Comment on US government uses Halo images in a call to 'destroy' immigration, Microsoft declines to comment

• Zink@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Big wisdom in this.

  Don’t assume it is “checking out” from society or taking the easy way out. The news will find you, don’t worry. Plus maintaining focus on your thing is something that can take significant effort.

  I have noticed that the smaller I make my world, the happier I am. My free time goes into my family, friends, hobbies, and pets (which I guess is a big subset of the hobbies). I think a big part of the benefit is not just focusing on the people who can have the biggest effect on my life, but focusing on the people whose life I can improve the most with my involvement.

  Our brains evolved to keep tabs on our clan or our village, not to monitor the events of the entire Earth in near real time, as if we’re going to do anything with that information. In fact, I think that “need” to be informed is often just an addiction manufactured by the need to drive engagement to validate 24/7 news as a business model.

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  • qualia@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Agreed. My self-critical side used to argue this was constructing an echo chamber for myself. But now I’m realizing that unless I’m going to completely refocus my life on deconstructing the first-past-the-post de facto two-party duopoly then I’m just taking on unnecessary anxiety.

    Instead I figure as long as I’m still discussing my political or philosophical values on here those who do wish to pursue politics will have access to the statistics of what their constituents actually want (e.g. via LLMs focusing on political language). Whether we actually get such a leader is another question.

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    • Zink@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      And let’s be honest, this is one of those many contexts where giving a shit and putting forth ANY amount of effort puts you ahead of 80% of the population anyway.

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