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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • I think you’re useful! I have Voyager’s tags on for votes, and it shows that I’ve upvoted your posts hundreds of times, so your content definitely has value for me.

    Your account always stands out to me, I notice your posts and am happy to engage with them.

    That said, do you, if you’re not feeling good about things lately a break probably couldn’t hurt (though my feed will suffer!).



  • This one bugs me a bit. I’m sure it’s said with good intentions, but I have a client who calls everyone on my team “friend” whether or not she knows us, and it always rubs me the wrong way. We’re not friends, she’s the client in a professional setting, and she has never shown any interest in getting to know me enough to actually call me “friend” and have it mean something, so it always comes across as superficial and unnaturally folksy.

    As someone who doesn’t have a ton of deep friendships, the ones I do have matter a lot to me, which means I don’t like to throw around the word “friend” lightly.

    Could just be my own emotional hangups though.


  • As one of your so-called “anti-AI lunatics,” ignoring these kinds of discussions is not an option, and your desire to dismiss the stronger more passionate opinions does not make them go away.

    So I’ll just keep it superficial: the use of what we call AI tools has definitely not stabilized. Especially when it comes to things like agents, we’ve barely even started to see the impact of unthinking and unfeeling algorithms going out on the open internet and meaningfully doing real and consequential things on our behalf. I think there are still very few systems (if any) that can effectively operate as an agent and accurately take a real action that was desired by the user, and yet that’s one of the “features” that scares me most and one I believe has the potential to cause serious harm.

    If companies continue to shove slop makers and unwanted “productivity tools” (AKA surveillance) down our throats, all while causing real damage to the environment, economy, and human creativity, then I frankly don’t think the technology will gain more traction or usefulness proportionate to the overall harm caused by these tools.


  • These things are very different, and imo not a valid comparison.

    Sure someone might die by suicide no matter what cultural or social inputs they’re exposed to, but it’s equally possible that they wouldn’t, and only did so because of constant pressure and personalized conspiratorial fantasies fabricated by an unthinking and unfeeling algorithm.

    Video games, though we might personally identify with them and their characters, are not actively refining and tailoring themselves to infiltrate our psyche like some LLMs are. I’d go as far as to say video games are passive when compared to LLMs. You play a video game that exists as a single piece of work with predictable outcomes based on your inputs, in a completely fictional space. LLMs are essentially the opposite. LLMs play you and tailor their responses to achieve outcomes they predict you want in the real world, without actually understanding or caring about the potential consequences. Still not necessarily a 1:1 cause and effect, but the incentives are super different.



  • Same. If I find myself spacing out at my desk and don’t have anything scheduled, I’ll hop over to the couch and lay down for 15 or 20 minutes. Even if I don’t fully fall asleep, letting myself drift puts me in a much more productive mindset when I go back to my desk.

    Though I don’t worry about making up for that time, since I assume everybody else has their own little remote work cheats to get through the day.


  • People, especially young people who are still learning what it means to be a person living in a society, deserve a second chance, and sometimes a third. This whole thing is disgusting, and as the grandchild of holocaust survivors I really struggle to not let these displays of bigotry completely ruin me, but your idea is also pretty upsetting.

    People can and do change their beliefs, especially at the age these offenders are. I thought some pretty nasty things in high school that make me look back in shame. But I’m not that person anymore. I grew up, like most humans do. These students deserve to be punished, but that punishment needs to be serious education about why what they did was so awful. Putting them on a blacklist doesn’t help anyone, but it would help their hatred fester.




  • To me it definitely has gotten much worse, though everyone’s internet experience is radically different. 20 years is too far back, definitely not. But 5 or 10 years? Absolutely.

    I don’t have accounts on and completely ignore all social media other than this, and have all my ads blocked everywhere. I don’t use streaming services, so no exposure to ads there either. That all makes my web experience (and I’m sure most other Lemmy folks) arguably way cleaner and content-focused than the vast majority of people who just use the mainstream internet as it is.

    And yet it’s pretty difficult to find out basic things, and I think that’s a very recent development. It has always been nontrivial to figure out what’s true and what’s not and sometimes you had to dig a bit. SEO did a great job of poisoning things before LLMs. But now? I feel like 99% of what I find is unconvincing and just bad, and the sheer volume of rehashed bullshit makes it super hard to find something useful, let alone something real and truthful.



  • Just a reminder that JD has three kids (actual kids, not 35 year olds) with his wife, who is a woman of color. If he won’t defend them against blatant racism, do his supporters actually think he gives a fuck about them?

    Also, a good parent would take the opportunity to teach their children why what they said is wrong, not just tell them how to avoid responsibility:

    Vance said he would tell his three kids—“especially my boys”—“don’t put things on the internet. Be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.”

    Our Vice President is a huge piece of shit.