walkingears

For me it feels important to maintain faith that, deep inside, people are good, or at least are born innocent, and that it's mainly our institutions, philosophies, and cultural norms that turn us against each other and harm our souls with toxic stuff. And that through seeking local community and connection we can reconnect with the natural tendency towards compassion that exists within us all even as so many of our leaders fail to show those qualities.

There's a big moment in SOMA that really stuck with me. Not gonna spoil it. Mostly it's a horror game but it engages with some pretty intense ethical questions and does so in a way that feels very personal.

I write music! I originally used the free program Finale Notepad where you can write sheet music with digital instruments "performing" it. I switched to Musescore which is also free but has better-sounding instruments and more versatility for things you can do within a composition

Feels a lot better supporting Disney animation, especially animation based on new concepts, than it does supporting their live-action stream of reboots and movies based on theme park rides. I was thinking earlier today about Disney's animated films still having some imagination behind them compared to recent live action offerings which feel pretty soulless

There's also a sort of morbid fascination and curiosity that comes from a situation this unique. I definitely agree that of course the sinking refugee ship should have gotten far more help and attention, but I think the "morbid curiosity" element is certainly part of why this got so much attention. The whole situation of paying a fortune for visiting the Titanic in a janky unregulated submersible and then vanishing underwater is...bizarre, and surreal, in a way that captures attention

It does seem like Oceangate advertised in a misleading way, emphasizing claims of safety and compliance with safety standards. There's also probably an unfortunate bias, of sorts, of "rich and powerful man saying something is safe in a confident and authoritative voice so it must be true"

Is it sad that I wouldn't be surprised if Spez suddenly rolls back reddit's restrictions on hate speech, taking after Musk to pander to the alt right? Given that spez has already expressed admiraton for Musk, and seems to have alt right leanings, I wouldn't be surprised.

yes, social media keeps proving why a profit-driven society really doesn't have the interests of individuals in mind, companies will just do whatever they can get away with to extract as much money as possible from ordinary people.

Yeah it would have to be mass deletion by people who use the app regularly, which (should) lead to a measurable reduction in traffic and ad revenue, assuming that those people would spend less time on reddit if they didn't have the app handy on their phones constantly anymore.

I wouldn't mind as much if half the websites out there didn't have the trashiest ads I've ever seen in my life. I've got an ad blocker on my desktop but not on my phone. Amazing that supposedly "professional" businesses are filling their sites with sleazy ads that look like they'll lead you directly to installing a bunch of viruses.

Amazing that he can't think of a way to make money that doesn't involve alienating the unpaid people who keep the place running.

I haven't abandoned Reddit entirely, but I'll never use the app...downloaded it once a year or two ago, and deleted it within an hour because it was ugly and confusing. I honestly think maybe the next phase of the protests, for those who still are active on Reddit, should be mass deletion of the app and using only the desktop site/mobile browser version. The API thing was meant to force people onto the app, so mass organizing to delete the app would hit them where it hurts.

One quote that jumps out: “It’s difficult to say with certainty what the causes are, but Facebook has made no secret about its intention to deprioritize news on its platform and give greater precedence to video content, which by nature results in less clickthrough traffic."

It does feel like my Facebook "algorithm" is constantly trying to push "shorts" on me...annoying little videos clearly meant to imitate, I assume, Youtube Shorts, Tiktok, Instagram short videos, etc...

Broadly speaking, with all that's happening in the social media world, it feels like some sort of reckoning or change is coming, but where exactly things are heading is hard to say...