If I had my understanding of the world that deeply shaken, I’d be in the throws of Lovecraftian insanity. I would have even less certainty of anything than the already low certainty I have now. That’s a ‘vampire problem.’ There’s no way of guessing what I might do if I was that fundamentally derealised.

Why is it anything? Poop shouldn’t have a face.

Realistically, it’s just media visibility. People were doing ML research for ages before LLMs became ‘the next big thing.’ The things developed by that research are often incredible but also incredibly narrow. ML based protein folding systems were big news among nerds several years ago. The amount you have to explain to even have the groundwork to explain how important that development is could never fit in a clickbait headline or article. You know what does fit in a clickbait title? ‘Celebrity ignoramus talks to chatbot, decides it’s God.’ ‘AI company insider says their product is the best thing since sliced bread and everyone who doesn’t pay them money will commit suicide.’ and ‘You are doomed because of AI. Click here to find out why.’ No one outside of the field those narrow ML systems are built for can understand their output. Anyone can understand ‘You’re absolutely right!’

People. I don’t see any mention of people in that itinerary. If you want to FEEL good about what you are doing, you need a human in there somewhere. People need social interaction, and the real deal, not something transactional. So, learn to be human. It’s a powerful skill that will help you survive turning yourself into a machine to analyse market data. Pick something you can do with other people. Play a game like chess face to face. Find a reading group at your local bookstore/library and learn some literary analysis. Whatever it is, just do it with people who aren’t there to seek more money.

Re-reading the Sundering duology by Jaqueline Carey at the moment. I loved it years ago so I’m checking to see if it really was that good or if I was just young. It has held up fairly well. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes fantasy.

Has there been a real life kissing booth? Always seemed fictional.

Palm oil isn’t the drug we’re all addicted to.

You’re still doing jars? Why not order from the manufacturer and get an IBC for over your bed?

I’ve always enjoyed it on honeyed brown rice cakes. There’s something to be said for the textural contrast of crispy vs unctuous.

All the dots. . com would become com. 192.168.1.1 would become 19216811. All mentions of dippin dots would be affected across many different areas, though no one would be able to see it. Take all the tops off lower case I’s. It’d be fun.

Not really. If someone is offering their view, it’s often because they want to be valued for what they bring to the conversation. There’s nothing wrong with someone wanting to feel valued. There’s just no way to filter the things people say based on their motivation because even the speakers are often unaware of it. That’s a level of self-awareness very few people can manage. If you could magically shut down all communication that wasn’t at least heavily based in the esteem drive, you’d have a nearly silent world.

It’s somewhat similar, but there are a few differences.

One, the instance matters. You’ll see users as BlahBlah@somesuch.blargh. The somesuch.blargh is the instance. An instance with .ml is often a sign of tankies. 196 has a high proportion of trans individuals. db0 leans technical. World is more conversational and broad. Lots of smaller ones around too with less defined reputations/communities. If you want to be a piece of shit, there are actually instances for that too. They just get defederated. (No one outside the instance will see it)

Two, advertisers are evil. There are no ads here. No one wants to make a community that advertisers approve of. The focus is on maintaining the community, not a business. You might see things that offend you a little. Unless it’s actually hateful or illegal, grow up and deal with it. If it is hateful and illegal, report it. Mods are generally pretty good in a lot of places. Learn to use ‘block user,’ ‘block community,’ and ‘block instance’ to improve your feed. There’s no company algorhythmically trying to force you to see things.

Three, the maturity level is higher here. Reddit is the big name so it has all the teens. Lemmy leans toward older, more technical, less popularity focused people. There’s still plenty of silliness, but it’s not usually the same kind seen elsewhere. It’s a good thing.

Four, no karma. Your points aren’t about you. They are to help sort post and comment quality individually. So, if you are getting some downvotes because you said something a group of people didn’t like, ignore it. The points won’t follow you to the next post or comment.

Rule 0 is still ‘Don’t be an asshole’ though.

Taking things seriously is a sign one cares. The alternative is apathy. To borrow a quote, either everything matters or nothing does, and much rather the former than the latter.

If you are uncomfortable being held to some kind of standard, I’m sure you can find communities for that. Anything with ‘shitpost’ in it’s name should fit.

I might have a weird view of things but I don’t want to get rid of royalty, just take away any authority they have over the lives of themselves and others. They already live off others’ work. Let’s keep them as national pets.

‘Who’s a good king? Who looks nice and waves for the people?’

‘Is it me, <racial slur>?’

‘No! No talking! Bad! Smack you on the nose with a rolled up replica magna carta.’

How would it make them go up? It currently costs zero, and adding the cost of that pay doesn’t change any other expenses for recruitment contractors. Even if they don’t view it as a significant cost relative to the full HR department, they’d still either ignore it and maintain current rates or view it as an avoidable expense and minimise it. I don’t see a mechanism for increasing them unless the law gave them some backdoors to, say, pay below standard wages while asking candidates to do work as part of the interview, effectively turning them into sub-minimum wage workers for businesses where that might be useful.

The point is the difference between the slacker on the shop floor and the slacker in the back office is just the job title, not the approach. If you can let other people do all the work while you collect a paycheck, you’re winning as a slacker.

Now, you might think, ‘but won’t they just get fired once their direct report gets wind of what they’re doing?’ The answer is yes, but if their direct report is also slacking, when would they see the employee’s work to know they need to be fired?

And if they’re a good liar, the slacker can say ‘Oops, yeah, I fucked up by trusting Soandso with that. I’ve fired them now so it won’t be a problem anymore.’ Then they burn that employee/contractor and keep collecting a paycheck. Depending on how lazy/stupid/gullible their management is, this can be repeated for years.

The world of business is FILLED with people more interested in their own leisure than the company’s benefit at every level. Everyone knows about the slackers making minimum wage but every time you hear a company has hired a contractor, that’s a manager looking at the choice between A) putting in the time and effort to hire an employee, train them, integrate them into the team, and manage and support them as they do necessary work, or B) just writing a check from company funds to the contracting company and taking off early to get a few beers with their buddies, and wouldn’t you know it, somehow it seems like the answer is always to spend the company’s money.

If you aren’t qualified and they have to pay for every interview, either you are being honest on your application and they aren’t interviewing you or you’re lying and you open yourself up to charges of fraud because you took money under false pretenses.

If companies have to pay for every interview, I doubt they’d do as many so you’d have a hard time getting enough interviews to make that viable.

A great many things that would be good for society are not feasible to be the first/only one to do. The world would be vastly safer if there were no nuclear weapons, but in a world where other nations have them it becomes self-negating to not have them. The only way to get the social benefit of all companies doing something is to legally mandate it so there is no disadvantage.