As time went on, I’ve lent pretty far left, but had never read theory. My understanding was far-left = communism. I’d never read Marx but I watched a few videos and podcasts on an introduction to communism. But most resources are ML and eventually I couldn’t agree with their authoritarian ways. I learned some history about the DPRK and the CCP and it was really interesting, but their successes didn’t make up for their atrocities.

It just wasn’t clicking and I didn’t know what to do.

I was floating in a soup of leftist values but without a unified framework to understand them.

I’m subscribed to a newsletter from Go Make Things, who does web development but is also politically outspoken. He did a newsletter or two about anarchism, and it clicked with me. I subscribed to Lemmy communities and watched videos, read some Anarchist FAQ, Anarchy Works, The Conquest of Bread, Everyday Anarchism podcast. It all made so much sense to me.

At first, I was like most people and asked “sounds good, but how would this work?” but I know now that anarchist communities have worked, and that anarchism more is a set of principles than a plan for society.

Turns out I had a lot of anarchist values already, but I have learned a lot in the process and changed my mind on some things.

And a massive bonus is that anarchism is just fucking cool!

No way… They were definitely doing this because of the environment and cooling zones in 1857! /s

Green spaces have cooling affects around them, so all sides benefit if it’s in the center

Most of my qualms with AI aren’t in the usage of AI, but in its creation (water usage, mass layoffs, etc.—you’ve heard it all before).

To me it’s like asking “What are some good uses for slaves?” (An extreme example to show the point, I’m not trying to say AI is the same as slavery).

Like yeah I could find good uses for it, but should it exist in the first place?

Oh boy it was an amazing surprise for me. I hadn’t been keeping up with the Marvel films and my friends invited me to Thor: Ragnarok (I hadn’t seem the first two).

I was absolutely flabbergasted to see the Hulk there. I was like “What the fuck is he doing here! This is awesome!”

Sometimes it’s great to be out-of-the-loop

What about having no skin?

This is likely not the Generative AI, LLM-slop type of AI you’re thinking of.

I hate generative AI. But other forms of AI and machine learning have been used for much longer and haven’t facilitated the building of ecologically harmful datacenters.

For example, AlphaFold, which is an AI program that can predict how proteins fold and is an incredibly useful tool.

I expect that the use of AI here would be similar: something trained for a specific purpose, not just generic generative AI tech like ChatGPT

Yeah easy to miss. They’re great I love them,

Yes but this is an anti-meme community

Colemak claims to not remove QWERTY proficiency, but I think that’s wrong.

I use Colemak at work and QWERTY at home. That way I keep my proficiency at both. I also game on my PC and I can’t be bothered to edit the keybindings for every single game I play

We’ll give you three minutes back, as they say on Teams meetings!

I don’t think this is enough evidence to show they use Teams. At work we say “zoom calls” and use Google Meet. It could very well be someone’s catch-all term for video call meetings in general

You may be partaking in revenge bedtime procrastination

Australian tortoises aren’t tortoises. Australian turtles are commonly mistaken for tortoises (as they sometimes come onto land) and so get incorrectly called that sometimes.

Where did you learn that that’s only an American thing? I don’t live in America. I’d be interested to learn more if you’re right, but I can’t find anything to support your claim

All tortoises are turtles but not all turtles are tortoises

I wouldn’t count ChromeOS as Linux. That’s like counting all Android phones as Linux or something

Oh that makes sense, sorry I misunderstood!

Yep, they/them/theirs is used in the same place as he/him/his or she/her/hers. It/it/its should not be used for people unless someone explicitly says those are their preferred pronouns. “It” is typically used for objects and non-human animals, so it could be seen as rude to refer to a human as “it.” If unsure, use they/them.

Using “they” for a singular person has been used since at least the 14th century, so there’s no need to feel uncomfortable with it. I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page on Singular they, which touches on its history.

A similar example is “you.” “You” used to be only a plural, with “thou” being the singular, but over time it fell out of fashion and now “you” can be used as singular or plural, like how “they” can be singular or plural.

Singular “they” was criticised by some people hundreds of years after it started being used. But language cannot be prescribed; it is determined by how people use it.

I suspect it’s not a lack of playtesters that’s the problem, but harsh deadlines and crunch. That type of environment leads to tech debt to get things working fast, which leads to hard-to-manage code, which leads to bugs…

I also thought toggles were unnecessary, but then I read something that changed my mind.

Toggles have an immediate effect, whereas checkboxes don’t.

For example, a light/dark mode setting. You could use a checkbox, but users have become used to the above behaviour, and so a toggle may be more appropriate.

Checkboxes, therefore, are more of a form element.

Personally, I’d still be fine with just checkboxes, but that design intention is something I hadn’t known but makes sense after I heard it

any word that starts with T and ends with T