A 50-something French dude that's old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. I also like to write and to sketch.
After years using it, both my spouse and I happily supporting it with our Premium subs, maybe it's time for a change as I see nothing new that would be worth the almost doubling of the price.
for music: mpv to play good old audio files saved on a hard drive, from ripped CDs.
Yes I was asking you, as I thought you were the author. My bad.
I would not say I see substack as problematic. I mean, I don't use it (I had a look, even created an account) but I have no issue with people not sharing my values or having their values I deeply disagree with. My question was really all about the choice of hosting a site about solarpunk using a tool/service that is not, well, not much in the vein of solarpunk tech. At least, not as I understand it.
Certainly, and I did not delete my account either ;)
I’d argue that in some applications, this is fine.
It sure can be. Like I said, a bit like an address book has its purpose. But even if it has pages and printed text in it, an address book is not a book anyone would want to read, it's just a stack of pages.
I have not considered UBI to be honest, maybe I should give it more consideration.What I worry a lot more about is the way 'creativity' (as the OP tried to frame it) is being hijacked and privatised by very few corporations/private interests. The same that pillaged so many of our art history and creations in order to make their own version of it they want to sell us back.
recurring topics. My answer won't change:
- More quality content/comments. People will go where they find what they're looking for. No matter teh sad show reddit has turned into it is still filled with quality content (even more so in 'niche' communities).
- Less preaching. Does anyone really think that by telling people they're doing it wrong or worse that they're being dumb (because they're using this or that) we will encourage them to change their habits?
- Less politics. My very first impression of Lemmy was almost enough to make delete my account. Politics, not the most subtle one, and memes were everywhere. Not really the type of content I was looking for (I'm fine discussing politics with anyone willing to discuss it provided we can go above the mere 'you're wrong because I don't agree with you' or the 'you're fascist if you don't hate what I hate' type of discussion).Everyone should be able to chose what they're exposed to (including politics and memes, btw) but forcing them to taste it out of the box may not be the... most seducing default.
How do you feel about the fact that art created by AI this year is not much different from art created by humans? I think those who have seen it themselves understand what I mean.
I would say It's quite... challenging to hope to hold any discussion about an hypothesis that requires all participants to already agree on it. That's more akin to entering a cult.
But here are a few remarks worth keeping in mind imho:
- Art is not limited to visual art. Far from it.
- Visual art is not about portraying something in such or such specific manner (be it realism, surrealism, or whatever else) it is about sharing an experience (which no AI can do, as it doesn't live and can't experience shit by itself) and it is about sharing an emotion that can be ranging from the pure emotional one to the most cerebral. Things that no AI, no matter how sophisticated it is, can experiment either as it certainly has no soul and it has no mind. At best, an AI is a complex set of statistical textual analyses. At best. Hence it's ability to spit out pure non-sense with the same seriousness as it will spit out factual data.
- Randomly copying and iterating randomly is not 'creating' anything it's playing with volumes of data (and violating copyright). Art is all about making decisions and following one's own path.
- AI art is boring. Like reading an address book would be (edit: still, even boring it can be useful like an actual address book). People are more then welcome to enjoy boring, like they're more than welcome to watch shit shows on the TV, if that's really what they want to get out of their life. I'd rather not and therefore I focus my time on less boring (and human made) art.
How do you feel about the fact that now and in the future, AI will do most of the creative work
If by creative you mean mimicking/monkeying what human do, well... AI can 'do' all the 'creative' work it can. It won't make me enter any art gallery or museum to look at it and it will certainly not make me willing to spend a cent accessing it either.
No more than, say, good (bad?) old Microsoft Clippy ever pushed me to enter a bookshop in order to check if it had published anything under its name.
How do you feel
And you, how do you feel about asking questions that aren't questions? And what do you get out of trying to portray AI as what it is not?
Edit: some clarifications + typos.
Thx, a lot for sharing.
The endless attempts at defining solarpunk is something that has surprised me, to be honest.
Why the need to find one right definition, and worse 'to be right' (making all the others wrong in the process)? I mean is there any other reason beside feeling good about oneself?
To me, solarpunk is a way to look differently at tech. I could end my definition here.
I could also go on talking about how it's empathy-focused and how human centric it is.Or talk about the flavors I like the best (low-tech would be my obvious pick) but that's just words hiding what I think is solarpunk core principle: a desire to provide another way to look at tech. To any tech, and for any use. For good and for bad as well... And that is where I think all the ‘preachiness’ going on around solarpunk fells short.
With solarpunk, tech is once again a tool. Not that magical-like (super) power that stays out of our reach—like fatality or like Gods, be they bene or malevolent. Not what our very own CEO want us to believe tech is: something we can't get over, something we can't live without, something we can’t replace ever, save with whatever new piece of tech they hand down to us
Solarpunk makes tech what it used to be: a tool in our own hands. A tool made with our own hands. Our tool. A tool we learn to use and then to master, and whose mastery can then be taught/transmitted from one generation to the next—or to the previous generation, if one was to make time traveling solarpunk a thing?
A personal question, if I may : is there any specific reason you're using Substack?
I mean, I know it works well and it seems quite popular among 'literary' people but isn't it another one of those centralized (social media-like) type of tool that keep full control of tech out of our hands, something solaprpunk wants to offer an alternative to? It's a genuine question, I'm not trying to troll or blame, I'm curious to know.
Should we tell people Lemmy exists
Tell them, sure. Preach it to them, a little less so imho. I often see people being such a pain in the you know where insisting on making other people using whatever it is they're using, or proving them wrong when they don't want to. It's not the best way to make it attractive to anyone.
or is the organic slow growth much better long term?
There is no assurance it will get better. The reality is that it can fail, like it so frequently happen with anything 'organic'. Living things can grow for sure, but they can also not grow at all and die. For many reasons, including the lack of care and... excessive care too (try giving too much water to a plant, or too much food to some creature).
What I do is tell people wanting to reach me I don't use centralized social media at all. And that they can find me around here (or on my blog, or through email).
A few will indeed reach out to me using those, while most will simply not bother trying. Quite normally, I would say, as most don't care about reaching out to me specifically (or anyone else, for that matter), they care about getting an answer (from anyone) to whatever is bothering them, or getting instant feedback/validation. And they care about it as easily as possible, putting in as little efforts as possible... meaning they're not looking forward to trying new and less popular ways.
Depends how long you keep them in the fridge.
I remember org-mode was quite impressive, like really unique. I used it for a while to publish a blog.
I will give it a look, thx for the tip :)
by not generalizing what someone(s) may say to what all persons sharing the same gender would say?
I was using Lemmy, I now use Piefed and I quite satisfied (it's not perfect, sure, neither am I ;).
Can't recall why I switched but I know there was some technical reason.
To me, they're just two ways (among a few more) of accessing the same fediverse. I use the Web UI, on a desktop computer as I don't do social media on my phone.
On my phone. I would love to be able to run a Linux system or at least a de-googled android. But some apps I need access to don't seem to be working without Google services and stuff like that si I'm stuck using a stock Google (Pixel) android.
Beside that, everything is and has been working smoothly on my computers since I switched from Apple to Linux Mint, 5 or 6 years ago. My only regret is to not have switched way earlier.
I do miss Spotlight. All the alternatives I have tested fall short one way or the other but giving up on Spotlight is not that bad of a deal considering all what Free Software, GNU and Linux have offered me in exchange. I would not want to switch back.
Am I even allowed to create a thread even though this is my first time here?
Yep.
Or are there rules like Karma points, like in Reddit?
Nope. Just avoid acting like if you knew everything better when you don't. It's ok to be a newcomer and to make mistakes, as long as they're only mistakes.
Any input would be appreciated
Learn to use keywords filtering and maybe limit you home feed to 'Subscribed' instead of 'All'. That will limit the content to whatever is being posted in those communities you're subscribed to. Removing all the rest. In my case it helps making sure I don't see much (no memes, barely anything political and barely any news beside the few niche topics I'm interested in).
Also, don't be afraid to block people when you realize they're becoming a nuisance. Your time is precious, or it should be, don't waste it with people that just wish to trigger you. I certainly don't hesitate myself.
Thanks. And nice meeting you all!
Nice to meet you and welcome, obviously :)
Do “anarchists” hear themselves? I don’t know if OP is an anarchist, but this is why I don’t take them seriously. Their ‘ideal society’ always leads back to what is—in its most fundamental form—a government.
Not really (I'm not an anarchist, if that matters)
A government is an institution created to hold power between people and to act on their behalf (executive power) it is also a regulatory system (law, rules justice... the legislative and judiciary powers). That would be common with most 'local' entities. Albeit at a much smaller scale. More on that important nuance next.
A government is also an autonomous organism, a thing in itself, autonomous, with its own objectives. An administration or multiple ones, offices, bureaus, services, departments. It also a lot of people working for it. Things that are not found in local/smaller orgs. It's so autonomous that it tends to grow beyond its original limits when left uncontrolled . It grows in order to sustain itself and in order to weakens/get rid of whatever it considers a threat to its own existence (any other form of power, say local vs national or federal). It will grow as much as it can even at the cost of the interest of the very people who devised it to begin with.
That's why most democracies were supposed to have devised safe-guards against such excess. But the threat is always there. Suffice to watch the present US government to realize it doesn't work as it should: the US executive is eating away the very fabric of country 'democratic' roots and values, and getting rid of all safe-guards by all means (corruption, threats,...). BTW, something remotely similar but less dramatic and much slower is happening in the EU: we're witnessing a lot less democratic control happening, in exchange for a lot more bureaucratic control (even against ourselves and our own will, us the citizen).
Such a derive would hardly be possible with a local for of power (aka limited and surrounded by many other powers like it). A,d individuals in each one of those power would still weight enough to keep it under control (by sheer egoism) and even if, for some really odd reason, all individuals in one of such power would agree to abuse it at the exact same time and to go in the exact same direction (which would already be very impressive, in itself) all other powers existing around that one would suffice to put it (and its too confident members) back in its place, if not effortlessly at least it would be done.
As I understand it, the anarchist idea of small/local powers lies in the co-existence of many of them that would be as different and autonomous from one another as possible. Which is kinda neat but it's also something that not many in the wide anarchist spectrum (from the far left to the most right extremists, so to speak) seem to be willing to accept. I mean, they're all fine with the theoretical idea of having many independent smaller groups co-existing one next to the others but most of them only seem willing to tolerate the existence of like minded other groups... which, to me, is the main reason why I can't imagine anarchism getting that far ever: they too want the world to be a perfect image of themselves. Which makes them behave very much like any of the more traditional/structured form of organizations.
then the newly discovered Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are translations of the western names (e.g. Neptune is “king/ruler of the sea star")
Not sure to understand your remark. I mean, like you noticed, most planets save the earth (soil) are named after Roman (and a few Greek) divinities; aka Western names.
Beside that to answer your question I would say: 1, 2, 0, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Or if they were to be renamed in a more considerate way, we would need to know why they need to be renamed. I mean is there any reason to change the names? I like 'Bob' a lot by I'm not sure it would make for great name for 'Mars', nor would 'Penelope' (another Greek character btw, unlike Bob) for 'Venus' ;)
If I was to answer that type of argument, I would consider those:
but I tend to ignore people using the "I have nothing to hide" argument