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.

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

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  • How do people know to cherish this and train the next generation if they don’t do it in the first place?

    Like with everything new: through trial and errors. Another essential thing our tech-ridden world tries so hard to make young people not realize: anything worth learning is hard work. Be it to ride a bike, to write and to read, to send a ship into space or to… walk.

    Now, how is one to realize education is sorely lacking?

    Imho, one needs to look at young generations and see how completely lost they feel and… act. My idea is that young people have not magically become dumber today than they were some 50 years ago. So, if they’re as smart as they used to, what else has changed that could explain that sad situation?

    Quite obviously, the world around them has changed but fundamentals have not (people want food & shelter, sex and will work or do war to get that). Much more importantly imho, the real change happened between how people were educated back then and how they’re being educated today.

    Why is that more important than any other change? Like I was saying earlier, education is what is supposed to help people think and be able to deal with problems, any type of problems. Give them a shitty education and they will deal with any problem in a shitty manner.


  • Libb@piefed.socialtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldAm I useful to Lemmy or not?
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    3 days ago

    I’ve been posting a lot lately But I seem like I’m controversial no matter what I post. I came from Reddit with over 2 million karma trying the API controversy.

    Forget about karma and algorithm: votes don’t mean much around here.

    What’s not different from reddit, as already mentioned, is that some people only seem to enoiy acting like jerks. The right answer to that is to 1) ignore them 2) to block them. They will still be able to (meaninglessly) vote but they won’t get a chance to annoy you directly anymore.

    Should I keep posting or give up on Lemmy?

    Should you keep on posting?

    The Fediverse (lemmy being a small part of it, I’m from Piefed another and even smaller part of it) severely lacks active users so, from the Fediverse’s perspective the answer is obviously: yes, you should!

    But one should never do something only because they think or because ethey’re being told they should do it. Even posting content on a forum. So, if you don’t enjoy doing it, it’s probably not worth your time.

    I do participate as regularly as I can because I think most of the discussions are enriching and done with a correct mindset. I would stop participating if that was not the case. Like I quit using reddit the day I realized I could not agree with their latest policy changes (that was a couple years ago).

    So, do you enjoy participating? If so, by all means keep on doing it as I have no doubt other people do appreciate your contributions too.


  • If people are emotionally hurt, they abuse themself (throw themselves into work etc). What do you think would stop people from hurting/abusing others?

    That, I could not tell. What I can tell is that education was supposed to help fight that by helping all of us (not just ‘them’) learn to think more… adequately when faced with a problem. ie, to not decide on anything based only on…

    Base instincts to hurt others are just too strong.

    Here again, the only tool working against our instincts, all of them, is… education.

    So, the failing of the public educative system that has been happening in the USA for the last few decades, a very similar failure to what is happening right here in France (since approx. the 70s-80s) and what is happening in way too many other democracies too, is the real issue.

    At least, I think so. People not being educated in school is what’s making the situation real dramatic. And it could even be hopeless.

    The school has been increasingly failing at teaching kids much of anything, and even less so how to properly think by not being taught:

    1. how to properly read books, aka being able to access and understand nuanced/complex information and ideas, and being to properly listen to people expressing nuanced ideas.
    2. how to write, aka how to properly express their own nuanced ideas and how to properly share them with one another.
    3. how to do math, even simple calculus, aka be able to manipulate basic logic and abstraction. Heck, how many kids are not even being taught how to properly read a clock anymore (the one with hands and numbers written all around… sorry, my English is really lacking here and I’m not sure what terms I should use) or even funnier how to read roman numerals on a clock? It’s obviously very symbolic but by not teaching kids how to read time on a clock, we’re kinda leaving left out of time trapping in an endless and formless present.

    When you remove reading, writing, abstraction and thinking in a nuanced fashion from education, you stop creating citizens that will be able to manage living together in society, including with people they disagree with. All you’re left with are… basic instincts and gut feelings. And, like a wrote in another thread a few days ago: we all know that what usually come out of guts of our guts is not bright ideas, right?

    Heck, I would even say that not properly teach them how to speak foreign languages we’re betraying kids. Including what we now wrongfully call dead language, Latin and Greek.

    How many US citizens have no idea their precious Founding Fathers they’re so proud of were indeed real intellectual, real nerds that enjoyed books and could read them in a few languages, including Latin and Greek (including my own French, in which so many essential ideas were formalized around that time too, ideas that helped shape the revolutionaries ideals)?

    Why is that not a requirement anymore? Do we really think we’re so much smarter than them, that they were too dumb to realize it was ‘a waste of their time’ to read dusty Latin and Greek, or some other language outside of English? Or can we start considering the idea that maybe, just maybe, they were reading those texts in the original, not in translation, because they realized it was giving them a direct, unmediated, unfiltered, uncensored access to essential ideas and thoughts that helped shape their own?

    So to get back to your question, how could that trend change?

    I have no certainty but I do think that if people started asking question about the failing of their public education, the damage that is being to their own kids. If they started investing their energy into educating again (there was a time back then when it meant something to get a diploma and, nope, it was not all about getting a better paying job). If they started doing that today, then in a few years maybe things could start moving in the right direction again.

    But this would still take years and, what an odd coincidence, it happens we’re now being intensely educated to not tolerate being asked to wait a few days, or even a few instants, to get what we want. So, the idea of working for a few years without getting any immediate feedback is rather unlikely to happen, I’m afraid.

    Meanwhile, while the public education, the one that is accessible to all kids no matter how wealth their family is, while this school is collapsing under its own and unprecedented level of stupidity, the private education system, the one that is accessible only to wealthy kids, is doing quite ok. But, obviously, than can only be another odd coincidence we should certainly not worry about: elites kids being properly educated while the wider population is being intensely un-educated.

    I’m now waiting to see who will first explain it will be a good idea to suppress teacher’s jobs from the education as it will save so much money (like if school was supposed to be a business making money) and to replace them with AI… Another thing that is 100% owned by a handful of elites that will now also get to decide what and how kids will be educated… just not with their own kids, mind you, as those privileged few will keep on receiving proper education, aka human-made, in their fancy private schools.

    So, putting books in the hands of kids. Even more so difficult books would be a good starting point.

    Go read a biography of some of those founding fathers I mentioned, see what they were studying and reading when they were kids and compare that to the absolute garbage and pure non-sense today’s kids and teens are expected to… no even read anymore, because it’s too demanding to read. Well, it happens making a revolution (against the world first or second empire of back then, Britain), and creating a new republic based on democratic principle was a also quite demanding too. But here again, that is obviously just a mere coincidence and those people created the USA by sheer luck.


  • how do you deal with the inherent human yearn for others when you know that you can never truly rely on them?

    Two remarks:

    1. How can you be that sure you can never rely on people? ‘Never’ seems quite a long time and ‘people’ is more than 8 billions of us: that 's quite a lot to be that that affirmative. We regularly leanr about people giving their live to save another person’s life (say helping a kid that is drowning, or rescuing someone in a fire or a car crash, and so on). Isn’t that quite a convincing demonstration of some people out there one can rely upon?
    2. Rephrasing your question as an affirmation may help see why I think it’s based on a flawed premises: I wish for a perfect friendship, or a perfect relationship, or even just a perfect date. Or I will not rather try.

    I’m trolling, here but only half because the moment one stops expecting more than what others are willing to give them, there is no risk of ever feeling disappointed. Perfection, or even just expectation of it, is one of our worst enemy:

    I will only write that story when I’m ready and sure I write it perfectly!’ say countless wannabe writers that will never write their story.

    I will only marry the perfect dude/gal’ say so many people that will remain single for their entire life, missing out on potentially amazing lifelong partners while they’re waiting to meet the perfect one that probably doesn’t not even exist outside of some fantasy land.

    My spouse and I have been together for 25+ years and counting. One of the reasons our couple remains that strong (if not stronger than ever) is that we’re both keenly aware of our own and the other’s ‘flaws’ or imperfections, theirs and our own limits. And we’re fine with them. We’re also fine being different and often not agreeing on stuff. She has friends and activities that I don’t like at all, like I have friends and activities she don’t like either. We do things on our own and meet those people on our own, and that’s it. But we also know we have each other’s back when it really matters like we know we’re happier together, despite our flaws ;)

    Exactly like with love, friendship is an exchange. Heck, even a one night affair is supposed to be an exchange. One just don’t exchange the same kind of things but both people do bring something to the other and it doesn’t need to be that special to be valuable and appreciated for what it is: a gift.

    Personally, I learned to value what people are willing to share with me more than what I would want them to share with me.

    Expecting perfection is also very risky: if one feels they should receive only the best out of any people they interact with, why should they not be expected themselves to always give their best and to be perfect friend/lover/date/whatever? I don’t know about you, but I am far from being perfect be it as a friend, a lover, a date, or as a whatever ;)



  • I’d seriously consider it if Asahi Linux wasn’t going through a bit of drama right now and won’t get to it for a while.

    I tried Asahi a couple months ago, it worked nice but was not ready, at least not for me. Great project. No idea they were having issues.

    I need a tiny laptop for writing though.

    Like I do, which could have make thin small machine running Linux almost perfect ;)



  • AI is here to stay. It will likely get its own ‘bubble’ crash, because it’s also a speculative bubble, but it’s not just that. Unlike NFTs, AI is a real game changer tool (whether we like or not).

    The only question that remains to be decided is which country will develop the real winning ‘model’ of AI.

    So far, it seems the USA have manged to keep some lead.
    The EU has the brain-power to be able to become a meaningful actor too but as a EU-citizen myself I doubt the EU will ever wake up and start building anything, as the 27 of us would first need to be willing to work together and the EU itself would also need to be willing to reduce its own regulations that make it impossible to do anything, and that is as likely to happen as, say, Mr Donald J. Trump actually becoming a nice person willing to make the world a better place.
    But I would not write off China: at the exact same time the USA is working hard at dumbifying itself and its population (and also making the rest of the world can only wish for the USA to not be a thing, and that is including their all-time closest allies), at that same time China is working hard at becoming a scientific and tech leading/innovating country, and they also had more than enough brain-power. Also, unlike the EU, China don’t need to learn to work together.


  • Beside the handful of real absolute morons/racists/haters (we have similar people in the EU too, they are far from being exclusive to Britain), I consider this an impressive scam that went somewhat completely wrong.

    Those promoting Brexit never intended to really leave the EU, that was a mean to grab more power by manipulating the… lesser informed population, and they were indeed quite surprised the day those people, and then a few more with them, actually voted for that Brexit scam. Making them the proud leader of something that was probably never meant to happen. Hence their absolute lack of preparation for it and the shit show that followed for years.

    It’s also a demonstration of why a failing public educative system is fatal to a working democracy. Uneducated citizen can’t vote with their brains, only with their guts. And we all know that what usually comes out of guts is not ideas, right?

    Something we can also witness happening in the USA, quite obviously, but also in most countries in the EU even in my dear own France. Sadly.



  • Libb@piefed.socialtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldRecommend a video camera
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    7 days ago

    Appreciate your input!

    Would need more context to be able to give any real advice but on the whole idea here is my 2 cents:

    What is needed to store that amount of footage?

    Mostly depends the size/quality you’re recording but you will need enough to store a month worth of ‘any modern camera’ footage. (removed the first numbers I suggested, there are too many parameters to be precise. roughly speaking maybe at least 8 to 16To, for 2k and for 4k… roughly because it depends a lot of various parameters like bitrate, codec even what you’re recording will have an impact)

    And that is without using any backup! What happens to your project if the disk fails, is stolen or whatever, or if the files are corrupted? Will you start from scratch?)

    Also, I will need a stand to prop the camera up as I will move it around the apartment

    I will be filming myself and my day-to-day life for nearly 24 hours a day and for 30 days.

    Imho, if you want non-stop, or close to, you may need more than a single camera/stand: you will Waste a lot of (unrecorded) time by (un)mounting and setting up your camera every time you need to change room or change angle.

    You should also consider sound recording, if needed ?

    More importantly, you will need proper lighting. No matter the quality of your camera, without proper lighting equipment your image will look like… well, not the best (polite version ;)

    Any brands that are reliable and any that I should stay away from?

    Why not use an older iPhone? They have real nice integrated camera.

    Or much better: a used Lumix GH5 (4k capable): they have an excellent sensor (given enough lighting) and you can pick among many lenses the best one for any situation, they don’t risk overheating and you can easily swap SD cards using the two slots (aka auto-backups), plus you can also use them with a third-party AC adapter in place of the battery making it almost perfect for long sessions filming. And they’re quite cheap on the used market as most m43 cameras.

    Edit: clarifications.



  • My impression would be that they’re an idiot and overestimate their own intelligence. They also probably complain online that women won’t date them, and most likely voted Republican.

    Republican vote aside (the world does not end at the US borders, mind you, and most of us humans living on this planet your country is mercilessly wrecking havoc upon are not US citizens), I would quite agree.

    ‘Machiavellian’ is not something one will say about themselves, it’s something one will say about someone else. Oftentimes misusing it. Hence the importance of reading that (short) book written by Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’ in which he explains how to be, well, a prince in various types of princedoms. He also shows how ‘bad’ actions may be the right actions for that prince, but it’s far from being limited to that idea.


  • What’s the point on buying from small business/indie dev. if they might become big and greed eventually?

    Allow me to reformulate to a broader level:

    what’s the point of living if one is going to die no matter what?

    The point is to try to do something.

    The worst criminal is still a human being. Does that mean we should all commit suicide, now, the 8+ billion of us, to never risk becoming the same criminal? Hopefully not.

    By supporting a (small) company whose work you appreciate you give them a chance to keep on doing good work, maybe. Things can change… and when this happens you can change with which company you chose to spend money.

    I had been a customer of Apple since the early 80s. I quit some 6-8 years ago because I realized how not the same company they had turned into.

    Edit: typo on the date I started being Apple’s customer.


  • I love this comment and I’ll look into Wendell Berry since I haven’t heard of him before.

    for his essays, there is an excellent anthology available from Penguin, ‘The World-Ending Fire’.

    who frustratingly have no interest in literature to flesh out their own philosophies about the world.

    Literature is not the (mandatory) way to get to meet intelligent people (or to be intelligent, for that matter), far from it. I’m sorry if that’s the impression I gave. One of the smartest man I’ve ever met could not write his name and could not read.

    Literature is just the best shortcut I can think of to meet among the most intelligent people humanity has ever produced through most of its (recent-ish) history. It’s also the safest way I can think of to ‘store intelligence’ in an easily transmissible package, known as the ‘book’ ;)

    Tolkien

    Is a great writer. He is also much more subtle and so much more interesting to read than the… let’s just say… the noticeably less subtle adaptations that were made from his excellent work by Peter Jackson. The saddest part, imho, being that countless people will only know Tolkien’s work through those movies, missing out his so much more interesting, smarter, rich, and funnier books.

    whatever you enjoy.

    As far as ‘meeting smart people’, enjoyment of oneself is not always the best path. It’s fine to have a good time, quite obviously, but sometimes it’s not about that.

    We live in an age that considers putting barriers of entry or demanding any semblance of effort as ‘elitism’, and will oftentimes be offended by such barriers. (not saying that’s you, just a general remark, here). It’s a mistake. And it is not elitism. It’s realism (valuable work is often more demanding for a good reason: it gives more… provided one’s give it more to begin with). Like learning to play music or to become a surgeon demands a lot more work and patience than, say, learning to kiss. Even that unforgettable kiss.

    We should encourage young people to read for fun, 100% agree. But we should also not lie to them and tell them reading can be very demanding too. And tell them that with reading some books the fun may lies… years away after reading it (it took me 30 years to finally be able to understand how essential Marcel Proust is as a writer, he is now one of my favorite author… barely 30 years after I first tried read his books).

    Reading can be a real challenge, not only because learning to (properly) read is hard work, but also because we, as readers, will change over time (I don’t enjoy the same books nearing my 60s I enjoyed a little boy… Some I still enjoy to this day, though). And because not all writers worry about making themselves easy to read. And because some topics are more demanding than others.

    Reading Kant or Hegel is not fun, it’s quite… demanding (and one better take copious notes while reading them), but it’s also worth it.

    Reading can also be a challenge because of the ‘peer pressure’.

    That is something even more obvious nowadays when so many people do feel entitled in telling others what they should (not) read based on their own personal convictions and biases… very seldom on the books themselves.

    So, on that last point I will disagree with you: it’s not always whatever you enjoy.

    By all mean enjoy whatever you want to read and have a blast reading it, that’s great, but keep in mind there are other works out there that are not just about that.

    Don’t get me wrong, reading classics can be a blast too. I mean, read Homer describing combat scenes (and come talk about gore literature), or Ovid telling us about the old gods and their many tricks to fool us, Virgil, Shakespeare or Tolstoy, or Molière (the dude is as funny and smart-ass today as he was some 400 years ago), or that Aristophanes dude that past away approx 2.5k years ago that do still make people laugh to this day (women going on on a sex strike to make their (dickhead, obviously) husbands end the war, anyone?)

    And so is reading Wendell Berry, for that matter: a blast (plus the opportunity to meet someone remarkably intelligent) ;)


  • Do you think the use of these tools are still evolving or has it stabilized?

    What’s the meaning of the question? I mean, new/beginner users won’t have experience using those tools while seasoned users will have more of it. Like with anything else. Or did I miss some important detail in your question (I may very well have, English is not my first language)?

    If you’re an anti-AI lunatic, please, just ignore this discussion.

    Was that remark useful in any way beside trying to display contempt for anyone who dares say they don’t like what you like? (I don’t like bananas, I can’t eat a bite of it. Is that ok with you?)


  • ‘Intelligence’ means something along the line of ‘ability to pick, to understand’. So, I would say behaving intelligently would be a good starting point.

    Showing an ability to recognize and to appreciate differences, to be able to accept people having conflicting ideas, for example, or being of different origins and cultures, believing in different values or morals. To realize those differences are a strength and not a weakness, an opportunity more than it is a threat. Also, not feeling any need to always ‘be right’ would come close second for me.

    Third and finally, if you’re going to tell me to read more, recommend specific literature.

    Read more about what ? Intelligence? That’s a bit too… broad, I’m afraid.

    But if I was to suggest any young person (which I suppose you are, which I’m not anymore) showing a desire to get acquainted with some of the brightest and most intelligent people our species have ever created, I would tell them to start reading. Books. And not any books, mind you. Read classics.

    Yeah, I know, boring. Save that they are not. They’re just different than what most readers are used to read. Here again: being open to differences, welcoming them, is a sure sign of intelligence ;)

    Read literature, and poetry, and essays, plays,… Read as much of them and read them as regularly as possible. But why classics, why not the latest ‘XYZ series about some amazingadventuressomewhere’?

    Too many people consider books a mere ‘fantasy’, an escape door from the sad reality they’re trapped in, we’re all. And a lot of books are indeed just that, and they’re doing a great job at being that. No issue with that. But books and literature is so much more.

    Books, the written word, is the way through which mankind have shared ideas and reflections through time. It’s how we have maintained on ongoing dialogue between some of our smartest people for thousand of years. Reading them is taking part in their conversation! That is why I can read Homer to this day, almost 3000 thousand years after his death, like if he was sitting here with me like if it was him that was singing his amazing stories, just for me!

    So, be it by reading Homer, or Ovid, Shakespeare (and my dear Molière), or by reading the Bible or the Upanishads. Or some philosophical work. Or by reading novels by Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, Flaubert. Stories by Borges or Kafka. Or by reading the essays of Montesquieu and those of Montaigne, or by reading Diderot (so undervalued, nowadays!) or this poor Rousseau whose ideas have so often been caricatured and misunderstood (not always by accident), read ‘The Social contract’ and the ‘Discourse on Inequality’ and read it in French if at all possible because their writing is so fine tuned, every single word matters (yes, I’m French).

    Poetry is another great way to get familiar with (another form of) intelligence, through rhythms and attention. But that would deserve a threat of its own.

    If you’re from the USA, there was a time this once great and inspiring country had to offer the world more than angry buffoons. Go read Henry David Thoreau, Emerson, or the poetess Emily Dickinson to name just three that I think of right now.

    Heck! If you want to read an old (but still alive) amazing and very critical US thinker, and a poet, and a fiction writer, and a man that lives his life in accordance with his personal values, look no further than to your unique Wendell Berry. Mister Berry deserves more Nobel Prize than anyone else, and not just in literature. Being able to meet him and to discuss with him, even for a few minutes, is the only reason I would agree to travel to the USA. Edit: but since I’ve refused to travel by plane since the early 00s, it probably will never happen but would I like to be able to meet him? Yes.