@sxan@midwest.social
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

sxan

@sxan@midwest.social 

<span style="color:#323232;">       🅸 🅰🅼 🆃🅷🅴 🅻🅰🆆. 
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 𝖋𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍 
</span>

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sxan, (edited )
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Laissez-faire economics and libertarian ideals (a-la Atles Shrugged) destroy society. I don’t know that anyone has nailed down a good balance of personal liberty, social justice, and (individual) wealth; I suspect one of the nordic models is closest, but fuck if I know.

What I’m pretty sure of is that countries with laissez-faire models are like virulent diseases. They’re aggressive and successful, until they kill the host and collape. To compete, other countries have to adopt similar models. I think the host in this metaphor is the planet, but we’re seeing some indication that the social immune system in the US is responding, with a resurgence on union activity. And it’s possible that one of nature’s balancing tools (diseases such as COVID, SARS, etc) will help with the environmental impact; I don’t see that as a global community we’re doing so well at managing our environmental resources responsibly, so if nature doesn’t cause a great purge, we may simply extinct ourselves and moot the issue.

Edit: Whilst I’m preaching… I believe capitalism is the best economic system we’ve found. I believe some tools in capitalism have unintended, and deleterious consequences. In particular, the stock market, and usury. Both are tools that generate money directly from money (“investing” and “interest”), and both IMHO are responsible for most of the excesses of capitalism.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I absolutely believe a lot of companies outsource simply because they don’t want to build an internal organ to do it. Even in government, despite what Conservatives believe, most organization heads are pretty focused on core competency and press to use outsourced resources. This latter also promoted by heavy lobbying by the companies selling the services.

This is a situation of “never attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity.” Sure, some are motivated by malice or subterfuge, but most are probably just buying services because they have other things they’d rather focus on.

How is it even possible/practical to obey traffic laws?

I’m talking specifically about obeying the speed limit, doing a full stop at stop signs, etc. After receiving a speeding ticket for doing 53 in a 50, As an experiment I went a full day obeying all traffic laws 100% and it caused so much road rage. For example, there is a 2 lane road near me with a speed limit of 50 (where I...

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I think it depends largely on where you live. There’s a reason it’s called the “California Stop.” And arpund Boston, the shoulder is a completely additional, auxiliary lane, which so. many. people. use.

There’s a funny video where a group of people got on the Atlanta 285 loop, spread out across all lanes, and did the speed limit for a few miles. They had a camera set up on an overpass to watch the procession come around a curve. They say they did it to show how stupid the speed limit on the loop was, and I’m sure it was infuriating for the miles of cars backed up behind them, but… yeah. It showed few people there obeyed the speed limit. I don’t know if this is the original; I don’t remember it being edited by a spastic gerbil, but that’s what I could find before I lost interest.

Getting a ticket for going 3 over is silly. That part does seem contrived, and if contested OP could easily get that thrown out. I suspect either OP was being a douche in some other way, and the cop put something down to harrass them, or they dropped a “0” in the retelling.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Could this be generalized to: if the couple is in obvious disagreement about something in the wedding, it’s a bad sign? Are themed weddings a bad sign, even if both partners are enthusiastic about the theme?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I’m not the person you asked, but current deep learning models just generate output based on statistic probability from prior inputs. There’s no evidence that this is how humans think.

AI should be able to demonstrate some understanding of what it is saying; so far, it fails this test, often spectacularly. AI should be able to demonstrate inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning.

There are some older AI models, attempting to similar neural networks, could extrapolate and come up with novel, often childlike, ideas. That approach is not currently in favor, and was progressing quite slowly, if at all. ML produces spectacular results, but it’s not thought, and it only superficially (if often convincingly) resembles such.

Recommendations for a FOSS Cross-Platform Note-Taking Application

Up to now I’ve been using Simplenote, which has a Linux client (but also Android & iOS) & supports live collaboration on notes. However, Simplenote hasn’t had a meaningful update for a long time, & it’s recently been behaving strangely, e.g. notes undeleting themselves, line duplications & undeletions....

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I just sync a directory called “Notes” everywhere and use whatever text editor is most comfortable on any given platform to edit Markdown documents. Helix on desktop, Markor (or, increasingly, Simple Text Editor) on Android. For checklists, same thing except I use todo.txt for the file format, and the todo script on the desktop and Simpletask on Android.

I have been looking for a self-hosted, concurrent collaborative web editor, as asking my wife to write Markdown is a bit much, and the syncing becomes more complex, but I haven’t settled on something.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Thanks, Hedgedoc looks like a neat project. It’s focused on Markdown, which is nice, and the preview is handy. The editor requires some knowledge of Markdown, and willingness to use it in some instances, which means it won’t be the best option for my wife. While she’s certainly capable of learning markdown, she has no willingness - it’s one of those areas where she just can’t be arsed to fuss with it. Embedding images, for example, and even seeing the markup while she’s editing is distracting for her.

Anyway, I need to find some WYSIWIG editor. If it saves and loads markdown, all the better, but it’s more important that the editor lool Word-ish, which is what she has to use at work.

Thanks for the pointer, though!

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I had this same paper issue! I solved it by using heavier weight paper. I think it’s just wear making parts looser. I think it just sincerely can’t grab the cheap, thin sheets as well as it used to. If I were more mechanically minded, I’d be tempted to get in there and see if there was anything I could adjust. But just using heavier paper solved it, so I haven’t gotten to the “if it doesn’t work, force it; if it breaks, it needed replacing anyway” stage.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Right? I was like, 🎶 “one of these things is not like the others…”

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I know this doesn’t answer your question, but it’s relatively easy to own music you pay for. I mostly use Amazon (from which you can buy and download mp3s), but 7digital offers FLAC encoded music, and I’m not sure they evem.offer streaming - it’s buy-and-download.

There are many reasons to pirate, but I don’t think not being able to actually buy music is one of them. What music are you not able to find buy-and-download options for?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Would you mind providing an example of music not available to purchase and download, but is available streaming (which is what OP was implying with being fed up with “not being able to own music they paid for”). I know there are garage bands where digital music is unavailable, but that includes streaming. What music is not available for purchase?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Is it? Gnome loads in a ton of services and feels pretty bloated to me. I don’t notice that it’s any lighter than KDE, and it often feels more sluggish.

But, they’re both desktops and are loading in a bunch of stuff whether you use it or not, so you’re right that they’re pretty comparable.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Used i3 for years, tried bspwm. Liked the concept - absolutely loathed the community. Ended on herbstluftwm.

If Wayland ever fixes hdpi scaling, I’ll be looking for something that works the same way: configuration is entirely through scripting, not config files. I don’t think I’ll ever give that up, now that I’ve discovered it.

It looks like hyprland uses config files, right?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

If there"s one thing I love but am perpetually frustrated by, it’s how slow the US legal system is. Yes, “finally.” OTOH, citizens have rights and one of them is innocence until guilt is judged, and also that we try really hard to not let the general public, under the influence of the 5th Estate, be that judge. It’s super frustrating when it’s obvious to me that the person is guilty. It can also be extremely unbalanced, with people whe can afford better council getting better benefits-of-a-doubt than the poor. But in general, we have a pretty good system which - if I were ever caught in - has protections I’d be grateful for.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong, and I’m certainly no expert. However, I do know that Ukraine has long struggled with corruption, and has been making slow progress over the past couple of decades. And they will always have (there are always, in any conflict) a certain level of partisanship in their own ranks.

I’ve been mildly concerned about what could happen after the invasion; assuming Ukraine is successful, Zelenskyy’s popularity could make it easy for him to transition into a dictatorship. However, so far I’ve seen little to indicate that he’s anything other than a sincere, effective, and passionate leader – I like the guy, and I’m inclined to trust his judgement. He’s done unexpectedly well so far, and Ukraine under his leadership has been acting up to the highest ethical ideals of the EU.

Maybe Ukraine leadership is making a mistake, but maybe they know something us armchair Generals don’t.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Are you comparing a fictional character in a fictional story to a person performing IRL? You’re judging his performance in this crisis by hia previous career? Which careers pass your “ok to be voted into presidency” test?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Do you think they’re different than the ones codified in Article 2?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Are you kidding? I can’t tell if you’re kidding. “Dracula” is a real family name?

If you’re not kidding, I’m gonna be so pissed at my dad for not being a Dracula.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Ted Lasso, season 1, is spectacular. Season 2 wasn’t bad, either, but I felt they were stretching it a bit.

Anyway, one of the best comedy series in the past decade.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I love paintings that evoke what it must have been like when the world was wild; when you were really, impossibly removed from other humans. When wolves howled, and nature - and not your own stupidity - was your greatest danger.

I’m glad that I do not live back then, but it’s nice to think about from the comfort of my heated, air-conditioned home.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

No, I can’t say that I have. I could look him up and fomd out for myself, bur in the interest of conversation… what does he write? Historical fiction?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Oh! I read Call of the Wild, jesus, back in high school, I think. It may not have been my cuppa, since I didn’t look for more work by the author, but tastes change. I’ll have to check that out.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Are you asking why can’t a bad admin change the code so that they can more easily steal the password? They could, and this is what OP was saying about trusting the admin. What I was saying was that there are client-side auth mechanisms, where the admin never has access to the password. But Lemmy could also implement OAuth, or a similar federated identity pattern, where (again) the Lemmy admin never has access to any form of the password.

I’ve never run a Lemmy instance; it’s possible the server software supports SSO but few instances use it.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Why not?

I love mine, mainly because it’s so small when folded; it’s like in the œlden days, when small was cool and you could actually fit your phone in your pocket without cargo pants. Folded, it’s more robust than a candybar phone, and I don’t worry at all about sitting on it.

I look forward to better use of the 45° format, and standardization of the API for the cover screen (for more apps).

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Here you go (made on my phone with limited tooling: don’t judge me)

https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/cfa5a062-86be-4648-a837-4a01370d2673.jpeg

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