ArbitraryValue
@ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Windows 11’s 2025 problems are getting impossible to ignore 3 days ago:
Windows seems to be transitioning from being software you run to being an experience that Microsoft provides to you. The pattern of pushing new features to users unpredictably and without the option to refuse is clearly inappropriate in the first model but natural in the second. As a power user I strongly prefer the first model, but I recognize that most people these days might be ok with having their computer work like a website they access or an app they run on their phone - something they have no control over the state of.
- Comment on How often do you change your towels? 1 week ago:
- Comment on 'Devastating': Amnesty Rips Hegseth Memo Reversing Limits on Landmines 1 week ago:
I think the war in Ukraine has shown us that landmines are so effective that any nation’s ban on them is only going to last as long as no serious war is being fought.
- Comment on Damn 2 weeks ago:
Clearly he’s out of practice.
- Comment on Who shops at small businesses? 4 weeks ago:
I do wonder about stores like that. According to a friend of mine who worked on the household staff of a very rich family, they did buy extremely expensive stuff in boutique stores even when much cheaper alternatives were almost as good (or even equally good, I suspect) but how many rich people like that are there?
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world | 39 comments
- Comment on The ancient Greeks or Chinese should have already had words for this. 5 weeks ago:
Speaking of mind blowing… I took ketamine for the first time a few months ago (by prescription from a psychiatrist, yada yada yada). I have just come back to normal from a ketamine trip during which I constantly kept thinking about what you’ve said. In fact, I was thinking about it so much that I couldn’t relax enough to get the full effect of the ketamine. For me, the first thing that lets me know that the ketamine is kicking in is that I gain the ability to “see” even though my eyes are closed. I remain aware that I’m sitting in my living room and wearing a blindfold, but in my mind there are patterns that I can look at and think “Ooh that’s pretty.” Not just the abstract sensation of seeing a pretty pattern, but actually an experience like vision, complete with the ability to look at a different part of the pattern and see something new. When I stop being able to do that, I know that the ketamine has worn off.
I thought that that’s what people called hallucinating, which seemed odd to me since I never felt like what I was seeing in my mind was real, whereas people say that hallucinations can seem real. Now I wonder - can some other people, like you, just see things in their mind that way all the time? Amazing!
I don’t mean to imply that I think your experience of the world is the same as mine is on ketamine, since ketamine does a lot more than let me look at pretty patterns. The first time I took it, I was sad since I realized that I was all that existed and the entire world was a figment of my imagination, a dream that I woke from. But being able to look at things in my mind has been beautiful and very dramatically different from the way my brain works without ketamine. So far I’ve only seen patterns like twinkling lights, clouds, or mazes. You’re saying that you can see anything you want… Excuse me because I’m going to say something immature: if I could see things in my mind like that, then it would take me a really long time (if ever) to get tired of just seeing naked ladies.
But if I really have aphantasia, how is it that I’ve always been good at “using my imagination”? I love reading fantasy novels and they’re not just words on a page for me. And how do I solve geometry problems in my mind? Strange.
- Comment on The ancient Greeks or Chinese should have already had words for this. 1 month ago:
Interesting… I can’t do what you describe with regard to the mouse. If I focus on actually picturing the mouse, the most I can do seems like a child’s crude sketch, and only the parts of the scene that I am particularly focused on are pictured at all. The rest is abstract. And yet I can entertain myself by daydreaming in visual impressions. For example, just now I thought about a cool car chase, and I was thinking visually rather than verbally, but then I noticed that I hadn’t bothered to imagine what color the cars were - I can assign them colors now that I think about it, but before there was just no impression of seeing any color.
- Comment on The ancient Greeks or Chinese should have already had words for this. 1 month ago:
I think that I have a good visual imagination but it works on a higher level of abstraction than simply imagining a picture of something. Let’s say that you see a mouse run by. You think “I have seen a mouse. It was small and gray.” My imagination seems to work on that level - it goes straight to the feeling of seeing something rather than generating pictures and then processing them to create that feeling.
This might not seem visual but I can rotate 3D objects in my mind to solve geometry problems, so I think that it is.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
They grab the hook because they intend to pull you into the water.
- Comment on xkcd #3170: Service Outage 1 month ago:
The curve for people who depend on the service seems wrong. I would expect a sharp drop as soon as the service goes out and then gradually a partial recovery as they find other things to do.
- Comment on The floor is lava 1 month ago:
I have never met a woman who liked being lifted off the ground in real life.
- Comment on How has there not yet been a leak of the Epstein files? Surely there is someone with access to them that could have been subject to worldwide pressure to let something out. 1 month ago:
My guess is that they’re not particularly outrageous but embarrassing to both parties. Maybe the unreleased information is about Epstein’s work with intelligence agencies, something that neither Democrats nor Republicans would want to release and individuals with access wouldn’t feel a moral obligation to leak.
But that still doesn’t explain why Trump doesn’t just say so without revealing any details - it seems less damaging than total stonewalling.
- Comment on Just FYI 2 months ago:
I used to work for a guy who was never wrong. He didn’t talk much, but when he said something, it was always correct. He still hedged a lot, so he would say “I’m not sure you’re right; I think the answer might be X.” What that meant was “You are certainly wrong and the only reasonable answer is X.”
- Comment on Python Foundation rejects $1.5M grant with no-DEI strings 2 months ago:
The PSF is (presumably) already required to comply with Federal anti-discrimination laws. Am I misreading the text or does it not actually create any new obligations for the PSF if they were to accept the grant?
- Comment on Wrecked 'em 💀 2 months ago:
Only the foreign objects need to be removed. British rectums are for British objects.
- Comment on life purpose 2 months ago:
easy work in an air-conditioned office
despair
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
There’s a filter but it’s not necessarily a “sanity” filter. People on here generally seem to put more effort into learning and understanding the causes that they support than the average person on Facebook does, but those causes themselves are often far out of the mainstream and people’s understanding of why someone might disagree with them in good faith is often rather poor.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I think blaming billionaires for this is incorrect. Look at Lemmy: this place is very much a silo. I’ve been actively participating here for over two years and in that time I have encountered one or two people who supported Trump (the ones posting in /conservative/ before it apparently got taken over). I routinely get called a fascist for being a mainstream Democrat. I’m not complaining (after all, I choose to be here rather than in a more comfortable silo) but clearly being a federated open-source non-profit isn’t solving the problem.
Some billionaires got rich by enabling people to join online silos, but those billionaires were doing what the people wanted already.
- Comment on They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you? 2 months ago:
I often watch other people play games and they look like a lot of fun but then I buy them and try playing them myself and don’t like them. For example:
Kerbal Space Program
Baldur’s Gate 3
King of Dragon Pass
Subnautica
- Comment on In the doghouse: flying canines count as cargo, EU court rules 2 months ago:
I wish it was easier to travel with animals. I’d be willing to pay for an extra ticket if that meant being able to bring a dog with me in the cabin.
- Comment on Believing misinformation is a “win” for some people, even when proven false 2 months ago:
Our interpretation is that people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation—doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.
The article glosses over the distinction between endorsing misinformation and believing misinformation. I think people often interpret poll questions as expressions of political affiliation, so for example a person who thinks that the covid lockdowns were a mistake might say that covid is caused by 5G because that’s the answer that upsets or offends lockdown supporters, not because this person thinks it is the literal truth. In other words, what the authors are seeing is not necessarily sincere belief but rather a deliberate, politically motivated endorsement of statements known to be false.
- Comment on King of Dragon Pass, making you feel like a bronze age tribe chieftain 2 months ago:
My problem with the game was that the connection between my choices and winning or losing was very hard for me to see. The mechanics are hidden (to encourage roleplay) and the consequences of many actions can be quite delayed, so I would end up losing without understanding why
- Comment on At somepoint in human history there was likely a day where not a single human died. 2 months ago:
1:50,000 implies an average lifespan of 137 years, unless I’m missing something. I think 1:15,000 is a more reasonable estimate.
- Comment on Just in time 2 months ago:
How dangerous were women in the past, that you had to wear full plate armor when near them?
- Comment on Just in time 2 months ago:
I paid $15 a month to haul bulk cargo in a freighter.
- Comment on At somepoint in human history there was likely a day where not a single human died. 2 months ago:
I read the full paper and I’m not qualified to evaluate the validity of the model being proposed but I find the idea that the population was
about 1000 individuals, which persisted for about 100,000 years
rather implausible. Implausible things sometimes turn out to be true but models frequently turn out to be wrong so if I were to get, I would bet on the latter.
- Comment on At somepoint in human history there was likely a day where not a single human died. 2 months ago:
The human population would have to be in the tens of thousands for that to be likely, and I’m not sure it was ever that low unless we’re arguing about technicalities regarding who counts as human during the process of evolution.
- Comment on Cuddly gerbils 2 months ago:
You’re right!
- Comment on Cuddly gerbils 2 months ago:
Then why is there an odd number of gerbils?
