up for such an egregious transgression upon His Holiness? https://ravenation.club/@grievousangel/115…
@lepire@social.linux.pizzaLinked on Lemmy: https://www.stilldrinking.org/stop-talking-to-technology-executives-like-they-have-anything-to-say
"I can’t think of a better argument for a humanities requirement than a billionaire being asked “how do we kn…
@brian_gettler@mas.toI'm again at that point in the research project where I think, "ooh, that sounds super important. I better get a copy of that source." Once I do, I realize, of course, that I've had a copy for years.
@cdarwin@c.im"we often think that centralization is more efficient,
but is it really better?"
-- No
https://bsky.app/profile/eikonos.bsky.social/post/3lxkq7qyfm22d
@sascha_wolfer@fediscience.orgOne other thing, while we don't claim that our mixed-effects logit model is the perfect way to account for non-independence between languages, we don't think it's correct, as Xia & Lindell assert, to just claim that our results are "counterintuitive", the fix-eff estimates are "unreliable" and that the high model fits are "unrealistic." Whether a mix model better captures the data-generat. process is ultimately an empirical question, not one to be decided by assertion. Take, for instance, our finding that once random effects for either subregion or language family are included, the estimated effect of L1_population reverses direction—from the negative value reported by Xia & Lindell et al. to a positive one.
@samir@functional.computer@… Yes, exactly! And I think that is closer to what Alexander meant about patterns, TBH.
But honestly, I don’t think he did a stellar job explaining patterns, and his other work is way better.
IIRC A City Is Not A Tree covers changes in the system over time (and how observing the system changes the system), even though its main point is that you …
@jredlund@social.linux.pizza
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioThis computer science professor agrees with @…. The humanities are crucial.
I mean, it cuts the other way too: a lot of the credulous nonsense about AI would melt away if people had a better idea how to think about software systems and mathematical models, what they really do and don’t do, how to look at them critically.
The key in my view is people having multiple ways of seeing and not narrowing themselves.
https://infosec.exchange/@dnsprincess/115140939294365490
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
UK High Court to lawyers: cut the ChatGPT or else.
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/07/uk-high-court-to-lawyers-cut-the-chatgpt-or-else/
saved 2025-06-08
@kcase@mastodon.socialIn 2011, I posted to our forums to explain "Why not Windows?" Our goal is not to make the most money; it's to make the best software that we can make. There are other successful platforms, but I don' t think our software would be better on any of them.
Since 2011 we've moved to different forums and the hardware hosting our archived forums died. Maybe someday I'll revive it from backups, but in the meantime it's nice that the Internet Archive still has a co…
@raiders@darktundra.xyzGutierrez: With a lack of true first-team battles, Raiders and Niners still find quality work https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-49ers-quality-work-joint-practice-nfl-2025-preseason-081425
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialIPv4 prices seem to have come down recently. But it is still much better than when I sold a /16 I sold a few years back.
I still can't believe that the Interop company - a for-profit corporation - simply gave away a /8. I don't think the officers/directors knew the value of the asset they gave away.
I've been prediction that the net will fragment into distinct IP address spaces - many full 32-bit IPv4 and many full 128-bit IPv6 spaces connected by application level …
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
.
.
.
I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading
@cellfourteen@social.petertoushkov.euI think he is trying to say he is an Avenger without realising he is the supervillain.
Also, does he know that while he is torrenting the world libraries into his bank account, you could set up for $10 a month your own Mastodon instance which is ten times better federated than his 'federated' Threads?
@mlawton@mstdn.socialWhen the commentators said Anthony Taylor has done more LFC games than any other team, it honestly hurt my heart.
I don’t think Taylor is biased. I just don’t think he’s competent. But why more LFC games than others? So I researched.
PGMOL has a board that makes the selection each week. The criteria for disqualification due to conflicts of interest are clear, but otherwise the selection is opaque. It seems an ideal place to ask for better transparency.
@arXiv_csCV_bot@mastoxiv.pageSee Different, Think Better: Visual Variations Mitigating Hallucinations in LVLMs
Ziyun Dai, Xiaoqiang Li, Shaohua Zhang, Yuanchen Wu, Jide Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22003 h…
@pavelasamsonov@mastodon.socialIs your super cool UX really better than just emailing a spreadsheet back and forth?
Before you answer, think about what "better" means to whom. #uxdesign
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itStill amazes me that people are this clueless.
https://gothamist.com/news/how-do-nj-beachgoers-feel-about-the-governors-race-gothamist-hit-the-shore
@stefan@gardenstate.socialI think this is a really good post on the cost of AI from my friend.
I'm anti-AI but I do think I need to better understand how it works and how others use it or I can't really contribute to the conversation.
AI might be able to make you more "efficient" but if you don't care about the content you make no one else will either.
@hex@kolektiva.socialThe thing that #Framework doesn't seem to get is that they are a premium brand, and every premium brand is an identity brand. Identity brands don't work because they're cheaper, or better. They don't generally follow market rules. The work because people want to be associated with the values that the brand is associated with.
Apple really pioneered this, making people think of them as the company for creative artist. They were able to sell hardware with absurd markups because they weren't selling hardware, they were selling an identity.
Now, the thing is that all identities are political. If you have an identity brand, you have a political brand. You can't really dodge that.
@pre@boing.worldVoting in the UK Green party elections is half over. Too late to join the party and vote, and sounds like Zack is very likely to win.
Which is good. I voted for him.
I think the job-share rule is important and that any job should be possible to share between workers. But in the case of the "leader", which is literally the face of the party, having two faces is difficult in the public hive mind. Even with a united front, it's litterally two faced.
But mostly my vote was just for Zack, and would have likely voted for him in a job-share too.
He's very personable and seems to know how to talk to the public and express not just environmental issues but other green issues like inequality and war and how your enemy is not a boat of refugees but the concentration of power in the hands of maniacs both political and corporate.
I confess I gave up trying to read anything about the candidates and cast a vote about half way down all the other jobs being elected. I'm just adding noise. I dunno who any of these people are or even what the job entails most of the time and there's too many all at once. Should stagger them weekly or something.
Anyway here's Zack on Mark Steel's sweary podcast being brilliant on the issues and how to explain them better than I can.
I love Mark Steel too. Miss the sketches things it used to have in the newish revised entirely-an-interview format.
🤞
In two parts
#podcast #green #uk #ZackPolanski #listening
@BugWarp@wikis.worldMiguel Ángel Russo passed away yesterday. Besides his sports achievements, he was loved and respected everywhere he go. And he died doing what he loved and being fully conscious about it, I can't think of a better way to leave this life.
Today, football is a little bit worse.
https://www.batimes.…
@arXiv_csLG_bot@mastoxiv.pageLarge Reasoning Models Learn Better Alignment from Flawed Thinking
ShengYun Peng, Eric Smith, Ivan Evtimov, Song Jiang, Pin-Yu Chen, Hongyuan Zhan, Haozhu Wang, Duen Horng Chau, Mahesh Pasupuleti, Jianfeng Chi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00938
@threeofus@mstdn.socialI hate being told what to do. I also find it hard to accept ideas from other people - my partner especially. I think it’s because I want to find solutions myself and do it in my own time. I’m often overwhelmed with things when she starts talking about another thing that needs sorting out. I feel really angry when she does that. I will try to communicate better in those situations. Sometimes I don’t need problem solving, just a hug.
@shoppingtonz@mastodon.socialit's cold here, putting on more clothes...
cold is good, you'll think better!
I'LL THINK BETTER! 🤣
#cold
@arXiv_csCL_bot@mastoxiv.pageLanguage Models that Think, Chat Better
Adithya Bhaskar, Xi Ye, Danqi Chen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20357 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20357
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 09 - Sand
CHASGO: Suddenly, I think we must have hit some kind of multi-gravitational field. Instruments are going mad. Investigator, you and the others better get strapped in. S'gonna be a hell of a bumpy ride down.
[In Xenon Base, Vila slams his glass down on the table in front of him.]
https://blake.torp…
@joe@toot.worksI think that I better go take a bike ride ...
@light@noc.socialhttps://guardianbookshop.com/when-everyone-knows-that-everyone-knows-9780241618820/
Just because we all think it, doesn't make it true.
@raiders@darktundra.xyzGutierrez: With a lack of true first-team battles, Raiders and Niners still find quality work https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-49ers-quality-work-joint-practice-nfl-2025-preseason-081425
@grumpybozo@toad.socialIn a decade on the Fowl Site, I don't think I ever saw anyone post pictures from or mention Empire, which is a very special place for me. In 3 years here, I've had the boon of new ones every day (from @…) and a trickle of fabulous shots like this one. Sleeping Bear and South Manitou in the distance anchor it for me as being a very parti…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialObesity & diet
I wouldn't normally share a positive story about the new diet drugs, because I've seen someone get obsessed with them who was at a perfectly acceptable weight *by majority standards* (surprise: every weight is in fact perfectly acceptable by *objective* standards, because every "weight-associated" health risk is its own danger that should be assessed *in individuals*). I think two almost-contradictory things:
1. In a society shuddering under the burden of metastasized fatmisia, there's a very real danger in promoting the new diet drugs because lots of people who really don't need them will be psychologically bullied into using them and suffer from the cost and/or side effects.
2. For many individuals under the assault of our society's fatmisia, "just ignore it" is not a sufficient response, and also for specific people for whom decreasing their weight can address *specific* health risks/conditions that they *want* to address that way, these drugs can be a useful tool.
I know @… to be a trustworthy & considerate person, so I think it's responsible to share this:
#Fat #Diet #Obesity
@cdarwin@c.imStephen Miller is trying to make you think that it's a done deal that they have all the power ...
It's not a done deal
https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social/post/3m2nnspr7js2s
@jonippolito@digipres.clubOn yesterday's Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else podcast, I talked about AI's impact on the environment and classrooms—and argued that it isn’t reinventing education so much as exposing bad habits we should’ve let go years ago https://www.link…
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgI was interviewed by Kim for her @… Website about my criticism/approach. It was neat to think about how I approach things, maybe it's interesting to you, I enjoyed thinking about the questions a lot.
https://
@sean@scoat.esRolled hummingbird-macrorouting v0.3.0 ; version bump due to API changes (for the better).
Apologies if this conflicts with your travel (though I don’t think anyone hard-depends on this except us, anyway). Complain to me in person. (-:
#Swift #Hummingbird
@sonnets@bots.krohsnest.comSonnet 121 - CXXI
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing:
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses re…
@detondev@social.linux.pizzai just hope that, long after he deploys the illegal it/its schizoaffective palestinian o9a-affiliated jihadist former gifted kid he's grooming on trump, even after he turns all homeless people and his wife into biofuel and dies of reticulan aids from unprotected peter thiel, everybody keeps using this one image of him
@rberger@hachyderm.ioQ1’s –0.5% growth is already a bad look. But Apollo’s Torsten SlŸk points out that data-center construction alone added about a full percentage point. Remove it, and you’re staring at –1.5%.
Q2 looks so much healthier at 3.0%, or you would think so. Pantheon Macroeconomics sums up the first half of 2025 with some more sobriety: AI alone contributed about half a percentage point of GDP. Without it, the U.S. would be bumbling along at 1% growth. Still better than minus, but thin grass all the same.
One more stat for the better view: since 2019, investment in AI-sensitive sectors is up 53%, while everywhere else is basically flat – 0.3%.
https://www.turingpost.com/p/fod114?_bhlid=f437d028caabcb66cc36e677728d12aea2504a71
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org@… My thoughts exactly.
And Vance’s remarks make me think that his favorite architect should better get started with the design of a Trump mausoleum. It has to be the biggest ever! With the biggest souvenir shop!
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org@… My thoughts exactly.
And Vance’s remarks make me think that his favorite architect should better get started with the design of a Trump mausoleum. It has to be the biggest ever! With the biggest souvenir shop!
@jason123santa@fosstodon.orgI was ripping movies with makemkv and decided to try handbreak to h265 and it produced a movie about the size of 1.5gb instead of the raw 4.4gb size from makemkv. I actually think handbreak movie looks better anyway.
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social«So, to sum it up, Kling wears his mask a bit better than DHH, but as far as I’m concerned it seems clear that both projects are run by fascists. If it walks like a fascist and quacks like a fascist… then why is Cloudflare giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars?»
I think we all know the answer to that one!
https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeThinking more about the PIC12F683 RE project.
I think if I really want to go all out, it might make sense to be both blog and video dual tracked, since some stuff will map better to one format or the other.
But that's gonna be a lot of work. Another option would be split media with particular parts of the analysis in one format or the other but not double covered.
@hex@kolektiva.socialAnd when I'm talking about understanding the drives to violence, I did write about something similar recently.
https://write.as/hexmhell/algorithmic-violence
The drives behind this and the shooting last week are pretty radically different, but there's some overlap. People like Kirk are part a huge political machine slowly crushing people all over the world. There's a hopeless rage that would naturally drive even the most calm person to the edge of violence. You can't look at the world honestly and be OK. We want to do something. We want to react. But everything we do is silenced or must rmain silent. So it's easy to understand why someone might choose violence. Very different situation, but everyone is subject to the same national and international influences.
I don't promote violence, not because I disagree with it but because I think it's expensive. It takes time to plan, especially for those trying to get away. Guns are not cheap, nor are bullets, nor is the range time you need to get somewhat good under pressure. It's not cheap for the person doing it, and it's not cheap for the community that has to clean up. The community will face police repression (which, if we're honest, was gonna come anyway). The community will have to post bail, will lose a person for a while, will need to support the family, will go to hearings, will write reports, will do interviews.
Sun Tzu said that deploying one soldier to the front takes 7 in the field. Logistics are a huge invisible cost. Some of that time and energy could be reused. It's never bad to be armed and able to defend if needed. But a lot of that energy and time would be better spent planning a community pantry, a tool library, organizing a union, etc. We are living in a disaster, and we need to invest in thriving through the next crumble.
Kirk is replacable. They're almost all replacable, because they don't really care about human life. We do, so none of us are. It's not really a worth while trade, IMHO.
@mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoWhen I design physical objects, I think in boxes and simple, usually circular-section curves. This has been true when I freehand build physical objects, as well as when I model things on the computer. Fillets are about as crazy as I get.
I'm in awe of artists whose design imaginations extend to "organic" shapes.
Reminds me of music a bit. I was a reasonably good high school musician. Played multiple instruments; did fine in music competition on several of them. That's just en…
@samir@functional.computer@… Yeah, that’s the stickler. I had a look for passive cooling cases with space for a HAT and I can’t find anything.
I think that if I was OK with arm64, I would probably go for an Orange Pi next time. You can get them with NVMe support. But I think the Zima probably fits my needs better.
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI think "dumb" or "stupid" best describe the choices you make and not the knowledge you have or do not have. I think "ignorance" better describe that.
My partner was amazed to learn that the moon does not generate light, but just reflects sunlight.
I've know this since I was a child because I had an interest in astronomy and they never had such and interest and just never thought about it or learned it.
@Jyoti@mas.toOh, no, I think it's *perfectly fine* that a white man is telling a black woman just how wrong she is on racism and how she doesn't understand it.
It's very good of him to explain it to her, he's so much better informed!
#WhiteSplaining
#FuckKeirStarmer
@migueldeicaza@mastodon.socialOne area where I think I can do better is to have some sort of Asset browser in Xogot. I do not think that finding files by name is great - and I am lacking an icon view for the file browser.
I am unfamiliar with the space (other than Googling "Unity Asset Browser") and the Final Cut iPad browser - which seems insufficient.
Do you have a favorite tool or UI that you like that you recommend to me?
@pre@boing.world"What do you lose by using Facebook", asked a friend who is keen to keep his account there for some reason.
What made me leave was the manipulation. I mean: they started hiding your friends posts in order to show you adverts instead! Feeding you slop from their promoted posts and "viral" messages (that aren't actually boosted by anyone, just picked out by their megaphone to show to everyone).
If you let the algorithm determine what you see than you let it determine what you are, who you become.
Even if you think it's better at finding shiny things than you, even if you think it builds the parasocial relationships that you want, even if you think it's saving you time to let the robot manage your reading-list: if you are letting Facebook, or any algorithm written by advertisers, do your reading selection then you are letting Facebook decide who you are.
On behalf of the advertisers who bribe them the most.
This is why you gotta use RSS. You gotta use the chronological timelines not the "for you" feeds. You gotta build follow relationships that you choose and understand because otherwise, you are letting the corporation and it's systems determine these things. You are abdicating some control of your very self to the machine.
Not to mention that we have to stop feeding money to the evil multi-trillion dollar companies built to control and manipulate us through our relationships with our friends. They have enough money, they need less participation not more.
#fediverse #algorithm
@raiders@darktundra.xyzRaiders Cornerbacks In Midst of Fierce Competition https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-sam-webb-greedy-vance-eric-stokes-darien-porter-darnay-holmes-training-camp
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialFinished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzJerry Jones Selling Cowboys as Better Without Micah Parsons, But No One's Buying It https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/jerry-jones-insists-cowboys-better-without-micah-parsons-no-one-buying
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialI think I'll hold my $MSFT, thank you very much.
✅ Microsoft market cap tops $4 trillion after hours on earnings beat - CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/30/microsoft-market-cap-tops-4-trillion-after-hours-on-earnings-bea…
@cdarwin@c.imTo hear JD Vance talk,
you’d think the only people who ever see a doctor in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants.
He insists that Democrats are refusing to support a Republican budget bill because
“they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of health care benefits to illegal aliens.”
As Vance repeats the lie, the number gets bigger.
He’s even claimed that it’s a
“trillion dollars for medical benefits for illegal aliens.”
By the time you read …
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI think I'm finally starting to get past being sick. It started last week Tuesday, but I had to conduct online training sessions at work so I soldiered through until Friday when I was able to stay home and rest. I thought I was better Saturday but I was wrong... Sunday rolled around and still not great but I think finally this afternoon I am starting to get my energy back.
@mlawton@mstdn.socialKavanagh. Every time, that guy. 6’ of stoppage? Let’s play a full minute more because Palace have a throw. I have zero doubt he’d have blown it dead at 95:45 if #LFC were on a counter.
Given that Palace played better in composite, Liverpool being decidedly better in the second half, and that I think Salah did handle the ball that VAR somehow missed… seems the result is justice served.
Glas…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 11 - Orbit
VILA: This had better work.
AVON: Have you cleared the governors?
VILA: I think so. Try it now.
AVON: Switching to manual. Maximum power on all drives.
[Biodome]
PINDER: Egrorian.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/411/397 B7B3
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com@… Better yet, I pushed the code yesterday so they *think* they’re safe.
Today we enable the feature flag.
@samir@functional.computer@… @… I partially agree. I think PLoP could do a much better job of marketing and publishing!
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeAWR6843 100x focus stacked scan finished. I need to get some better stacking software as I think there's potential to get more out of the raw dataset.
But I'll upload the initial stitch when I have it.
Which... might take a while.
@Jyoti@mas.toOh, no, I think it's *perfectly fine* that a white man is telling a black woman just how wrong she is on racism and how she doesn't understand it.
It's very good of him to explain it to her, he's so much better informed!
#FuckKeirStarmer #KeirStarmerIsARacist
@jamesthebard@social.linux.pizzaAlright, the good news is that I've mostly corrected convergence on the Sony PVM-2530 and it looks tons better. The bad news is that I'm getting shadowing/bleeding on changes in colors which wasn't apparent due to the horrible convergence. However, it's progress. I think it's a cap issue...not sure where though.
#electronics
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net @mlawton@mstdn.socialIf #LFC can get their defense sorted, I think the rest will snap into place better. Kerkez has looked uneven, but I thought defensively he was pretty good tonight.
I'd rather see Bradley start with Robbo and Kerkez rotating. Frimpong available as a sub, pace for the late push against tiring opposition.
And until Konate gets right, there is no stability. It exposes everyone else. Van Dij…
@cdarwin@c.imInstead of using data to determine how to govern,
the Trump administration is manipulating, ignoring and even jettisoning data altogether.
Those who balk at the administration’s wishful thinking about reality face threats to fall in line or leave -- as Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook and now the C.D.C. director, Susan Monarez, have all experienced.
The administration has clearly embraced the strategic cultivation of uncertainty and ignorance.
It is not just trying to trim th…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialShould we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
Should AI coding be taught in undergrad CS education?
1/2
I teach undergraduate computer science labs, including for intro and more-advanced core courses. I don't publish (non-negligible) scholarly work in the area, but I've got years of craft expertise in course design, and I do follow the academic literature to some degree. In other words, In not the world's leading expert, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about course design, and consider myself competent at it, with plenty of direct experience in what knowledge & skills I can expect from students as they move through the curriculum.
I'm also strongly against most uses of what's called "AI" these days (specifically, generative deep neutral networks as supplied by our current cadre of techbro). There are a surprising number of completely orthogonal reasons to oppose the use of these systems, and a very limited number of reasonable exceptions (overcoming accessibility barriers is an example). On the grounds of environmental and digital-commons-pollution costs alone, using specifically the largest/newest models is unethical in most cases.
But as any good teacher should, I constantly question these evaluations, because I worry about the impact on my students should I eschew teaching relevant tech for bad reasons (and even for his reasons). I also want to make my reasoning clear to students, who should absolutely question me on this. That inspired me to ask a simple question: ignoring for one moment the ethical objections (which we shouldn't, of course; they're very stark), at what level in the CS major could I expect to teach a course about programming with AI assistance, and expect students to succeed at a more technically demanding final project than a course at the same level where students were banned from using AI? In other words, at what level would I expect students to actually benefit from AI coding "assistance?"
To be clear, I'm assuming that students aren't using AI in other aspects of coursework: the topic of using AI to "help you study" is a separate one (TL;DR it's gross value is not negative, but it's mostly not worth the harm to your metacognitive abilities, which AI-induced changes to the digital commons are making more important than ever).
So what's my answer to this question?
If I'm being incredibly optimistic, senior year. Slightly less optimistic, second year of a masters program. Realistic? Maybe never.
The interesting bit for you-the-reader is: why is this my answer? (Especially given that students would probably self-report significant gains at lower levels.) To start with, [this paper where experienced developers thought that AI assistance sped up their work on real tasks when in fact it slowed it down] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089) is informative. There are a lot of differences in task between experienced devs solving real bugs and students working on a class project, but it's important to understand that we shouldn't have a baseline expectation that AI coding "assistants" will speed things up in the best of circumstances, and we shouldn't trust self-reports of productivity (or the AI hype machine in general).
Now we might imagine that coding assistants will be better at helping with a student project than at helping with fixing bugs in open-source software, since it's a much easier task. For many programming assignments that have a fixed answer, we know that many AI assistants can just spit out a solution based on prompting them with the problem description (there's another elephant in the room here to do with learning outcomes regardless of project success, but we'll ignore this over too, my focus here is on project complexity reach, not learning outcomes). My question is about more open-ended projects, not assignments with an expected answer. Here's a second study (by one of my colleagues) about novices using AI assistance for programming tasks. It showcases how difficult it is to use AI tools well, and some of these stumbling blocks that novices in particular face.
But what about intermediate students? Might there be some level where the AI is helpful because the task is still relatively simple and the students are good enough to handle it? The problem with this is that as task complexity increases, so does the likelihood of the AI generating (or copying) code that uses more complex constructs which a student doesn't understand. Let's say I have second year students writing interactive websites with JavaScript. Without a lot of care that those students don't know how to deploy, the AI is likely to suggest code that depends on several different frameworks, from React to JQuery, without actually setting up or including those frameworks, and of course three students would be way out of their depth trying to do that. This is a general problem: each programming class carefully limits the specific code frameworks and constructs it expects students to know based on the material it covers. There is no feasible way to limit an AI assistant to a fixed set of constructs or frameworks, using current designs. There are alternate designs where this would be possible (like AI search through adaptation from a controlled library of snippets) but those would be entirely different tools.
So what happens on a sizeable class project where the AI has dropped in buggy code, especially if it uses code constructs the students don't understand? Best case, they understand that they don't understand and re-prompt, or ask for help from an instructor or TA quickly who helps them get rid of the stuff they don't understand and re-prompt or manually add stuff they do. Average case: they waste several hours and/or sweep the bugs partly under the rug, resulting in a project with significant defects. Students in their second and even third years of a CS major still have a lot to learn about debugging, and usually have significant gaps in their knowledge of even their most comfortable programming language. I do think regardless of AI we as teachers need to get better at teaching debugging skills, but the knowledge gaps are inevitable because there's just too much to know. In Python, for example, the LLM is going to spit out yields, async functions, try/finally, maybe even something like a while/else, or with recent training data, the walrus operator. I can't expect even a fraction of 3rd year students who have worked with Python since their first year to know about all these things, and based on how students approach projects where they have studied all the relevant constructs but have forgotten some, I'm not optimistic seeing these things will magically become learning opportunities. Student projects are better off working with a limited subset of full programming languages that the students have actually learned, and using AI coding assistants as currently designed makes this impossible. Beyond that, even when the "assistant" just introduces bugs using syntax the students understand, even through their 4th year many students struggle to understand the operation of moderately complex code they've written themselves, let alone written by someone else. Having access to an AI that will confidently offer incorrect explanations for bugs will make this worse.
To be sure a small minority of students will be able to overcome these problems, but that minority is the group that has a good grasp of the fundamentals and has broadened their knowledge through self-study, which earlier AI-reliant classes would make less likely to happen. In any case, I care about the average student, since we already have plenty of stuff about our institutions that makes life easier for a favored few while being worse for the average student (note that our construction of that favored few as the "good" students is a large part of this problem).
To summarize: because AI assistants introduce excess code complexity and difficult-to-debug bugs, they'll slow down rather than speed up project progress for the average student on moderately complex projects. On a fixed deadline, they'll result in worse projects, or necessitate less ambitious project scoping to ensure adequate completion, and I expect this remains broadly true through 4-6 years of study in most programs (don't take this as an endorsement of AI "assistants" for masters students; we've ignored a lot of other problems along the way).
There's a related problem: solving open-ended project assignments well ultimately depends on deeply understanding the problem, and AI "assistants" allow students to put a lot of code in their file without spending much time thinking about the problem or building an understanding of it. This is awful for learning outcomes, but also bad for project success. Getting students to see the value of thinking deeply about a problem is a thorny pedagogical puzzle at the best of times, and allowing the use of AI "assistants" makes the problem much much worse. This is another area I hope to see (or even drive) pedagogical improvement in, for what it's worth.
1/2
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries C, Episode 12 - Death-Watch
SERVALAN: But I don't think of YOU as an enemy, Avon. I think of YOU as a future friend.
AVON: [Puts his arm about Servalan and pulls her against him] Your plan had better be fireproof, Servalan, or I'll see you burn with it. [Kisses her. While continuing to hold Servalan he activates com in bracelet behind her back.] Cally?
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialToday's bike ride to work was a bit rough when I got to Hampton Avenue. There's a 0.65 mile stretch between Mayfair and 124th that can be brutal. Last week wasn't as bad so I think I just need to time it a bit better with the oncoming traffic.
I actually got forced onto the sidewalk for a bit due to construction barrels, the super narrow "bike lane", and overly aggressive drivers.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialTL;DR: spending money to find the cause of autism is a eugenics project, and those resources could have been spent improving accommodations for Autistic people instead.
To preface this, I'm not Autistic but I'm neurodivergent with some overlap.
We need to be absolutely clear right now: the main purpose is *all* research into the causes of autism is eugenics: a cause is sought because non-autistic people want to *eliminate* autistic people via some kind of "cure." It should be obvious, but a "cured autistic person" who did not get a say in the decision to administer that "cure" has been subjected to non-consensual medical intervention at an extremely unethical level. Many autistic people have been exceptionally clear that they don't want to be "cured," including some people with "severe autism" such as people who are nonverbal.
When we think things like "but autism makes life so hard for some people," we're saying that the difficulties in their life are a result of their neurotype, rather than blaming the society that punished & devalues the behaviors that result from that neurotype at every turn. To the extent that an individual autistic person wants to modify their neurotype and/or otherwise use aids to modify themselves to reduce difficulties in their life, they should be free to pursue that. But we should always ask the question: "what if we changed their social or physical environment instead, so that they didn't have to change themselves?" The point is that difficulties are always the product of person x environment, and many of the difficulties we attribute to autism should instead be attributed to anti-autistic social & physical spaces, and resources spent trying to "find the cause of autism" would be *much* better spent trying to develop & promote better accommodations for autism. Or at least, that's the case if you care about the quality of life of autistic people and/or recognize their enormous contributions to society (e.g., Wikipedia could not exist in anything near its current form without autistic input). If instead you think of Autistic people as gross burdens that you'd rather be rid of, then it makes sense to investigate the causes of autism so that you can eventually find a "cure."
All of that to say: the best response to lies about the causes of autism is to ask "What is the end goal of identifying the cause?" instead of saying "That's not true, here's better info about the causes."
#autism #trump
P.S. yes, I do think about the plight of parents of autistic kids, particularly those that have huge struggles fitting into the expectations of our society. They've been put in a position where society constantly bullies and devalues their kid, and makes it mostly impossible for their kid to exist without constant parental support, which is a lot of work and which is unfair when your peers get the school system to do a massive amount of childcare. But in that situation, your kid is in an even worse position than you as the direct victim of all of that, and you have a choice: are you going to be their ally against the unfair world, or are you going to blame them and try to get them to confirm enough that you can let the school system take care of them, despite the immense pain that that will provoke? Please don't come crying for sympathy if you choose the later option (and yes, helping them be able to independently navigate society is a good thing for them, but there's a difference between helping them as their ally, at their pace, and trying to force them to conform to reduce the burden society has placed on you).
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzMailbag: Comparing Prescott to Hurts? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-comparing-prescott-to-hurts
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialHow popular media gets love wrong
Had some thoughts in response to a post about loneliness on here. As the author emphasized, reassurances from people who got lucky are not terribly comforting to those who didn't, especially when the person who was lucky had structural factors in their favor that made their chances of success much higher than those is their audience. So: these are just my thoughts, and may not have any bearing on your life. I share them because my experience challenged a lot of the things I was taught to believe about love, and I think my current beliefs are both truer and would benefit others seeing companionship.
We're taught in many modern societies from an absurdly young age that love is not something under our control, and that dating should be a process of trying to kindle love with different people until we meet "the one" with whom it takes off. In the slightly-less-fairytale corners of modern popular media, we might fund an admission that it's possible to influence love, feeding & tending the fire in better or worse ways. But it's still modeled as an uncontrollable force of nature, to be occasionally influenced but never tamed. I'll call this the "fire" model of love.
We're also taught (and non-boys are taught more stringently) a second contradictory model of love: that in a relationship, we need to both do things and be things in order to make our partner love us, and that if we don't, our partner's love for us will wither, and (especially if you're not a boy) it will be our fault. I'll call this the "appeal" model of love.
Now obviously both of these cannot be totally true at once, and plenty of popular media centers this contradiction, but there are really very few competing models on offer.
In my experience, however, it's possible to have "pre-meditated" love. In other words, to decide you want to love someone (or at least, try loving them), commit to that idea, and then actually wind up in love with them (and them with you, although obviously this second part is not directly under your control). I'll call this the "engineered" model of love.
Now, I don't think that the "fire" and "appeal" models of love are totally wrong, but I do feel their shortcomings often suggest poor & self-destructive relationship strategies. I do think the "fire" model is a decent model for *infatuation*, which is something a lot of popular media blur into love, and which drives many (but not all) of the feelings we normally associate with love (even as those feelings have other possible drivers too). I definitely experienced strong infatuation early on in my engineered relationship (ugh that sounds terrible but I'll stick with it; I promise no deception was involved). I continue to experience mild infatuation years later that waxes and wanes. It's not a stable foundation for a relationship but it can be a useful component of one (this at least popular media depicts often).
I'll continue these thoughts in a reply, by it might take a bit to get to it.
#relationships
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 5: Robin Wall Kimmerer
I'm taking these liberty of changing my hashtag and expanding the intent of this list to include all non-men, although Kimerer is a woman so I'll get to more gender diversity later... I've also started planning this out more and realized that I may continue a bit beyond 20...
In any case, Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Indigenous academic biologist and excellent non-fiction author whose work touches on Potawotomi philosophy, colonialism (including in academic spaces), and ideas for a better future. Anyone interested in ecology, conservation, or decolonization in North America will probably be impressed by her work and the rich connections she weaves between academic ecology and Indigenous knowledge offer a critical opportunity to expand your understanding of the world if like me you were raised deeply enmeshed in "Western" scientific tradition. I suppose a little background in skepticism helped prepare me to respect her writing, but I don't think that's essential.
I've only read "Braiding Sweetgrass," but "Gathering Moss" and her more recent "The Serviceberry" are high on my to-read list, despite my predilection for fiction. Kimmerer incorporates a backbone of fascinating anecdotes into "Braiding Sweetgrass" that makes it surprisingly easy reading for a work that's philosophical at its core. She also pulls off an impressive braided organization to the whole thing, weaving together disparate knowledges in a way that lets you see both their contradictions and their connections.
The one criticism I've seen of her work is that it's not sufficiently connected to other Indigenous philosophers & writers, and that it's perhaps too comfortable of a read for colonizers, and that seems valid to me, even though (perhaps because I am a colonizer) I still find her book important.
An excellent author in any case, and one doing concrete ideological work towards a better world.
#20AuthorsNoMen
