MrsEaves

MrsEaves, 6 months ago

I can’t believe anyone is still using and even defending that word as a slur in 2023. It’s been over a decade since the push to remove references to it in federal law and honestly, even 20 years ago I felt seriously uncomfortable with any use of that word in an offhand or derogatory manner, and I didn’t even know about neurodivergence then.

I feel like the culture around usernames on Reddit really enables this kind of behavior, like it’s a game to be as offensive or lewd as possible for some folks there without “technically” breaking the rules. I deleted my account back when the Apollo drama happened and I definitely don’t miss that aspect of the culture. I’m sorry you encountered resistance to bringing this up, because you are right - it is not okay and it hasn’t been okay for years. I suspect a lot of the “just get over it” is folks who wrongly feel like there is no other option but to tolerate this culture in exchange for the ability to communicate and find support online, since the power you have as a user there is pretty much limited to “I’m leaving”.

MrsEaves, 9 months ago

Regarding the nightclub … the easiest way I’ve found to sort my feelings out on this was to imagine how hard I’d cringe if this skit was in my corporate-sponsored sexual harassment training. The answer is something around the level of crawl-in-a-hole-and-die rather than endure this skit, and I’m pretty sure “Director So and So is planning a company party and suggested a strip club. How would you respond?” was an actual scenario in one of the many I’ve had to sit through.

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

Nope, and I used to do a lot of Reddit - like several times a day, and usually entire evenings just browsing. I used PowerDeleteSuite and deleted my account, and I use an RSS reader with an adblocker for the 2-3 local subs I truly can’t find the same info for elsewhere. One is a university I teach at, and the only exception I’ve made to this was to create a throwaway to answer a question about salaries and point the person who was hoping to teach to our union contract. Worker solidarity > Reddit drama.

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

I got this while at MSPCA Angell a minute or two after the ER doc gave me the “you should get ready to say goodbye” talk. My partner was out grabbing us coffee, I was trying to communicate updates to the foster and adoption agency (I’d just brought her home over the weekend so was worried it might be something others were exposed to), and my goddamn phone starts BLARING with this shit. The only thing I managed to catch before I panic dismissed it to make it stop was EVACUATE, SEEK SHELTER and it scared the shit out of me, but in that moment I decided whatever it was, I officially gave zero shits, got back to sorting out what was happening with my pet, and then went back to check if I was about to be obliterated by something only to find out that it was an emergency concert closing. Pet didn’t make it. 0/10, this Fourth of July absolutely blew.

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

True! 😁

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

I was wondering about this myself. If a bot presents a good argument that promotes discussion, is the presence of a bot automatically bad?

I don’t love that right now, the focus is on eliminating or silencing the voice of bots, because as you point out, they’re going to be indistinguishable from human voices soon - if they aren’t already. In the education space, we’re already dealing with plagiarism platforms incorrectly claiming real student work is written by ChatGPT. Reading a viewpoint you disagree with and immediately jumping to “bot!” only serves to create echo chambers.

I think it’s better and safer long term to educate people to think critically, assume good intent, know their boundaries online (ie, don’t argue when you can’t be coherent about it and have to devolve to name calling, etc), and focus on the content and argument of the post, not who created it - unless it’s very clear from a look at their profile that they’re arguing in bad faith or astroturfing. A shitty argument won’t hold up to scrutiny, and you don’t have the risk of silencing good conversation from a human with an opposing viewpoint. Common agreement on community rules such as “no hate speech” or limiting self-promotion/review/ads to certain spaces and times is still the best and safest way to combat this, and from there it’s a matter of mods enforcing the boundaries on content, not who they think you are.

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I’m sorry you are encountering this here, but I notice that it’s largely not Beehaw users who are continuing interactions that do not meaningfully engage in this conversation. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself). I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. Although you make awesome points, they aren’t being heard right now, except by folks in Beehaw, since they have community guidelines that promote this type of discussion in a respectful manner. It may be better to call this off and restart the conversation in our instance, or choose to respond only to folks who are practicing respectful debate.

Please don’t take the downvotes seriously, especially in Beehaw. Beehaw has downvotes disabled, so what we’re effectively having here is a kbin conversation following kbin rules in Beehaw. If you want to engage with folks who are downvoting you, I think it’s best to do that in our instance or elsewhere to be respectful of Beehaw’s guidelines.

I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in.

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself), but name calling doesn’t move the conversation forward. I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in and their guidelines.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

I have a hobby of trying out new hobbies till I’ve accumulated a bunch of stuff, then losing interest and doing new hobbies!

ah, my people

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

kbin PWA through Safari on an iPad Pro here. If anyone here is building an app on iOS, please don’t do that thing where you only do vertical layout - it drives me batty!

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

I’m trying to subscribe to gardening@thegarden.land and can’t seem to get it to show in search results, so it’s not just you.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Yeah, I’m really tired of reading this line in every news article about Twitter I read. They should have quietly disabled that auto reply months ago so the line would become “Twitter did not respond for comment” like every other company with bad press. That’s going to look terrible to a judge.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Congratulations!!! What are you studying, and do you have anything planned to celebrate? 😁

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

I’m an Apollo-only user from Reddit and on an iPad Pro. kbin as a progressive web app works better and makes better use of screen real estate on my device, and Reddit’s website is miserably designed for me - “show more comments” everywhere, very little information density, ads intermixed with content that make me question what subreddit I’m in, and more. I was also an Alien Blue user for years before the app was purchased, and Reddit had every opportunity to take that app, leave it alone, and make it the official app (and it was the best client I ever used for Reddit by far). I just… can’t. This is my second go around with this bull and I’m done. I have no problem with companies making money, especially those that provide a good service, but Reddit paid significant sums to make my experience worse, and when I went to find an alternative, they destroyed that too.

I didn’t need “improvements”. Things were fine. Literally, they could have just changed the app name from Alien Blue to Reddit and I would have been thrilled. I don’t want Reddit’s “improvements”. Sometimes a mature app is a mature app and you don’t need to muck with the UI. I’m also furious at the treatment of third-party developers throughout this - not just Apollo’s developer, though that’s an extra special type of anger I have for that, but for everyone. 30 days notice for this kind of price increase? That is absolutely not realistic. I want nothing to do with Reddit right now as a company - these are not a kind of people I want to support.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

This is the way.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

We have this problem in the education space - AI plagiarism detection isn’t reliable at all, but some professors will blindly rely on it to pin students for cheating. Still, as a professor, if the content is wrong, you can mark it as wrong, regardless of where and how it was written. Does anyone know if this policy prohibits removing wrong answers, or is it just that you can’t remove an answer only under the assumption that an AI wrote it?

There’s also a voting system which I think would discourage anyone who sounds like an AI from posting anyway if they get downvoted regularly. If I’m understanding this right, I think it might actually be the right call, but I’m interested in other perspectives in case I’m missing something.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Yup. I used to use Alien Blue heavily and the UI tweaks that Reddit did to it made it a subpar experience from what it was from the start. I preferred the greater information density, I didn’t need to see the thumbnail images as large as they were, it made poor use of space on the iPad, and I couldn’t swipe back and forth anymore. I continued to use Alien Blue as long as I could and then switched to Apollo.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Add to Home Screen + kbin is 🤌, all I need is a back button or the ability to swipe back and I’m golden.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

I definitely have this feeling too. I’m finding that memes and other picture-based posts are a little easier for me to start with because they do some of the talking for me.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Yes! I’m realizing how much I took that for granted when social media came on the scene. Not anymore. I’m not letting this version of the internet die out if we have the chance to bring that energy back.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Wait, where? What brands? I’ve managed to find Modern Kitchen cream cheese, which is absolutely on point and tasted exactly like dairy cream cheese to me, but I haven’t seen anything like a cheddar or mozzarella yet and I’m dying to try one.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

I love working from home! I really like hunkering down, focusing, and getting into a good flow, and doing that from home is easy for me. I’ve been WFH about 3 years now and can’t see myself ever taking an office job again. I also have kind of brutal anxiety that is so much easier to handle from home.

One thing I do like is when my team meets for an in-person event, once or twice a year. It’s a lot for me, but I’m ready for it and have a good time when it rolls around.

I’ve also been in a position of managing folks who are remote, and I find that to be a lot easier as well. I made better connections on Zoom than I did in the office from a manager level, because it removed a social anxiety barrier I had. I don’t manage anymore, but if I did, I’d be happy to have a remote team and wouldn’t want it any other way.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

In theory, I do both! In reality, I get halfway through a project and give up. Though I did successfully make a Sunkern amigurumi once, fully knit one entire sock, and a few scrubbies for my dishes. Currently I’m distracted by sewing and DIY renovations, though.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

Honestly - what happens to all the information on Reddit if this actually happens? DPReview just recently announced they were shutting down (thanks, Amazon) and the first question was - what happens to all the valuable information and knowledge in the forums? There was a serious wave of panic in the photography community at the potential loss of all that information, and it was too much for archive.org to reliably get. I wonder what the contingency plan for Reddit would be at this point.

All the more reason in my eyes to support the fediverse at this point - archiving a single instance isn’t going to be as terrifying as a decade-plus monolith forum.

MrsEaves, 11 months ago

I only use Apollo, I can’t stand the website. I’m testing out Lemmy and Kbin as alternatives given the API news. I used to be an avid Alien Blue user and am still livid Reddit bought it only to completely kill it off and release a completely different and much worse app experience.