Khrux

I do agree entirely. If I could use the internet of 2015 I would, but I can’t do so in a practical way that isn’t much more tedious than asking an LLM.

My options are the least rancid butter of the rancid butter restaurants or I churn my own. I’d love to churn my own and daydream of it, but I am busy, and can barely manage to die on every other hill I’ve chosen.

Compared to crypto and NFTs, there is at least something in this mix, not that I could identify it.

I’ve become increasingly comfortable with LLM usage, to the point that myself from last year would hate me. Compared to projects I used to do with where I’d be deep into Google Reddit and Wikipedia, ChatGPT gives me pretty good answers much more quickly, and far more tailored to my needs.

I’m getting into home labs, and currently everything I have runs on ass old laptops and phones, but I do daydream if the day where I can run an ethically and sustainably trained, LLM myself that compares to current GPT-5 because as much as I hate to say it, it’s really useful to my life to have a sometimes incorrect but overalls knowledgeable voice that’s perpetually ready to support me.

The irony is that I’ll never build a server that can run a local LLM due to the price hikes caused by the technology in the first place.

I heard a theory (that I don’t believe, but still) that Deepseek is only competitive to lock the USA into a false AI race.

I don’t really think there’s ever a pass to staring at anyone’s chest except a partner or a very specific friendship energy.

I mean as a first language speaker, it is.

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As much as I don’t disagree, I think the “Apple is closest to Nazism” comment touches on something different. Other massive American companies have awful practices but they don’t care particularly how their way of making money looks. Apple wields a specific aesthetic power that generally dictates a hegemonic uniformity, that strays the line of being to their detriment at times. I don’t think any other big tech company would care in the same way if not for their desire to copy Apple.

It’s interesting how Discord absolutely nukes its own trust by pretending to be more than it is. I loathe discord, to the point I’d use a competitor (not teams) just to evade it. I’m sick of finding a hobby group using it as a Frankenstein forum / chat / info hub when it’s only built for chat.

Discord is fine for this use, but I’m getting used to the distrusting it so often that it blends into reasonable use.

That’s still incredibly low, I’d have assumed an enormous increase.

Yeah, he looked like he did on the left through the entire 2010s without changing appearance much, from Narnia 3 to Midsommar. This is absolutely styling above just growing up.

Funnily enough, when I do ask an LLM to rephrase anything I write, it changes any sentence with a semicolon to one with an em dash. I’ve probably always overused the semicolon because of its availability on a keyboard, but it appears a lot in my normal work.

Now I trust the semicolon, it’s an identifier of me.

Blurry photos is fine to make an stylistic choice. The 2019 movie The Lighthouse stylistically looked like a 1920s film, before modern music intentionally used bitcrushing, it used vinyl cracks, boomer shooters made in this decade intentionally look like 1990s Doom clones.

When a medium’s shortcoming is patched by technology, it ultimately becomes an artifact of the era where it was accidental. Once a few years have passed, it becomes more synonymous with the era than the mistake.

It’s not necessarily nostalgia, Gen Alpha and the younger half of Gen Z never grew up without smartphones, so they don’t miss the era of poor film photography. Although every generation does this simulation of forgotten mistakes, it’s particularly poignant now, where the high quality, perfectly lit, professional feeling photos convey something artificial, i.e. smartphone software emulating camera hardware, faces tuned with filters or outright AI generated content. Even if it’s false imperfection, the alternative is false perfection.

Art using deliberate imperfections that were unavoidable in the past is romanticising something perceived as before commercialism, and that’s admirable.

I cannot believe character.ai was valued at over a billion.

^bubble

People disagree because it’s still an abstraction of camo. Wearing it in the first place came from people fawning over militarism.

I actually think it can work with a queer look in one of two ways, so you are likely fine: Either it’s effectively teasing the pro authoritarian militarism camo types, or it’s a radical anarchy armed rebel look, which without praxis is really just the former look again. Either way these are fine.

Another reason maybe you’ve been downvoted is that people loathe the deep abstraction of modern, or rather postmoderm society. Camo was made for soldiers > Camo was worn by patriotic civilians simulating the soldier aesthetic > particularly under the Bush administration, it became less a symbol of soldiers, and more a symbol of patriots. Patriotism is nationalism.

Today when most of us camo in the military cosplaying way, we think ‘nationalist’. When we see a person in a little bit of camo, perhaps just some came shorts and a regular t-shirt, we think either ‘nationalist’, ‘okay with nationalism’ or ‘ignorant of nationalism’.

So when most people see someone in a blended queer and camo look, they probably assume one of three things: ‘ignorant of nationalism’, ‘critical of nationalism in a rebellious manner’ or ‘pro nationalist queer’. Of course one of these is fine, but one is very bad.

This isn’t really the gen Z stare, I’d describe that as a very neutral expression.

Honestly I don’t actually think the Gen Z stare has much to do with the internet or COVID either, as much as it’s just something that caught on among people in school. I think another large element is that Gen Z culturally a lot less judgemental of people who don’t mask autistic traits.

The general nodding and 'mmhmm’ing we do to affirm we’re paying attention is something that’s effectively a social contract, although useful. The flip side of the Gen Z stare that people don’t talk about is that Gen Z also don’t mind recieving the Gen Z stare, and can converse through it.

I think it’s just a silly reading, pretending point 4 is madness over point 3.

I was always under the impression that this is what the episode was referencing.

Coming from the UK is correct, it was literally an artistocratic flex at having literally useless land. I read a dissertation a few years back that also linked this to a Baudrillard style simulationist desire for the upper class not to see land with any practical value immediately besides their homes because they were resistant to accept that their wealth was exercised from any real action, and instead they’d pretend it was just a truth. But beyond the lawns were forests and fields, because they had to exist.

When lawns were adopted by the bourgeoisie, who only had half an acre of property, it was already trendy to have the surrounding acres of the house be only lawn. The bourgeoisie simulation was to have the house surrounded by lawns as if it were to then give way to fields and forests, which of course did not exist, just your neighbours equally ugly plot of land.

What I never understood about all of this though, is that gardens are equally cosmetic vanity. I have fond memories of the garden of my grandmother, which has a small greenhouse and two raised vegetable beds at the back, but everything else was flower beds, a pond, a summer pavillion, a small lawn, a shed and a scattering of trees and bushes. Other than the small sections for growing vegetables, it was all entirely for vanity. But it was beautiful. Hell, the small lawn was even pretty functional as the primary place to set up chairs in the sun and play ball games.

I am British, and once this island was forest and mountains from shore to shore, with meadows and plains being rare. The lawn never made sense here, and caught on less in in the Soviet Bloc as plains become more common in nature. America is a land with far more natural plains, and the lawn is further removed from it’s original status. It’s imitating an imitation of a denial of reality, Baudrillard would have a field day.

But I did mention, in my grandmother’s garden, playing ball games on the lawn. American sport is largely built on the suburban madness that is lawns. I’m not talking about sport born in urban centers like basketball, or sports from true rural areas, which I can only assume is rednecks drink driving, if watching US shows has told me anything, but Baseball, American Football and even golf are sports made for lawns. It’s hard to detangle lawns from middle class America without stopping middle class kids play sports in their gardens.

One day they’ll add vegetable gardening to the Olympics and America will be saved, and Joseph McCarthy will be stuck in hell on his fucking lawn.

I work a lot of fancy events as a caterer and often have a drink behind the scenes, but often these events are in random offices with no bar support, resulting in us drinking strange concoctions.

Spanish coke is popular, which is just red wine and coke. This is probably second only to white wine spritzers. Separately in day events, we’ve found putting espresso into coke over ice is surprisingly okay, I wouldn’t say it’s better than the sum of its parts, but probably on par with normal coke.

So I had the wise idea of shaking espresso, coke, and red wine together, just to see what it tasted like. I’d truly give it a 5/10. Which isn’t bad if not for the fact that I’d give each ingredient alone a 6/10 or better.

I’m trying to make my own smart watch as a hobby experiment at the moment, and one of my most important features is NFC payments. It’s a nightmare, although I understand why. Currently my plan is to buy another smart watch or smart ring and take the NFC chip from it, which is maddening, but more or less my only option due to contactless payment security.

To do contactless payments, your bank must effectively permit the specific device, otherwise go through GPay or Apple Pay, who in turn just do the permitting themselves. Anything outside of the standard ecosystem just gets overlooked.

The best workaround while avoiding these companies is to find a smart watch or ring that has compatibility with a proxy card, such as Curve. But beyond halving the price of the accessory, this is pretty much an arbitrary decision.