deathbird
@deathbird@mander.xyz
- Comment on Violence alters human genes for generations, researchers discover. 1 day ago:
“It’s not clear what, if any, effect these epigenetic changes have in the lives of people”
No shit.
Also let’s not pretend that the only response to scientific support of the existence of measurable negative epigenetic effects from generational trauma would be “being nicer.” It could also be genetic discrimination. Or sterilization. Or eugenics. Or a tactic in genocidal campaigns.
- Comment on Tech jobs are now white collar trades that need apprentices 2 days ago:
Co-ops and collectives can help bridge the gap between management interest and worker interest.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 4 days ago:
Your rant is 100% sensible and/or valid and/or based or whatever one says these days.
If a user wants their own echo chamber, let them cultivate it themselves. The hosts should not decide for them, and the choice to defederate should be based on practical/material/legal concerns only.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 4 days ago:
To me the biggest issue with federated platforms is defederation: deliberately breaking interoperability.
Like, imagine if email servers (the original federated network) blocked whole domains as aggressively Mastodon or even Lemmy servers do? It never would have worked.
- Comment on First Gaming PC 5 days ago:
If your primary gaming is through Steam, then you shouldn’t have to switch back to Windows much if at all.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 5 days ago:
I mean, I hate BlueSky too, but I think the reason it’s more popular than Mastodon is that it’s more centralized and in practical terms that means it’s easier to adopt and engage with.
The biggest headache I have with Mastodon (and Lemmy, to a lesser extent) is defederation. I understand it’s the most practical thing to do sometimes, but it’s waaay overdone. Like, there needs to be a culture of only defederating as a last resort due to pratical concerns (e.g. bots I guess). Unfortunately the current culture is one where many instance admins treat defederation as a personal blocklist. I wish more admins would leave it to individual users to decide who to allow or not.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 5 days ago:
It still needs polish, but the biggest deficit is lack of adoption.
Platforms like Twitter encourage casual breaks between public and private space, but Facebook-like platforms are better for passively extending existing friendship circles. Or so it seems to me.
- Comment on In light of recent events, here's OpenStreetMap editors discussing naming of the Gulf of Mexico 2 weeks ago:
Yeah I feel like there needs to be a huge asterisk by name declarations that, while formal/official in the barest sense, are blatantly arbitrary.
- Comment on In light of recent events, here's OpenStreetMap editors discussing naming of the Gulf of Mexico 2 weeks ago:
Literally no one ever called it “Gulf of America” until January. I appreciate the generally thoughtful conversation on OSM, but there’s no reason that declaration should be taken seriously.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing? 3 weeks ago:
Replayed Myst. This time with environmental subtitles I was able to complete the rocket ship puzzle, so that was cool.
- Comment on Bluesky now has 30 million users. 3 weeks ago:
I agree that defederation is vastly overused, and simple account migration should be a priority.
- Comment on Bluesky now has 30 million users. 3 weeks ago:
Activitypub or gtfo
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing? 5 weeks ago:
Back on my Minecraft habit. Experimenting with pale oak logs a little, but mostly branch mining after work to chill.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 month ago:
Pikmin 3, Vampire Survivors, Gang Beasts, Pico Park, and a little Minecraft.
- Comment on The peer review system no longer works to guarantee academic rigour - a different approach is needed 3 months ago:
This is a great idea I think, but part of the problem with science versus programming is that they’re just very different social environments, so the expectations, norms, and demands on each are very different.
Dependent down a little bit more, most research is done by people with phds or other advanced degrees (or pursuing them) in an academic job, and one of the conditions of attaining or maintaining that job is publishing. And these are the same people doing the peer reviews.
I think what this creates, even aside from the overwhelming volume and complexity of work, is a certain amount of grace amongst academics. That is, I think a fair number of peer reviewers are not only failing to rigorously grapple with the material that they review, but because of the small social mileux and shared incentives, they are incentivized to not be very rigorous in many cases.
Nothing peer review is without value, but how harshly would you want to challenge or critique the work of someone whom you may work alongside or under in the future?
- Comment on Sympathy for their PTSD 4 months ago:
I hope these IDF soldiers wake up. You can’t kill people without killing part of yourself.
- Comment on Sympathy for their PTSD 4 months ago:
This is basically Objectivism.
Wouldn’t it be cool if people who committed violent acts couldn’t actually be traumatized by those acts if they were unambiguously immoral. If people who did Evil were always consciously aware of it. If there was a moral order to the universe manifested in our bodies and in our works. One could then be sure that anyone who committed an act of evil and reported being traumatized by it was really lying.
- Comment on Sympathy for their PTSD 4 months ago:
Everyone has a choice.
- Comment on Sympathy for their PTSD 4 months ago:
There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.
- Comment on X's controversial changes to blocking and AI training saw half a million users leave for rival Bluesky in just a single day 4 months ago:
I hate Twitter, but I’m getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we’re just gonna have Twitter again.
One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X is now worth less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price 4 months ago:
I think you’re giving the guy too much credit. Sometimes things are as they seen. He just didn’t like the moderation scheme on Twitter, made a gesture buying it, fumbled a little bit and overbid, then after having been forced to acquire it tried to turn it into something closer to what he wanted it to be.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X is now worth less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price 4 months ago:
Masnick’s post is well put, but also a disturbing reminder of how much power nation-states can exert over the Internet.
- Comment on ISPs tell Supreme Court they don’t want to disconnect users accused of piracy 5 months ago:
Because they’re also rich. Laws are for the poors.
- Comment on Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills 5 months ago:
The difference between clearly documenting features, and hiding or removing them.
- Comment on Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills 5 months ago:
First time I saw a Zoomer do that it hurt my soul.
- Comment on EE warns parents against giving children under 11 a smartphone 5 months ago:
This is actually a good take. Kids aren’t miniature adults, they’re kids. They’re not helpless or useless, but neither are they fully morally and emotionally developed. They need guidance. Plenty of adults can’t responsibly handle internet access. I survived early onilne porn and gore and social media, but it’s not like any of it benefited me in a meaningful way.
Some folks have an attitude that’s like “I touched hot stoves and I learned better”, but that’s far from ideal.
- Comment on Israel Is Buying Google Ads to Discredit the UN’s Top Gaza Aid Agency 5 months ago:
To be fair, at least as of this moment his prior post says Google is “manufacturing consent for”, not “actively supporting”. I believe that the former can be the latter, but is not necessarily the latter.
- Comment on Doctors Remove Woman’s Brain Implant Against Her Will 5 months ago:
I feel like maybe research on medical implants like this should be done by the state.
- Comment on Everything old is new again. 8 months ago:
An Uber will never pick you up and tell you “My credit card reader is broken” at the end of the ride after driving you in circles.
- Comment on Everything old is new again. 8 months ago:
Up front pricing is almost always going to be more attractive than metered pricing.
If you offer me metered pricing, I’m going to assume you’ll charge 20% extra.