AnarchistArtificer

@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Discord Breach Might Be Worse Than We Thought, As The Hacker Is Said To Have Two Million Age Verification Photos⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Quelle surprise

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  “not that hard to do”

  Eh, I’m not so sure on that. I often find myself tripping up on the xkcd Average Familiarity problem, so I worry that this assumption is inadvertently a bit gatekeepy.

  It’s the unfortunate reality that modern tech makes it pretty hard for a person to learn the kind of skills necessary to be able to customise one’s own tools. As a chronic tinkerer, I find it easy to underestimate how overwhelming it must feel for people who want to learn but have only ever learned to interface with tech as a “user”. That kind of background means that it requires a pretty high level of curiosity and drive to learn, and that’s a pretty high bar to overcome. I don’t know how techy you consider yourself to be, but I’d wager that anyone who cares about whether something is open source is closer to a techy person than the average person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Sidestepping the debate about whether AI art is actually fair use, I do find the fair use doctrine an interesting lens to look at the wider issue — in particular, how deciding whether something is fair use is more complex than comparing a case to a straightforward checklist, but a fairly dynamic spectrum.

  It’s possible that something could be:

  • Highly transformative
  • Takes from a published work that is primarily of a factual nature (such as a biography)
  • Distributed to a different market than the original work but still not be considered fair use, if it had used the entirety of the base work without modification (in this case, the “highly transformative” would pertain to how the chunks of the base work are presented)

  I’m no lawyer, but I find the theory behind fair use pretty interesting. In practice, it leaves a lot to be desired (the way that YouTube’s contentID infringes on what would almost certainly be fair use, because Google wants to avoid being taken to court by rights holders, so preempts the problem by being overly harsh to potential infringement). However, my broad point is that whether a court decides something is fair use relies on a holistic assessment that considers all four of pillars of fair use, including how strongly each apply.

  AI trained off of artist’s works is different to making collage of art because of the scale of the scraping — a huge amount of copyrighted work has been used, and entire works of art were used, even if the processing of them were considered to be transformative (let’s say for the sake of argument that we are saying that training an AI is highly transformative). The pillar that AI runs up against the most though is “the effect of the use upon the potential market”. AI has already had a huge impact on the market for artistic works, and it is having a hugely negative impact on people’s ability to make a living through their art (or other creative endeavours, like writing). What’s more, the companies who are pushing AI are making inordinate amounts of revenue, which makes the whole thing feel especially egregious.

  We can draw on the ideas of fair use to understand why so many people feel that AI training is “stealing” art whilst being okay with collage. In particular, it’s useful to ask what the point of fair use is? Why have a fair use exemption to copyright at all? The reason is because one of the purposes of copyright is meant to be to encourage people to make more creative works — if you’re unable to make any money from your efforts because you’re competing with people selling your own work faster than you can, then you’re pretty strongly disincentivised to make anything at all. Fair use is a pragmatic exemption carved out because of the recognition that if copyright is overly restrictive, then it will end up making it disproportionately hard to make new stuff. Fair use is as nebulously defined as it is because it is, in theory, guided by the principle of upholding the spirit of copyright.

  Now, I’m not arguing that training an AI (or generating AI art) isn’t fair use — I don’t feel equipped to answer that particular question. As a layperson, it seems like current copyright laws aren’t really working in this digital age we find ourselves in, even before we consider AI. Though perhaps it’s silly to blame computers for this, when copyright wasn’t really helping individual artists much even before computers became commonplace. Some argue that we need new copyright laws to protect against AI, but Cory Doctorow makes a compelling argument about how this will just end up biting artists in the ass even worse than the AI. Copyright probably isn’t the right lever to pull to solve this particular problem, but it’s still a useful thing to consider if we want to understand the shape of the whole problem.

  As I see it, copyright exists because we, as a society, said we wanted to encourage people to make stuff, because that enriches society. However, that goal was in tension with the realities of living under capitalism, so we tried to resolve that through copyright laws. Copyright presented new problems, which led to the fair use doctrine, which comes with problems of its own, with or without AI. The reason people consider AI training to be stealing is because they understand AI as a dire threat to the production of creative works, and they attempt to articulate this through the familiar language of copyright. However, that’s a poor framework for addressing the problem that AI art poses though. We would be better to strip this down to the ethical core of it so we can see the actual tension that people are responding to.

  Maybe we need a more radical approach to this problem. One interesting suggestion that I’ve seen is that we should scrap copyright entirely and implement a generous universal basic income (UBI) (and other social safety nets). If creatives were free to make things without worrying about fulfilling basic living needs, it would make the problem of AI scraping far lower stakes for individual creatives. One problem with this is that most people would prefer to earn more than what even a generous UBI would provide, so would probably still feel cheated by Generative AI. However, the argument is that GenerativeAI cannot compare to human artists when it comes to producing novel or distinctive art, so the most reliable wa**y to obtain meaningful art would be to give financial support to the artists (especially if an individual is after something of a particular style). I’m not sure how viable this approach would be in practice, but I think that discussing more radical ideas like this is useful in figuring what the heck to do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I get what you’re saying.

  I often find myself being the person in the room with the most knowledge about how Generative AI (and other machine learning) works, so I tend to be in the role of the person who answers questions from people who want to check whether their intuition is correct. Yesterday, when someone asked me whether LLMs have any potential uses, or whether the technology is fundamentally useless, and the way they phrased it allowed me to articulate something better than I had previously been able to.

  The TL;DR was that I actually think that LLMs have a lot of promise as a technology, but not like this; the way they are being rolled out indiscriminately, even in domains where it would be completely inappropriate, is actually obstructive to properly researching and implementing these tools in a useful way. The problem at the core is that AI is only being shoved down our throats because powerful people want to make more money, at any cost — as long as they are not the ones bearing that cost. My view is that we won’t get to find out the true promise of the technology until we break apart the bullshit economics driving this hype machine.

  I agree that even today, it’s possible for the tools to be used in a way that’s empowering for the humans using them, but it seems like the people doing that are in the minority. It seems like it’s pretty hard for a tech layperson to do that kind of stuff, not least of all because most people struggle to discern the bullshit from the genuinely useful (and I don’t blame them for being overwhelmed). I don’t think the current environment is conducive towards people learning to build those kinds of workflows. I often use myself as a sort of anti-benchmark in areas like this, because I am an exceedingly stubborn person who likes to tinker, and if I find it exhausting to learn how to do, it seems unreasonable to expect the majority of people to be able to.

  I like the comic’s example of Photoshop’s background remover, because I doubt I’d know as many people who make cool stuff in Photoshop without helpful bits of automation like that (“cool stuff” in this case often means amusing memes or jokes, but for many, that’s the starting point in continuing to grow). I’m all for increasing the accessibility of an endeavour. However, the positive arguments for Generative AI often feels like it’s actually reinforcing gatekeeping rather than actually increasing accessibility; it implicitly divides people into the static categories of Artist, and Non-Artist, and then argues that Generative AI is the only way for Non-Artists to make art. It seems to promote a sense of defeatism by suggesting that it’s not possible for a Non-Artist to ever gain worthwhile levels of skill. As someone who sits squarely in the grey area between “artist” and “non-artist”, this makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I liked it, personally. I’ve read plenty of AI bad articles, and I too am burnt out on them. However, what I really appreciated about this was that it felt less like a tirade against AI art and more like a love letter to art and the humans that create it. As I was approaching the ending of the comic, for example, when the argument had been made, and the artist was just making their closing words, I was struck by the simple beauty of the art. It was less the shapes and the colours themselves that I found beautiful, but the sense that I could practically feel the artist straining against the pixels in his desperation to make something that he found beautiful — after all, what would be the point if he couldn’t live up to his own argument?

  I don’t know how far you got through, but I’d encourage you to consider taking another look at it. It’s not going to make any arguments you’ve not heard before, but if you’re anything like me, you might appreciate it from the angle of a passionate artist striving to make something meaningful in defiance of AI. I always find my spirits bolstered by work like this because whilst we’re not going to be able to draw our way out of this AI-slop hellscape, it does feel important to keep reminding ourselves of what we’re fighting for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been practicing at being a better writer, and one of the ways I’ve been doing that is by studying the writing that I personally really like. Often I can’t explain why I click so much with a particular style of writing, but by studying and attempting to learn how to copy the styles that I like, it feels like a step towards developing my own “voice” in writing.

  A common adage around art (and other skilled endeavours) is that you need to know how to follow the rules before you can break them, after all. Copying is a useful stepping stone to something more. It’s always going to be tough to learn when your ambition is greater than your skill level, but there’s a quote from Ira Glass that I’ve found quite helpful:

  “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  What makes you want to do art? I’m just curious, because I am also someone who has bounced off of attempting to learn to do art a bunch of times, and found tracing unfulfilling (I am abstaining from the question of whether tracing is art, but I do know it didn’t scratch the itch for me).

  For my part, I ended up finding that crafts like embroidery or clothing making was the best way to channel my creative inclinations, but that’s mostly because I have the heart of a ruthless pragmatist and I like making useful things. What was it that caused you to attempt to learn?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the things I find most awesome about art is seeing how so many people with different capacities find ways to make art.

  I likely have aphantasia, and whilst I call myself an artist, there are times where I see a particular shape or form within the world and think “damn, that’s beautiful”. I find myself taking a mental note of it, because whilst I don’t make art, I do enjoy making clothes. Aphantasia does make it hard to take those experiences and make cool stuff out of them, because without a mental image to work from, it may take me many attempts to correctly mark out the shape, where my only guiding sense is whether a particular attempt looks right though. It hasn’t stopped me from making things I’m truly proud of though, and a key thing that drives me to keep creating is that sense of fulfillment I get from taking something beautiful from the world and reusing it in a manner that allows me to share that slice of wonder with other people.

  I feel like I’ve only been half decent at that in recent years though; before that, I tended to focus on the more technical aspects of the craft, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t creative. I made a chainmail hauberk for myself once, because the base technique didn’t seem hard and it seemed like it would be fun (turns out the hard part is sticking with it long enough to make a whole item). Part of my quest was that I knew that wearing a sturdy belt over a chainmail hauberk is essential for the weight to be properly distributed, and I thought it might be cool to use an underbust corset in place of a belt. The creative part of that required little, if any, visual imagination — I mostly just enjoyed the juxtaposition of the traditionally masculine armour with the femininity of the corset.

  Beyond my own personal experiences, I’ve been awed by seeing so many examples of creative people working with what limitations they have, and honing their skills in whatever way they can. A close friend has such poor vision that they legally count as blind, but their paintings have such incredible colours — they have a beautiful diffuseness to them, which is apparently how they see the world. Seeing their art makes me feel closer to them. Unfortunately, they’ve recently suffered injury to their hands, so they can’t paint like they used to — so they have found new ways to paint that don’t rely on their hands so much. And there’s even more examples of this kind of persistence if we consider music to be art too.

  I don’t really give a fuck about art — not really. I care about the people who make it. I get that it’s frustrating to try something creative when your skill can’t match up to your figurative creative vision, but that’s also a problem that even experienced artists struggle with. If you made something that required little to no skill, but it was something that you had cared about, then that’s enough to make me care. That might sound silly given that you’re just a random person on the internet to me, but that’s precisely why I care; art makes me feel connected to people I’ve never even met.

  People who make the point that you’re making are often people who have within them the desire to make art, but they feel that it’s inaccessible to them. I know, because I was one of them (years before AI hit the zeitgeist). I realise that this may not apply to you, and you might be speaking in a more general sense, but if it does, then I would hope that you would someday feel able to give things a go. I think it’d be a shame if someone with a desire to create never got the chance to see where that could go. I’m not saying “maybe you could start a career as an artist”, because even highly proficient artists often struggle to make a career out of art that doesn’t kill their soul (most working artists I know use their paid work to support work that’s more artistically fulfilling to them). Just know that if you make things that you care about, there will always be people who will care about what you make.

  I say this as someone who has just written out a veritable essay full of care in reply to someone I’m probably never going to speak about. And hey, if you’ve gotten this far, then that is surely evidence towards my point about how making stuff you care about causes people to care about what you’ve made — either that, or you’ve jumped to the bottom in search of a TL;DR. Regardless, people like me care so much about art because human connection helps us to survive this pretty grim world, and art is our most reliable way of doing that. I’d love to have you here with us, if you’d like to be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you lose your memories, are "you" dead? If a close relative/friend lose their memories, are they still "your relative/friend"? What the hell even is memory? How sentimental are you about memories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope this doesn’t sound trite, given that I’m just a random stranger on the internet, but I’m proud of you. Whilst I haven’t experienced depression in the way that you describe, I know how suffocating of an experience it is. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to endure that, especially when there are concrete life circumstances exacerbating things, as you describe. I am glad that you get to be alive again; you deserve it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you lose your memories, are "you" dead? If a close relative/friend lose their memories, are they still "your relative/friend"? What the hell even is memory? How sentimental are you about memories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I recently played Signalis which explored these themes in an awesome manner. (It’s a survival horror game, but speaking as someone who isn’t great with horror, it wasn’t too bad on that front.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you lose your memories, are "you" dead? If a close relative/friend lose their memories, are they still "your relative/friend"? What the hell even is memory? How sentimental are you about memories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man, I relate to this. I have a somewhat similar experience which I have recounted in a long comment elsewhere in this thread that you may be interested in checking out.

  My conclusion is much the same as your own. In some ways, I think I had to believe that I was the same person, because otherwise, I’d be living out the rest of my life feeling like an imposter who had stolen another person’s life. I imagine it might’ve been harder to believe that I’m still me if I had experienced personality changes as people who experience head trauma sometimes do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you lose your memories, are "you" dead? If a close relative/friend lose their memories, are they still "your relative/friend"? What the hell even is memory? How sentimental are you about memories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Story time!

  I once bumped my head and got complete retrograde amnesia. I lost basically all of my episodic memory — that is, the memory of all my past experiences. My semantic memory appeared to be intact, which meant I retained my general knowledge of the world, such as who was prime minister. However, I basically lost all sense of my identity for a while. I didn’t even remember my name at first. Honestly, I don’t know if I can say that I ever truly remembered my name after the fact; I was fortunate that my memory did return to me gradually over the course of many days, weeks and months, but because I was told my name many times over that period, I never got that sense of remembering my name (I’m going to use the psuedonym Ann for the sake of this story)

  Anyway, it was terrifying at the time, but now that I’m past the dread and trauma of it all, I can reflect on it as a cool experience. A few days after the accident, when I still had very little memory of who I was, I went to a Christmas party with many of my friends. However, it felt like being in a room full of strangers. It was awkward at first when I arrived; people didn’t know how to act towards me, and seemed uncertain of whether I was still the person they knew. That was a fear I shared. However, they seemed to ease up quite quickly, because it seemed that my personality was still authentic to the person they knew, even if I had to start from scratch in getting to know them. It’s a bizarre experience to reflect on, because now I have two sets of memories of meeting some of my dearest friends for the first time.

  The most distressing part of it all was when I had gotten to know some of the people in my life, and had put together many of the fragments about who I was. I wasn’t sure that I was that person though. I felt like an intruder in someone else’s life, and I was terrified that I wasn’t the same person. All the wonderfully supportive people around me — how could I call them my friends when I wasn’t the same Ann that had earned their friendship. Apparently I still acted like her, but if I was her, why was there such a stark division between the two versions of Ann in my head: there was the Ann who existed before the accident, and the Ann that I was afterwards — I didn’t know whether I could consider them to be the same. If we were the same person, why was I talking about “her” rather than “me”?

  Some months after the accident, a romantic relationship started between me and my best friend. We had been close friends for a few years prior, and he later confessed to me that a part of him was anxious that maybe we wouldn’t have been together if not for the bump to my head. I was surprised to hear this, because my friend was a super charismatic guy and this kind of anxiety seemed out of character for him. I understood where he was coming from though. I told him that it would be nice if I could tell him that his worry was a silly one, and that of course the amnesia wasn’t the only reason we were together. However, I didn’t actually know whether I was the same person. By then, it felt like the vast majority of my memories had returned, and no-one reported any discernible personality change to me. However, I had no way to know what significant memories, if any, were still missing to me. I didn’t think that his fears were true, but ultimately, I had no way of knowing, and I just had to live with that — and unfortunately, so did he.

  One of the most disconcerting aspects of it all was how it felt to rediscover a memory. Have you ever had something remind you of a memory that was tucked away so deep in your mind that you didn’t even know you still had it until something brought it to the surface? A foggy fragment from childhood perhaps? Well that’s what regaining my memories felt like. In the early days, it was extremely vague bits that I remembered.

  The first fragment was in the hospital waiting room, when I remembered that the friend who was with me was someone who reuses day old tea bags (they will take the mug they used the previous day and add a new teabag in with the old one, and pour in new hot water). Bear in mind that this was a person who I had initially thought had drugged and kidnapped me, because my first memory after the fall was feeling dizzy in a room, surrounded by complete strangers who claimed to be my friends. I was so overjoyed and surprised to have something come back to me that I loudly exclaimed this revelation in the half full hospital waiting room. The first thing I remembered of my best friend was snow, because of a road trip we’d taken together the previous year. The next fragment about him was barbeques (he enjoyed getting people together for one in the Summer), and the next bit was Lord of the Rings. At first, it felt like I was receiving loose, disparate fragments about a person, but over time, it began to feel more like I was filling in the final pieces in a mostly complete jigsaw. But then, that’s not far from how it feels to be close friends about a person, and to discover new facts about them, despite having known them for years.

  Nowadays, when I have that feeling of a long forgotten memory returning to me, I’m unsure of whether it’s another fragment returning to me post amnesia, or if it’s just the regular kind of remembering stuff. It’s been around 6 years since the accident, so I have a heckton of new memories on top of that. A few years ago, I had that peculiar feeling of a memory returning, and I assumed that it was another amnesia thing returning, but then I realised that this particular rediscovered fragment happened after the accident, so this was just normal, run of the mill forgetting. That was jarring to realise that memory has always been fallible like this. Whilst yes, complete retrograde amnesia is a super rare experience, nothing had really changed.

  Memories are always slippery things. I’ve read neuroscience research that suggests that when we remember a thing, we’re sort of rewriting the memory. It’s like if every time you checked out a book from the library, you weren’t allowed to return that specific book, but instead had to write out the book and return a new copy of the same book. Even if you try hard to be accurate, there’s inevitably going to be some errors in transcription (just look at transcription errors in manuscripts before the invention of the printing press). This means that the more you check out a particular book, the more likely it is to be changed. Trippy stuff, huh? That’s what I mean when I say that nothing had really changed. The amnesia made me feel unstable because I didn’t have my memories to rely on to build my sense of reality, but memories will always be fallible. We like to pretend they’re not, but everything we perceive is filtered through our own subjective filters, and then each time we reflect on our recollections, we pass those memories through the filter again. Even before my amnesia, my memories were not an accurate reflection of reality — that’s just a lie that makes us feel more at ease with the inherent instability of our own perceptions and experiences. That fact was brought to my attention in a rather abrupt way, but it’s one of the reasons I’m oddly glad for this absurd experience. It was certainly philosophically interesting.

  I could talk forever on this topic, because it was a hell of a ride, but I’ll stop here, because this comment is long enough already. I’m open to answering any questions that y’all want to throw at me though, because God knows there aren’t many people with an experience like this. You don’t have to worry about being overly intrusive or about upsetting me, though be aware that I might not get round to answering your questions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are fruits and berries healthy, even though they are mostly just sugar?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  People have spoken a lot about how digestible the sugars are, but in terms of overall healthiness, the fibre is an important component even beyond its impact on sugar absorption. Many people do not get enough fibre in their diets.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It does look pretty comfortable

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Gosh, that’s… a lot.

  “When I was an alcoholic” I hope that the “was” in your comment means that you’re in a better place now. I also hope your best friend is still your friend and/or that he didn’t end up ruining his life (or that he was able to rebuild a half decent life from the wreckage of his mistakes)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meh, I'm more of an Aragorn fan...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Did you show this image to your girlfriend and ask her if she got the joke, only for her to give you this oblique reply? If so, that’s hilarious

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Winner winner!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Same. At least we won one game today.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Being a dude sucks⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is just anecdata, but something that I find really funny is that of all the lesbian couples in which there appears to be a butch and a femme, people seem to expect that the more “masculine” of the two will be the one to dispatch spiders and other scary critters, but it always seems to be the more feminine one.

  This is a sample size of 6 couples, so it’s obviously not representative, but I find it funny nonetheless

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And the pre-peeled containers for 4x the price are a ripoff⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I saw a friend do this and I was so impressed. Although she didn’t beat the slices.

  Tangentially, the bowl of pomegranate seeds was for snacking on during a movie. I found it hilarious because it felt like it was middle class popcorn (I grew up super poor, and pomegranate was one of the many foods I didn’t try until university)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does my brain think I still need counterpoints for arguments I had ten years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because you’re not having enough interesting arguments now. Perhaps you have an instinct to want to grow and improve, but you’re not able to easily access that in the here and now.

  I sympathise. Sometimes it’s not necessarily even about “winning” an argument, but just articulating your point well enough that things can move forwards. I find I am more likely to dwell on arguments where the other person was arguing against a point different than the one I was trying to make. In those cases, going over the argument in my head is usually me trying to think about how I could have better communicated my point in a manner that would allow the other person to engage with my actual points; perhaps then we could move forward productively and some change happens: either one of us causes the other to yield some ground, or I’m able to fortify my stance and come up with responses to new arguments. Either way, lack of closure sucks, especially when it feels stagnant.

  Dwelling on past arguments isn’t healthy, but I suspect you already know that, or you wouldn’t have asked this question. Try not to beat yourself up about it too much though. Everyone ruminates sometimes, and trying to force yourself to not think of something is doomed to fail. It’s more effective to find new things to focus on to help you to move forward, but that’s an ongoing effort, and easier said than done.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Star Trek Discovery that bad?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been doing a complete rewatch of Deep Space 9, and it really underscored why I didn’t enjoy Discovery and Picard. My favourite parts of DS9 are the character driven moments, whether they’re big and dramatic, or lightweight and silly. I like that the show has enough space for that. The show has more Plot than previous Star Trek, but that Plot still serves the characters. Discovery is not nearly as bad as Picard on this front, but I still found myself wishing for more opportunity to get to know the characters.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shakes pear⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My favourite example of it is Ben Grosser’s edit of Andreeson Horowitz’s “Techno-optimist Manifesto”. It takes something gross and makes something beautiful out of it, by distilling Horowitz’s masturbatory prose into something more honest. It’s a long document, but it’s a refreshingly speedy read, what with entire pages being blacked out.

  An excerpt

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like this should be an xkcd explains (if it isn’t already one)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK is ‘worst country in Europe’ for drug prices, says Mounjaro maker⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve heard it’s gotten worse since Brexit

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK the basic techniques for "deprogramming" people who you think are in a cult⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you tried having a modicum of empathy? It seems that’s a pretty important part of the method.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who the fuck needs an x axis anyway⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, it’s possible, but I’m not sure there’s data to support the idea of increasing rates of autism. The increase in diagnosis rates is way too strong of a confounder

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than 150 lawyers and refugee NGOs report being ‘pressured into silence’ by far-right protesters⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This double standard is why Palestine Action being proscribed was such a galling move

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2025 Ig Physics Nobel Prize goes to perfect pasta sauce⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You might enjoy the work of Kenji López-Alt, from Serious Eats. He’s not a scientist, but the manner in which he investigates and iterates when solving cooking problems is super scientific. I fucking loved his investigation into Yorkshire puddings , because it validated some of my own findings when investigating the best methods. For example, my tests led me to use a hydration level of 250% (so for every 100g of flour, use 250g of liquids (a combination of eggs and water/milk). López-Alt found that 266% worked best, and I was pretty chuffed at someone I respect so much arriving at such a similar answer to my own.

  He also wrote a book, titled The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science . It’s one of the few books that I’ve actually bought. Lots of the good stuff can be found on the Serious Eats website though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would unironically rather win an Ig Nobel prize than a Nobel prize. Granted, it’s easy to say this as I’m exceedingly unlikely to win either, but a girl can dream.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can't argue that.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My pragmatic understanding of this as someone who is a life scientist (but not a neuroscientist) is that neuroplasticity itself is sort of like a skill, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. That is to say that you needn’t rush to cram in new knowledge, but you should continue to indulge your hunger for knowledge. If you keep expanding your horizons and ways of thinking, you’ll maintain a high level of neuroplasticity as you age