CarbonIceDragon

@CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchy⁩ ⁨⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  This is why I only ever get the creamy peanut butter and not the kind with peanut chunks in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rare insults dropped⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, the guy is a lawyer, I’m not sure I can think of a profession with a more “generic person in a formal but not fancy outfit” stereotype than that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China has introduced a drone that flies like a bird. The new invention could turn the drone industry upside down⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  ornithopters arent exactly new

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Like us, I wonder if other animals are kept awake by embarrassing memories⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If any are, I bet crows are among them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Id argue that to some extent, its foundational to capitalism, such that any effort to actually abolish it would almost necessarily require destroying or significantly curtailing capitalism to succeed anyway. Virtually every company based on selling information, such as software and media companies that are some of the biggest on the planet right now, would find such an effort an existential threat, and even companies not based on such things may have patents or designs that give them an edge and that they would expend a lot on avoiding giving competition free range to copy. If you’re able to overpower them on something so important to them, in so consequential a fashion, then their grip on economic and political power would have to already have been greatly reduced, and some other basis of such power to draw on for support would have to exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of that is down to the general culture of the furry fandom I think, it tends to be a fair bit more sex-positive and less inhibited society at large, and while porn is a thing fairly common to humans in general (obviously not every human engages with it and the degree varies with the person, but still, it isnt exactly rare), if you have one group of people who have far less of a taboo about talking about and sharing it than those outside that group, thats the thing that outsiders are going to notice about them, especially if the stuff they make in that category is visually distinct from adult content found elsewhere. Its not universal of course, there are definitely puritanical furries out there if you look for them and the fandom is big enough that I cant say with certainty that the people Ive encountered are entirely representative of it, but thats the notion I get. To be honest, Ive come to get it over time, it can be nice to feel like you can just be open about every interest one has without having to think about which things are and arent suited to sharing with other people, but the natural consequence of choosing to reject a social norm is looking cringey or worse to those that still value it.

  As far as where the subculture goes outside the fetishey stuff, theres a lot of digital art made that isnt sexualized, but beyond that Id point to some of the more “irl” stuff furries are known for, like conventions, fursuits, and other related crafts like that (ive seen people with things like custom made plushies or other physical art). While some do bring adult things into those, it isnt really the norm. More or less all the sorts of creative or social aspects that you might expect of a media-based fandom, like star trek fans or such, just without any one big IP franchise behind it and instead an emphasis on making your own stuff with an informal set of shared themes and tropes.

  I wont try and point out specific events and craftspeople, since I am an extremely shy and anxious person irl and most of my interaction with other furries has been online spaces, mostly with my specific friend group that happens to be made up almost exclusively of them, but there are quite a few, especially in the US and EU. Anecdotally, that shyness is part of why I got into it in the first place, it somehow feels easier for me to make friends and generally interact socially, by creating a character that represents a more idealized version of myself that is more outgoing and less anxious, and pretending to be that character. Which is one of the things a fursona is, its partly an internet avatar and an outlet for creative expression, partly a subculture identity signifier to help find like minded people, and partly a sort of mask and social tool for self-reflection. If I had a blog, Id represent myself using mine just like the person in the OP is, get used to presenting yourself that way long enough and doing so ends up just feeling natural to you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait, wouldn’t it make sense for an anarchist to opposite intellectual property law on the grounds that the only way you could possibly enforce it beyond those in one’s immediate community would be with a larger state and associated law enforcement apparatus, which an anarchist would be expected to be against the existence of?

  I’m not sure that has much to do with AI, and if anything, AI companies should somewhat like copyright since what they are ultimately selling is a form of software, which is harder to profit off without such law. They just want the concept to apply selectively so as not to impede them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’d only be a fetish to the people who only like furries for the porn they make and don’t have an interest in the rest of the subculture that it comes from, which probably isn’t the sort of person to use a fursona to represent themselves on a tech blog in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We don’t exactly force other people to use one, and it doesn’t hurt anyone for us to, so why should we care?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  eh, Id say theres some pretty ugly mammals out there, at least in my opinion. most primates for instance, mole rats, some but certainly not all bats…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, while paradox games like Stellaris or the crusader kings games you mentioned, certainly have a lot of replayability (I don’t really care much for CK myself but have over 1000 hours on both Stellaris and EU4), they’re not great examples for where cheaper games by smaller companies offer more than expensive ones from bigger ones. Partly because paradox is fairly sizable and well known these days, but mostly because those games are quite expensive, just split into numerous expansions that come out over time. One can opt out of getting them, sure, but they’re where a lot of the different options that bring the replayability come from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  yet also kind of cute

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Seriously Jesus, who was doing that for that to be added 😭⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s been a long time since I read any of the bible, but wasn’t there some story in it somewhere where some guy uses that and is immediately killed by god or something? (albiet I think the justification was some sort of tradition obligating him to have a child with a specific person, and his behavior was supposed to be exploiting that without fulfilling his end or something like that).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure thing, just need to find a jedi to teach me the force so that I can move and assemble the parts in the factory without actually being there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  At which point, Id have to spend the money saved on housing on buying, fueling, maintaining and insuring a car, if I was even able to drive one in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you understand how many people 350 million is? How did this worm ridden ball sack float to the top?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, the vast, vast majority were never really in the running. Were the chances anything close to even, would you expect to have so many at least somewhat well known politicians with his last name?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Believe It Or Not, Black Licorice⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When I was a kid, a sibling and some friends of mine would occasionally play “jelly bean Russian roulette”, wherein we would get a number of jelly beans equal to the number of us playing, with one of them a black licorice, have one non-playing kid scramble them and “randomly” give one to each player, and then eat them eyes closed without seeing what the flavor was. Whoever got the licorice was the loser.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨With ‘AI slop’ distorting our reality, the world is sleepwalking into disaster⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For how long though? The issue with detecting AI generated stuff, Id imagine, is that a picture contains a finite amount of information, especially a digital one. These things have been improving relatively quickly, and I cant think of any fundamental reason why one could not eventually create images where every pixel is as it would be if that image were real, or at least close enough that detection is not even theoretically possible if you dont have some actual proof that the event depicted couldnt have happened. We may not be there yet, but the closer we get to it, the more prone to error and therefore less useful any detection algorithm must be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And then I'll sell my AI, so everyone can make drawings - EVERYONE can be an artist! And when everyone's an artist... no one will be⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I’ve encountered one person that could reasonably be said to be using AI generators to make art, in that a discord server I’m in used to have a guy that made something of a hobby out of trying to get chatbots and coding AIs to make “shaders” (I don’t know exactly what this implies, since what he posted weren’t recognizable as shaded images but some kind of abstract patterns or shapes). He was always talking about tweaking some technical aspects of various models, that I didn’t really get the terminology of to understand, and seemed to spend a lot of time messing around with them to only occasionally get something he found interesting enough to share. It wasn’t how people typically use “AI art” generators though, for sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Quite the exaggerated headline from the look of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could you grind up a loaf of bread back into a flour and make a new loaf of bread?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve heard of some bakery somewhere doing “recycled bread”, where they supposedly take the leftover bread that didn’t sell that day, dry it out, grind it up, and mix it with fresh flour to make new bread, but I don’t know for sure if the story is real.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Couldn't be worse than what we have now...⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If he were a chicken, he’d probably care more about dealing with bird flu, even if for purely selfish reasons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flushing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Avoiding flushing the water is even harder

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ex-Amazon VP explains why rich a-holes with helicopters and personal assistants don't get why you hate your commute⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, if they really were just living lavishly and not using their wealth to amass more wealth like some kind of wealth black hole, then the extreme expenditure of such a lifestyle would one day drain their money dry, since they couldnt possibly actually earn enough to live like that. Were it not for the effect of wealth begetting more wealth, the issue you refer to would eventually solve itself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The science is divided⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But the reasoning given doesnt apply exclusively to horses. Suppose we follow the same chain that gets us “all horses are the same color”, but replace “horses” with “colors”, we would end up with the statement that all colors are the same color. Thus, this is not a counterexample, because black and brown are the same color.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are dwarf planets not considered planets but dwarf stars are considered stars?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I suspect that we might not use the term “dwarf planet”, were it not that the objects we initially created the category to describe were originally classed as planets. The category labelling is a bit arbitrary, we just discovered that what we now call dwarf planets are quite abundant and that there was a clear line that could be drawn to distinguish them from the rest of what we called planets, and so decided to draw that line between them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨on topic⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Lemmy three day challenge

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do AI bros and other staunch AI defenders seem happy about the potential of killing off the creative industries?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m no AI bro, but I do think this concern is a bit overblown. The monetary value in art is not in simply having a picture of something, a whole infamous subset of “modern art” commands high prices despite being simple enough that virtually anybody could recreate it. A lot is simply in that people desire art created by a specific person, be it a painting that they made, or commissioning a still active artist to create something, or someone buying a band’s merch to support their work. AI simply does not have the same parasocial association to it. And of course, it doesn’t at all replicate the non-monetary value that creating something can give to someone.

  I can, at most, imagine it getting integrated into things like advertising where one really doesn’t care who created the work; but even then there’s probably still value in having a human artist review the result to be sure of it’s quality, and that kind of art tends to add the least cultural value anyway.

  That isn’t zero impact obviously, that kind of advertisement or corporate clip art or such does still pay people, but it’s a far cry from the end of creative human endeavor, or even people getting paid to be creative.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SAD⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not necessarily, there can never be a last time if there is never a first time after all…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Potentially habitable planet TRAPPIST-1b may have a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, The innermost Earth-like planet in the famous TRAPPIST-1 system might be capable of supporting a thick atmosphere⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, saying it would take half of forever with existing technology, when we do not have the technology to do it in the first place, seems a bit redundant. There are any number of hypothetical technologies for travel to relatively nearby stars that, while we don’t have them presently, at least do not violate physics and are more an issue of requiring a civilization of much larger scale than ours to afford to build them rather than one of if they’re physically possible.

  An analogy I once saw was this: suppose you were to go back in time to meet a medieval blacksmith, and you show him the blueprints for a modern jetliner. You might, with a lot of explaining of the relevant physics and engineering behind all the parts, be able to convince the guy that the machine could work if constructed. But, he’d have no idea of the process for how many of the parts are made, or the materials they’re made from, and if you included all that information too, the whole process would be so expensive and the size of the economy back then so small that in all likelihood, not even the richest kingdom on earth in his day could possibly afford to actually build and operate one. However, if the blacksmith took all that information and concluded “this can never happen, it’s just too hard”, time would prove him wrong.