thefunkycomitatus

Latest ep ending question/discussion:

spoiler

They're recycling dead bodies into nutrient drinks? Hinted by the coyotes running out of food and trying to eat the dead.

This new diagram generation really bothers me. We already have an epidemic of people using bad or unnecessary diagrams to make their work seem more credible than it is. People have already lost the concept of graphic aides. With AI slop it just going to go further and people can easily put any nonsense into a diagram. The idea being that if you can make it into a diagram then it's meaningful. The abuse is now going to be tenfold.

Just doing bad observational comedy as public speaking.

How the c-suite will read this: we need to force our employees to pretend they work in a sit-down restaurant. also, give customers a packet of taco seasoning to sprinkle on their fries for that authentic ethnic experience.

I look like this and act like this.

The flavor profile matches close to what people in the US, at least in the South, are used to. We're already used to cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar with sweet potatoes. It's not much further to add cardamom, anise, ginger, or other "warm" spices. Plus sweat & spicy combo has really taken off in the US over the past two or three decades as a cultural import. The OP is just an attempt at a fusion dish.

I expected him to be fired already after the Kirk fuck up. They probably decided on firing him then but wanted to wait a couple of months so it doesn't seem he was pushed by media pressure. He finessed the Epstein interviews like a Boeing after takeoff as well.

He's a property developer so maybe he sees them as a waste of money. He thinks he can design a building better and hates having to put up with someone else's tastes. Or he just doesn't understand the job and thinks all you need is an engineer and a contractor.

Accountants is another weird one for him. But I guess people charging you to tell you how to spend your own money is bad.

Leftcom.

Actually, after some searching, I found them. Their last account was not banned.

https://hexbear.net/u/whygodwhy

They had a thread here, but it looks like it got scrubbed because the comm was removed, their comments are still in their post history though: https://hexbear.net/post/128539 Then this one here inviting hexbears to r/ultraleft (lol): https://hexbear.net/post/167374 Then this comment chain in a thread about the mistakes of the USSR: https://hexbear.net/comment/2077278

I also found this person: https://hexbear.net/u/aws0me

Me looking for that DSA-NYC member who posts here and said Mamdani could help with rent control from day one.

Historically, from what I understand, it was people who understood theory but sat on the sidelines while Monday morning quarter-backing revolutions. While revolutionaries were out doing stuff, testing ideas, coming up with new theory, the ultras would nitpick every action as wrong. They were always around for a debate and criticism but conspicuously didn't have much to contribute otherwise. They're overly academic about action and dogmatic about theory.

The reason it comes up is because people think they're doing something useful (whether they are or not) and are criticized for it (whether valid or not). It feels like someone being unnecessarily critical of a productive action (whether actually productive or not). Since it's an internet debate and nobody wants to be owned, the person doing the action will never see it as unproductive or the criticism as necessary. The ultra will always want to see the action as unproductive and feel there is nothing harsh about their criticism.

We had a self-proclaimed ultra at one point. They would write paragraphs every week about why ultras are the correct tendency. They were banned several times. I assume they're still around under an alt and learned not to be so obvious. But I also assume people are looking for ultras when criticized because it's the internet and nobody wants to be owned.

I have no hog and I must dunk.

The most important struggle of our time.

Hi, I'm weighing my options on replying to your post. Here are my choices:

A) Agree but secretly continue enjoying Hasan B) Agree and renounce Hasan C) Agree but remember that streamers are really cool people who don't deserve this unfair criticism, and I will never say what I think is fair criticism, just that any is inconvenient right now because the streamer is at war with pepehitler67 and needs our support. I will spend the next two hours trying to rationalize the reasons why this problematic thing is okay in this instance instead of just not saying anything or continuing to enjoy the things privately. I need you to also agree with me liking it or I don't like it as much.

Can anyone help me decide?

How white people feel when they say they're part Native American.

I don't even see how any of the alternatives you mentioned or any of the proponents of the alternatives I've seen over the years solve the specific shortcuts to media that defies category problem you cited.

Tagging would because you would tag the media with whatever genres that apply. Searching any of those genres would bring up the media. This, again, is something that exists and is functional but is not part of the OS and has to be added in by third party. But it doesn't solve the fundamental problem because it's yet another interface layer. You can just fix the fundamental problem of the filing system.

Look, you keep saying nobody is showing you an alternative filing system or OS. I've just explained alternative filing systems that work and are used everyday. Your argument seems to be they're not true alternatives because they still use files and folders. Again, this is another instance of the jargon issue and being specific about what we're saying. No matter what filing system you use, the discrete packets of data are probably going to be called files. Any container in which you put a file is probably going to be called a folder. Those are the widely adopted terms for pieces of information and locations where the information is stored. It doesn't invalidate that there are existing and working ways to store and address a piece of information.

Besides, what is your argument then? That nothing exists outside of the desktop metaphor? That no filing system exists that isn't hierarchical? That's just plain wrong on a technical level.

As for why you don't have 30 alternative operating systems: capitalism. It's very simple. Creating an operating system is a lot of time and requires more than a few people. Companies aren't going to spend resources on that without users and there won't be users without a working piece of software. There have been alternative interfaces and file-handling. These have been created mainly for research purposes.

Within the commercially viable operating systems that do exist you even have desktop alternatives like Symbian, anything with a CLI, Android, iOS.

For the final time alternatives do exist, just not for your PC because the PC market has been dominated by the companies who created the desktop metaphor for home computers to begin with. It's not that nobody is refusing to show you or explain it, it's that you're refusing to acknowledge it. You have been presented with no other option in your entire life, due to the mode of production of software, and are mistakenly assuming it's just the correct option and no other option exists. Your reasoning is that if another option existed that was way better, you would hear about it and would be able to test it out. But due to the nature of how software is produced and what cuts through to consumers on modern hardware, you will not see those options. At least not in a way where you have extensive documentation and a person in a video explains how it works. You can go read white papers on the research that explains alternative examples of OS/filing system combos.

And then I'll also say that it's bad because Alan Kay, a "techbro" as you put it (it's so disingenuous to call the Xerox Parc researchers Tech Bros, because that implies they were profit-seeking trend chasers rather than research scientists)

I know some people have a warm fuzzy feeling for post WWII Keynesian spending on private R&D, but let's not lose our way here. They are absolutely tech bros, that's where tech bros come from. That's where the Californian Ideology comes from. They were capitalists and they were profit-seeking. Xerox is a private company and the direction of researchers was steered by profit, even if that profit was near endless government money. They were not innocent imagineers just exploring the possibilities of cyberspace. They had a job and were paid to create the foundation for what we have now. There's nothing disingenuous about acknowledging basic facts.

Of course not. But that's a shifty way to introduce the idea that everything is subject to critique (which I totally agree with), because you're implying that the desktop metaphor is as sexist and ridiculous as the bikini armor.

Because the defense of desktop appeals to human nature in a specious way and defenders will not examine the inherent biases of society when discussing a piece of culture that is a product of a biased society. Suddenly there are no biases and nature prevails when it comes to this one outcome.

If you find yourself defending any capitalist product/outcome as "well that's just how the human brain works" or "that's just human nature", you should take a pause and do some introspection. Defenders of the dekstop will say that it had to be that way because people needed something to relate to. Then you say you understood it as a child. Children aren't office workers so you had no frame of reference for the metaphor. Meaning the metaphor was arbitrary in the first place. So no, it was not needed because the brain can only understand something if it relates to past experience. No, hierarchical thinking is not human nature. It's learned behavior and it's something you came to understand through engagement. It could have been almost anything else and you would have learned it too and it would now seem just as natural.

My final word is that you should use your socialist glasses to look at this the same way as you would someone defending "rules based world order" or any current system that is said to be the best or only way to do things. This is an appeal you hear all the time in defense of manufactured realities. We're always told it's the best way. If it's not the best way, it's the only viable way. If it's not viable, there are no other alternatives. The realm of possibility is restricted due to "real" concerns, technical limitations, or nature itself. This is hardly ever the case and is almost always an excuse to preserve an exploitative system.

It's not an argument against linearity, sequential information, or even hierarchical classification as a whole. It's more about how it's imposed on us when alternatives exist. Just to throw this out there because people seem to be really confused about what alternatives exist: Flat storage (Dropbox), databases, graph-based organization, content addressed (git), tag systems (the subject of this thread), time based (apple photos). It's also important to note that different physical filing/classification systems exist as well. For some reason people seem to be assuming that computer file folders are exactly how physical inventory systems work too.

So why isn't there an operating system that uses a....solar system metaphor with a...graph-based file structure? For one, it's mainly a political/economical reason like how cars are the default mode of transportation. From a technical standpoint, there isn't a holistic solution. Any good OS should have different methods for different tasks. The argument here is that the two dominant OSes impose one method for all tasks.

The reason this is a philosophical argument is that it's about design philosophy. It's also about social and political philosophy imo. I know it seems incredibly low stakes when we're talking about sorting our benis memes folder. But it's just as political as anything else. You wouldn't say the reason why women in video games have bikini armor is because it's the most natural way to design women characters, that everyone can understand. It's open to critique and analysis as much as anything else is. That means bringing in philosophy.

I think a big problem with the content I posted is that the people involved switch between talking about desktop as a GUI, a general interface (not just graphical), and a filing system/OS within quick succession. There is a lack of distinction and clarity between tackling these different aspects. If I could change something I would have someone with a better sense of clarity tackle the subject. A big part of the problem when discussing this is that everyone is swapping what they're actually talking about and end up talking past one another.

To bring it back to the OP, I think the biggest problem with all these alternative imaginings of how file systems or desktop metaphors or GUIs or whatever should work is that they all seem to require active discipline and maintenance on the document authors

I mean there's a person above describing how they have to use shortcuts in folders to point to media that defies category. Because the hierarchical file system actually sucks at media classification regardless of how many people are used to it and force it to work for them.

To the contrary there have been people who do actually explain what's so awful about it and people who have been coming up with alternatives. In fact, you have probably used alternatives without even thinking about it in this context. To make a long story short, it is easier to predict the end of the world than it is to predict the end of the desktop metaphor. The reason why you have trouble critiquing it yourself or thinking of alternatives (outside of technical knowledge, I am not a UX designer either), is because your intuition has been engineered. It's been engineered by a small group of techbros from the 70s. Much like many things in the current day. The very structure of capitalist business, particularly office work, is the foundation for broader computing. It's another level of capitalists inventing reality.

There are feature and technical shortcomings, some laid out in this very thread, because of the adherence to a desktop metaphor. Beyond that there is a social critique around who gets to decides what human interfaces are, how they work, how they line up with actual humans, and who gets to own them. It goes one step further than the linux evangelists, to question the nature of personal computing itself, not just the OS.

Some content to get you started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGpBQgZ5IsI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioki1q6yCok

https://archive.org/details/humaneinterfacen00rask

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zumdnI4EG14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En_2T7KH6RA

Nah the desktop metaphor has done untold amounts of damage to our relationship with computers and how we think about files. I'm all for getting rid of it in favor or something else. You shouldn't need a suite of programs outside of a file browser to deal with meta data and it should include tags by now.

Be mad at the startup "disruption" culture and VC funding, but the idea is sound. Your computer doesn't have to be a digital version of an office. Your files are not in a digital filing cabinet. It's not the best way to do it. It's just the way that was chosen by Apple and Microsoft.

thefunkycomitatus [comrade/them, they/them]

@ thefunkycomitatus @hexbear.net

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5 yr. ago

thefunkycomitatus [comrade/them, they/them]

Zosia Isn't "We" Anymore - The Evidence Everyone Missed | Pluribus

Mods are asleep. Or are they?

Is anyone familiar with the terms featured on this?

After talking about the national guard shooting JD Vance decided to have a normal one about turkeys cw : meat

America has fallen.

:enthusiast:

I'm offended on behalf of my white friends

Trump is considering firing Kash Patel as blunders pile up

Full List of Degrees Not Classed As ‘Professional’ by Trump Admin

What does ultra mean to you? (vis-a-vis leftism)

Zohran appointed the Chair of the Real Estate Board of New York to his Committee on Housing.

What does ultra mean to you? (vis-a-vis leftism)

I’m posting hard against liking Mamdani so when the moment is ripe I can have receipts to prove that I’ve always been team “I told you so”

I’m posting hard against liking Mamdani so when the moment is ripe I can have receipts to prove that I’ve always been team “I told you so”

Blue-ringed octopus - Novo General Megathread for the 24th-26th of November 2025

Caption this

For the past 40 years this basic function just worked. Please give us money and unrestricted access to all your data to fix that.

For the past 40 years this basic function just worked. Please give us money and unrestricted access to all your data to fix that.

For the past 40 years this basic function just worked. Please give us money and unrestricted access to all your data to fix that.

For the past 40 years this basic function just worked. Please give us money and unrestricted access to all your data to fix that.

Half Life: Episode 3 Trailer | VALVE |

(Finished) Hexbear Code to Live By (Final).xls Edit - New (Draft).docx

Just in case you're being told that you're enjoying this too much or too little.

Not circular but I made a hex bear for fat bear week.