That’s like saying that famine and starvation is a perk of communism when someone like Mao fucks up. In both systems, what matters is trying to find the most efficient way to generate and distribute wealth. Profit in capitalism is a byproduct of what matters. It’s important for people to remember this so they don’t fall for MLMs, pyramid and Ponzi schemes.

I’m imagining this comment as an I Think You Should Leave sketch. A bunch of people are on a tour in a museum and Tim Robinson starts going off on more and more unhinged rants about every art work the tour guide presents.

use something without an algorithm.

Lemmy uses an algorithm.

In the 70s and 80s, there was trope in TV mostly if someone died in a car somehow at distance after a chase or gun battle, the horn would blare to indicate the person’s head fell on it similar to the ending of Chinatown. It disappeared after comedians started making jokes about it around 1986. If you saw those jokes today, they’d make no sense.

I had a similar problem in the late 90s except I was in my late 20s and a friend of mine got me into web developing. It took me a couple of weeks to realize I didn’t need to spend 30 minutes uploading my work via ftp over a 56K line to see the website. I could have just opened it up with a browser on my own computer. I wasted a lot of time.

You know, I was about to say that we should go back to no school zones like in the 80s since the speed limit was always just 30 around school zones anyway and people had to slow anyway when school let out because of all the traffic.

And I was wondering why school zones were created in the first place since there was no problem to fix. But now I remember that schools were once always in residential areas. But with school zones today, they can stick them on airport runways if they want to.

For me, it’s when it’s convenient. Opera has a VPN built in, so why not? I’m not so much worried about the government. I’m more worried about website owners.

The first couple of years MTV was more like “New Wave Rock Music” Television. So there really wouldn’t be rap, R&B, heavy metal, country, soft rock, jazz etc. It tended to be more artsy.

I prefer Krita. It’s easier to migrate from PS since they have similar GUI. Gimp is a pain to work with.

Also, it has autosave, I disable autosave, but you would like it.

I never understood the appeal of Discord or chat in general. Going all the way back to ICQ, I found it distracting. I’m guessing most people using it multitask, but I don’t so I always just sat there staring at the program waiting for a reply.

No no. You’re right. The algae rythmz just got me. I suddenly believe the Earth is flat and I’m going to go eat some Tide pods.

People who live in the suburbs live in very quiet environments. I live next to a busy street and personally I would like to see the inventor of the subwoofer eliminated.

You’ve never come across something and view it out of curiosity? The algorithms love when you branch out like that.

The problem with tech companies is that they’ve hyped up their tech so much that people actually think it’s sentient. Algorithms don’t love anything anymore than a cake recipe loves anything.

You’re being amazingly condescending to people being abused and guided by the algorithms, acting like you’re above it.

No, I’m being normally condescending which is difficult not to do when people are being pushed around by their computers and phones. It’s like somebody getting manipulated by a light switch. “Oh my god! It knows when I want the light to be on! Get out of my mind!” I’m not acting like I’m above it.

You’re 3 clicks away from conspiracy theories flooding your feed by way of “here’s how flat earthers explain gravity” because your chosen video, the bridge video, and the conspiracy videos are all using the same keywords.

So? I get curious and look at that stuff but I don’t go walled-eyed and start drooling. If I don’t look, it goes away. Or better yet, if it doesn’t go away, I search for videos I’m actually interested in.

You’re not noticing all the “harmless” unrelated suggested content from the games you don’t play like Factorio, Stardew, Hollow Knight, No Man’s Sky, or Star field but it’s there, just as predatory, seeing where you’ll bite. The overlapping keywords and viewerships are there. It’s exactly the same situation.

This is some weird conspiracy stuff. So Hollow Knight and Stardew Valley is trying to eat my soul? This is the same kind of cryptic talk that people freaking out about heavy metal and DnD in the 80s used.

This category association is how people get drawn into deep, dark corners. This is how segmented conspiracy groups converge. This is how the manosphere becomes an echo chamber. This is how self-harm and self-hate content puts someone in a hole by themselves.

That and the search bar. Most people who get stuck in that stuff are seeking it out. It’s what they’re interested in.

You’re acting morally superior without an actual understanding of what these platforms are designed to do.

No, you think these algorithms are way more effective than they actually are. A lot of what you describe happens because algorithms can’t read people’s minds. They’re just dumb machines. Bare in mind that chess AI from the 80s can wipe it’s ass with your face and those mighty algorithms were like 25KB in size. Just 5KB is enough to present challenging AI. This is enough to give the appearance of Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde having different personalities.

And it’s pretty well established at this point that social media is harmful to mental health, is it not?

In the same way it was well established that heavy metal was harmful to mental health in the 80s. The moral panics of the 80s seem goofy to people today, but back then it was just as deadly serious and real as the magical mystery algorithms hacking and controlling our brains today.

The evil YouTube wizardry is currently recommending me videos about the Flax engine, Blender, Satisfactory, and old clips of Norm MacDonald. If it’s telling you to kill yourself, that’s because you’re asking it how to. It’s just matching keywords in videos: user watched video with keywords Einstein, gravity, and relativity therefor, recommend Einstein Oppenheimer clip, Kerbal Space Program review, and Sabine Hossenfelder video. Replace those keywords with nasty ass shit and you’re getting more nasty ass shit.

On Reddit, I always find it hilarious when people out themselves when they’re complaining about porn sites sending them some weird ass videos. “Oh man! I don’t understand why Pornhub keeps showing me videos of women being strangled!” No, no, you don’t understand but I sure as hell do.

This is the modern version of the Judas Priest backwards masking case.

I don’t have as much faith in AI. The manpower cost to have the team keep feeding prompts till it came out with something useful and then the energy bill to generate all the duds probably cost 100x more than it would have to hire writers, actors, editors, a director, and a crew to build sets.

If ICQ held on for just two more years…

Looks like the skeleton is called La mort Saint-Innocent.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_mort_Saint-Innocent_Louvre_R.F.2625.jpg

“The Death of Saint Innocent”, alabaster statue present in the cemetery of the Innocents from 1530 to 1786. Artist unknown.

And the woman is Jeanne of Bourbon, Duchess of Bourbon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_of_Bourbon,_Duchess_of_Bourbon

“For the duchess tomb; a magnificent effigy tomb was commissioned with the effigy wearing a crown on her head and her feet resting on a lion, of which now only a stone sculpture of the cadaver monument type (now housed at the Louvre) remains.”

It’s normal in the US too. I’m on Medicaid and have a dentist and a podiatrist.

I’ve been using Libre Office Writer for at least 10 years. When I hear people complain about Word, I always think “You’re still using Word?”