I wouldn’t recommend ChatGPT for factual information at all (at least, not without validating for yourself afterwards), but I think it’s quite good for helping you mull over or develop ideas, and for finding “soft answers” to things.

I used it recently to suggest a font to use, for instance, and found it much, much better than trying to use a search engine. My font knowledge isn’t particularly high at all - I know what serif means but that’s about it as far as technical knowledge, and I wouldn’t recognise or categorise most fonts - but I was able to describe what I wanted to ChatGPT and narrow it down:

• “I want something more friendly than that”
• “less professional”
• “more wonky”
• “less rounded”
• “less uncomfortable”

And so on. I could be somewhat abstract with my requests and it still mostly seemed to understand what I meant. Eventually it suggested something that fit my requirements pretty well. Trying to find a similar suggestion via a search engine would have been very difficult, I think, and would basically have just relied on me stumbling on a “top 10 fonts for X” listicle that happened to cover my requirements.

ChatGPT is fantastic within its specific niche (assuming you know how to feed it prompts properly and how to interpret its outputs - it’s a tool thats usefulness very much depends on the operator) but I definitely wouldn’t want it to replace search engines.

I agree, I had the same thought. And not only is she very pretty, she’s also “believably pretty”; she doesn’t look like a movie star or an unrealistically attractive Instagram model, she looks like someone you could see walking down the street. She’d catch your eye, of course, and probably be the prettiest person you saw that day, but it’s not like some pictures/videos I’ve seen of people where I’ve thought “I’ve never seen someone look that attractive in real life” and there’s a bit of a disconnect because of it.

Using Olga’s likeness, I suspect a lot of people can be fooled into thinking she’s just a regular person who happens to be at the upper end of the attractiveness scale rather than a paid model, and I’m sure they very intentionally decided to steal her likeness for that reason.

“Splinternet” and “cyber-Balkanisation / internet Balkanisation” are some other terms for it, for anyone else wanting to read into it!

It’s definitely more common for me, too. There’s a greater sense of community, and it just feels more personal and less hostile than most of the wider internet does. Smaller groups are much more able to hold each other accountable and self-moderate, too.

I agree. As much as I agree with the idea of universal basic income - because I think supporting society while reducing the work necessary is something we should aim for, because it’s the best way to ensure everyone gets a fair lot in life and because I think it’s a necessity with the direction the labour market is heading - this isn’t really the kind of thing I want to see in this community, personally. Hell, UBI doesn’t really have much to do with the thought of “if X is Y% of Z then 1000X is Y% of 1000Z” - it’s just basic maths really (and OP seems to have got the maths wrong, too).

I am not overweight

I didn’t mean to imply you are overweight, sorry if it came across like that! It’s more just that, besides general anxiety (which isn’t specific to the gym), the main reasons someone might be “gym shy” are because they’re overweight, unfit or unsure of how to use the equipment, so I wanted to touch on all of those things!

That said, I do seem to lack self-confidence.

I figured, seeing as you’re anxious about the gym and how people there might judge you, ha! Building confidence can take a long time, and definitely isn’t something that happens overnight. Obviously doing things you can be proud of - working towards a body you’re happy with, work achievements, artistic achievements, etc - can help a lot with building up confidence, but the big thing is working to adjust your perspective of yourself. Try to look at yourself how you look at other people; if you saw someone unfit working out in the gym, would you care? Or would you just have whatever your initial thought is and then move on?

…except that this is not what happens in my country.

It can definitely be a little more difficult if it’s ingrained into your culture for people to make a big deal out of things. Probably the best thing you can do - whether there are people around or not - is to listen to music/audiobooks/podcasts. It’s good for exercising anyway because it gives your mind something to focus on while your body does mindless exercises, but it also just lets you shut out other people entirely so it doesn’t matter whether they’re gossiping about you, talking about last night’s episode of whatever TV show, or something else.

Ultimately, though, trying to avoid basing your self-worth on other people’s opinions is something you should probably try to work towards. Not just because negative opinions can obviously bring you down and harm your self-esteem, but also because if you only feel good when surrounded by people and receiving positive reinforcement from them then it indicates you’re probably not happy with yourself

Anyway, sorry for ranting. I will try to do exercise at home and jog a bit!

That’s okay, having a good rant is healthy every now and then! Good luck with the exercise, and try to stick with it, even if you only do a small amount every day!

Doesn’t always work.

It doesn’t guarantee people are going to look at you and think you’re a 10/10 because some features are out your control, but the difference between being overweight, poorly-dressed with bad skin, bad hair, etc, and being athletic/toned and well-groomed is huge. And while they might seem like superficial things that you feel you shouldn’t have to do for someone to like you, they also boost your confidence which tends to make you more attractive as a personality, too.

Also this is likely me problem, but how do you get over people being judgemental in gym (about appearance/phyiscal capabilities)? It often scares me off from going to a gym.

This can definitely take a little while to change your mindset on, but the big thing is just realising that no-one actually cares.

• people are there to work out, not to judge others;
• how much do you judge other people in the gym? Very little, I’d assume;
• even if someone is judging you: so what? Does it actually matter what a stranger who you’ll likely never even see again thinks? You’re there to improve yourself, not to worry about their thoughts;
• if someone actually comments to you, you can turn it into a positive thing. Tall them you’re new to the gym and would welcome pointers. Most people who’ll talk to you in the gym are just going to be asking “how long are you going to be using that?” or something similar, though;
• there’s a pretty low chance someone will actually be rude to you, because most people are well aware that everyone starts somewhere, and that if you’re overweight/unfit then being in the gym is you already taking steps to fix that.

And most of those points apply to a lot of things in life - it’s very liberating when you realise that most people don’t really care about what you’re doing and that you should just do what makes you happy.

If it helps, you can also do some research before using the gym so you’re confident about how to use the machines and equipment. It removes that “what if I’m using it wrong and everything thinks I look like an idiot?” aspect for you to worry about.

And if you’re just worried about people judging your weight/fitness, you can exercise outside of the gym. Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, step-ups, etc, are all free and things you can do at home. You can probably find somewhere quiet to go for a run - especially early morning or late evening. Dumbbells are fairly cheap (relative to a gym membership for any extended period of time) and don’t take up much storage space at home; they be used for their own exercises and to enhance other exercises (just adding more weight to your squats, for instance). Resistance bands are another low-cost, low-space option.

So you can either start off exercising at home until you’re comfortable enough to step into a gym, or just keep working out at home and gradually expand your equipment as you see fit. Obviously some of the larger, more expensive machines you find in gyms have their uses - some of them ensure you’re doing the exercise in a healthy way, some of them allow you to work out multiple muscle groups at once that would otherwise be difficult (like the rowing machine), and some of them let you target specific muscles in specific ways - but the things I mentioned above can take you a long way.

The two most important things are just being consistent (so try to get into a routine) and making sure you’re doing it for yourself. Obviously we’re talking about it from a perspective of people finding you more attractive if you’re in good shape, but more important than that is doing it because you want to be happy and healthy - if you can become happy and healthy in yourself then other people finding you attractive will follow eventually.

Anyway, this turned into a bit of an essay but hopefully something I’ve said here has been helpful for you!

Honestly, most “ugly” people can be reasonably attractive if they get in shape, eat healthily (especially in a way that clears up their skin) and style themselves (clothes, hair, etc) in a way that suits them. Plus finding good angles and lighting for photos/videos, and building up some confidence and charisma for in-person interactions. Those things aren’t necessarily easy and they take patience and commitment, but most people can easily go up a few points on an attractiveness/10 scale if they manage them.

I think the case would be more on the supplier that provides the cups to Cinemark though

That’s a matter for Cinemark and their supplier to sort out (either through discussion or another lawsuit). This man had a contract with the vendor (Cinemark) which is why he’s suing them.

If a car can receive OTA updates from the manufacturer, then it can receive harmful OTA updates from an attacker who has compromised the car’s update mechanism or the manufacturer.

There’s potential for a very dystopian future where we see people assassinated, not via car bomb but via the their cars being hacked to remove braking functionality (or something similar). And then a constant game of security whack-a-mole like we see with anti-virus software. And then some brilliant entrepreneur will start selling firewalls for cars. And then it’ll be passed into law that it’s illegal to use a vehicle that doesn’t have an active firewall/anti-virus subscription.

It almost feels like the obvious path things will go down. Yay, capitalism…

I’m not totally opposed to software being used in cars (as long as it’s tested and can be trusted to the degree mechanical components are) but yeah, OTA updates just seem like a terrible idea just for a little convenience. I’d rather see updates delivered via plugging the car in (and not via the charging port - it would need to be a specific data transfer port for security reasons). Alert people when there’s an update, and even allow the car to “refuse to boot” if it detects it’s not on the latest version. But updates should absolutely be done manually and securely.

It’s the length of the combined total working lives of an entire football stadium full of people.

The reason it’s overwhelmingly called “climate change” instead of global warming now is because of language change pushed by billionaire foundations.

I do think “global warming” struggles to convince some more simple people anyway, unfortunately. Because while the average temperature of the globe is increasing and causing the changes in climate that we’re seeing, I’ve come across far too many comments from people saying things like “global warming must be a myth because it snows more than it used to” and things themselves smarter than all climate scientists combined for that observation.

Of course, those same people probably think global warming is good because they like their summer holidays so perhaps their opinions shouldn’t matter much either way!

“It’s absurd that we live in a society where people feel the urge to tell me to greet them with ‘sallam alleykum’”.

There’s already a huge difference between what happened and your example here. Your example is “people saying you must do X” . What happens when it comes to gender is people asking, “please do not do X”.

They’re not saying you must refer to them as, for instance, she/her, but rather asking that you do not refer to them as he/him/they/them/whatever. You’re free to just not use pronouns to refer to them at all if that suits you better - you can refer to them by name instead. You’re left with plenty of options and only a handful of restrictions.

Your example, on the other hand, is completely restrictive; you must take this single course of action, and there are no alternatives.

For what it’s worth, I do think we’re in a fairly transitional stage (ha) of how we as society deal with transgenderism. I think people being made to change their pronouns in order to feel comfortable is silly. Not because those people are silly - they’re just doing what they can to feel comfortable with the restrictions society has placed on them - but because society and language are silly.

Why do we refer to people by gender at times when it’s completely irrelevant? Someone having a penis, or male hormones, or whatever other “masculine qualities”, is irrelevant 99% of the time when I refer to them as he/him. If I say, “Donald Trump? Yeah, he’s a corrupt idiot,” then why does him having a penis have any bearing on the language I use there?

And why do we have such gendered roles in society? Why can’t men just wear dresses and make-up and link the colour pink and still identify as men? Why can’t women cut their hair short and wear baggy clothes and like engineering projects and lifting weights at the gym and still identify as women? I guarantee that if we could remove all those kinds of gender associations, you’d see a lot less trans people.

People transition because who they are and what they like, and what society says they have to be (based on their gender) are at odds with each other, and it’s literally easier for them to change gender in order to be allowed to be themselves than to change society. Being trans isn’t some kind of personal failing; it’s a failure of society to accommodate people who deviate even slightly from its rigid roles and expectations.

The ideal future, such as I see it, is for there to be no trans people because no-one feels a need to transition - they can just feel comfortable and accepted as they are. But until then, you need to recognise that there’s a societal issue and stop being a part of it. It takes such a small amount of effort on your part to use the pronouns someone requests, or to avoid using pronouns at all, and it makes such a huge difference to them to be gendered properly. So just be a decent, respectful person and accommodate their wishes and stop making their life worse.

An analogue would be: petrol stations stop being a thing as the world transitions to electric/hydrogen/whatever cars. You start working on a way to modify your car in some way to account for this - perhaps you plan on making your own biofuel, or manually converting it to a electric/hydrogen/whatever car. The manufacturer of your car hears about this, comes along to your house and repossesses your car and takes it to be crushed, despite it being something you own and that they should have no say in any more.

And if you’re getting a game 48 hours prior to release, you’re at least getting a finished game.

True. But, personally, I think it has all the downsides of pre-ordering but at extra cost. The game could be an absolute disaster (Suicide Squad, anyone?) and there’s no way for anyone to know that. Not waiting to be able to properly inform yourself about what you’re spending money on is so stupid.

I’m honestly reaching the point where I think pre-ordering games should be legislated against. Sure, it’s only stupid people being parted from their money, but it’s clear some consumers need protecting from themselves and it’s only really the corporations that would lose out.

The Expanse is the first thing that came to mind for me as a counter-example when I read your first comment so I’m glad to see you mention it! It even plays on the exceptionalism idea in book/season 3 and 4 where Holden seems special because >!Miller is appearing to him!< and because >!he isn’t affected by the eye parasites!< only to explain those things away with reasoning stemming from events that already happened in previous books. And any exceptionalism that comes after that is largely due to the reputation or skills characters have built for themselves rather than because they’re “chosen ones”.

If you haven’t read the books, I really recommend them!

Yep. Rishi Sunak’s trying to make homeless people and smelly people illegal; I’m sure disabled people will be next (especially ones with wheelchairs/mobility scooters or “unsightly” disabilities).

So as per @Kierunkowy74’s reply to me, limiting (basically what I described) is a feature on Mastodon already. It basically just sets things to follower-only mode on a per-instance basis. I’m not sure how well that would translate to the threadiverse, but I do think some level of opt-in integration would be best.

To go on a slight tangent: I’ve never used Imgur as anything other than a image hosting site, but I’m aware it has people that use it as a social network in its own right. Whenever I’ve hosted anything on Imgur in the past - even images that don’t need any context - I’ve noticed it always ended up downvoted and sometimes with some negative comments, while the reception on reddit was generally far better. It doesn’t bother me - like I said, I just used it as an image host - but it’s clear Imgur has its own culture. Threads could be the same, and trying to merge its culture with ours could prove difficult.

I don’t know what full-on federation with Threads would look like, but federating vote counts could definitely lead to Threads culture overwhelming threadiverse culture. But I assume that’s also something that can be done on a per-instance basis; I know kbin (which I use) already doesn’t federate downvotes from other instances, for example.

I’m not sure I have a fully-formed opinion on it all yet, unfortunately. I don’t like the idea of cutting Threads off completely unless they do something to earn defederation. I think finding a way to smoothly federate with Threads could give the fediverse a boost in users that could be significant for more niche communities that haven’t managed to find a large enough audience yet (because yes, I’m still missing some of the smaller communities from reddit). But I do also think there are very valid concerns about both the long-term and immediate impacts Threads could have on the fediverse.

That sounds like a good solution. I don’t want to need an account on a different platform to see Threads, but I also don’t want the feeds to just be overrun by Threads users, and that seems to achieve that.

I guess the ideal situation as far as I’m concerned would be for users to be able to choose that setting on an individual basis. Obviously anyone can set up their own instance and achieve that, but being able to do it without being an instance admin would be the best.

Personally, I would like to be able to follow individual Threads users if I so desire but not have Threads content showing up in my All feed. I don’t know if that’s possible with how federation/individual blocking currently works, but it would be the ideal, I think.

Sweet?!

So I just had a look into it and apparently American tomato ketchup is one third sugar (corn syrup, obviously…). Ketchup is supposed to be savory, America; why do you do this?