ffmike

ffmike, 10 months ago

Yes. If you set a display name, it displays without the "@". If you leave the display name blank, it displays the username with the "@".

ffmike, 10 months ago

That I do not know for sure. But you can get the username by hovering over their display name.

ffmike, 10 months ago

And just like DEI teams, ethics teams will be easy to cut back on if a company runs into economic trouble.

ffmike, 10 months ago

The dropdown lets you select the language of your target audience (or at least I find that the easiest way to think about it). If you select "English" then only people who select "English" in their settings will see that post.

But because most people leave their settings at the default "Undetermined" those people won't see a post that's marked as "English".

So for the moment, the best practice is to just ignore that dropdown and leave everything as "Undetermined".

The warning banner looks to be duplicated from the Settings page, where it actually makes sense.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Yes, both the settings and post language selections are multiselect. But it feels like there's a chicken & egg problem here: until something is done to encourage users off the default (which I would guess many don't even know is an option), changing post language will severely limit its reach.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Avoiding dupes is, I think, an important one. We've had multiple instances on Beehaw of the same story showing up more than once. If you try to post a duplicate link, Lemmy will let you know (by showing the previous copies to you as crossposts). It's harder to make sure you're not posting the second or third story from a different source on the same topic. Perhaps we can just encourage people to search before posting.

I'd like the rules to at least ask people to add an image description in their original post. https://beehaw.org/post/686974 would be good to link to here.

And given the nature of many posts in the news, I think it would be good for this community to remind people to be(e) nice in their discussions.

ffmike, 10 months ago

The article here takes a bit stronger stance than "losing debates because of tweets":

The NSDA has allowed hundreds of judges with explicit left-wing bias to infiltrate the organization. These judges proudly display their ideological leanings in statements—or “paradigms”—on a public database maintained by the NSDA called Tabroom, where they declare that debaters who argue in favor of capitalism, or Israel, or the police, will lose the rounds they’re judging.

The article calls out five judges for being biased. The NSDA site shows 47,168 paradigms. So, while there may be an issue, there doesn't seem to be much proof here. It could equally well be that the author is cherry-picking instances that fit his ideology.

ffmike, 10 months ago

My own high school debate days are decades in the past. From that perspective, though, the fact that you can easily look up the judges' biases, and so prepare for them, is a huge advance that we would never have even dreamed of. To me that seems like explicitly addressing biases in a useful way.

I'd be interested in a more serious analysis that went through all 47,000+ paradigms and categorized biases so some non-anecdotal conclusions could be drawn. That would take a lot more time and money than picking out a few instances that the writer knows about.

And yes, if an alternative ends up being liked better by debate coaches, people will go in that direction. It's entirely possible that debate competition will end up being as fragmented as national politics.

ffmike, 10 months ago

With Michigan being a pretty competitive state, and the unions being largely Democrat, I assume this is his pitch to try to pry some of those union voters away by scaring them about their jobs.

And yeah, decimate. "I do not think this word means what you think it means."

ffmike, 10 months ago

Clearly someone needs to figure out how to get an old Furby to interact with a new Furby.

(Of course, someone has already done ChatGPT + Furby)

ffmike, 10 months ago

Beehaw's community mods and admins have discussed this particular use case, and so far we haven't seen anything that we'd be comfortable having on Beehaw. The summary bots have (so far) too many problems with posting misleading summaries to make them a good addition to thoughtful conversation.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Their web site is down, but their Github account is currently still available, with 3D printing files and software for their microlab.

ffmike, 10 months ago

There are lots of B Corps out there these days, which I would say have at least some soul, but Dr. Bronner's is definitely something in its own class. I was surprised to discover Dr. Bronner's chocolate bars at the natural foods store the other day - honestly nothing special as far as taste goes, but the labels do have some of that classic vibe.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Here in the middle of America, it's not SUVs - it's full-size pickup trucks. Just as much of an ecological and safety disaster though.

ffmike, 10 months ago

I'm pretty sure that discovering a new isotope while working on your MS guarantees that you'll get the degree.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Telling one person that they can help out by not having kids is rather different from, as the dictionary says

the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group

Even suggesting to a whole group of people not to have kids is not the same as killing them.

So no, it's not a logical conclusion. It's illogical rhetoric. But you do you, I guess.

ffmike, 10 months ago

You appear to be unable or unwilling to distinguish between "preventing births" and "voluntarily choosing not to have children."

Not sure why you're quite so interested in escalating the rhetoric here (forced sterilization? in a thread that started with individual action to save honeybees? really?) but in view of the first rule of Beehaw ("Be(e) nice") I'm not interested in joining you.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Yep, I get it. Effectively block ads and javascript and it doesn't much matter what a site wants to do. I skip the few that have actually effective paywalls (as opposed to just putting a div over content on the page - as far as I'm concerned, if it's downloaded to my computer, I am allowed to read it). Of course, the sites that load up on ads tend to be pretty low-quality content anyhow.

ffmike, 10 months ago

Yes, and? I'm a moderator in a different community. That's different from being on the admin team (admins have many powers mods do not) and I'm not a moderator here which gives me no special options compared to any other user.