What does OC mean in this context?

This reminds me of an excellent episode of Dark Net Diaries, “Jeremy from Marketing”. https://pca.st/episode/52252c9e-e4a8-42f6-85f5-f162ec3f6b40

Vim has long since won the war. I say that as an emacs user who is familiar with using vim because it’s installed by default on the vast majority of computers I interact with nowadays

Speaking as someone who’s not American, I lost hope for her campaign when she made a show of getting endorsements from some pretty reprehensible Republicans (including but not limited to Dick Cheney).

It’s still fairly new research. I think the authors recently won an Ignoble prize for it

I don’t have input on cameras specifically, but I have gone pretty deep into trying to understand how to maximise security and interoperability in smart home stuff, through open source control.

A starting point for the you-in-control app to use for smart devices is Home assistant. I was surprised by how easy it was to set up self hosted smart home stuff, largely because there’s loads of guides that build around home assistant. So whether a particular camera works with home assistant is a good starting search filter

People didn’t so much vote for Labour, as they voted for “not Conservative”. Reform (Nigel Farage’s party) and the Greens also made gains, but not very much due to the UK’s first past the post system. Labour won via a “loveless landslide”, and in the months since their victory, they seem to be determined to stand for even less than they did at the election (which already was very little)

For a while, I was subscribed as a patron to Elisabeth Bik’s Patroeon. She’s a microbiologist turned “Science Integrity Specialist” which means she investigates and exposes scientific fraud. Despite doing work that’s essential to science, she has struggled to get funding because there’s a weird stigma around what she does; It’s not uncommon to hear scientists speak of people like her negatively, because they perceive anti-fraud work as being harmful to public trust in science (which is obviously absurd, because surely recognising that auditing the integrity of research is necessary for building and maintaining trust in science).

Anyway, I mention this because it’s one of the most dystopian things I’ve directly experienced in recent years. A lot of scientists and other academics I know are struggling financially, even though they’re better funded than she is, so I can imagine that it’s even worse for her. How fucked up is it for scientific researchers to have to rely on patrons like me (especially when people like me are also struggling with rising living costs).

It’s from 2024, but some of the best coverage of the use of AI in this genocide is from 972mag, a journalistic outlet whose team includes Israelis and Palestinians. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Thanks for that, I appreciate it.

I feel like they probably would taste nice. Maybe composting them would be better

I started keeping an informal “changelog” for my PC, because I was burnt out on reinstalling my OS every few months. I can be a bit patchy at actually updating it, but when I do, it’s so refreshing to ask “why the hell did I install $software ?” and then to check my logs and find that I installed it while trying to solve $problem, but that it didn’t work and I ended up solving the problem a different way, but forgot to remove $software. It’s so nice to not be scared of breaking stuff when I’ve forgotten why I did things a certain way.

Stuff like this is why I love xkcd. I feel this in my soul

Noted, thank you

I was talking about this recently with someone (read: ranting as they nodded sympathetically) and I finished up by saying “what’s the point of ‘smart’ tech if the humans who use it are steadily disempowered and ultimately, made less smart?”

I’ve recently been dabbling in HomeAssistant and learning how to set things up properly feels like it’s been making me more smart.

Most of my life, I’ve had people scrutinizing me and believing my emotions to be inauthentic because I didn’t contort my face in the precise manner they expect of people feeling a particular emotion.

Given that AI is well documented to reproduce existing biases found in the training data, I’m betting that this is extra assholish to autistic people.

One of my favourite jokes I’ve ever been told was from a German friend.

How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb?

One. We are a very efficient people.

His deadpan delivery had me in stitches. I am convinced that the stereotype about Germans not having a sense of humour is in fact a German invention, so they can mess with that expectation to be hilarious when we least expect it

I have a random question, if you would indulge my curiosity: why do you use ‘þ’ in place of ‘th’? It’s rare that I see people using thorn in a modern context, and I was wondering why you would go to the effort?

(þis question brought to you by me reflecting on your use of þorn, and specifically how my initial instinctual response was to be irked because it makes þings harder to read (as someone who isn’t used to seeing ‘þ’). However, I quickly realised þat being challenged in þis way is one of þe þings I value about conversations on þis platform, and I decided þat being curious would be much more fun and interesting than being needlessly irritable (as it appears some oþers opt to be, given how I sometimes see unobjectionable comments of yours gaþer inexplicable downvotes. I have written þis postscriptum using “þ” because I þought it would be an amusing way to demonstrate þe good-faiþedness of my question, as I’m sure you get asked þis a lot))

“Being in poverty doesn’t relegate one to always staying in poverty.”

I agree, but not everyone who makes good choices is able to escape poverty, nor is it the case that everyone who falls into poverty gets there through making poor choices; there’s a tremendous amount of luck involved.

You’re right that there’s basically nothing that an individual can do against the assholes in government and the injustices they perpetuate. However, it’s important to remember the strength of the social safety net varies significantly across history, and that just because things are fucked up now doesn’t mean it can’t get better (or worse). In my country, for example, although we are fortunate to have universal, taxpayer funded healthcare, the NHS is struggling after a couple of decades of chronic underinvestment, which has caused the quality of services to degrade in many respects. So much has changed in a relatively short time, and by looking at relatively recent history, it’s apparent that change is possible.

I imagine you would argue that even under a far more comprehensive welfare state, that government assistance can’t be a replacement for making good choices for oneself, and I would agree with that. My hope would be that under a more compassionate system, it would mean that people who make good choices would be more likely to actually be able to improve their socioeconomic circumstances due to being less beholden to luck.

“I don’t need any lecture about not understanding how “poverty works”.”

I hear you, and I apologise for offending you. Rereading my comment, I realise that my tone was unnecessarily harsh and presumptuous. However, I maintain that overemphasizing individual choices isn’t productive here, because there’s only so much one person can do. It seems like one thing that we are very much on the same page about is how fucked up the world is. Along those lines, I worry that it could be a net harm if we put too much pressure on ourselves by expecting ourselves (or others) to be able to struggle our way out of poverty. In much the same way that I believe that political change is possible, but that it’s important to not expect radical change is possible overnight, I also think that we need to be realistic about how little agency we have in this system. Individual choices do matter, and they can help tip the scales in our favour, even if we are still super reliant on luck. However, it often does come down to luck, and we do ourselves a disservice by believing that this system is meritocratic. It sucks to acknowledge, but sometimes even the best choices available to us are just harm reduction, and all we can hope for is that an opportunity to do more will come along.

I appreciate your point about survival tips though, because it really resonated with my own experience. I have also been homeless, and although it was a tremendously stressful experience, I have a surprising number of fond memories from that period as a result of the solidarity forged with other people who were struggling. This is part of why I apologised above — even if there’s much that we don’t agree on, that shouldn’t mean that we can’t be in solidarity with each other. My original comment was perhaps not conducive to that, so I appreciate your thoughtful reply.

That’s incredible, thank you for sharing