WatDabney
@WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on The ancient Greeks or Chinese should have already had words for this. 4 days ago:
normies
I think you missed the point of this thread.
- Comment on The ancient Greeks or Chinese should have already had words for this. 4 days ago:
Do you have the internal monologue, when not reading?
It depends on the situation.
I actually have it sometimes when I read - like when I’m reading something purely conceptual, like a question on a forum.
Basically, as near as I can tell, if it’s a written description of some tangible thing or place or event, I jump straight to visualizing it and the words don’t really register. But if it’s conceptual - an expression of an idea or philosophy or such - I “narrate” the words to myself.
I also have an internal voice - my own - when I write, presumably because I can’t directly share my visualizations, so have to translate them into words right from the start.
When I’m not reading, it seems to split broadly the same way - I only have an internal monologue regarding things that are conceptual. If it’s available to my sensorium, then my consciousness of it is simply those sensory impressions without the accompanying words, so no internal monologue.
But if it’s something conceptual, or something I’m sharing with someone else, then I translate it into words.
- Comment on The ancient Greeks or Chinese should have already had words for this. 4 days ago:
This reminded me of a sort of similar topic, and curiously enough it’s about reading, and might provide some insight into your question.
Some years ago, I happened on a thread in which the OP asked people whose voice they “heard” when they read.
I couldn’t even make sense of that question. The only time I “hear” voices when I read is when a character speaks. The rest of the time, I not only don’t “hear” the words - I’m not even really aware of them. My eyes follow the lines while my brain instantly translates the words I’m seeing into images and concepts and the like. And yes - it’s like a movie playing out inside my brain, and yes, I’m a #1 on this chart.
But apparently there’s a not insignificant number of people who “hear” a book inside their heads just as if someone else was reading it out loud. Instead of visualizing things, they remain focused only on the words - the representations - and somehow glean from them alone the necessary details.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those people are also generally #5 or thereabouts on this chart, and again what it is is that their brains don’t directly envision things but instead rely on descriptive representations.
I don’t get how it works either, but self-evidently it does.
- Comment on Trump, 79, chickens out of public showdown with Mamdani, 34 6 days ago:
Trump, like all bullies, is a coward at heart.
- Comment on OpenAI Introduces 'ChatGPT for Teachers' to Further Destroy the Minds of Our Youth 1 week ago:
The broligarchs must be positively giddy at the prospect of a generation of Americans who are entirely unable to even form a coherent thought.
Why muck about with all the complications of trying to force people into the peasant role of neo-feudalism when you can just destroy public education and gatekeep knowledge and create a populace too dull-witted to envision anything else?
- Comment on Racism is for poor people. Rich folks have classism. 2 weeks ago:
No war but class war.
And yes - racism is deliberately encouraged by the wealthy few in order to keep the lower class at each othert throats.
It’s a very simple dynamic really. People look around and recognize that their societies are fucked up. Then they look for somebody to blame.
And there really is somebody to blame. In virtually all cases, the society has been fucked up both by and for the ruling class.
But of course the ruling class doesn’t want anyone else to see that (and in many cases are so irrational themselves that they won’t or can’t see it), so they find somebody else to point to, to distract our attention from them.
And race is a particularly easy thing to point to, since it’s a visible distinction.
- Comment on Don't let the terrible be the enemy of the good. 2 weeks ago:
Less bad is still bad.
- Comment on Who's your favorite female protagonist in a video game? (Add pic of character in response) 1 month ago:
Shukran from Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei Ou on the Super Famicom
Ifrit is a djinn who was once the king of the djinn. Then he was cursed and bound to a ring until he granted the wishes of 1000 people. He’s granted wishes to 999 people when his ring comes into the possession of an orphan girl named Shukran. Over the years he’s become bitter and cynical, and he just expects she’s going to want gold or such, but instead, to his surprise and dismay, she wishes to bring peace to the land. And she means it. So Ifrit has to first set out to find and recruit the most powerful of his former djinn subjects, and since he can’t stray far from the ring, Shukran has to come along.
She’s far and away the weakest character in the game, but at every turn, when it’s (eventually predictably) revealed that whichever djinn they’re trying to recruit at the moment has a well-deserved grudge against Ifrit and no intention of helping him with anything, it’s Shukran and her optimism, determination, honor and kindness that wins them over, and (after Shukran and Ifrit and their allies complete whatever trial or quest the djinn tasks them with) they end up swearing allegiance not to him, but to her. So while she herself remains ridiculously weak, she is very much the driving force behind the party. And over time she can summon more and more powerful djinn in battle, and they’re decidedly not weak.
- Comment on Israeli settlers attack AFP journalist and olive farmers 1 month ago:
They aren’t settlers - they’re state-sponsored terrorists.
- Comment on US suspends visas for Gazans after far-right influencer posts 3 months ago:
We actually live in a timeline in which a psychopath rages about children getting medical care and politician psychopaths commend her for bringing it to their attention so they can put a stop to it.
- Comment on UN rights office calls on Israel to grant foreign media access to Gaza 3 months ago:
Israel assassinates journalists.
attacks on journalists undermine efforts to document the realities on the ground
And that’s exactly why.
- Comment on ‘It’s a horrible picture’: Gaza faces new threat from antibiotic-resistant disease 3 months ago:
As intended.
That’s most of why Israel has deliberately targeted hospitals, water treatment plants and the like, and has crowded the Palestinians into the smallest and least sanitary conditions possible. They aren’t just or even primarily counting on starvation to do the bulk of their killing for them, but disease as well.
This has been a key part of the plan from the start.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 33] 3 months ago:
I just stumbled across easily my favorite series of the season - Milky☆Subway: The Galactic Limited Express
It’s like anime espresso - the small crew (the entire cast and crew credits fit on a single page) somehow crams more story, character development and laugh out loud moments into its 4 minute episodes than most full length series can manage.
For anyone interested in watching it, start with the prequel, Milky☆Highway, which introduces Makina and Chiharu, and the pacing and the dense, multi-layered dialogue that contribute to cranming so much deliciousness into so little space.
And I’d say that Yohei Kameyama is definitely someone to watch. I can only imagine what they could accomplish with more run-time and a bigger budget.
- Comment on The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived 3 months ago:
That’s likely true.
But that’s not going to stop governments from trying, and mostly succeeding, since beating their censorship will require both the will and the ability to break the law. Granted that their systems will certainly be flawed, it will still require at least some minimal technical ability to beat them, which will put it out of reach of many.
And it will also provide the governments with a handy fallback charge to bring against pretty much anyone they deem troublesome enough, since they’ll almost certainly be among those who are breaking the law by beating the system.
- Comment on The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived 3 months ago:
- Comment on The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived 3 months ago:
Since the earliest days of the internet, governments have been scheming to gain control over the dissemination of content - to have authority over what people can and cannot see.
Autocracies like Russia, China and North Korea simply established censorships regimes, but the best that western governments have generally been able to do is ban content that is illegal in and of itself, like child porn. Their goal, all along, has been to establish systems by which to censor content that is not in and of itself illegal.
This is the most success they’ve had yet.
- Comment on Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks 4 months ago:
Very much yes.
I have this great visual image of the corporate web, marked by neon signs and billboards and holographic ads, populated entirely by bots talking to each other while the humans sneak away, giggling and shushing each other.
- Comment on Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks 4 months ago:
As intended.
First they’re going to collapse the ad model by eliminating most clicks.
Then they’re going to put all of the information they’ve been scraping from the now-bankrupt websites behind paywalls.
- Comment on Forget copyright strikes, a retro gaming YouTuber faces possible jail time for reviewing gaming handhelds 4 months ago:
Remember the good ol’ days, when it was only the urban housing market that was dominated by rent-seeking parasites?
- Comment on Scottish University agreed to 'monitor' students for weapons company supplying IDF, emails reveal 4 months ago:
weapons company
That’s the most important bit.
An awful lot of the otherwise inexplicable international support for the utter evil Israel is visiting on Gaza exists solely because it’s profitable for a handful of corporate parasites.
Which is its own sort of evil.
- Comment on The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool. 4 months ago:
And further - the establishment of a single, fediverse-wide account for each user would make it far too easy for those so inclined to silence anyone they wanted merely by banning their one and only account.
- Comment on The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool. 4 months ago:
It’s not a matter of how ones profile would be accessed, but how it would be created in the first place snd how it would be managed.
Necessarily, those who implement the creation of accounts have control over how they’re created, who is allowed to create them and how they will be handled after creation.
Any scheme to establish one “central” (your own term) account for the entire fediverse will necessarily be managed by one “central” service, which means one “central” authority over account creation and management
- Comment on The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool. 4 months ago:
Decentralization is a feature - not a bug.
- Comment on Palantir may be engaging in a coordinated disinformation campaign by astroturfing these news-related subreddits: r/world, r/newsletter, r/investinq, and r/tech_news 5 months ago:
Setting aside the veritable TITAN-loads of shady shit Palsntir is up to, it’s also worth noting that Reddit’s policy changes have made it clear that providing a platform for the spread of disinformation is a central part of its current business model, so I’d assume that not only is Palantir using it for that purpose, but that they are far from alone.
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 5 months ago:
They need to be sitting in their plush offices at the top of buildings full of busy workers to keep up the pretense that they deserve their obscene pay. Sitting in a plush office at the top of an empty building just shines a spotlight on how useless they actually are.
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 5 months ago:
So even the little tiny bit of work they have to do to justify their obscene salaries is too much for them.
- Comment on Mom sues porn sites (Including Chaturbate, Jerkmate, Superporn and Hentaicity) for noncompliance with Kansas age assurance law; Teen can no longer enjoy life after mom caught him visiting Chaturbate 5 months ago:
“I’m sorry ma’am, but could you explain your interest in the sex life of a 14 year old?”
- Comment on ‘I’m not looking for a deal’: Trump says EU tariffs staying at fifty percent 5 months ago:
Though he would be open to a bribe. Maybe a nice yacht to match his jet.
- Comment on Marjorie Taylor Greene picked a fight with Grok 5 months ago:
How do angry, hateful, vicious people like MTG convince themselves they’re Christian?
I don’t think it’s a pose - she appears to be entirely sincere about her claim to Christianity.
And I understand the basic mechanics of it - they pick and choose which parts of the Bible to highlight and which to ignore, and how to self-servingly interpret the ones they do pick.
But in a more fundamental sense, I still don’t understand how they do it. Are they really entirely devoid of self-awareness or conscience? How is that even possible? Or do they have at least some rudimentary self-awareness and conscience, but they just ignore it? How is that even possible?
- Comment on Trump's image of dead 'white farmers' came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa 6 months ago:
Or in other words, Trump reveals himself to be a lying sack of shit. Again.
Probably not even the first time today.
