lvxferre

@lvxferre@mander.xyz

The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

lvxferre ,

He would also say "melior foris quam intra" (better out than in). Oh wait, no, that was Shrek.

His choice of words is interesting. "Vae me" is extremely casual, and the verb "concaco" (I shit on), while not offensive, is still rather vulgar. However this was coming from someone who was rather worried about his public image, given that his predecessor (Caligula) has been assassinated, and Claudius was always trying finding historical figures to connect himself to. I'm almost sure that he did this sort of stuff to be casual, as an "ice-breaker", to become a bit more liked.

lvxferre ,

People downvoting this post: don't shoot the messenger.

I'll copypaste what I said in !redditmigration about this topic:

As I mentioned in the kbin comm about redditfugees: I think that the platform stopped being sustainable, and that changes like this - either trying to increase engagement or appeasing power users - are only a symptom of that.

They won't work, by the way, because of the trust thermocline (the impact of an act violating the users' trust is considerably greater, if there's a backstory of trust violations).

...excuse me while I grab some popcorn. I'm loving to watch this.

Fun comment (from a user) in that thread:

Because it's a Reddit Product Decision, you can always expect one step forward, two steps back, and four steps off in a random direction that makes no sense.
FAQ
Can people who used all their gold due to your short-sighted mistake get it back? Haha, no.
Are you offering any compensation? Sure, we'll give you some free bullshit. And it expires, so make sure to Drive Engagement and Interact with Posts before the end of the year!
Wait, you're replacing the stuff you made arbitrarily expire with a different arbitrarily-expiring currency? You know it.
Can you use Gold that people give you on other posts? Absolutely not. Gold you are given goes into a big pot where it will remain, serving no purpose, unless you're like the 0.1% of people on this site who ruthlessly and relentlessly farm for gold and karma. If you're one of those people, you can financialize your Reddit experience, earning upwards of, like, five bucks!
I run a subreddit that provides resources for people in mental health crisis or other major medical issues. Can I turn off gilding to stop people boosting bad or unsafe answers? At Reddit, we believe that consumers deserve choice, and in this case, the choice they deserve is to seethe and cope. You absolutely cannot turn this shit off.
You're at least blacklisting the really high-risk subs from the new old Gold program, right? Yes.
What happens when you inevitably miss a sub and end up causing massive headaches for mods? They can contact us at the Mod Help PO Box in Anchorage, Alaska. When the intern checks the mail in 6 months, we'll get right on it.
What if I'm not eligible for the Contributors program? Go fuck yourself.
Does it work on Old Reddit? What do you think?

Additional detail: did anyone notice that you can't log through old.reddit any more? I don't even have an account there any more, but if you try it, here's what you get:

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/ed93becd-22a5-4973-899e-25d571b0eb53.png

They are already actively removing functionality from old.reddit!

lvxferre ,

They take labour into consideration because less time spent serving a drink = you can serve more drinks = we can replace two of you with one.

lvxferre , (edited )

Note that the caret (‸) and circumflex (^) are different signs. The caret is used across plenty Latin orthographies to convey that something is missing, as its name implies; while the circumflex is a diacritic usually going over the letters, whose function depends on the orthography of the language in question.

EDIT: as for the etymology of circumflex it's basically Ben Dover "bent around" (circumflexum).

lvxferre ,

It depends on the dialect, as it relies on the weak vowel merge. Basically: if "John Lenin" and "Vladimir Lennon" sound right for you, you got that merge.

For those who find them to sound the same, the second vowel should be around [ə]. For those who distinguish them, "caret" should have [ɪ] and "carrot" [ə].

lvxferre ,

Yup, in French that circumflex is kind of etymological. I say "kind of" because that /s/ being dropped changed the pronunciation of the preceding vowel, and depending on the vowel and the modern dialect there might be some leftover of that change; for example ⟨tâche⟩ /tɑʃ/ "task" vs. ⟨tache⟩ /taʃ/ "stain".

Originally the diacritic backtracks all the way into Ancient Greek. Back then Greek had a pitch accent, and a vowel could either raise in pitch (so it got an acute, ά) or fall (so it got a grave, ὰ). But some long vowels and diphthongs did both things, raising then fall, so the solution was to mark it with both, as ᾶ. Eventually that circumflex evolved into a tilde-like shape, but that's a coincidence.

Other languages might use it for vowel length, vowel quality, stress.

lvxferre ,

In my keyboard it's in a big flashy position, right in the middle row, but that's because my L1 (Portuguese) uses it a lot.

If you're using a default Dutch (based on your instance) keyboard, check if the key to the right of [P] doesn't have it:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Nederlandse_toetsenbordindeling_-_tekst_als_paden.svg/2560px-Nederlandse_toetsenbordindeling_-_tekst_als_paden.svg.png

lvxferre ,

If you're in doubt if some content violates the rules, report it, and let the mods decide if it's okay or not okay. That is not abuse of the report function.

Include a short description on why you're reporting some piece of content. Specially in larger comms, the mod queue can get really large. If reasonable mention the rule being violated; a simple "r1 off topic" goes a long way.

Context is everything. If what a user said only sounds bad in a certain context, say it. If the user is clearly problematic due to their profile, say it.

You're probably better off not interacting with the content that you're reporting.

Don't boss the other users around. It's fine to be informative; it is not fine to act as a moderator when you are not one. If moderative intervention is necessary, report it.

Stop giving shitty mods a free pass. Honest mistakes happen; but if the mod in question is assumptive, disingenuous, trigger-happy, or eager to enable certain shitty types of user, spread the word about their comm being poorly moderated. And don't interact directly with the comm. I think that at least here in the Fediverse we should demand higher standards from our mods.

lvxferre ,

I have definitely erred in this regard several times!

I think that everyone did this at least once, so don't worry too much. Still, it's less work for the mods if you don't do it.

lvxferre ,

If your description of the events is accurate: that's a shitty mod, and a good example of what I wrote in the last paragraph. We should be denouncing this sort of crap, and avoiding comms where it happens.

It’s not always so easy to assume that mods are going to be fair. Reporting people comes with a risk.

I'm not assuming that the mods are going to be fair. I'm taking into account that shitty mods do a favour to you when they out themselves, as they're basically showing you which comms to avoid.

lvxferre ,

When I wake up I notice that I was dreaming once or twice per week. It's always weird dreams. Weird as in:

  • aliens spitting on trees
  • tomato fighting in the library, killing and burying the old librarian, to resurrect a god
  • using a rolled newspaper as a magic wand, triggered by the word "photon"
  • a vulture digging gold nuggets from my liver, a la Prometheus
  • a pig praying (stupid dream bilingual pun)
  • my cats preparing popcorn (I don't even like popcorn)
lvxferre ,

I'll mostly share tips regarding what you said, OK?

Quite a few programs still rely on files in ~/.config/. So if you feel like the options in a program are "missing", give its config file a check. (To see hidden directories: Ctrl+H)

There's another MS Paint alternative called Kolourpaint. I personally prefer it over Drawing; once you install it you'll need to install quite a bit of stuff from the KDE environment, but I think that it's worth.

The super key can be configured to your taste. For example mine brings up composing, so if I type Super+e+1 I get ɛ, Super+a+1 I get ɐ, so goes on. (I open the menu with Alt+F1, by the way.) As implied, as a further tip - if you need certain characters you can create custom keystrokes through a file called .XCompose.

There's apparently a Reddit activity streak achievement system now. ( lemmy.world )

I just noticed this when I saw a strange "Achievement Unlocked" notification pop up on Reddit. What do you think of this? It seems like a retention tactic to me, like what Amino had with its streak leaderboards, and GameFAQs currently has with streak achievements for logging on ten days in a row and also for all days of a month.

lvxferre ,

Yup, I also think that it's a retention tactic. Not the first one: karma, user profiles, that new year crap etc., they all boil down to "we're giving you reasons to consistently come back, and produce content for us for free."

The timing hints me that the Reddit userbase is getting a lower rebound ratio nowadays. i.e. user goes there to see some junk, then forgets about the site.

lvxferre ,

For reference: air density is roughly 1kg/m³ [see note]. So the same volume of air is roughly 10⁶ tons. The air in the cloud weights 2000 more than the water.

NOTE: it's 1.3kg/m³ on sea level, 0.9kg/m³ at 3km over sea level, I think that 1kg/m³ is a safe bet.

lvxferre ,

It's a bit messy but the rule in question might be from

  • the user's instance
  • the community's instance
  • the community itself

Typically when mods ban you based on violations of some global rule they'll highlight it, e.g. "global rule 1". And it's good form to include the short description of the rule being violated as the reason for the ban (e.g. instead of "rule 1", saying "rule 1 - uncivil behaviour").

Without further clarification, however, it's usually the community rules. Otherwise you'll likely get banned from your account (if you violated the global rules of your instance) or from the instance where the comm is.

In the desktop, to see the community rules you check the side panel:
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/cd6ec317-acd5-44e8-91e2-ad6ad5429664.png

And for the instance you see them on the main page of the instance:
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/0482cb3f-ee8a-40e4-a29d-fa0747f8c86c.png

Props for reading the mod logs, by the way. And if you want to know who did what, this site shows exactly which mod or admin is behind which moderative action.

lvxferre ,

If you’re referring to .ml, Rule 1 is saying anything they don’t like (criticizing an authoritarian regime, etc)

It's a bit more complicated than that. Basically they distort every single rule, not just rule #1. Rule #1 is specially common because they label criticism against certain governments as xenophobia, but sometimes you get "rule #4" (because you insisted on a certain point) or "rule #2" (because someone said some stupid shit and you didn't play along).

lvxferre ,

Old English attests the word as docga. My hypothesis is that it's dōc "bastard, mongrel" + -ga [diminutive suffix], roughly like calling it "the little mutt". The vowel shortening would've been happened already back then, otherwise the modern form would be *doog /du:g/.

Note that Latin/Romance attests similar phenomena (depreciative word for animal becoming the default word + diminutives being ingrained into the main word). And typically when you see weird stuff going on in a language you'll see it happening in other languages too.

lvxferre ,

That sounds unlikely.

Both squalus "shark, whale" and squamatus scaled are from Latin; typically this sort of phenomenon affects the native vocab, not erudite borrowings. And this sort of word merging is rather uncommon. Plus Old English /a/ ended as /æ/ in modern English, not as /ɪ/ (sound changes are typically regular).

Wiktionary tentatively connects it with "squirt", that sounds a bit more likely.

lvxferre ,

I remember some prototype studies made with fruits, where they tested (I think?) Mexicans and Iranians, and the results were different - one side picking apples as prototypical fruits, another bananas. So prototypes are culture-dependent, it's just that that one is widespread enough to mask the effect.

And the superhero example made me notice that they vary individually, too. For example I don't usually consume American hero media, but I do watch quite a bit of anime, so when the author mentioned superheroes my mind went like

  • "superhero" → Goku (arguable, but that's what immediately came to my mind!)
  • "costume superhero" → Sailor Moon
  • "costume superhero with a cape" → Saitama
  • "costume superhero with a cape, can fly" → Superman

The shift from Saitama to Superman was specially interesting because my mind actually backtracked into Goku, only to handle the conflicting info (not wearing costume, not wearing cape) afterwards. That fits rather well the metaphor used by the text, of prototypes as the centres of a web of associations, once you split the web into a bunch of overlapping "territories" - conflicting info forces you to migrate from one territory to another, and the reference to "flying" made me beeline for the prototype of "flying character" first, only then to check the overlap between "flying character" and "costume superhero with a cape".

lvxferre ,

Linux if I'm using the machine.

I can maintain Windows. But I don't remember how to use it for everyday tasks.

lvxferre , (edited )

When I adopted Siefrieda, the way that I introduced her and Kika (my older cat; she's now 16, I think she was 10 back then) was like this:

  • let Frieda in the carrier box. In the living room, so Kika could smell it.
  • let cats each in one part of the house, split by simply closing the doors. In my case it was laudry room + patio vs. the rest of the house.
  • switch the cats twice~thrice a day. That lets them get used to each other's smell, plus it gives them access to both sides of the house. Typically when I went to sleep Kika would have the main part of the house, as unlike Frieda she was already used to her home.
  • put their food on both sides of a glass door. At first they avoided eating at the same time, but when they were OK with it I knew that they didn't mind too much each other.
  • open a slid on the glass door, not enough for a cat to pass, but enough for a paw. Let them smell each other "on the live". When Kika was mildly curious with Frieda instead of aggressive, I knew that I could let them in the same room and they wouldn't fight.

Nowadays they aren't best friends, but let's say that Kika tolerates Siegfrieda like you'd tolerate a really annoying kid. The only main issue is that only one of them refuses to share a litterbox, but I'm fixing this.

lvxferre ,

Wines, cheeses, cold cuts, mutton, salmon, porcino. I'd be also experimenting different stuff here and there (casu marzu, maple syrup, etc.)

lvxferre ,

Interesting video. At the core it can be summed up as:

  • "AI is existential threat" is a lie of big tech trying to use regulatory capture against competitors
  • the main competition for that big tech would be open source generative models
  • we should fight against big tech in this
lvxferre ,

Those concerns mostly apply to artificial general intelligence, or "AGI". What's being developed is another can of worms entirely, it's a bunch of generative models. They're far from intelligent; the concerns associated with them is 1) energy use and 2) human misuse, not that they're going to go rogue.

lvxferre ,

That reminds me an extra shitty idea that I have: a forum that detects and bans redditors. Mostly as a thought experiment, I don't actually plan to implement this but it's fun to think on how to detect users from a specific social media site.

(I commented this once in /g/. Never mentioning which site I didn't want users from. They beelined for Reddit.)

lvxferre , (edited )

And then they clapped.

EDIT, for context: there is [used to?] be a meme in 4chan that Americans clapped for random shit, such as when the movie ends. Likely bullshit, but I'm poking fun at that meme.

lvxferre ,

That's a different meme. The one that I'm referring to had nothing to do with buses, I'm almost certain that it started with "Americans clap after the movie ends" or something similar. Quickly "expanded" by /int/ to include clapping after other "American activities", such as deep frying butter, sharting in the mart, being mass shot. It was mostly ragebait, like sopa de macaco and >Sweden >YES.

KYM does have an entry for that meme but it's incomplete.

lvxferre ,

It's complicated. Short version: Portuguese and Italian.

Long version:

  • Portuguese - native
  • Italian - have been learning it since a kid. It's by no means native speaker level, but I feel rather confident in the language.
  • Venetian - I can speak some but I can't write stuff in the language without pulling out a dic. My knowledge of the language is rusting and it pains me.
  • English - written only.
  • German - I can speak and write some. I use it mostly with my cat.
  • Latin - Classical pronunciation and rather decent vocab. Can read Caesar unaided without too much trouble, Cicero is another can of worms.
  • French - studied it a long, looooong time ago. Completely forgotten.
  • Russian, Ukrainian - sometimes I play a bit with both but I don't speak or write either, I just know Cyrillic. I tend to use Cyrillic a fair bit for my personal notes but it's always with Italian or Latin, it's just so people don't snoop on my notes.
  • Spanish - I never studied the language, my pronunciation is awful, but if I wasn't able to read it I'd seriously question my own basic literacy for Portuguese and Italian.
lvxferre ,

anglijskij i russkij

I love the fact that I can understand this fine without knowing Russian.

lvxferre ,

Yup! And there's some backstory for that.

Back when we adopted Siegfrieda*, I was studying German; and I decided to speak with her in German for my own sake, it's good for memorisation. But then I realised that she and Kika (our other cat) would pay attention to me separately depending on the language, so it was unexpectedly useful.

*the name is also obviously related to that, but partially due to the meaning; it's fitting for a cat that, when adopted, was beaten and starving and pregnant, and now only needs to bother about cardboard boxes and cups of yoghurt. It's like she got her victory peace (Sieg Frieden).

lvxferre ,

I get that you're probably joking, but note that calling C++ etc. "languages" is at most synecdoche. A really common one, but still a figure of speech.

(Language has multiple functions; referential, directive, expressive, phatic, metalinguistic, poetic, metalinguistic etc. Those instruction sets used when programming are at best directive speech only, as they're basically issuing commands to something.)

lvxferre ,

I got that you were probably joking. However, I've seen so many times people equating the human systems of communication with the computer instruction sets that... well, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction.

(Last time that I saw someone genuinely thinking that C++, Fortran, Python etc. were the same deal as Mandarin, English, Spanish etc., the muppet in question brought up code comments for an "ackshyually lol lmao". Yup.)

lvxferre ,

This was in r/linguistics, by the way. And the moderators there were doing jack shit to inform the users. Even if one of them works with NLP, so you'd expect the person to be somewhat well versed in both Linguistics and basic programming.

The worst part? It wasn't even the only time that I saw this conflation. I think that people get caught in the words, and miss that they're referring to different concepts.

lvxferre ,

I cross-checked it in https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com and it seems to be from Non Non Biyori indeed. The character is Renge Miyauchi.

lvxferre ,

I'd also love to see more comms for specific games here.

The main issue that I see is that it's extremely hard to create a "critical mass" of people here to discuss a game. Both because Reddit has lots of content (tutorials etc.) feeding into the network effect, and because it's hard for it to screw up to the point that gaming discussion is affected.

Both [Reddit and Steam Forums] are fucking horrible.

I've been using 4chan /vg/. It's far from ideal, but fairly active.

lvxferre ,

Yandex reverse image search often works considerably better than Google's.

And their translator too. I use it all the time for Latin. Google Translate was made mostly for Romance and Germanic languages, so it sucks at assigning the right case to Latin, and the word order is often a mess. Yandex was however made with Russian in mind, that is syntactically closer to Latin in those two aspects.

lvxferre ,

It's only an option if you're OK with the admins being as transparent as a chunk of charcoal, and enforcing a hidden rule that boils down to "don't disagree with us or our political views."

They're specially prone to distort what you say in order to fit the rules that they actually list in their instance.

Source: former lemmy ml user for 3 years, that used to moderate comms there. I got the fuck out after the notoriously poor way that they handled ani.social.

lvxferre ,

Thanks. [Frankly, I had to re-re-reedit this a lot. Otherwise the tone would definitively not fit Beehaw.]

lvxferre , (edited )

I believe that less than it looks like.

While only 5% of the pilots are women, flight attendants receive basic training for emergency situations, such as when the pilot is incapacitated. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them could actually land a plane in a life-and-death situation, or at least find a passenger who can.

With buses the picture is a bit brighter. If I had to guess, 20% of the bus drivers around the world are female? And a missing driver doesn't automatically spells your death - the bus might be going slow due to traffic, and a lot of people are able to at least step on a brake.

EDIT: I'm genuinely curious about the downvotes. If I said something that is either factually wrong (false) or morally wrong (sexist, insensitive, etc.), feel free to point out, as I can't guess anything based on downvotes alone.

Alternatively, if the downvotes are due to a faulty reasoning, then please show the flaw.

lvxferre ,

I asked my sister and my mum this question.

Sister: she'd be working as usual. Her only co-worker in their small biz is also a woman, so no issue. She asked about her male cats first, before asking about my nephew and BIL.

Mum: she said that she'd be eating air fryer French fries and ice cream through the day and watching movies. She can't be arsed to cook. (I'm usually the one cooking here.)

lvxferre ,

Yup. The main concern in the bus situation is how suddenly the driver disappeared vs. reaction time of the passengers. If it's sudden enough, and the bus is fast enough, even if all passengers were able to drive it, odds are that it'll still crash.

lvxferre ,

OC infographics, shared as pics. Include the URL of your Lemmy account, for authorship. If the infographic is interesting/cool/useful people will share it, indirectly promoting Lemmy.

lvxferre ,

In the meantime, me:

>buy big pillow due to back pain
>plain white sheet, no perfume
>hug it while laying in bed thinking about random shit
>cat nests herself between the pillow and me
>feel more loved from sleeping with the cat than I did when sleeping with my then fiancee

Conclusion: Anon doesn't need a GF. Anon needs a cat.

lvxferre ,

"A" Users would need to send requests to some server anyway, either A or B; that's only diverting the load from B to A, but it isn't alleviating or even sharing it.

Another issue with the current way that ActivityPub works is foul content, that needs to be removed. Remember when some muppet posted CP in LW?

lvxferre ,

I'm aware of Nostr. In my opinion it splits better back- and front-end tasks than the AP does, even if the later does some things better (as the balance between safeness and censorship-resistance). It's still an interesting counterpoint to ActivityPub.

lvxferre ,

Got it - and that's a fair point. I wonder however if this problem couldn't be solved another way, specially because mirroring is itself a burden for the smaller instances.

lvxferre ,

replication is a feature, not a design flaw!

In this case I'd argue that it's both. (A problematic feature? A useful bug? They're the same picture anyway.)

Because of your comment I can see the pros of the mirroring strategy, even if the cons are still there. I wonder if those pros couldn't be "snipped" and implemented into a Nostr-like network, or if the cons can't be ironed out from a Fediverse-like one.

Went to look for the first time in a while...didn't even take me 10 minutes to find an obvious bot. ( www.reddit.com )

All it does is respond to the title. sometimes that works out for it....sometimes its horrible. Just a tiny bit down, check the old school cool. down in the comment graveyard is another number name one doing the exact same thing.

lvxferre , (edited )

Yeah, the botter might have overdone it.

Another thing that I realised is that you could actually do this in a semi-auto way, without coding a single line of code - using a plain browser and an auto-clicker. EDIT: I'm not saying that autoclicker+browser is how people trying to bot Reddit "should" do it. I'm using it to highlight that botting Reddit is an extremely low-hanging fruit, to the point that you expect lots of bots there.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •