maegul

maegul , 14 hours ago

!learningrustandlemmy

It’s for learning rust (the programming language) and the lemmy code base itself as a sort of “reading club”. If you’re the type of person who might be interested there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it already. We’re currently working through The Book (conventional learning resource) through a couple of Twitch streams and regular posts/discussions.

More collaborative learning activity is plenty welcome!

maegul , 1 day ago

Yea, holy shit. That’s about 4 posts a day for a straight year.

maegul , 1 day ago

Onservable HQ, if you don’t already know it. They’re likely to be interactive too.

It’d a platform made by Bostock, who created D3.

maegul , 1 day ago

Well there should be plenty of people’s stuff available there. At least there used to be (I haven’t been there in a while).

maegul , 21 hours ago

Sorry about this. I hadn't been to the platform for a while (I was a keen early adopter when it came out).

It seems they've locked it down more as a public platform and requires an account just to explore. So I'm not sure how useful it'd be for you.

But there are public "notebooks" there with some attractive or interesting visualisations. EG, a quick one I found showing the confirmation votes for recent US Supreme Court Justices.

But yea, not the resource I thought it might be (interestingly, it's a lot less of a public platform than I think there were hopes of before, but maybe that was my idealism/optimism). It is a very cool tool though!

maegul Mod , 1 day ago

I was ultimately ambivalent about Poor Things, but this one looks more like the Lanthimos I’ve enjoyed in the past. I think I’ll make an effort to see it in the cinema.

maegul , 2 days ago

I hadn't seen this before and it's perfect! I saved it!

maegul , 2 days ago

Yea, well it tracks with the deferred ethics of the whole dynamic/system.

My favourite was the opening, which set the tone and had me double take to make sure I read it correctly: "You can slice someone’s throat and still love them." Of course you can, so long as you respect them and remain mindful of the circle of life.

I don't engage in any vegan arguments at the moment ... but I'd imagine the real razor would be whether anyone has actually killed the kind of animals they're eating and would be happy to do that every time they ate (the corresponding amount of meat, just to be "fair"). I have, through scientific research seen and participated in animal killing, and watched how others digest the process. I'm pretty most moderately thoughtful people would not be up for it at all.

maegul , 2 days ago

JFC that is a dire image! I believe it's real but I don't want to see it.

maegul Mod , 2 days ago

The interesting test will be when the Gunniverse starts

Was just thinking the same thing recently ... inadvertently, that "project" seems perfectly timed to steer the industry in a moment of uncertainty. Like 2 "flops" from Gunn and that could be the clear beginning of the end of mainstream comic films. Great successes, and it'll keep going for sure.

I wonder if Dune (at least part 2) is having any bearing on the industry ... because I'd guess it isn't at a broad level because that kind of content and film making is just not economical enough at the "cinematic universe" scale. But then again, are we going to see more classic and epic Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories being pushed out? Is some exec chucking a fit about why they don't own the rights to Asimov's Foundation?

maegul OP Mod , 3 days ago

No worries!

I myself am not on top of the "smart pointers" (yet) ... so I'm hoping it'll be helpful when I go through that just to keep perspective.

maegul OP Mod , 3 days ago

Further Notes ...

• This isn't a live watch thing
  • Watch the films in your own time and how you want, including a live watch thing of your own if you like of course
• This will be flexible
  • There's plenty of scope to adjust how this works along the way
  • Happy to take suggestions here, as I said, but I think running it at least once before getting too much into the weeds is a good idea
  • One of the biggest ways in which this could adapt, IMO, is being specific with the genre and/or era for any given month, and/or maybe even expanding it out to multiple movie clubs for different interests
• The first two aims listed above are the main thing IMO
  • Which means the voting is just to lead to a suggestion for us to gather around one film at a time
  • You can watch and post about any of the suggestions if you like (obviously, really) and that'd absolutely be a good thing ... watching cool/good/interesting films is the whole point IMO

maegul OP Mod , 3 days ago

Yea, great question. I'd guess that this is likely to be the biggest issue with the whole thing.

I personally don't think one person can source a particular film for everyone. I think crowd sourcing availability options is realistically the only way to go.

What we might find out though is that the current streaming system is actually a regression from the days of video rental shops. In the past, many of the films we'd want to watch would have been available at the local shop. Some might have required some hunting but nothing too serious. And esoteric ones would have been hard to find and required an academic library or something.

Now, if you have to sign up to a different streaming service and potentially VPN for every different film you want to watch, that may become prohibitive for many and would really be a step backward however convenient the internet is otherwise.

I'm hoping it's fine, and I'm also rather curious to see how it goes TBH.

I personally have found decent success in renting films off of Apple ITunes/TV. And I've also found a nearby old-school video rental with quite a good collection of DVDs and BlueRays. So I'll probably be leveraging those. But I don't know how available or desirable that is for many here or exactly what other options there are.

It will certainly be a conversation for every film we want to watch, I think.

maegul OP Mod , 3 days ago

Cheers!

maegul OP Mod , 3 days ago

Yea a scheduled discussion thread could work well. Don't know what times works for people ... but if it's pinned and always posted at the same time or the same date of the month, I'd imagine it would work well.

maegul , 3 days ago

This is one of my favourite things!

I've walked most of it (though I couldn't find Saturn for some reason ... I suspect it was stolen).

And yea ... it's a ridiculously effective demonstration of how hard it is to comprehend big numbers. I knew these numbers, or had read them before hand, and thought about them ... but seeing it all to scale was kinda devastating ... like the distances between the outer planets are huuuge ... you get tired walking them even though the planets are 5cms wide.

And yea, the proxima centauri thing is a very nice touch!

maegul , 3 days ago

And what would a non-vegan want to do in there?

What's wrong with minority views and practices creating their own spaces?

On which, is there any non-vegan/anti-vegan thought or idea that a vegan is likely to have not heard already? How many haven't they heard relative to the amount of decent "pro-vegan" ideas they also haven't heard of?

Maybe a specialised space, echo chamber even, makes sense in order to balance against the gravity of the mainstream?

maegul , 3 days ago

Right. Well, I think the instance name "vegantheory.org" was doing that already, and I'm betting you drew your conclusion from the public description of the place too (and aren't in the modlog or anything for challenging their ideas).

maegul , 3 days ago

they drive away potential allies because the concept of harm reduction is anathema to their binary thinking. If you’re not ALL in, you’re the enemy.

I can resonate with that. But I come back to ... "it's totally ok for people to create their own spaces, especially on federated social media and especially for minority groups/ideas".

There are likely plenty of other spaces for "potential allies" to engage and talk about veganism if they want to, or plenty they, or you, could make on their own.

Tacitly admitting that vegans are usually antisocial zealots. “It’s right in the name!”

Well, they're running their own social media platform, so I'm not sure how anti-social they are.

maegul , 3 days ago

I believe you ... gate-keeping types are all over the place really.

But vegans or the "vegan-curious" aren't one thing or one kind of person, at least not any more. I personally have only ever had positive conversations with vegan types.

This instance, in being insistent on not entertaining any "harm reduction" or "compromises", makes sense though ... because it's a space for people to talk about that sort of dedicated approach.

maegul , 4 days ago

I’ve peaked at that issue a couple of times, but I never worked out what the issue/feature got stuck on. Naively I would have thought it a relatively workable feature to add.

maegul OP , 4 days ago

For sure the whole thing is much more fuzzy than this, with “in between” generations, like Jones gen and xennials being quite real. Plus all of the other factors that make up a society.

One big piece missing here though are the relative sizes of the generations, which is part of my interest. Boomer and Millennial bring the biggest, which colors the implications.

maegul OP , 4 days ago

I hear you but death age is likely a messy statistic. Using life expectancy might help, but that too depends on a number of things. So I can see why they went this way … it lets you apply the ages to what you know.

maegul OP , 4 days ago

Ha yep!

And Game of Thrones first aired 13 years ago (roughly when all zoomers were kids) … just in case you wanted to feel old.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Another factor I’ve heard is that investment types and thinking have taken root in the film industry and established a baseline gross profit margin as an expectation compared to the past that was more happy to break even.

It makes sense because it’s also the story of the times I suspect, and there’s likely a lesson to be learnt that how we useful market dynamics can be some aspects of civilised life may be best left effectively non-profit.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Yea I agree. Like I said in the OP text, there may have been a long drawn out transition that is only hitting hard enough now, especially because of age demographics. If true, you’d expect that we’ve reached the point where the internet generations (millennial and younger) are the majority of the potential cinema going audience.

Which feels right.

It seems to me that 90s kid millennials and their young children are the current “mainstream”. And boomers have just shifted out of dominance in the past 5 years or so. The pandemic may have masked this shift TBH and we may have been talking about it more if it weren’t for the pandemic.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

With so many great things vying for my attention, I appreciate the ability to just turn something off if it doesn’t suit my taste.

Which is sanderson’s point I think. This is what books have been like for a long time. Film industry probably just needs to adapt.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Yea. A basic heuristic I picked up a while ago was “was this better before the accountants got involved”. I got it from someone telling me their profession was clearly better before accountants ruined it.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Cheers.

You know that’s an interesting one. As a speaker/writer of “Queens English”, I sometimes find myself reaching for the US spelling online just not to fit in (eg color) … and I think that kinda happened here, and I honestly didn’t know curtesy wasn’t the US spelling (not that I have any hard precedent to cite).

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Ha. Yea. Having a boomer generation does these sorts of things. Like both X and Y (millennial) gens have also transitioned sharply from being young (and “stupid”) to now actually old and ridiculed by younger gens. The dominance of the boomers gen in size allowed their perspective over X and Y to culturally persist.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Or you sometimes hear about shitty they apparently are as people. Truly left behind.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

I guess it’s the King’s English now.

I’ll probably say “Queen’s” until the day I die. Liz has probably earned that much.

maegul OP Mod , 4 days ago

Good insight there with the gaming industry, hadn’t thought of that (as I haven’t been a gamer for a while).

In the end though, this buttresses Sander’s point I think, which is that having the theatres protected their industry for longer. The theatre isn’t just the shop or shelf but the whole product, experience and marketing activity rolled into one.

maegul Mod , 5 days ago

Eggers ... vampires ... Dafoe ... ummm Fuck Yes.

I saw this trailer without knowing Eggers was attached, picked up on an Eggers-ish vibe, but was skeptical (I missed the credit early in the trailer) and looked it up ... seeing it was his film was a very pleasing surprise!

Probably easily most anticipated film of the year for me.

maegul , 4 days ago

It’s impossible to scroll through animation (not a good quality IMO).

But am I correct in thinking that chrome’s total dominance has lasted longer than IE’s ever did?

Theirs different beasts in terms of standards, but seriously modern front end devs … I think that’s a bad indictment of your profession.

maegul Mod , 5 days ago

Interesting. After watching cloud atlas recently I was nostalgic for the Wachowskis and thought I’d try to watch what ever I’d missed from their filmography.

maegul Mod , 5 days ago

it’s been amazing if flawed

My feelings too. I was very happy to have watched it. Cheers for the push to watch Bound!

maegul , 5 days ago

I suspect the basilisk reveals more about how the human mind is inclined to think up of heaven and hell scenarios.

Some combination of consciousness leading to more imagination than we know what to do with and more awareness than we’re ready to grapple with. And so there are these meme “attractors” where imagination, idealism, dread and motivation all converge to make some basic vibe of a thought irresistible.

Otherwise, just because I’m not on top of this … the whole thing is premised on the idea that we’re likely to be consciousnesses in a simulation? And then there’s the fear that our consciousnesses, now, will be extracted in the future somehow?

1. That’s a massive stretch on the point about our consciousness being extracted into the future somehow. Sounds like pure metaphysical fantasy wrapped in singularity tech-bro.
2. If there are simulated consciousnesses, it is all fair game TBH. There’d be plenty of awful stuff happening. The basilisk seems like just a way to encapsulate the fact in something catchy.

At this point, doesn’t the whole collapse completely into a scary fairy tale you’d tell tech-bro children? Seriously, I don’t get it?

maegul OP Mod , 2 days ago

Personally, I find this incredibly elegant

I'm not entirely sure I understand exactly what you mean here.

Do you appreciate it as an implementation design for the language (I do too)?

Or do you see some utility in being able to call MyStruct::my_method(&my_var)

... or both, cuz there's something assuring in knowing the simple pattern underneath the syntactic sugar is there?

maegul OP Mod , 2 days ago

Yep. And then you realise that "move semantics" aren't just a safety net that you have to "fight with" but actually a language feature against which you can develop/deploy desirable patterns.

A minor thing I noted reading your code snippets was that I immediately noticed, like at a gestalt level, the lack of ampersands (&) and therefore references and could immediately tell that this was a "faux-O"/pipline style system. Not too bad for a syntax often derided as messy/bad.

maegul OP Mod , 1 day ago

I imagine the fact that both of those are interpreted languages plays somewhat heavily into it.

Yea I'd imagine so too.