That was fast! It only just landed a few days ago

Quality over quantity.

1. Meta is so well known for having good moderating. (/s)

2. Meta is so well known for promoting posts that are active hate-speech. (For example, CW in Link: suggested "Threads" posts on Instagram have shown transphobic posts to me Which kind of goes back to point 1, terrible moderation. Btw, my partner is involved with Queer Activism on facebook and so it's not like I am being targeted for hateful ads. This is just what they decided to promote, probably because it got a lot of comments and shares. Oh, why do we want Threads users who are actively sharing this rhetoric? Seems antithetical to the entire concept that the fediverse was founded on.

3. What happens to the rest of the fediverse when it's overrun by millions of Threads users, hundreds of thousands of them promoting this sort of content? All defederated instances will now have to pick and choose - something we already do, but I would say we only need to look at Lemmy.World to see why this is a bad thing, as imagine Threads communities become the regularly used ones, so now any instances that defederate don't have access to the most active community. In turn, this either kills the defederated communities by keeping these communities small, or actively encourages those new to the fediverse to just join Threads since it has "the most active" communities.

4. Now that there are millions of threads users, what happens to smaller instances that are now being overrun by traffic that their server couldn't handle, or malicious users on Threads - with Lemmy's moderation tools this can be a cumbersome and difficult process since, from my understanding, this becomes a case-by-case situation for the Instance Moderator, all while the Threads Moderating Team will likely do nothing and ignore the inflammatory users. From my understanding, you can have 1 Threads account per Instagram Profile, and users can have 5 Instagram Profiles. Obviously, this is also a Lemmy issue, but with Instance Admins having control over their users, Threads as an Instance Admin historically hasn't seemed to be great.

5. The Fediverse is some ~1.5m users. Threads is already 100m. As mentioned about server load, there's also just the entire idea of it being so big that it naturally becomes a vital resource. E1) Extend. As it becomes widely used, Meta starts taking an interest in the future of ActivityPub. E2) Embrace. And finally, now that it is established and smaller instances are either defederated or have some form of, effectively a shadowban, all that is realistically left is Threads content. E3) Extinguish.

Is the fediverse being more accessible a good thing? Absolutely, not many are arguing that. The idea is that Threads gets so big that ActivityPub either can’t exist without Threads, or Threads leeches the userbase from the rest of the Fediverse. Someone you like is on Threads but not the rest of the Fedi? Well, why have a Lemmy.ML account when you can just have your Threads account?

Before you know it, we're back to only having one website again for all of our social media needs.

No Sony Xperia 1IV sadly

This is pretty much the only way that I use AI. It can brainstorm 50 ideas faster than I can and format them in a way that I can actually get started on projects rather than planning out each step.

AI is pretty strong at what I have been calling "permanent facts". Using any song as an example, it will always have the same key, tempo, scales, etc. As such, when asking for details about a song, listing out the key, scales, tempo, and asking it to show unconventional scales that will play over it. Another example of a permanent fact would be the death date of someone, as that isn't really going to be changing.

On the other hand, temporary facts are where hallucination and other inaccuracies come in. There's no way for LLM's to get new information, so it doesn't know about career changes, current ages or net worth. You can utilize permanent facts to get accurate information about temporary facts, but that's not nearly as useful. I think one of the major issues people have with LLM's (model creation aside) is that our society really values temporary facts, and so when it gets it wrong people like to point at that as a fault. Which it certainly is, but to me it's kind of like pointing at Photoshop and laughing that it can't even be used to write a book - like, OK but that's not really it's purpose?

I think another example of LLM's definitely being useful was all of those privacy nightmare Excel/Sheets plugins. Privacy aside, that's basically the ideal use-case for LLM's as you are pointing out Permanent Facts (the data in cells A-Z) and having it sort them in some fashion. I've seen a lot of LLM hallucinations for sure, but I've also seen a lot of consistency when actually using it as intended. I've yet to have it be "wrong" when I was testing my music information template or when sorting out data in excel.

Much outside of that though, no. It's only useful as getting mass amounts of theory in a short session, not so much for being reliable in that information. That might sound like a bad tool, but as mentioned it has plenty of use-cases, people are just using it as a tool very, very poorly. (It can also be used maliciously more easily than most other tools, which definitely prohibits its status as a "good" tool.)

~~Commenting so I can come back to this later with the site, I can't recall the name at the moment~~

Alrighty, it looks like the list has grown and I can't remember what site I had used previously, so here are a couple options. It looks like they all roughly have the same format of: create account, fill out games from database, possibly account and app linking options.

In no particular order:

How long to beat: create an account, has a games library for your profile

Keep track of my games: create an account, "pay what you want"-ware (free), can import gaming accounts (Steam PSN etc) to fill out list.

Backloggd: Create an account, can fill out games to your library and has space for reviews and other user profiles

Grouvee: Create an accout - homepage is pretty minimal

Gametracker: Seems more "game team" oriented but it has a spot for filling out a games library

GameTrack: Has an IOS app as well, can link gaming accounts for achievements, can make lists to sort games

Playtracker: Create an account, looks like there is a software download for the computer

Stash: Has both Android and IOS apps,

Of all of these, the feature sets look basically the same, the main differences seem to be UI layouts and more niche options of sorting/filling out. All of them look to need an account (expected). Since I can't recall which, if any of these, I had used in the past I will just say that the websites for Playtracker, Backloggd, and How Long To Beat looked the "best".

Hopefully this helped and didn't just give you more choice anxiety, lol.

I forgot to say, when a show fails to highlight something properly, it puts it at risk of being seen as perpetuative instead. This is why shows like The Boys and IASIP get latched onto by the conservative demographic, as by failing to highlight an issue, the audience can very easily ignore them and use these characters as self inserts. This means that even a show with all intents to highlight issues can still perpetuate negative things simply because they failed to do a good job at highlighting the problem.

Let me just say, I have found that my barometer is, "does it perpetuate the issue or does it highlight it." I find that IASIP does a gold job highlighting issues, and if people choose to ignore that that says a lot more about them than the show. In regards to the Jerry and Dreyfus commentary about comedy today, IASIP is a perfect example of a show reframing how they talk about _____. I think we can look to Dennis for this example, as a creepy, high libido man who wears a whole different face and manipulates women into sex, in early seasons (after it's established), his character in 2007 says things like, "you want to see real girls going wild*" and in 2023 he has a whole monologue about learning how to sleep with leftist vs. rightwinger women. His dynamic has stayed the same, how the show uses comedy around the situation has evolved. To put it frankly, Jerry Seinfeld doesn't like his stuff to be grown up, hence his issues with the evolution of comedy.

In the case of Drawn Together, when the pig straight up said "I just don't like black people!" And wiggles his eyes and smiles, to me it comes off less as highlighting an issue and more just being crass and edgy because it can. You're right that at no point does it try to present any of these characters as good in the first episode, but I would argue that it doesn't really try and make any point with any of them either. It seems to exist just to take existing characters and put them in a reality TV style situation. The link character is a gay twink just to be funny, not to highlight anything.

Not everything needs to have a point, but it certainly helps when your content is dealing with terrible characters who are actively perpetuating a very poor way of acting. For example, if The Gang rarely has actual consequences in IASIP, but the way the characters are written makes it clear that they are aiming to highlight certain social issues and use these characters as a way to frame perspectives of each side of the issue. Them being awful is a way to deliver the commentary.

Again this is just from the first episode and so I'm not going to speak for the entirety of the show, that would just be wrong. But from the research I did after the fact and comparing it as a pilot episode from the early 2000's to others, if we simply look at "The Gang Gets Racist" (episode 1 of IASIP, 2005) and Episode 1 of Drawn Together (2004} the former makes clear statements about culture and character, that people will give up thing that make them uncomfortable for money, and that people who say they will support a cause might stop when they don't get recognition (and money). Just an example as this is just 1 of a hundred possible reads, because the show does a good job at framing the awfulness of the characters and the situation. This dynamic is one that they'll come to revisit, as you have 2 sets of characters on one side, 2 on the other, and then they meet in the middle (or blow right past each other per the Gun Fever episode)

Now, the pilot of Drawn Together on the other hand is a direct to video, which from my understanding the show was picked up by Comedy Central after the fact. The focus of the episode seems to be a lot more shock factor, which for a show that wasn't initially intended to be aired, I can't really fault it. But, watch Betty Boop and Cinderella become lesbian, watch a smoking Pikachu say Toyota and Hyundai, there's a lot of stuff happening but not a lot of stuff that I personally could easily point to and say, "now that's good social commentary!". And it's okay for the show to not be created with the intent of highlighting these issues, it just means that rewatching it is watching something that has aged very poorly. The actual content of the episode is just playing with the idea of what reality TV is like, making fun of behind the scenes style footage while playing up the drama.

I think they definitely were able to highlight some issues, such as how some characters used sex to deal with avoidance and how people do certain actions to cope, but I wouldn't say that my takeaway was that Betty Boop was being used to highlight these things. The show and the characters were treating her as the joke, in my opinion thus perpetuating this problem. For me it just didn't do a good enough job at making the distinction, so each component fell apart. The reality TV set is a great medium, the... extremeness of each character sets a very strong stage and expectation, but the end result turned out to be saying and doing edgy things to make the audience gasp. Which, after 20 years, doesn't give a lot of room for any sort of social commentary with staying power.

I'm sure that season 2 and 3 do a better job at attempting to have some social commentary, however I do have my doubts that there was ever a point that Ling Ling the racist Pikachu could really make. In regards to liking it back then, comedy changing, racism existing... I think all I need to really say is that a show succeeds by making it clear to the audience what the joke is. In IASIP, every single character is the butt of the joke because they are an idiot that thinks they are smart, so we laugh at them.

In what I saw from Drawn Together, every single character is the joke, because they are an extreme stereotype or caricature. We're supposed to be laughing at Betty Boop cutting after being fat shamed and for being emo. We're supposed to laugh at Ling Ling saying the names of asian cars as his language. We're supposed to laugh at the pig explicitly saying he is racist. At no point did the episode even attempt to give these characters consequences or make a setup for why they are the way they are. They simply exist to be a stereotype to laugh through, and I say this because the show gave no reasoning to believe otherwise. As in, what is the point of Ling Ling? To be an Asian stereotype. Because at no point does the show try to make him be anything else.

Finally, I should say that comedy is an ever-evolving medium and that rarely does comedy age well, almost inherently due to the nature of it being so strongly linked to a specific cultural era. That is nearly the sole reason that comedy doesn't age well. However, there's a huge nuance in this, because there can be more than 1 reason why comedy doesn't age well. If we look to analyze comedy in American cinema, we would have to look at blackslpoitation films which dominated the 1920's. We would almost universally say that none of these are funny today for a litany of reasons. But even when you go to actually study the writing, that sucked too! The jokes were bad and not funny. Because these were written for white people to point and laugh at the funny black people. The humor back then was racism. So not only was the writing shit, but the reasons for it as well.

So, to say that "racism exists" - yeah, obviously which is why comedy should work extra hard to utilize that and make it humorous. It's Always Sunny does this nearly perfectly in its very first aired episode, having a gay black actor in Philly dating Dee and Mac saying things like "so you people actually are related!" You can make fun of anything, that doesn't mean it will be funny. Sometimes, people aren't laughing because it's funny but because they're uncomfortable. Sometimes, people are laughing because it's how they feel.

That last bit is important, because if you're going "oh man it's so true it's so true!" And you're reacting to Spanky Ham talking about Foxxy Love.. well, let's just say it's probably the same type of person unhappy about The Boys S3 and S4, or IASIP past season 12. They don't like it because they finally realized it's making fun of them.

Tl;Dr does comedy perpetuate an issue or highlight it?

This show was really fucked up lmao my partner and I stayed at an Airbnb and while looking for something to watch and she saw this was like "honey this is kinda raunchy but we HAVE to watch it since you haven't seen it" and then 10 minutes in we had to turn it off because of how awful it was haha. Fat shaming goth cutter Betty boop, gay link, racist Pikachu, hypersexual pedo superman, generally just racist to every possible point like the pig character and stereotypes.

My partner just said, "the racist characters existing themselves I could handle, it was the racism they were perpetuating that made me tap out" lmao. [Edit: I said it already but I feel the need to re-iterate, this was all in the first 10 minutes!! end edit.]

But to your point, this sort of show done right would be hilarious with the public domain characters lol

From my understanding apps are able to have versions for their free and pro apps without having to keep them separate. The dev has stated that all of the trackers present in the app are google trackers for him to get revenue from ads and are stripped from the paid version. I only know this cause over the years on his reddit app it would come up from time to time, one memorable example when someone was complaining about getting NSFW ads in the app and how any self-respecting user would use an app that showed those ads... Turns out they had ad personalization turned on and their history shared some light about the sorts of sites they were searching for lol.

What, yeah, definitely points against having tracking. But also small time developers don't have to follow FOSS when they just want to provide a good service for free with ads, and Google Play Store is the easiest way to make that happen for him. He made enough from Boost for Reddit monthly that it negatively impacted him during the API change. Maybe I'm a fool for having some trust here and there, but I also just don't care too much.

But, I know others do so that's why I always mention that as a possible shortcoming and let people decide from there.

I just want to say I hate disposable vapes with a passion, they are so terrible for the environment because people inevitably litter them, leaving the plastic and batteries to leech into the environment, let alone the nicotine remnants.

If you use nicotine, please switch to a refillable vaporizer.

I think that's a great description, in part it's what drew me here with the idea that the discussions and topics are always from a kind and informational perspective, without the common "sneer tone" that can so often overtake conversations on the internet.

Personally my experience with users on Beehaw has been entirely kind, thoughtful, and full of knowledgeable people, whatever the topic may be. The few poor experiences I have had here were from outside instances, it's true, and I can't imagine just how much of that you all must have to deal with. But I have also had just as many incredibly thoughtful interactions from some federated instances as well, generally the (seemingly) smaller instances. I feel like maybe every 1 in 10 comments through the posts I go to read in All might have be negative or purposeful troll, but all the rest are at least coming from a perspective that I can understand even if I may not agree - but it's always worth engaging because it drives good thoughtful conversation.

I have an account on slrpnk that is federated with lemmy.world and it can be unbearable to use sometimes - the slrpnk community itself is wonderful, but lemmy.world dominates the All feed, and lemmy.world comments... it's a mix of dismissive and instigative. I feel like every 1 in 10 comments might be coming from a kind and thoughtful perspective. Comments are immediately downvoted, often times there's comments no more than a sentence long through a whole thread. Except for moderators, but there's just a tone that I can't quite place among reading the interactions that feels... maybe not entirely welcoming? However I also understand they have a lot going on there, and certainly some history I'm missing.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying I really, really value both the Beehaw community & mods and our set of instances, even if there may be a few that still have problems that I don't get to see as a regular user. But I do know that I value all of your comments enough to see what you have to say and get to know my internet friends - Chris, your determination for community is inspiring and you've got some cool hobbies! And the few times I have seen moderator intervention and extended discussion, I've yet to come across an example where I think any of you handled it poorly. (All of you) Your contributions here are more than mod team leaders when you need to be, you feel like community members through and through - which unfortunately feels rare for a mod team!

Regarding federation and instances - maybe the family analogy is something that can be adapted? Here on local we are the immediate family but the instances that I appreciate the most I still feel are cousins. I think many of them appreciate us as well. Unfortunately, I think the negative users overall will not be prevented from their bad habit by a sidebar and our philosophy. With that in mind I think federation with servers that focus on sharing knowledge is the most important.

From the recent post made on I think lemmy.ml regarding Beehaw's federation - the reception was terrible. It felt terrible to read. But looking through the comments, I would say over 80% of them at least had to be lemmy.world users who have never even interacted here - or if they did were soon defederated from and clearly salty about it, all of those getting ~30-50 upvotes. It was a literal circlejerk about our instance coming from a flawed or probably just intentionally wrong perspective. Information like a game of telephone. If it weren't so inflammatory it would have been funny, given my actual experiences here.

However, the rest of the comments though were from a wide, wide array of instances saying they would miss our presence, with it being about a 50/50 split from lemmy.ml itself. And each instance I happened to see that felt positively about us, I likewise had only ever had good interactions from members of those instances as well.

Luckily, I had already seen just how awful lemmy.world can really be, as I mentioned I'd created my slrpnk account just a few weeks ago which is actually where I saw that post, maybe just last week or so? Suffice to say, the reception from them was not surprising in the least because to me it seems clear the intent is to tear down, not lift up. You cannot share knowledge in a tear down community because no matter what, somehow your knowledge is wrong.

Users here just have a completely different intention and way of using and interacting with the internet. Users on other smaller instances feel like that intention is there too. We share knowledge with the intent of further gaining and growing our ideas and abilities and because it helps another member of our community. That is becoming more and more rare on the web and I really value our presence in the fediverse and I believe that there are others that do too.

Whatever the future may hold for our instance, I'll likely migrate with and keep it as part of my sites, but I do worry about the continued level of engagement over time. On the other hand, I realize I don't like the wider fediverse as much as I thought I did after my last month or so looking around on other accounts. (I definitely need to curate better, though). Anyway, I saw this post 14 minutes in and I only got distracted once so... Happy new year to all and I look forward to our next interaction!

I think everyone saying market consolidation is bad is missing the point for this particular one.

This isn't Google buying and killing another product. This isn't AT&T buying and merging something. This is the failed company Activision that bought Blizzard and tarnished its name and branding once again being sold off.

What's more, this is (effectively) the death of Activision. The bane on gaming since it first started mouthing syllables to the words "corporate profits".

I can only really see this as a good thing from pretty much any angle you try to look at it from. The fact that the only thing all the comments here have to say is that "consolidation bad" should be very telling. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they generally let departments have a vision and execute them. They seem to have less awful stories than most tech cultures, so one would imagine that going from managers who don't care or are actively participating in hazing you to a place where you are given the space to foster your creative ideas... I'm gonna say this consolidation is probably a good thing if only because of the small chance that the workplace culture changes. In regards to the company, there may even finally be a litany of IP have a chance of seeing the light of day again!

Time will tell of course but I'd say all you need to do is read the timeline. The last decade has been nothing but awful actions from Blizzard leading up to the buyout, ranging from people doing multiple different boycotts against them for Blitzchang to their now parent company Activision just going full 1970. Microsoft will never be a golden pinnacle of perfection but they haven't been fostering workplaces where people feel fear and have their freaking bodily fluids stolen.

I guess I'll put it this way. Would you rather have the execs behind CoD and WoW or would you rather have the execs behind Halo and Starfield?

Both suck but one is clearly trying to allow space for heart to exist while having lots of skeletons and decomposing corpses in the closet while the other is whipping its junk out and rubbing it in your face while laughing about making skeletons... too much? lol