@ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world

ElectroVagrant

@ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world

Another traveler of the wireways.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ElectroVagrant,

Brings to mind this NSFW ('cause light horror) short film “Circles”

ElectroVagrant, (edited )

Original article: reuters.com/…/biden-whats-happening-gaza-is-not-g…

It’s pretty clear to me Biden’s trying to thread the needle on this in a gruesome way. The argument seems to follow the form of: civilian deaths are collateral damage, this is unfortunate but this is war and they are not purposely being targeted and so this is not genocide.

However that almost willfully ignores the denial and blocking of aid to the same affected civilians, which is a deliberate action that despite the cover story being to prevent it reaching Hamas, falls entirely flat as regardless, it results in direct suffering and death of the civilians. I say almost because some small efforts have been made to push back against the denial of aid, but as is evident to anyone monitoring the situation, these efforts are all far too small to address the widespread suffering and death of the Gazan people.

This whole semantics game around genocide is simply disgusting. You know those in government know exactly what people mean when they’re calling it that, they want an end to the killing and an end to the deaths of civilians, whether from military strikes or denial of aid.

ElectroVagrant,

when you simply become the tail I think that makes you like a ferret, or other roaming furry cylinders

hmm, fluffy ferrets…

ElectroVagrant,

when you get cc’d on an email and wait till the right moment to send the CharCoal image you’ve had waiting for this moment

ElectroVagrant,

Once I thought and did the thing then realized the thought was the thing to do and then it kept going and going and…

ElectroVagrant,

You might try different media if you haven’t already, as in, instead of pencil/pen and paper, maybe colored pencils or markers. Maybe even try getting some black paper and trying to draw with white color pencils instead.

I’m sure you may have tried a variety of things over the years, so I’m just spitballing, but also if you’re trying to dive into the deep end with more complex drawings, you might revisit and really hone the fundamentals. Fundamentals being like getting clean lines by practicing drawing those over and over till you can get a nice, sharp line (which often isn’t a single pencil/brush stroke!).

Once you have those down you may move on to the simple shapes, squares, triangles, circles, and try to recognize how those are put together for more complex forms. It’s a tough skill to get down, without a doubt (I’m not some proficient artist personally), but it’s just that: a skill that takes not only practice but learning methodologies. One of the toughest parts with drawing is that there’s so many methods to go about it to figure out which helps you improve.

ElectroVagrant,

Jungle is a plant metropolis

ElectroVagrant,

oh, uh, for those unfamiliar: Shadowrun’s a tabletop RPG as well as a computer RPG with a cyberpunk setting but with fantasy creatures and magic mixed together

ElectroVagrant,

bummer, an ent using comms tech despite the classic trait of’em being against exploitative civilization didn’t click as much as I thought it might

more fun imagery for me! In my head it’s a clear visual of a cross between solar and cyberpunk. Then again, I don’t remember ents in Shadowrun, but people play the TTRPG a little fast and loose like D&D, so I stand by my OP thought

ElectroVagrant,

it’s 2% milk, 98% mystery fun

ElectroVagrant,

I agree on both points!

I like to try to add a little more levity around here, especially when it’s in the spirit of the original post!

Whatever happened to lemmy.film?

It had a few niche communities I would occasionally post to after the Reddit exodus but a couple months later I would post there and get no responses or votes. Going to lemmy.film now gives me an error message. Did they decide to shut it down or combine with another instance similar to FMHY? I am curious if they gave some kind...

ElectroVagrant,

I don’t know the specifics of what may have happened with Lemmy.film, so we’ll have to see if someone else may know.

As to what happens to posts to “their” communities, my rough understanding is that with the host server gone, federation either doesn’t occur or maybe attempts to reach the host but simply stops after some number of attempts. Upon failure I think it simply collects the posts on your home server/instance’s copy of the community.

Not sure what would happen if a new instance was spun up of Lemmy.film either from a backup or in general, but I’d imagine there’s some settings/adjustments that may be calibrated to prevent it getting a backlog of posts dumped on it causing it to get bogged down or crash.

As to questions specifically about the Lemmy software, you may try !lemmy_support or !lemmy, think either one would be okay for this.

ElectroVagrant,

At a glance this sounds even more intrusive than it’s been with Win10 (and maybe 11?), and sadly it’s no surprise as even without AI junk, I think the defaults with Win10 (and maybe 11) are to track your PC use to try to provide some “convenience” features, e.g. display of recently used programs/accessed files when you go to open a new desktop (Win key + Tab).

If they would be more transparent about this and indicate whether and how much of that info, “anonymized/depersonalized” or not, is being taken by them, I think people would still be understandably annoyed but more understanding; at least with an easy opt out or better still, the default being that you must opt in for any of it.

xsecur, to books
@xsecur@noc.social avatar

Enshittification of Libby & Overdrive. This was long time coming. This deserves attention and we need more independent libraries.
https://tweesecake.social/@weirdwriter/112465274302648993

@bookstodon @books #books #ebooks

ElectroVagrant,

Pulling the background link here to save people some clicks: buttondown.email/…/the-coming-enshittification-of…

With a few quotes to highlight the frustrating situation:

That’s because OverDrive, a private corporation, has a monopoly on managing the availability and distribution of ebooks and audiobooks for government-funded public libraries in North America. (I looked for exact current numbers, but turns out that would require the time and resources of a professional journalist.^1^ Best I could do: as of December 2019, OverDrive controlled digital lending for “more than 95% of public libraries in the US and Canada”.^2^)

Emphasis added.

Right away I saw that in June 2020, OverDrive was sold to global investment firm KKR. […] The private equity firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, I quickly learned, was either the inventor of, or an early pioneer in, basically all the Shitty Business Practices: leveraged buyouts, corporate raiding, vulture capitalism. They’ve been at it since the 1970s and they’re still going strong. […] Even in the world of investment capital, where evil is arguably banal, KKR is notoriously vile. They are the World Champions of Grabbing All The Money And Leaving Everyone Else In The Shit.

[…]

And if OverDrive goes belly-up at some point in the future, crushed by KKR’s leveraged debt, it’s going to take down access to the digital catalogs of nearly every public library in North America.

Emphasis added.

ElectroVagrant,

That’s unfortunate, yet what a wicked legacy of aircraft to leave behind! The Dragonfly looks really cool and like it’d be a wild ride to fly!

ElectroVagrant,

They mean it in the sense of new, hombrew NES games as I understand it, instead of new games that mimic the NES style

ElectroVagrant,

No reason really, and the video doesn’t suggest they’d be unable to. Its title is doing that regular clickbaity style of YouTube, but the content itself is interesting if you wondered what went into making these small games, and how some grew in size later in the NES’ existence as more was added to cartridges to enable more involved games.

ElectroVagrant,

Whoa, chonk for sure! Do the sprinkles inside move about?

ElectroVagrant,

That’s so cool! Appreciate all the detail as well!

ElectroVagrant,

Right? Also here’s how little I knew of it going in: I only knew the name of it and thought it might be an edgy show about some yakuza or something that was constantly going all out 😂

ElectroVagrant,

I think you’ll be in for a treat when you get to it!

ElectroVagrant, (edited )

In strict technical terms, yeah it’s okay, albeit with the shortcomings to be expected of a smaller development team. In terms of population and activity with this format, I think it may be at the top compared to alternatives as well.

There’s still others and other software options though for this format that people could try, which honestly may even be technically better, but lacking population/activity means they’re in an odd spot.

The first of these you’ll read about on here are likely Kbin/Mbin, possibly followed by PieFed or still-in-development Sublinks. Kbin/Mbin is definitely the runner-up in terms of federated Reddit-alternatives, as it was one of the few options available at the time people were leaving Reddit.

PieFed and Sublinks have emerged more recently with different priorities and approaches compared to Lemmy, but with the same desire to offer a federated option for people to deploy.

The last you may read about around here would be of stuff like Discuit, Lobste.rs, Raddle (and any other sites built with Postmill), Tildes, and the like, which are all most like Reddit in terms of their being stand-alone sites, unconnected to any others running the same underlying server software. However each of these, I think, may have lower population than the cumulative population of the Lemmy network of sites.

All that said, cutting to your last question: ultimately it heavily depends on the instance/site you settle into.

Lemmy isn’t a monolith, which is both its greatest strength and weakness compared to Reddit. You may be able to find a Lemmy instance/site that heavily blocks out politics and moderates lightly, but the irony of this is that it means it may have to be overly-policed to achieve that, and might appear less active in the process from heavy disconnection/defederation from any instances/sites that permit political posts/discussion.

Right now though, much of Lemmy is heavily political, and it’s arguably because of lax moderation to keep political posts/discussions to relevant communities, which is itself probably in part because of lacking moderation tools to enable lighter touches to redirect posts/discussions.

Nevertheless, it’s possibly the best option fitting the format available at the moment given the rest, but if Lemmy and federation doesn’t suit you you might check out Tildes or Discuit. Although be advised: Tildes remains invite only for now.

Links to all options/alternatives mentioned:

One last point, I swear, but if you do stick around and just want to chat about tv shows, movies, and music, I’d recommend visiting:

!moviesandtv
!movies
!music
!casualconversation

Honestly I think any general/casual discussion community would welcome posts about those subjects as well, which there are a number of across Lemmy sites to check out.

ElectroVagrant, (edited )

I am very good at being online so I am definitely not just getting around to mentioning that I cross-posted this to our peer community !casualconversation where some others have responded with some of the active communities they’ve found: lemmy.world/post/14734186

If you’ve any you’d like to add, comments are open here as well!

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