aasatru

@aasatru@kbin.earth

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does lemmy.ml use the "ML" country code for Mali?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is where people mess up when they judge the past in the eyes of the present. Communism in Marx' time had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, Mao or China.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨brewing tea with space vacuum?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That's a great explanation but a really shitty cup of tea.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do other languages have similar acronyms to 'tbh', 'imo', 'smh', etc?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In Denmark and Norway the "with best regards" acronym is healthy and well, and I doubt it'll disappear any time soon.

  Mvh
  Aasatru

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it just me or do Lemmy communities tend to skew left wing? Why might this be?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm just here because I hate capitalists.

  I also hate stalinists, so the joke is on me I guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pros / cons of riding a bike?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In my city cycling is faster even if you're not stuck in traffic because you can take one way streets and shortcuts. During rush hour it's not even comparable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pros / cons of riding a bike?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a pretty comfy saddle, and if it's too bumpy I prefer cycling standing up anyway. Don't really get why people insist so much on sitting down all the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is End of Life of an OS bad for an average user?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It's not reasonable, but it is understandable. This is why FOSS is the only viable alternative for sustainable computing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't you all get tired of the constant negativity?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There's a genocide going on with what appears to be more or less the full support of the countries that make up the defence union my country is a part of.

  There's war in Europe.

  I find those topics worthy of discussion, and any social media where this is not actively discussed seems to me to be a smokescreen more than anything.

  Of course tragic realities like the genocide we are complacent in, climate change, war in Europe, Russian propaganda and the rise of the far right is going to be actively discussed. It concerns more or less everyone who uses this platform, and they are the most important issues of our time. It's not about negativity, it's about coming to terms with reality and seeking to understand it.

  That said, the communities I follow are largely apolitical stuff that interests me. Woodworking, knitting, gardening, owls, art, and the Fediverse. With the exception of !europe and !energy, I let the political stuff come through the cracks rather than actively following it.

  I also have a Piefed account on which I follow news communities but actively filter out Trump and Musk. I can see how Amercians still feel the need to talk about these men, but at the end of the day they're just fascist attention whores.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How am I supposed to decide who to vote for in local elections?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It varies everywhere, even from state to state in the US.

  The US system is kind of broken - they ask you to vote for way too many things. Where I'm from I just vote for a party - I basically say "yeah, the green party are cool", and then the party decides who to put in which position should they get enough votes. I can give a +1 to candidates I like personally, but I don't have to.

  In the US you might be asked to vote for school boards, a sheriff, and a bunch of weird positions. There's no realistic chance you'll make an informed decision for all of them.

  Sadly, it's very important you still vote, because the republicans are using this broken system to fill these positions with far-right lunatics. So basically seek out information as much as you can, but at the end of the day just vote for whichever Democrat is on the ballot whenever in doubt. They're not guaranteed to be good - in fact they're likely to be pretty bad - but they're pretty much guaranteed to be the lesser of two evils.

  Still might vary though - local politics are weird, and there are no rules set in stones. Some places you still have decent republicans on the local level (or so I've heard).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where can I find the rules for Lemmy.world?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess the rules of the instance you're posting from always apply, in addition to the rules of the instance you're posting in. If you're posting stuff that's not tolerated by your instance it will probably kick you out, no matter which communities you post in. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In our post-AI era, is job security strictly mythical? Or How to believe in careers as a concept worth doing?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Artificial intelligence. There's nothing intelligent going on in an LLM model. There's learning, but not intelligence.

  The people objecting to the use of the term AI to describe computerized parrots are the people who think intelligence still matters as a concept.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In our post-AI era, is job security strictly mythical? Or How to believe in careers as a concept worth doing?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it possible that I miss out on valuable insights by immediately dismissing the opinions of anyone who refers to machine learning as AI?

  Sure.

  Will I stop doing it?

  Sure as hell not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I supposed to ask stupid questions here, or *not* ask stupid questions?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No stupid question?
  No, stupid question.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will I ever be seen as truly British?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, imagine you meet a guy travelling through the US. He's wearing lederhosen, has a freaking feather in his hat, and speaks with a heavy German accent. You ask where he's from, and he says he's American/Italian, as his maternal grandfather was born in the US and his grandmother on his father's side is Italian. However, this is his first time outside of Germany, and he speaks no Italian and hardly any English.

  This is what Americans tend to look like to Europeans.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come liberals dont hate conservatives the way conservatives hate liberals⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This. Conservatives tend to themselves be the victims of a failed system, hating them for failing to address it in a useful manner is hardly constructive. I reserve my hatred for billionaires.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] Any high-quality right-wing media, books, explainers?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, you're probably right it's worth reading if you want to understand the American right. I just don't think Atlas Shrugged is anywhere near as interesting as Anarchy, State and Utopia from a history of ideas perspective, but that might not be the relevant dimension. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does the government of the USA stand by the country of Israel?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are experts around here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] Any high-quality right-wing media, books, explainers?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia is a solid philosophical foundation for a lot of right wing thought. If you want to engage further you can follow up with Michael Otsuka's critique in Self-Ownership and Equality: A Lockean Reconciliation.

  Nozick provides an underpinning for what many think of as traditional conservative American values, without basing it in Christianity.

  Then of course there's the Chicago school of economics (Friedman et al), which is just a somewhat naive and more it less completely discredited take on how the economy works. It's fundamental for understanding American politics the previous half century, but their ideas are not really worth interacting with unless you're particularly interested in economics. It's not like the idiot politicians who push it in front of them understand the theories either.

  The theories is not far right; there's no salvaging the far right, and their ideological basis is mostly just bigotry. You could read Ayn Rand to try to understand which hole these idiots crawled from. Or better, don't waste your time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you or somebody you know ever fell for a romance scam, how did you or the person fall for it?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess technically that's neither romance nor a scam. Still messed up in more ways than one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Movie lines people laughed at in theaters despite not actually being intended to be funny?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  oh no

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Movie lines people laughed at in theaters despite not actually being intended to be funny?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Careful, you might attract the Shrek cult

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Movie lines people laughed at in theaters despite not actually being intended to be funny?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not very high brow, but this happens a lot in good children's movies, with adults laughing at moments when the kids don't understand why. My favourite is in Shrek when he's walking across an onion field trying to contemplate how troll are like onions, but gets constantly interrupted by Donkey.

  In Peer Gynt, the protagonist picks up an onion after having considered marrying into a family of trolls. He starts out by comparing himself to the onion, exactly like Shrek, in that he has multiple layers. However, as he's not being interrupted by Donkey, Gynt keeps removing layers until he realizes there's no core - the onion, like himself, is just a bunch of thin layers with no real central identity or reason to exist.

  Shrek never gets to make this realisation, because Donkey keeps insisting nobody likes onions: he would be better of comparing himself to a parfait, as they also have multiple layers.

  What's a bit of a turning point of self-insight in the beginning of Peer Gynt is ruined by Donkey in Shrek, rendering it instead a commentary on how everybody loves perfait.