blocked

I haven’t blocked anyone yet, not really a believer in it unless they’re personally targeting me. For me it feels like plastering over cracks, I’d rather just leave if there were too many toxic people around.

They’re a political group by definition, even if you don’t believe the rationale it’s their prerogative, if they left former Twitter purely because it didn’t align with their values that wouldn’t be a contradiction in and of itself because their whole reason for existing is taking a political stand.

They don’t have their own instance as far as I know but they’re very active on mastodon.social

People who use marijuana are like your stereotypical vegans or Arch uses. Never pass on the opportunity to tell you.

I don’t know who this person is, but doing some research this “wireless festival” is managed by some American entertainment company called “Live Nation Entertainment”, so that’s typical.

The one person I know who owns one (who is overall happy with it) complains that it’s bit bulky for tight manoeuvres and narrow lanes, but it’s spacious enough for four adults to travel in reasonable comfort. If that’s what “compact” means to you then so be it but If words have any meaning it’s a generous mid-size car. Not something you’d buy if you specifically wanted something small.

I wouldn’t describe it as “compact”, though maybe by US standards?

I use it, I like it, though there is something in the back of my mind about the company that sets off alarm bells that I can’t quite put my finger on so I’m cautious. But I don’t mind the model of paying for online services in principle. I would say it’s about as good as DuckDuckGo was 10 years ago when it was still good (DDG has gone downhill like a lot of things in my opinion), and Kagi is the best search I can find now. I do research for work so I need the unlimited (middle) tier since I use a lot of search, I consider it reasonable value for money. I suggest doing the free trial and see how long it takes to run out before deciding which tier to choose.

I see that Euro-Office claims to support ODF and that doesn’t seem like a direct response to them. My criticism still stands though.

Well 35 years is just false, even if you count it as a continuation from StarOffice that would be 41 years, I can’t work out where they got 35 from, but that’s a stupid argument anyway, it’s only as old as its last version, OnlyOffice lacks features. I’m not impressed by any of this.

A sign saying Labrador to me is less proof to me than a body of pictures documenting the culture; and I don’t necessarily mean artistic or traditional culture, it could be streets, houses, road-signs, shops, infrastructure, etc. that have features that rule out it being anywhere else, that’s what’s lacking. If Tristan da Chunha is a bad example, you could try Greenland (only double the population of Labrador but sparser), which is even colder.

I have that one too…

In which direction? Because if it’s somewhat warm but raining I’d be more likely to lean towards shorts since they’re easier to dry than long trousers.

I still remember when Google launched, the uncluttered homepage was the real differentiator, other search engines, especially AltaVista, were just as good at the time, but they would load their homepage with as much extra stuff as they could think of to attract people. Then Google came along with a quirky name (for the time) and a uniquely minimalist look that broke all the established rules, it wasn’t necessarily better search at that point but it really looked different. Different times of course, a search engine was just another website, no different to your own personal page.

That’s pretty typical of the pictures I can find; nothing that shows any culture or lifestyle that couldn’t be mocked up in a moment.

Compare, for example, an image search for Tristan da Cunha (a far more remote, less populated, and less visitable place than Labrador) with one for Labrador, Canada. Most of the images you get back from the Labrador search featuring buildings will actually be of Newfoundland because of search engine algorithms these days so discard those. The Tristan da Cunha pictures show people and life, even if they’re mainly of tourists, but the Labrador pictures are all like that one at best.

I’m not crazy and I’ve never heard of it as a conspiracy theory but personally I’m not 100% convinced about Labrador, Canada. The only pictures I can find of the place are either pictures of scenery that could be anywhere, extremely generic, or low-resolution aerial shots of settlements, nothing that concretely convinces me it exists. I know it’s remote and sparsely populated, but there are more remote, less populated places that I can get normal pictures showing daily life a lot more easily.

I believe they’re pronouncing France to rhyme with your pronunciation of pants, not the other way round, it only works for some accents, not mine either.

Yeah, they were making AI slop by hand before we even had AI.

I expect this will be a controversial take but hear me out. I think it’s futile, to an extent, to fight against so-called echo chambers since it’s so ingrained in human tribal nature that the alternative ends up being worse for us. Having some key points of consensus is not necessarily all bad, it mirrors how socialising works in the real world, where people tend to connect with like-minded people, groups of people may not agree on everything but usually have some core values in common that tie them together (note, I still think that Lemmy has less of these types of values in common than most real world friendship groups, but it’s closer to it).

On the other hand, throwing everyone together on the same corporate social media platform is something recent and unnatural. People don’t have respectful debates and listen to each other there, they argue, get angry, and dig deeper into their beliefs. For example I would never have made a comment on Reddit, like this one, that I think might be slightly against the grain of the thread since you just get shouted down by defensive people who have already made up their minds. Here on Lemmy I don’t expect everyone to agree with me all the time but I believe they might at least listen, so I feel freer to express myself, then again I do have some core values in common with most people here which is what enables that.