Rayquetzalcoatl

Congratulations and well done dude!!! I’ve found Hybrid Calisthenics (the app and the YouTube channel) to be a friendly, easy way to build routine and understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it when you’re exercising. The app can be a little glitchy on my phone but it’s just visual glitches.

Ahhh I assumed it was that one, lol

Making art can be lonely when you come up for air and feel like nobody cares or would enjoy what you’re creating, but I’m sure plenty of people would love to read what you’re writing! It’s impressive that you’re even attempting to write a book!

What film are you referencing?

Nice, thank you! 👍

The head of my agency is a gullible rube who is terrified of being “left behind”, and the head of my department is a grown-up with a family and a career who spends his days off sending AI videos and memes into the work chat.

I’ve been called into meetings and told I have to be positive about AI. I’ve been told to stop coding and generate (very important) things with AI.

It’s disheartening. My career is over, because I have no interest in generating mountains of no-intention code rather than putting in the effort to build reliable, good, useful things for our clients. AI dorks can’t fathom human effort and hard work being important.

I’m working to pay off my debts, and then I’m done. I strongly want to get a job that allows me to be offline.

Asking you as it seems like you’re somebody working in the AI field: how can I avoid whatever you and others in your field are doing? Do I just have to go offline?

I’m not against that idea, but unfortunately I do have debts to pay off at least for the next 45 months or so and my career requires me to use the internet (I’m a web developer). Once the debt is paid, I’m free.

Sure, it’s an arbitrary distinction to you. To me, not so much. Different feelings, I guess. 🤷‍♂️ Have a good one! ✌️

I hear you. It’s hard to trust that art you see is genuine art by people anymore, and it’s only going to get more difficult as these AIs swallow and plagiarise more and more of the human effort that they can.

I can’t give you easy advice on this. Find an artist you trust. Follow them. Learn to appreciate older artists who are dead. Learn to love fewer artists.

What I can tell you is this: take time away from the internet. This whole Generative AI boom has shown me that a disconcerting number of people, probably even the majority, honestly and seriously do not give a shit about authentic human effort and creativity. Being real, being authentic, being creative, any of the things you or I might view as essential to the human experience don’t matter to them. They want content to consume, and that’s that. Don’t give a shit where it comes from. Don’t give a shit what it means. Just stick it in front of their eyes for a few seconds before they move onto the next thing. It’s really fucked up.

So, go outside. Reconnect with your real friends, in contexts where these marketing machines can’t lie to you. Talk with human beings. I’ve started going to galleries in my area. I’m sober at the moment so I’m spending a lot of time working out at home or running. I went out to a film night screening Palestinian films made about the genocide. Met a lot of people there.

Get away from the internet when you can. It’s not a healthy place, and it can make people a little bit sick, I think. Make art for yourself.

Oh do stop it, you know what the OP means.

That feels a bit dangerous to me, sincerely. Like, what if the government mod of a country decides LGBTQ stuff is blacklisted? How do users protest the legislative blacklist? I guess just switch instance?

No idea honestly mate, but what I meant when I brought up the illegality was really that it’s usually very disturbing content, which mods catch and remove before loads of people have to see it.

If it’s a new account posting that stuff, I don’t know how the system we’re discussing would prevent loads of users having to see it - altho I guess if those blacklists of users were collaborative and the person or team whose list you’ve “subscribed” to catch it, maybe that solves the issue?

Ah yeah I hadn’t thought about legal authorities. I guess that would entail local police forces monitoring Lemmy and blacklisting and subsequently investigating specific users or bots once they post something illegal, which seems not so feasible sadly. But, definitely up for a more democratised system of modding generally!

Oh, that’s an interesting idea. It’s more nuanced than just relying on upvotes, and sort of democratises the role of moderator! I was thinking maybe reporting would come into it somewhere but I see that the idea you’re describing has more depth than I was picturing. I’d be up for using a system like that, I think!

Re this, though:

It could also be dictated to you, in the case of legally forbidden stuff.

Is that just admins? Does that decision sort of shift mod responsibility upwards, leaving a good majority of decisions in the hands of the public but ultimately leaving a few powerful people with more global “modding” capability still? Not trying to nitpick or be antagonistic, this sounds like a cool system to use, I’m just trying to understand

Voting could replace mods in some ways, but in others it would be less effective (I know, not all mods are effective).

For instance, combatting spam; more users would have to see the spam and downvote it to have it removed (presumably in this system, a post could be removed when it reaches a certain downvote threshold? Not sure how else it would replace mods).

Additionally, content moderators and admins do actually do at least one other good thing; they look at and remove illegal or seriously upsetting material. Unfortunately, Lemmy has had several issues with csam being posted by presumably bots – good, active content moderators remove this as quickly as possible, protecting more of the users on their instances than a downvote threshold.

Outside of having some sort of threshold, I’m not sure I have a good picture of how downvotes could replace mods? Human oversight is really key to a lot of accurate and effective decision making; I’m sure we’ve all dealt with fully automated systems and know the pain of that.

I think it is important to recognise people as people. I’m not making excuses for intentionally malicious wealthy or powerful people – but the wealth or power itself isn’t the whole problem (although the various systems that perpetuate and enable certain wealthy or powerful people are problematic of course), and we shouldn’t give these adults that as an excuse.

They’re wealthy, yes. They’re also human beings who choose to be cruel, callous, selfish, uncaring arseholes.

They’re powerful, yes. They’re also adults who know what they’re doing and consistently make the decision to harm people with their choices.

Netanyahu’s political power wouldn’t be as much of a problem in and of itself if he wasn’t choosing to enact a genocide. Murdoch’s wealth wouldn’t be as much of a problem in and of itself if he didn’t choose to use it to buy media outlets and push right-wing lies to millions.

No excuses for cruelty; the money and power didn’t “corrupt” these people, because we don’t live in a fantasy world where money and power are magic cursed items. These people intentionally decided to be cruel.

Greed

Congratulations on 90 days! Huge achievement, you deserve to feel proud. I’m also going through a bit of a journey with sobriety.

Around the three month mark was a bit of a difficult time for me, too. I’d gotten over the constant temptation, but was still tempted while IN bars. I was isolating socially, and spending more time alone.

Having that time alone, and having some free headspace rather than focusing on not drinking, led me to boredom and restlessness. There was a lot of ruminating on mistakes I’d made, or on things I’d missed out on, or on how I absolutely had to make the most of my free time. Lots of stress!

I picked up some new hobbies. I’ve found it satisfying to start trying things that I was always too self conscious to do before; running, taking photos outside, writing music. I walk a lot now. I listen to podcasts, and I wander around my area. I booked a bunch of little events for Halloween, so for instance today I walked two hours into the center of the city and went to a talk about medieval manuscripts, and then spent another two hours walking back.

I text myself ideas. Ideas for cool little visual designs, or photographs, or songs, or games I’d like to try to develop. Whether I revisit them, hmm… less often, but making the notes is enough for me right now. I think about my finances, and try to figure out where I could be saving money. I think about people I haven’t spoken to for a long time, and wonder about what small changes I can make to my life just to see what happens.

It’s hard to exist without occupying or distracting our minds, because the human mind tends to exist in a slightly negative emotional state when it’s not actively engaged with something (I think it’s called the Neutral Mode Network if you’d like to find out a little more about this). It’s uncomfortable, but sitting with my thoughts in a (hopefully mostly) healthy way was ultimately positive for me.

I’m only a little further into sobriety than you, 198 days, but I can honestly say these past two months have been sincerely transformative for me.

I hope you can find something in my comment, or in other comments, that helps. There is a stopdrinking community here on Lemmy which seems supportive, so that could also be worth checking out. Otherwise – stick to it, you’re doing a great job! Best of luck! 👍

It might work but it’s really not a long-term solution. Confrontation is uncomfortable and I know you mentioned he has personality issues but is there somebody who could talk to him? When the guy I work with joined, he would constantly tap his feet and it would shake my desk, and the desks of like four other people around us. Eventually we just asked him to stop – he didn’t even realise it was bothering us because nobody said anything.

Granted, he’s actually friendly, but still… Someone might just have to ask Noiseguy (nicely) if he could maybe be a bit quieter? Or poke your head in and say “you okay? Oh, sorry, I could hear you from across the office.” - just something to maybe remind him like, hey, keep an eye on your volume. This might not get solved by just closing the door!

If you want to avoid confrontation, find a reason to talk to him in his office and then calmly and “accidentally” close the door on the way out. As long as everyone else works with their doors closed, you can laugh it off as a mistake if he even notices.

Some people really are just accidentally obnoxious though, he might genuinely not know he’s being a pain in the arse. We have a similar coworker. Always with these shitty unfunny quips, often plays air horn sound effects interrupting other people’s conversations if they think something positive has happened… Just so much fucking noise from one person.

They’re on holiday this week and I’m over the fucking moon lol

Yeah I just thought you lot were talking about Alien 🤷‍♂️