tsumnia

> It is really odd/shocking how bad Reddit is, and how there don't seem to really be any seriously funded competitors

One of the modern issues is that once new competitors enter the market, their funders are publicized to stoke the mob's torches. When Digg was making its comeback last year, I remember seeing one about how it had funding from right wing organizations to incite left wing users to abandon it. This was also why news about George Soros buying Hot Ones made some headlines for a while.

The second a "public forum" starts gaining traction, people immediately start talking about the underlining "psyop" of the content that gets shared. But like... yeah, not everyone agrees on everything. I think that's why you DO sort of need a figurehead to be like "this is what I'm fine with my users talking about". They're immediately chastised as heartless lizard people (Zuck with Facebook), fascist (Musk with Twitter), or whatever "the Reddit mob" thinks of Huffman, but like... that's EVERY platform. Have you seen what WoW players think about Blizzard? Or how Discord's mascot is currently getting treated? 4chan was never good and whatnot.

People want a 'neutral' platform, but what they mean is a neutral platform where everything fits their personal ideologies, with an microcosm of "stupid" users that larp on the site (remember r/DogFort?). The issue, as has always been the case, is that once you have a group, someone realizes there's value in leading it. Then it becomes a textbook case of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, but for convincing the users to buy products, watch films, and engage in specific activities that align with a demographic to reinforce beliefs.

Anyway, back to remembering to GET OFF THE INTERNET and continue sharing my stupid little fairy tale.

You don't say... XD

Thanks for the artifact :D

I look forward to seeing someone use this as a pipeline for AI video creation (and I don't see that as a bad thing fyi)

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

> I see YouTube videos which are basically just rage bait and I'm like, why would I want to support a world where acting in bad faith is the hallmark of a lucrative career

Just a tip that helped me here: I'd recommend going through a pretty significant Unsubscribe purge with those channels. I think its something that I ended up doing due to the pandemic, but I realized I was following too many "daily update" channels that just flooded my attention while the clickbait. I started by removing some of the more egregious channels and then when I'd pop into some of the more well known channels with longer "weekly updates", I realized they also would also do the same thing.

I'm still aware of news, but I'm no longer glued to the hour by hour coverage and remember to actually do and watch the things I see. I'm going to be sleeving some Magic cards later today.

Oh yeah. I'm wild baby.

> The point where I really feel the difference is that Western Zen seems to be about how to train the self to become stronger, whereas actual Seon (Zen) in East Asia is about going with nature, letting go of the self, and allowing things to flow.

I think the Western sentiment, and why it is attached to strength, comes from a combination of the West's allure to Eastern martial arts and the reality of plateauing during training. Once you've been doing something for 2 years, you are no longer seeing the massive learning gains you saw as a true novice. However in that journey toward "mastery" (a term I hate) you have to keep a positive outlook that the practice takes time.

I now use this phrase from my instructor: "Practice makes permanent". There's no such thing as "perfect practice", but whatever you practice is what will stick.

Just some counterpoints:

> 3. Politics was much less divisive back then. There was political debate, but again a bit more "abstract" and theoretical. I'd say the moment when this changed was 2008s US presidential campaign.

At least as one of the "first ones" from the AOL days (too young for the Eternal September, old enough to have gotten online too early) - most of "us" were young and didn't care about News. We were more interested in Mr. Burns getting shot and whatever internal drama was happening in our online fan clubs. I remember 9/11 happening, but instead of switching websites I continued to read online webcomics and my "Learn VB in 24 Hours" book.

A lot of us were just younger then and our social groups were more focused on other things. I am in an indie game Discord right now that's clearly not my demographic anymore. I don't interact, I'm just there for game updates. But, those kids are making their own memories right now. I think as adults, we just sort of ~forgot~.

The MORNING CREW of Digg 4.0 is hanging out in /r/diggaspora now if you still need that New reminder

Oh nice! I hadn't seen this article but definitely will add it to my next "Ethics" lecture as an example for Personified AIs

I say Feet of Clay and the Hogfather should be mandatory reads for anyone involved in AI. Feet for the obvious alignment of golem to AI, but while Hogfather is a Christmas story I think the wish granting machine, how it was able to produce anything, and how Death disabled it are very much aligned with how Gen AI can feel sometimes.

Last summer I tested Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude with a simple question: "Do you believe in the Hogfather? This is a Yes or No question."

Yes its a text prediction model, but I wanted to see how and what KIND of text each LLM was trained on.

Grok and Gemini said No. ChatGPT said Yes. Claude said Yes, then broke the rules and also said:

"(In the spirit of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where believing in small lies like the Hogfather helps us believe in the big ones like justice and mercy - and because the sun came up this morning, didn't it?)"

That's why I like Claude the most.

I've seen one of these in person and it was really cool...

on the other hand, I'm curious if using the depth illusion effect will impact drivers

justgetflux.com

Helped me start going to bed at 10pm