gerryflap

@gerryflap@feddit.nl

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Huh?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably, but in this case it fits. If there’s anything that generative AI is good at, it’s capturing the vibe of that fucked up thing your brain does in dreams. This image perfectly represents what my brain does when I’m just awake or almost asleep. Messing with proportions and unable to form a normal picture of things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨80s Nostalgia AI Slop Is Boomerfying the Masses for a Past That Never Existed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Recently my parents showed me some stuff they saw on Facebook. It was all just AI slop, rage bait, advertisements. Seriously, there was barely anything useful on it. They were very avoidant of acknowledging it tho. “But there’s also fun stuff on it”. They were constantly wondering whether what they were reading was real, yet it did plant seeds in their brains. It’s even influencing their politics, I had to have a whole discussion with them (traditionally centre left voters) about how our left wing parties didn’t want to let an unstoppable horde of immigrants into our country. And why voting for a centre right guy because “he looks pretty competent” will also fuck with poor people and important topics like abortion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Taylor Swift’s new album comes in cassette. Who is buying those?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Your view is totally fine, but I guess you’re not understanding why people do this. I’m a millennial, around 30. Personally I buy CDs, I buy vinyl, and I even have some stuff on tape. I’ve also recently picked up film photography and among my friends it’s common nowadays to bring some 2000-2010 digicams.

  So why? flac is perfect, and streaming services stream whatever high-quality music you’d ever want to play. Film is expensive, and digicams are often way more shit than whatever a modern smartphone that’s already in your pocket can do.

  Personally I’ve become bored by perfection, overwhelmed by choice, and frustrated with the lack of owning anything. When I play a physical album I sit down for it, I am focused on the music. I cannot easily choose the music, I’ll just have to accept the order of the album. There are way fewer choices to overwhelm me. Likewise, with film photography, it feels simpler in a way. You shoot a few images in a go, because film isn’t cheap, and you’ll only get to see them weeks later when the roll is developed. No pressure of the perfect shot, no insane resolution to show any imperfection. And mistakes just happen, because you cannot see what you’re doing, so you just have to accept them. Digitally you can just take 20 pictures and take the best one.

  So back to music. Why would one prefer vinyl or tape over CD? As a life-long CD collector, I wondered the same thing a few years ago. But when artists that I enjoy started skipping CD releases in favor of vinyl I hopped in, invested in a shit vinyl player, and didn’t really get it. Sure it had a character, but it wasn’t great in any way. After some more research I found out that it was probably just the vinyl player (please don’t get some cheap shit for a 100 bucks with a red unbranded needle). I invested in an Audiotechnica LP70XBT, and oh boy did stuff improve. I finally get it. The sound is gorgeous, though not necessarily better or worse than CD imo. It’s a bit warmer, with detailed bass but less clinical high end. And I love the whole tactile experience of it. Older vinyl definitely sounds worse than modern CD quality though.

  I think it’s the whole experience that people enjoy. Putting the vinyl or cassette in the player, having something move and, as if it were magic, suddenly there’s music. With a slightly different character that differentiates it from the clean and clinical sound of high quality digital audio. Modern digital audio is great and definitely has its place, but at times it can feel sterile, too perfect. The crackles and warmth of vinyl, the grain and slightly off colours of photographic film, they feel like they have more personality. They stem from a time where the imperfections of the medium still kinda hid the imperfections of the artist.

  (Okay this turned into quite a ramble but I hope there’s something useful in there :3 )

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨monthly challenge⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a bit weird, but imo not wrong. 500 > steps/day or steps/day < 500 is the same. As long as the big end of the < or > is at the 500 it makes sense. It only doesn’t make sense if you literally read 500 > steps/day as “five hundred greater than steps a day” instead of parsing it as math.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT 5 power consumption could be as much as eight times higher than GPT 4 — research institute estimates medium-sized GPT-5 response can consume up to 40 watt-hours of electricity⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s horrendously slow, unusable imo. With the larger DeepSeek distilled models I tried that didn’t fit into VRAM you could easily wait 5 minutes until it was done writing its essay. Compared to just a few seconds when it does. Bit that’s with a RTX 3070 Ti, not something the average ChatGPT user has lying around probably.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah that’s why I commented

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If it’s like Cities Skylines then that’s pretty decent. I never bought a DLC and yet I got lots of content updates on an already great base game

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cutting sucks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah it’s insane honestly. My own meals are probably like 70% vegetable or something. A lot of people already eat very few vegetables in my opinion, but OP really goes beyond that in this case. Bland, tasteless, and not even healthy

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gamers have you ever been in a game competition or something similar?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  2 things come to mind:

  The first thing is that at one point many years ago we participated in Rocket League’s RLCS. Participation was completely open. We were actually doing quite well until we randomly ran into pro players and got completely demolished. It’s kinda humbling to know that even though you’re part of the top ~1% of players, pro players are still in a totally different league and absolutely unbeatable. Their speed and game sense is so much better than that of any mere mortal, it’s like we weren’t even there. We were probably low Grand Champion around the time, and we got beaten like we would beat Gold ranked players. Personally I don’t mind losing like this, it’s a good learning experience and shows you how much is possible.

  At uni I also participated in plenty of LAN parties that had random game competitions. Usually they were games that a lot of us didn’t ever play before. We’d usually start playing the game a few hours in advance to get a feel for it. There I’ve found that I’m quite decent at this usually, but that there are definitely a few people who can get quite decent at a game in 2 hours to the point that they challenge people with casual experience with the game. It as always good fun though, and because I tended to put some effort into it I regularly managed to get into the top 3.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: Deezer, the music streaming service, is owned by a company whose Founder and CEO is a Russian Oligarch with connections to the Kremlin and donates to the American Republican party.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well if you only listen to Taylor Swift then that’s valid, but most people have a more diverse music taste so for them this doesn’t apply. The artists I personally listen to (and the labels they’re signed to) are often relatively small and genuine, and to them every bit of income is appreciated. Obviously merch, shows, and direct music sales help more, but getting paid more by streaming services sure would help a great deal as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic as Steam’s top-rated game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally I’d say that “always striving for the maximum and stressing myself out” is a personality trait that’s not only a problem in Stardew Valley for me haha. I’m o it’s not a great mindset to have, but unfortunately it’s a subconscious drive that’s hard to eliminate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic as Steam’s top-rated game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess it’s just a mindset difference. I’d say me and my friends are all pretty competitive gamers (as opposed to more creative gamers). We tend to play games mostly for the challenge. Also didn’t help that we had just finished our Facorio playthrough. So in our mind we still had “the factory must grow”. So our minds were like “if space -> use space”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic as Steam’s top-rated game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  While I enjoyed it, it was also very stressful. I think we just played wrong. We covered every millimeter of the plot with farms or other useful stuff and then proceeded to be busy for more than half the day with just maintenance. At some point this meant that we never got to explore and often barely had time to go to the stores or talk to the people in the village.

  Apart from overcooked it was probably the most stressful game Is ever played and it’s not supposed to be like that

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not vegetarian but it baffles my mind how many people are against not eating meat. Some people seem to have made eating meat their whole personality and it’s insane to me. I don’t always eat meat and actively try to reduce it. Personally I’ve only met vegetarians who encourage this, even if I’m not willing to fully commit. I’m trying to make meat more of a luxury for myself and I think it’d be nice if most people did so. Better for the climate and better for the animals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That entirely depends on the circumstances. One cannot make a blanket statement. Let’s say that a horrible disease breaks out in a city and the government successfullymanages to quarantine the city before anyone gets out. The people inside suffer and most die without medical help or medicine, but the disease doesn’t spread and humanity is saved.

  However there are plenty of cases where we should stand up for the rights of a few people even if it costs the majority of people. Making things accessible for people with disabilities costs money that technically could be spent elsewhere, but an empathic society should stand above this kind of thinking and make sure that society is accessible to people with disabilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Men are opening up about mental health to AI instead of humans⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally I also ran some distilled versions of DeepSeek locally, though I’d imagine that isn’t really possible for most people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Well, are you?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Meow meow :3

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Men are opening up about mental health to AI instead of humans⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Better than nothing I guess. Obviously it’s a privacy nightmare. But therapy is hard to reach nowadays and I’ve noticed that many men are reluctant to make that step. It’d be preferable if they did, but if ChatGPT can at least give an outlet for the emotions then it might just save a few people. Seeing men demolish themselves because they’re too ashamed to seek help is something I’ve unfortunately seen quite often. Even though I’m aware of this I’ve still waited till it was way too late because I subconsciously didn’t want to give in to the “weakness”. I hate that men are conditioned this way, it costs lives.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “mem”, which is west-frisian for mum. Other than that I don’t really speak west-frisian, but words like mom/dad/grandma/grandpa all stayed in Frisian. Family also sometimes speaks Frisian to me, but unfortunately I forgot how to speak it at a young age and can only understand it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mothing phone⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hahaha. I love all the moth posts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Honda successfully launched and landed its own reusable rocket⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Call me an optimist, but I still hold the hope that we can one day do better as humanity than we do now. Humanity has become a “better” species throughout its existence overall. Even a hundred years ago we were much more horrible and brutal than we are now. The current trend is not great, with climate change and far-right grifters taking control. But I hold hope that in the end this is but a blip on the radar. Horrible for us now, but in the grand scheme of things not something that will end humanity. It might in the worst case set us back a few hundred years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Honda successfully launched and landed its own reusable rocket⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Imo it’s a good thing tho. Spreading our civilization across multiple planets is the only way to guarantee long long term success. Obviously we should also fix the climate change issue (and many others). But still, being spread across the solar system would give our species redundancy. An extinction event on earth like a large meteor strike would no longer be the end.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨we are not the same⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yup same. And many like it. Good to know that this experience is shared lol. All the stalls will probably either be empty, locked, or have something fucked up in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨we are not the same⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Same here it’s so frustrating. It’s usually when I actually have to pee. Would be cool if I could just wake up to actually go to the bathroom instead of going through this while show. Luckily the brain is at least smart enough to not mix up the dream with reality

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some people hate drinking water?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wondered this for a long while, but I’ve realized that I’m in a pretty privileged position. Where I live (the Netherlands) the tap water is not only drinkable, it’s actually almost indistinguishable from mineral water. Certainly for me at least. I’m not much of a traveller, but when I was in Oostende in Belgium I remember the tap water was absolutely vile. It was (or at least tasted like) desalinated seawater. Instead of hydrating and refreshing it tasted stale and salty. If that was the only water I knew I probably would be drinking more refreshing stuff like ice tea or cola all day as well. When I got back to the Netherlands my first glass of tap water tasted like heaven.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you have used this you are immune to all disease.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m Dutch and I’be seem plenty of these over the years. I can’t remember where tho, probably university and maybe highschool. I feel like they’re (or were) quite common

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Of course you had to have a binder to store them⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m still looking for my childhood CDs/DVDs that somehow got lost in my parents’ binders and are now possibly lost to time. I love keeping them in the case so I can admire the album art and possibly the booklet before listening

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Possible, but at least in my experience most normal people know 1/3rd and understand what it means, but if I’d throw a “point three repeating” at them they’d probably get confused. Fractions are just a tool to communicate stuff more efficiently, good in some scenarios, confusing in others. It would be cool if we could teach everyone the “repeating” syntax as well because it’s another useful tool.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m also Dutch so I don’t have the answers about the imperial system haha

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In many cases that’s fine, I’ve done so regularly. But when you want to be precise without making it complicated you can just say the fraction as well. But in order to do that you need people to feel comfortable with it, therefore we need to teach kids this from a young age. I’m not saying we always need them, but they’re definitely very useful tools that you want at the ready when you need them. To make quick calculations in your head it’s often way simpler to use the fraction than the real number. And in cases like 1/3rd or 3/7ths it’s a way simpler, accurate and more efficient way to communicate the number than to name the rounded number.