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I’ve long since removed myself from the mainstream (I.e enshittified) social media, but my spouse loves to show me cute, silly or funny animal videos and I genuinely love the habit.

However, the pst year or two, I keep finding myself asking “who is this? why are the there?” since the actual silly or just cute video is only half of it, then the other half is just a bloke watching the same video I guess, but for whatever reason (I.e content theft and number go up game) included in the damn video that is the actual content.

I keep thinking it’s relevant somehow, like maybe their dog jumps out and does something funny in response to them watching a cute dog video, but no. The entire thing is just them silently watching and often not even nodding or gesturing like others here illustrate. More often than not, they simply sit there silently with a very neutral non-expressive face, then the video ends and there was exactly zero point to that (other than pumping out content for the algorithm with minimal effort I guess?). It’s a real fucking thing. It boggles the mind. Who wants that?

I asked my spouse why on earth would they ever choose to watch those when they can just skip and look for other cute stuff. It makes no sense to me. The algorithm should simply not suggest or serve those to anyone since in my mind, nobody would bother watching them. It genuinely fucks with my mind.

However, I’ve since learnt that the modern way of consuming even things like instagram is click on whatever on front page, then simply scrolling up/down or left/right for next videos without any chance to evaluate whether one wants to watch it or not. It simply toots new ones infinitely and I guess the users just… watch whatever comes?

It’s fucking ridiculous. The only reason those trend like they do, even for us millennials, the modern boomers, is because somehow somebody watched it once, or it was paid/promoted or something, then the algorithm just decides similar people will watch that snd suddenly perfectly normal and sensible people like my spouse end up watching some random fucking people sit still with nothing to offer, in an abrupt video, day in day out. It’s simply ridiculous.

But while I don’t get it and actively loathe the practice (I.e content theft and gaming the platforms in ways clearly not intended (or exactly as intended…)) I guess that’s just the way of the world now. I feel boomer enough even though I’ve barely passed 30 because I don’t get all the brainrot stuff and don’t get exposed to those since I no longer use social media I can’t curate myself like non-proprietary link aggregators, and I keep getting these surreal experiences that seem so completely nonsense to me.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify that this kind of content is not niche, the instagrams and tiktoks of the world keep pushing exactly that kind of senseless shit to even regular millenials like my spouse and by their proxy, me. The feed is otherwise just cute animal videos basically. The half that isn’t, is cute animal videos with some visibly tired and uninterested streamer-looking bloke taking half the screen for no actual reason other than capitalism-driven modern social media practices.

My friends who have entirely different interests also get them. Like tech-savvy guys too, content is mostly technical or nerdy stuff, but a percentage of that just comes with some weird person staring in the screen on the bottom part of the video. It’s so stupid. Musicians whose feed is similarly specialized and in no way gen alpha tier brainrot or suspectible for nonsensical streamer content or whatever, have a part of the feed just be absolutely out-of-place rgb-light-headset gamer looking dudes just silently fucking watching and very occasionally perhaps even react with a singular nod before the video ends.

It is a real trend that seems to even inflict itself to the kind of people I would absolutely think would not ever watch any content like that, are not just your average people mindlessly scrolling, rather very sensible and extremely specialized in their interests kinds of people.

I am genuinely surprised that you do not seem to have seen this. Count yourself lucky. I count myself as one too, although I still occasionally have to be exposed to that shit when a cute otter video is pushed on my face and for a second, each time, I almost laugh at the fucking bloke just sitting there, each time a different dude. What nonsense.

It’s a strange instinct to think, somehow, this wasn’t the case. In general, not here specifically even. And he especially does not seem like someone who’d just ad hoc do something without knowing what he is doing.

Sorry, I go on tangents and end up just confusing people. It is! That was my point, though failed to deliver it. Gpl3, agpl and apache.

They do have a pricing model for enterprises with some proprietary extra stuff on top (shared billing, SSO, premium support and stuff like that), and a tier for expanded AI stuff (entirely ignorable, and the editor works with pretty much everything, so if you need those things, you can just set up whichever service you want yourself), but those can both be ignored, the main editor is FOSS and committed to remain so.

Yeah I do a similar thing with intermittent fasting. I allow myself to eat as much as I want, but only after around 1600 (4pm for the temporally confused friends) or roughly the time the kid gets home from school and either has a small snack or we eat dinner straight away around that time. Couldn’t skip that, because I do need to show example too, since they, as many kids do, struggle to eat enough, sometimes just nibbling on stuff. Even if they’ve been very active with hobbies and friends and walking to and from school (around 4km total) and they really need the energy and the nutrients to build back and heal the body after all that, not to mention usual growing stuff. And as they often do, especially the salad sides are difficult without someone body doubling the experience, or if we’re doing something different, unusual food to slightly expand their comfort zone progressively. So I can’t really fast beyond that. But I’ve found I don’t really need to. I’ve lost around 10kg in a year just by this small fasting period. No other changes. I wasn’t obese before, just a bit overweight, but I have been back in the day, on the obese side even. I got back from that with keto diet, and luckily never let it slip back too much, but that isn’t an option anymore, for largely the same reasons; have to lead by example, show healthy eating habits (when they are there) and have diverse, nutritious food. Can’t do keto like that.

I’m not doing this for weight reasons though; my blood sugar is on the high side, almost pre-diabetic, and the docs tell me if I don’t get it sorted, I’ll eventually just slip over the line and that’s not something you get back from apparently. I also have vascular fat (or whatever it’s called in English, the inner fat) that I’d need to get rid of to get my liver values back to healthy bounds. Already gave up drinking some years back, even if it was occasional even then, and it wasn’t enough, so I have to try and get the fat off too. Keto would’ve been perfect for this, back in the day I lost crazy amount of that inner fat especially on it, but apparently this intermittent fasting is doing good things there too, although not nearly as effectively.

But the surprising thing to me is, I didn’t cut off any foods or food types, generally I’ve tried to keep the short carbs a bit lower than usual, but haven’t gone entirely off. And it still works. I haven’t been on the blood controls yet for either of the reasons, but my scale tells me about 2-3kg of that 10kg has been inner fat.

And even through Christmas and a lot of carbs, the weight didn’t seem to sway back almost at all, even with delayed monitoring.

Which is all to say, it seems easier to cut on the calories if you only consume them less than half a day, time-wise, even if you ate unhealthy food and generally not very diet-y. In the limited timespan it might just be impossible to get to similar amounts of calories vs. if you ate regularly throughout all day, if you like me have trouble regulating and tend to overeat fairly consistently (I have adhd so the dopamine rush gets me too excited every time and I guess I lose most of my sense of moderation for a while there).

Sorry for the weird digression. Just wanted to hop in with my experiences.

I believe zed has extensions for c#, and I guess more importantly, dotnet.

At this point, unless you have the money to grab sublime (or specifically want foss or even just free as in beer), and you aren’t sold on the way of life of the old guard like the modern vims or emacs, zed is pretty much the best there is.

I used to be such a jetbrains guy, but that was back when they did actually have something nobody else really offered outside of Microsoft. Before that, for a good long time, I was an emacs guy, until I had to use a windows computer for work and emacs just doesn’t fit well there, couldn’t get a good equivalent of the daemon going consistently, had to switch. And to be frank, lisp is the fucking worst.

Nowadays, there are so many options though, even, or especially, on foss side. Or even just free. Hard to justify the jetbrains kinds of specialized tools, now that the same sugary, smooth experience is almost exactly achievable on those. And faster.

I have been happy with zed for quite a while now. Apart from the (disableable, thank god) first class AI stuff, I haven’t a single complaint. It feels as fast and responsive as sublime, and while the ecosystem isn’t there yet, I can get all my stacks and tooling to run currently like it was a jetbrains ide from back in the day. Rust, dotnet, deno/ts, it all just works after setup.

I would still go for sublime just for the ecosystem, but I haven’t the economics at a point where I can choose convenience for a price, if a close equivalent exists with the price of nothing but contributions occasionally. The zed source being open, even if my PRs don’t get merged, I can just live with my fork and have it natively the way I want, without working around the extension limitations.

I’ve been in a committed relationship for the past few years, so I haven’t got the freshest experience, but:

I’ve always had luck with tinder and similar ones. Current relationship is from there too. But this is for mono relationships.

When I was going through my poly experiments era, tinder really didn’t work out for me. Or any of the others at the time, but tinder’s been the biggest here regionally so I’ll keep using that in place of all the similar apps.

Surprisingly enough, for any poly or just more casual stuff otherwise, the most action and great memories and experiences I got through Jodel. It’s not a dating app, but somehow it just happened to work. I didn’t explicitly send messages to anyone either, it just came to be.

Which is all to say, it’s not the explicitly dating apps alone one should consider. Or, rather, I guess it depends a lot on what one’s looking for, and perhaps speaks to just how much people you can meet and get contact with and get excited about and have nice memories with, without trying explicitly to do that. Just organically connecting with people on a personal level without any masks on.

But I never thought any of the different ways to meet people are necessarily bad or gave me any problems or whatever. People just meet and click, if they dare to put themselves out there. When I was younger, it was through school, work, bars, friends’ friends, parties, gigs, festivals, cafes, libraries… you know, basically anywhere there are people, you might just accidentally find a fun or endearing adventure with someone.

That’s not to say there aren’t any bad experiences too. But it does a lot of good to instead focus on the good ones and try and hang on to them, so you’ll dare to throw yourself out there again and have more of them. I know it’s not as easily done as it is said, but outright dismissing it without seriously trying will definitely not help and even actively sabotage your own confidence and vibe, you know?

A lot of it is just attitude. If you can find a way to remain happy and endearing and brave enough to get personal, close, even if for just little whiles at a time, then I almost guarantee you, you’ll just attract others somehow, somewhere, always. The question I guess is, will you pick up on it or dare to go with it when it comes to you? Because that shit is hard and stressful if you’re not used to it, very easy to just skip or ignore outright without even trying, without exposing yourself to the potential harm and heartbreak (potential love and warm memories too, mind you!), and only repeat practice will ultimately give you the perspective and outlook required to come out better each time.

But I digress. I know not everyone has a good time with these, perhaps a lot of it is regional/cultural too, but almost everyone I know, have mostly had amazing experiences, ultimately, through these apps. Some get to it some other way, mostly the means alternate, but people just tend to find each others naturally, somehow just end up in the right place in the right time. Sometimes that’s the tinder or other dating app. Sometimes it’s something else.

But I haven’t personally heard any horror stories, and all the heartbreak and sad stories have always ultimately been overshadowed by later joy and warmth found in the exact same apps or whatever. Neither have I experienced anything out of ordinary. Some heartbreak, some disappointments, sure, but most importantly, love and caring to outshine those. Nothing that wouldn’t happen if met otherwise.

This has to be a joke, right? But the .gov domains are reserved in us for actual government agencies, right? So what the fuck

I would also consider just choosing the middle ground and take the pension, retire half time. If that’s doable within your country’s framework.

Less work, and you can potentially choose the work depending on how you do this, which can make it even more enjoyable in addition to having less hours. You’ll get to supplement the pension with a bit of income, you can perhaps even choose to live more frugally for a few years to get some extra investments going that you only touch on emergencies, but otherwise will hopefully get large enough to fight back on the inflation.

But if it was me, I’d just retire. No telling what the world will look like in a few years, nevermind 20. Even if you kept working, there’s no guarantees things’ll get better, maybe entire economy collapses and all that work has been for nothing. Or maybe the humanity collapses, you know.

I’d take all the free time I could muster and spend it as much as practical, on nice enjoyable things and family and friends.

While I don’t agree, I’ll concede I might be in the minority with this stand. But I don’t really believe in a universal intelligence in the first place. There are several, and not all of them are self-serving or marked by the traditionally associated emotionless calculations. There’s emotional intelligence. Social intelligence. And so on.

I don’t pretend to be a philosopher or a psychologist to say what they all are, what they even are if you get down to it, but I do know there’s intelligence in caring for others. There’s intelligence in many kinds of sacrifice too. They just aren’t the classical kind of universal intelligence, because that is defined by self-serving “cold facts” and a fragile attempt at realizing an objective world and objective stance on it, which one can never truly reach or possess. If something like that even is possible.

I stand by my original comment, and I’ll be a bit sad to learn if I’m the odd one out with that take, but I also think these are the kind of things philosophers ought to talk about and not me. What do I know? Maybe my view is distorted by idealism and good expectations, faith in people and the world, that may well be unsubstantiated and entirely delusional.

Sometimes we don’t value stable career or steady income as highly as other pursuits.

I wouldn’t say it’s not intelligent. Just different priorities.

I admire anyone brave and idealistic enough to commit to academia or culture or any similarly less lucrative and extremely uncertain path. Takes some resilience and big balls. You are almost guaranteed to lose a lot of the comforts available to others with that. And yet, they still do it. And we are all better for it. The world is better for it.

That has to be one of the worst choices if you must go. I get that we don’t think straight in those moments of our life, but it’s such a horrible thing to force on someone and their conscience…

Not just trains, but all the instances where someone entirely unrelated will be dragged into something so heavy, like truck drivers, too. Hard to live with, can really ruin lives.

Another thing I don’t like is when others that aren’t trained for it like the paramedics or police, have to see the outcome and fallout, such as jumping off a building into a busy street, even at night when nobody’s there just now, but will be. Or hanging yourself from your balcony in an apartment complex.

It fucks up someone to see that, and I have to believe everyone could make the responsible choice of doing it in private or in a way that affects least amount of unrelated people possible. Like going with the helium/nitrogen bag, hanging within the bounds of one’s privacy, if shooting is the way to go, do it perhaps in the woods, somewhere peaceful and remote, and call the paramedics so they’ll be there before any innocent walkers-by, etc.

It’s bad that anyone has to be involved, but at least the professionals have the training to deal with that somehow, even if it will ultimately fuck them up too at least somehow. At least it’s a conscious choice for them to put themselves in the position that they might have to see shit like that. Same for police.

I would strongly encourage messless ways to go, too, because I think the psychological impact of a peacful-seeming exit without blood or injuries has to be the least damaging. It’s never going to be clean and harmless to others, but an exit bag would do a lot of good for everyone eventually involved in the situation.

But I also get that a lot of people in that position may harbor some general hatred and bitterness towards others, which is horrible and I have to think entirely avoidable if the society did its job, so they might even choose to go as publicly and messily as possible just to make a point or something.

But the others have to live with that shit. They keep going. You don’t. The least we can do is try to minimize the trauma and impact we necessarily inflict on others when we do go. We get the peace. We get away. Those others, not so much.

I don’t know how this would be taught other than boldly and empathetically talking about it in school, to make the point repeatedly, like we do with sex education for example. And health education too. We really should talk about these things, so when the time comes one has to leave, the spine reaction would be to do it as kindly as possible, to be considerate in the choice of manner.

I occasionally have these spells where I forget what I’ve previously learnt, and choose to try to let an ai help me out with some particularly boring code, think something mundane but laborous. So I succumb to the temptation.

And every fucking time I come out having wasted time and still having to do the thing, or at any rate, something equally boring and mundane, myself manually, because either the result is so ridiculous that it requires extensive cleanup/refactoring or just won’t get there at all.

And each time I merrily keep forgetting this, learn nothing from it beyond the short term, because I seem to be hardwired to try and skip the boring stuff.

There’s no escaping the boring stuff.

Thing is, what these models really do, is give a small dose of escapism under a fragile illusion of productivity, so for a moment there you feel good, “released”, though only postponing the boring fucking work and annoying your future self.

But that escapism sells well, because we yearn it. Same with entertainment. Games. The escape from mundane, boring and annoyingly repetitive life.

For a method of escapism, it’s so fucking inefficient and resource-intensive, we should punch ourselves in the dick just for falling for that each time.

While having this mindset, knowing rationally what I know, I still expect to fall for it in the medium term again, because fuck me if some work just isn’t boring.

And every time the excursion leaves me feeling so ashamed and dirty, I truly would deserve a punch right in the dick. And perhaps need one, to actually make this stick…

I’ve not heard a single capable person ever come out of using the current agents, or “ai”s in general, and not have ended up just wasting time and resources and feeling dirty and embarrassed for it.

The only thing good about them is the potential, which, at least currently, never materializes.