1dry

A reminder that all of the largest Proton subreddits (r/ProtonMail, etc.) are moderated by Proton employees themselves. Linked sub is community-moderated.

Trump and his acute destabilizing actions are the symptoms of the chronic, broad, deep destabilization of our society in the form of differing perceived realities, caused by....the internet and its exploitation by sick, greedy social media founders, investors/owners, and, yes, employees.

Expressing frustration at the pervasive tendency of technologists to look at everything, including art which is a reflection of peoples' subjective realities, with an "at-scale" lens, e.g., "let's collect ALL of it, and categorize it, and develop technologies to mash it all together and vomit out derivative averages with no compelling humanist point of view"

I hope readers will feel our frustration.

updated - thank you commenters for making it clear that my sentiment was not clear

Thank god we are taking care of the “researchers working on things like music classification and generation” ! As long as we can convince ourselves we have a sound analysis of it, no need to support and defend people making actual art right. So much already made, who needs more?

This is not to defend Spotify (death to it), but to state that opening all of this data for even MORE garbage generation is a step in the wrong direction. The right direction would be to heavily legislate around / regulate companies like Spotify to more fairly compensate the musicians who create the works they train their slop generators with.

Yuck. Just to make it easier to train slop machines. The point of art is not to have completionist archives of EVERYthing that’s ever been made! Let it die. Death is the most natural part of life. Art is about the human experience, not “for researchers”.

The point is human connection. Art is a living reflection and record of human experience. Art will persevere- the kinds of folks who prioritize what they like based on popularity were never the supporters artists (contrast with craftspeople trying to make a buck) counted on in the first place. Enjoy your derivative slop - we’ll continue on our imperfect, messy, individual, human artistic lives.

What is wrong with that, especially as it facilitates the creator's being able to earn income from their irreplaceable work?

That's great of you to buy the book as well, major kudos. I would bet most are not as altruistic as you.

Do not traditional libraries and their ebook lending systems, however inconvenient, provide the same service? All one needs to do is be patient until the book you are interested in becomes available. In the meantime, maybe you can check out a different book that is available that you might not have discovered otherwise!

So you optimize text spamming?

> I'm honestly not sure if I'm capable of working in tech anymore at this point and that's doing quite a number of any selfesteem I had.

You know, as Mr. Rogers said, "Not your toys, they're just beside you, but it's you I like" Your value isn't dependent on being able to work in tech or what you have. Go out, grab a coffee, wonder at the autumn leaves, do something nice for someone, see where that leads.

Right, yet we do track all kinds of well-being related metrics, there are happiness indices and the like, yet it seems no one optimizes for them.

I think what's selfish is romanticizing "so many more [hypothetical] lives" while real lives now are smothered for the sake of malignant capitalism. Perhaps the fact the the former takes no self sacrifice makes it an appealing viewpoint.