I'm currently testing https://piefed.social/u/Libb all my new participation will be posted there, at least for the time being.
A 50-something French dude that's old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. Also, I like to write and to sketch.https://thefoolwithapen.com/
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100% this.
I'll let anyone decide what's best for them. My opinion is that journaling does not need to be the most active community (it's not a practice relying on short term/constantly changing trends, for some like me it's a lifelong habit) but it does need to have enough activity to feel welcoming enough... which something it looks like I did not manage to initiate, so far. I would also say I consider journaling a very specific way of writing I would not wish to see it mixed with a more 'public-focused' type of writing. Also, we've seen more than a doubling (x3 maybe?) of the subscribers in the 6 months or so I started posting content. To me, that's saying there is a real interest for a dedicated community. And imho, with a little more patience, it may start to feel more lively.
But like I said, it's up to anyone to decide what they want to do it, and where. I'll keep an eye on the journaling community for the time being and hopefully I'll be able to quickly resume regular postings if no one else wants to do it, because like I keep saying: it's not my community, I don't own it. I'm just its janitor, trying to make it welcoming and get more people to visit and... use it ;)
Maybe !keepwriting@lemmy.world (not that it’s that much active either looking at it now)
That's a Lemmy issue, I'm afraid. We're not that many. And niche communities are the most impacted by that.
For personal reason, I had to stop my weekly post in our Journaling community. So, even though we're still getting new subscribers (nearing 600) there is not much new content/comments being posted. I don't know for how long I will too busy to post myself I hope others will keep occasionally posting ;)
I wonder what law/regulation the EU will sacrifice in order to appease the tiny orange pouting?
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Not often but I also barely use my phone, so ;)
It’s no secret that we trade our information for access to the Internet.
You tell me. I had this odd idea that I was already paying a monthly sub to access the Web and then, on top of that, corporations suddenly deciding it was their natural right to suck our data without our consent.
gotta say i’m a bit deflated. you built up so much weirdo energy that i expected a payoff. we were on the verge of putting the lotion in the basket. we could have been so much more
All things must come to an end, even the most beautiful stories. Plus, to be 100% honest with you, I just met that cute Dutch cheese lover...
gotta say i’m a bit deflated. you built up so much weirdo energy
I will take that as a compliment ;)
That truu, I’ve recently started my privacy journey,
That's a great decision, imho.
I made the same choice a few years ago. Every little step counts. I will never be an expert or feel that safe using digital tech but I quit using many tools and services I realized I can't trust at all, which is already something. And it all started by one small first step.
so im slowly switching to alternative to trying to show them to people.
Showing them is a good idea, preaching them to do what you're doing is probably not that great an idea. Think about it, when was the last time you sincerely changed your mind because someone was forcing you to listen to them or was harassing you. What most probably happened is that you told more or less politely to funk themselves ;)
That article
... is terrifying, imho and it is certainly not the kind of society I want to live in.
There is also a much older story about Amazon deleting the novel 1984 from the kindle of customers having legally purchased it (they were refunded but still that doesn't change what happened). This kind of events is what started my journey toward a more privacy and ownership-respecting usage of digital tools. That's also what helped me switch back to analog wherever it was doable (Amazon can't delete a printed book from my bookshelves).
"You don't care about privacy? Why not give me your bank login, then"
More seriously, You don't have to convince people of anything. Sooner than later some huge leak will happen or anythign more intimate that will still impact them, say, like the story of this dad sending a pic of some intimate part of their sick kid's to their doctor and being flagged by Google AI and being arrested for sharing child porn. And then they will realize why it mattered to protect our privacy.
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They usually have plenty of options.
Plenty options, are you sure about that? ;)
um… cheese?
Wait? What? You were not supposed to say... Well, ok. Fine. Doesn't matter. I will have another glass of wine instead.
why do i feel like you wear masks in private?
I don't know (and I don't know probably because I don't wear one and neither do I wear a mask in public btw, save when I have a cold) but I would like to know.
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I somehow described myself in two and half sentences, in this discussion. Does that count and is that long enough?
this comment was generated by Libb, the first French English-speaking AI that’s as human-looking as anything French can be. It was trained on baguettes and wine—please, say ‘cheese’ in the next 20 seconds if you don’t want for Libb to give you a real French kiss.
Bowing in front of the one-person cheering crowd.
I just realized, you did not say 'cheese'? Come closer ;)
I must be an AI, then—does that mean I should charge for a subscription when I answer a question; maybe adding an extra premium fee on top of that sub each I'm also using a semi-column in the same sentence?
I have no idea how representative these stupid remarks you mentioned are to be considered but it's interesting to realize how their own ignorance of a certain know-how/knowledge is so, so easily becoming a proof for them that the use of said tool/knowledge by other people is making those people suspicious.
In a working society, when faced with something one doesn't know, aka faced with one's own ignorance, one would see that as an opportunity to learn something new and become less ignorant. Not anymore. Following their own 'reasoning', it's now being used as a proof that the other person must be some bot/AI, that they must be something non-human and suspicious. Difference is not considered an opportunity to enrich oneself anymore, it's an anomaly.
When dumb starts defining what's 'normal'—and what's human—one better start worrying, imho.
Btw, using the 'Azerty (French alt)' keyboard layout on Linux, this poor em-dash is just a Shift+AltGr+' away—why wouldn't I want to use it?
Legal disclaimer: this comment was generated by Libb, the first French English-speaking AI that's as human-looking as anything French can be. It was trained on baguettes and wine—please, say 'cheese' in the next 20 seconds, if you don't want for Libb to give you a real French kiss.
But unless society moves in that same direction, it would seem that things would become more and more difficult. We can’t rely on old books and already-created content to move us forward.
100% with you on this. And this is a real issue.
Note that people are still writing books, making music and so on. Some even still go to school in order to be educated—they're just not as trendy anymore ;)
I’ve been finding more value in IRL contact with other people these days. But I don’t think everyone has that luxury, I’m afraid.
It's becoming unusual but it's not a luxury. As a matter of fact it's often cheaper than to use online services to go meet someone at a local place: one needs no subscriptions and no is not (not that much) tracked to be monetized either. The real issue, imho, is that people have been very quickly 'un-educated' about living IRL/together to the point it's now starting to become not only unusual but also... odd to be willing to meet (and talk) IRL, not through an app (it's really noticeable among the young).
Thinking about it, it's almost feels like if humanity was trying to commit suicide: we only exist as a species because we devised 'societies' aka the art of living/working/being together.
What if that entire “person” was just AI generated, and the “blog” was just fake AI stories?
I don't live in the future so that I could not tell.
What I can tell is that AI of today smells very much like AI (which is to say, by grossly over-simplifying, that AI 'creates' content that is a severely neutered content and that shows) and, seeing how people are asking for more of that shit content, it doesn't look like they will need to invest that much more to make AI better to make it an economical success. So I doubt it will ever reach a point where we can't tell teh difference. But if it was to get to that there would still be:
So, if that ugly AI-Web was to take over what I call the human-made Web, I would simply quit using the Web.
Exactly like we quit owning (and watching) a TV in the early 00s my spouse and I, when we realized we had had enough of being asked to pay money in order to watch unskipable fucking ads and what we considered always shittier content (read: 'politically correct' content a bit like that AI-crap of today, as we both prefer to be challenged by what we watch and what we read, not so much being nursed or feeling validated by it).
With AI, you could generate a lifetime of greedy/evil corporate/marketing-owned web in a matter of hours, and just flood every corner of the internet with it.
They could flood the Web they own with that shit and, imho, that's 100% what they will do and so will do Hollywood and Netflix (it will be much cheaper/quicker to produce and there will be less risk of getting lynched for offending this or that part of the population). That they will do, I'm willing to bet. But they still won't be able to flood my part of the Web (I pay for it, I own it, I decide what's (not) published on it), as well as on many other small parts of the Web owned by other people like me. To get rid of us they first would need to make it illegal (or too costly) for mere individuals like us to own a domain and publish content. If that was to happen (and it could very well) it would take them a lot of work to achieve, and that would give us, the mere people willing to keep our freedom of expression (and willing to remain not-owned in any way) the opportunity to search for some other place... including moving back to analog media and IRL/in-person meetings.
I mean, humanity has shared stories for thousands of years. The Internet? It's approx 40 years old. So, yeah, we should be able to find some alternatives ways to express ourselves without relying on such a shitty web if things were to become that bad.
Per my point above, you’ll never know what’s human-made in the very near future. At some point, bots with human identities will flood websites, then what?
See what I just said.
Sure, there will most certainly be a web like the one you're describing and realizing how lazy most people are it will most certainly be a huge hit. But no matter how successful it is it will still be 100% of no interest to me and to people like me. So me and those other people we would focus our time (and money) on a man-made Web without worrying how machines monkey humans. And if one day they make it so that it's not possible to access any man-made content online, well, we will fall back on IRL-meeting, with real people. Like going to church, or to a book club, go to concerts or make some music in a band, go listen to poetry, go places to play board-games, whatever.
We don't need our lives to be online at all time. As a matter of fact, we used to not spend it online at all up until very recently ;)
AI generated content, which now includes incredibly convincing videos of people, will grow exponentially over the next weeks, months, and years.
At some point, the majority of the content you see will be fake, and any usefulness or connection to humans will be lost.
(...)
To that end, when will the internet be so untrustworthy, “soulless”, and useless to you that it crosses the tipping point?
Depends what you read. Blogs are still a thing and on many there is not the slightest hint of AI and in some there is even not even a single ad to be seen. It's still people talking about what they truly care. Not people trying to farm likes or views by spreading some low-effort shit content, be it videos, pictures or text.
The corporate/marketing-owned Web is filled to the brim with utter crap but that's not new, and it has been so well before AI became a thing. I've quit bothering about its existence a decade ago or so. So, I would not even notice it that corporate-owned Web was to suddenly vanish back into the nothingness it never should have left.
But the human-made web is still a thing. It's just not promoted as much as it once was and certainly it's not promoted where nowadays crowds gather to get spoon-fed content. Aka, in those handful of places that are all owned by corporations, corporations that don't want people to go see elsewhere. But corporations not wanting to promote human-made web doesn't make that human-web go away.
It's there for anyone to taste and, if they're willing to, to participate in. But it's up to those people to move their ass and change their habits. If they don't do that effort to try to go see elsewhere, well, they'll the only one losing out on a potentially more interesting (and less faked) content.
It's out there. One just needs to open the door or jump the fence to get the fuck out of their walled garden and start exploring the World Wide Web.
edit: clarifications.
You're welcome. Colored pencils are great ;)
Depends where you live. The already suggested Prismacolor for example can be hard to find in many countries.
The German FaberCastell has decent non-artist grade colored pencils (much better than Crayola). They also have excellent artist grade ones but they're also more expensive (the Polychromos), they're much less soft than the Prismacolor (US, btw). You may also want to watch for the Swiss Caran d'Ache as they too will offer non-artist grade while still really nice as well as amazingly good but also very expensive artist-grade ones called the Luminance.
Cheaper of the three while still good, I would also suggest the German Staedtler.
Keep in min those 3 brands not only sell your traditional kind of colored pencils but also sell watercolor pencils (unlike traditional pencils, those can be used with water and a paint brush to activate the paint and, well, paint it) so be aware to pick the kind you need, it's written on the package ;)
Last but not least, even though I'm certainly not a fan of Amazon, it must be said that their Amazon Basics colored pencils are very, very good if you like softer pencils like the Prismacolors. For the price, they're a real bargain. The issue is that, beside being Amazon branded, they only sell sets so one can't buy a single color when needed.
I don't think I would try to prove anything, why would I want people to know that I'm from the future? but if for some reason I had to prove it, it would depend a lot, like a lot, of the place I'm in. What country and what type of population? I've discovered at a very early age I had an allergy to angry crowds and their willingness to lynch whatever they hate and fear (if there was ever a difference?).