“01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101”

If I must trade one thing to get another then what I recieve is not free.

Yes. Exactly.

Older stuff here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

Newer stuff here: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt

The dev guide within that gitlab repo confirms that it can be used sans Steam: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/blob/main/docs/slr-for-game-developers.md

This applies to the new runtime as well: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt4/platform

You’ve got some excellent replies to this question already. I want to add something a therapist told me about therapy that I’ve found helpful.

Therapy isn’t about fixing everything that’s “wrong”. It’s mostly about identifying coping mechanisms we developed during childhood which no longer work for us as adults. Different techniques are used to help clients start opening up to doing therapeutic work or starting it in earnest. The goal though, regardless of the technique, is for the client to know themselves better and use that knowledge to build better emotional and social tools. To replace the coping mechanisms we’ve outgrown with better ones.

A comparison I’ve made is that therapy is like working with an occupational therapist. What’s “best” is conditional and is often usefully defined by what we find difficult or limiting. The best way to pick up something we’ve dropped varies person to person. The important bit is having healthy ways of picking it up again (with or without direct assistance).

Therapy ought to focus on self-understanding which helps us function in reality. In my experience most modern therapists advocate for this even if they aren’t forward about it.

Any therapist who councils you to capitulate to narcissists or ignore your disability should be reported to the relevant licensing authority for negligence at a minimum.

You’re correct.

Check out “The Separation of Church and Hate” by John Fugelsang. It’s an almost comprehensive teardown of Christofascist ideology using the words of Jesus directly. No extras and no oulled punches. It’s excellent. The author is a comedian and while the content is serious and presented well it’s dressed up as an easier read than I expected.

I grew up Christian in the American South. I left religion in college and faith generally a few years later. I was initially compelled to leave organized Christianity exactly because it demanded exercising cruelties which Jesus clearly opposed.

Fugelsang’s book gathers all of the major contradictions between Jesus and modern right-wing Christianity then dismantles any justification for each one just by quoting Jesus. I’m recommending this book to every reasonable person I know as required reading for the present moment. Not just in the US but the world over.

Fascism respects nothing and if it takes root in a land with the means to export then no shore is necessarily safe harbor.

An surprise, I’m sure, but a welcome one.

Eyes don’t normally do that. I think you should squirt see a doctor.

Yes but, also, no.

You already seem familiar but, for the uninitiated playing along at home, Wikipedia’s entry for Simulation Theory is a pretty easy read. Quoting their synopsis of Bostrom’s conjecture:

1. either such simulations are not created because of technological limitations or self-destruction;
2. advanced civilizations choose not to create them;
3. if advanced civilizations do create them, the number of simulations would far exceed base reality and we would therefore almost certainly be living in one.

it’s certainly an interesting thought. I agree it shouldn’t inform our ethics or disposition toward our lived experiences. That doesn’t mean there’s zero value in trying to find out though. Even if the only positive yield is that we develop better testing methods which still come up empty: that’s still progress worth having. If it nets some additional benefit then so much the better.

I’d argue that satisfying curiosity is, in itself, and worthy pursuit so long as no harm is done.

That all still sets aside the more interesting question though. If such simulations are possible then are they something we’re comfortable creating? If not, and we find one has been built, what should we do? Turn it off? Leave it alone? “Save” those created inside of it?

These aren’t vapid questions. They strike at the heart of many important unresolved quandries. Are the simulated minds somehow less real than unsimulated ones? Does that question’s answer necessarily impact those mind’s right to agency, dignity, or self-determination?

The closer we get to being able to play god on a whim the more pressing I find such questions. That’s not because I wring my hands and labor anxiously at truth or certainty for lack of better idols. It’s because, whatever this is, we’re all in it together and our choices today have an outsized impact on the choices others will have tomorrow. Developing a clearer view of what this is, and what we’re capable of doing in it, affords future minds better opportunity to arrive at reasonable conclusions and decide how to live well.

For the curious:

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/746684/why-does-a-microwaves-faraday-cage-block-microwaves-but-not-larger-wavelength-r

The metal screen on the microwave door is designed to block the specific wavelength being used to heat your food. It isn’t a full cage and isn’t effective at blocking other frequencies.

Another consideration is that expertise in a domain highlights ignorance. I’ve known experts who refuse to dabble outside their expertise because they’re keenly aware of how much they don’t know and feel they’d be doing a disservice to the requester if they agreed to help out. Better to leave it to the right experts.

That’s a certain kind of person. I’m not like that. I don’t mind breaking things so long as their mine or it’s agreed to up front. Some people are more anxious about these things though. I’d guess none of us know the fellow, so it’s all speculative anyway, but it’s possible this angle is the source of refusal.

Agreed. Check out Grayjay: https://grayjay.app/ https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay

It’s a client for following creators across platforms while the user retains control. YouTube is one of the platforms Grayjay can access but you don’t have to let YouTube play adverts, track you, etc. It lets users turn the screen off and keep playing audio, bypass intros or sponsored ads, download whole videos, and other quality of life features.

You can also avoid YouTube entirely and only stream from PeerTube, NewPipe, SoundCloud, etc. You just tap the plugins you want and it respects your choices.

It’s still under active development during an ongoing arms race with YouTube but I’ve been using it for over a year and have only encountered two bugs that kept me from using it. It’s been a refreshing experience overall and I find myself watching more of the stuff I care about, more meaningfully supporting the artists I care about, and disallowing Google to abuse those interactions.

I’m not affiliated with them in any way. Just a happy convert.

It’s a practice at least as old as type itself. It seems the attention Trump garnered, and the highlighting of his stereotypical Boomer typing, have merged the two in some people’s minds.

We’re at a unique crossroad where Gen X and Y grew up with their grandparents mostly refusing to use cell phones and their parents mostly fumbling with them. Now Gen Z and “Alpha” are growing up with grandparents who have mostly been shamed into acceptable text etiquette, and parents who are mostly as tech savvy as the next parent and who were there when the deep magic was written (so to speak).

Mango Mussolini’s narcissism is as pervasive as his parasitism so it’s no wonder the lecherous rapist’s sins against modern digital convention survived along with him. Some spin that as brilliant tactics but I’m not so sure. I’d wager it’s a coincidence he leaned into because it garnered attention.

Most of those now driving online discourse hadn’t had the same exposure to that style of texting prior to the 2016 US Presidential election cycle as preceding generations. So it seems novel to them. It’s history and perspective bring formed in real time.

Even if so… If this is as effective and safe as it seems then it will get leaked to the public or reversed engineered and then made public. The original paper’s abstract says “this active exopolysaccharide is ubiquitous among the genus Spongiibacter” which means it’s accessible.

The repression of such a boon could not last long. History has proven the human spirit is nothing if not irrepressible. There are plenty of people capable and motivated enough to run what little information we already have all the way to a consistent home manufacturing solution. Its publication and distribution is another game entirely but I’d bet on the public there as well.

Take a look at the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective for some tangible encouragement. Knowledge is power. Together we can be powerful enough to create what we need to survive. Government buy-in encouraged but optional.

It isn’t just one thing. The big money wants to present this unified front to the public like LLMs are a single commodity anyone can use. In reality they’re a collection of complex tools that few can use " correctly" and whose utility is highly specialized for niches those few find valuable.

So you’re correct in a way. I’m sure model decoherence isn’t helping much either and isn’t as visible in those niche applications as it is for the general public.

Illegally! Amendment 13, Section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

No such vote was held. The disability was not removed. Allowing the tried and convicted impeached and indicted insurrectionist Donald Trump to appear on any ballot for any public position, State or Federal, after he was convicted impeached and indicted of for insurrection against the United States was the beginning of the Constitutional crisis we are now mired in and all of Congress is complicit.

Edited: a word. I don’t give a flying fuck what the corrupted kangaroo circus in DC voted reality was. Anyone able to tie their own shoes who lived through that event knows what the truth is.

All people are born ignorant to their material circumstances and the conditions necessary for them. Disadvantaged folk often have a more difficult path out of that ignorance. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides some insight into why: one rarely has capacity for deep introspection when they’ve been deprived of basic needs.

The US Military (among others) purposefully recruit more heavily in economically depressed areas. This has been true for decades. These two facts are correlated. Couple this with American Exceptionalist propaganda which created the myth and social elevation of the American Soldier as the ultimate freedom fighter / patriot and maybe you can sympathize with those who enlist.

My point is not that individuals should be excused from being taken to task for their actions. Nor is it that all those who enlist are duped into it. It’s this: people are rarely lost causes, are often unguided, and live unexamined lives. So when confronting anyone: their personal context matters. When I’m struggling to find empathy I look to Daryl Davis. When we encounter ignorance, hate, and bigotry, we are right to oppose it. Always. How we do so should be conditioned, and possibly tempered, by the fact that we ourselves are ignorant to the context of the neighbors assigned to oppress us.

Do not dismiss out of hand the power of speaking to reason and empathy in the face of violence and hate. Take them to task with the intention of educating a lost comrade. We must defend ourselves when the need arises but, prior to that Rubicon, we ought to acknowledge that were it not for circumstances outside our control so too could we have remained ignorant and been persuaded toward hate.

There is no more stalwart an ally than one who has been given the tools to free themselves from chains they were sold as armor.

Fiat currency is just as silly. As is all money, really.

“I trade numbers for food. The numbers are accessible via a magnetic strip on some plastic in my pocket.” or “I trade paper for clothing but the number of papers isn’t as important as the number printed ON the papers.” Both of these realities are absurd. :)

As a store of value representing labor rendered: neither of those are terrible systems and most people don’t understand either of them anyway. Fiat seems “normal” because we grew up with it. That said: I’m no apologist. Popular crypto currencies offer little novelty for the layperson, no true improvement on the concept of currency generally, and cost orders of magnitude more to maintain their required infrastructure. I fail to see the appeal.

There are some projects which focus on the practical utility of decentralized currency (I remember thinking Nano (wikipedia.com) was cool back in the day) but they don’t get the same kind of attention as meme coins because they can’t be abused as easily. I’ve heard stories of these kinds of tools facilitating commerce in places where the local currency collapsed. Neat as that may be it isn’t revolutionary… Still more convenient than bartering via cigarette though.

I’d like to tack on that this point can be used to highlight why this is so. It’s a deep concept that can be explained simply and produces a lasting positive impact.

Everyone has fantasies. Sometimes we want them to be realized. Most often: we don’t. Many people carry internal shame because of their fantasies and some of those people have difficulty with intimacy because of it.

Good sex with other people requires our investment in their comfort and pleasure. This can be emotionally complex and fulfilling to navigate. Masturbation is free of those complications but we often make up the difference via fantasy. This is normal and there’s no need to confuse one space for the other. Masturbation and sex may fulfill similar basic needs on the surface but, in practice, they are very different exercises. It’s normal for one’s preferences to be different for each and for those preferences to shift over time.

Don’t worry about “normal”. Focus on having a healthy, honest, and emotionally aware sex life instead.

Signal.

Wired had an interview with Signal’s President last year that I found enlightening and provided an entry point for me to self educate further. Here’s an archive.org snapshot of it: https://web.archive.org/web/20240828100224/https://www.wired.com/story/meredith-whittaker-signal/

For the click-averse here’s an excerpt I find compelling:

Going back to your sense of Signal’s new phase: What is going to be different at this point in its life? Are you focused on truly bringing it to a billion people, the way that most Silicon Valley firms are?

I mean, I … Yes. But not for the same reasons. For almost opposite reasons.

Yeah. I don’t think anyone else at Signal has ever tried, at least so vocally, to emphasize this definition of Signal as the opposite of everything else in the tech industry, the only major communications platform that is not a for-profit business.

Yeah, I mean, we don’t have a party line at Signal. But I think we should be proud of who we are and let people know that there are clear differences that matter to them. It’s not for nothing that WhatsApp is spending millions of dollars on billboards calling itself private, with the load-bearing privacy infrastructure having been created by the Signal protocol that WhatsApp uses.

Now, we’re happy that WhatsApp integrated that, but let’s be real. It’s not by accident that WhatsApp and Apple are spending billions of dollars defining themselves as private. Because privacy is incredibly valuable. And who’s the gold standard for privacy? It’s Signal.

I think people need to reframe their understanding of the tech industry, understanding how surveillance is so critical to its business model. And then understand how Signal stands apart, and recognize that we need to expand the space for that model to grow. Because having 70 percent of the global market for cloud in the hands of three companies globally is simply not safe. It’s Microsoft and CrowdStrike taking down half of the critical infrastructure in the world, because CrowdStrike cut corners on QA for a fucking kernel update. Are you kidding me? That’s totally insane, if you think about it, in terms of actually stewarding these infrastructures.

Lootboxes.

Players have a random chance of getting crate while playing the game. Each crate is a pool of item cosmetics with various levels of rarity. To acquire one of them the player must purchase a one-use key with real money. Expending the key on a crate initiates a die roll that determines which cosmetic is unlocked.

That’s the gambling they’re responsible for. What gambling players may of afterward is not the same conversation.