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the August 2023 Beehaw financial update
  • I see what you mean, but I also believe that the value of places like Beehaw often lies in the intermediary stage before they become an institution or wither away and die.

    Right now Beehaw is pretty close to the peak of what it can be. It's the equivalent of a large online block party. If it gets bigger than this it will need to institionalize or wither away. What you're asking is for it to institionalize sooner than is necessary, which is what will kill the feeling.

    Beehaw has a lifespan to it, we should all recognize this now. Beehaw is great because it runs on good faith and trust. These are limited resources and they'll run out eventually, either sell out or burn out.

    The best way to approach it is to put into it what you get out of it, and stop putting into it when you stop getting value out of it.

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  • No I do not think it is right to impose choice on others and I never said as much. I believe people ought to be free to waste money if they so see fit. But when it comes to the collective level, we ought to be subsidizing sustainable agriculture and not corn and beef as we (USA) currently do. I.E. when it comes to policy the policy should be directed towards incentivizing people towards sustainability. This doesn't take away people's free choice to eat beef, it just means they do so on their own dollar and not the governments.

  • [HN] Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools
  • This is just using a digital solution to an analog problem for no real gain in efficiency. In theoryland sure, you can replace books with ereaders and possibly save money. And at certain levels of education this works out, middle/high school. In earlier levels, there are two issues. One, kids break things. Cheaper to replace a book than an ereader. Two, kids associate the tablet form factor with entertainment. Kids rely a lot on symbols for interpreting the world. It's hard to get them into education mode when the symbol on front of them puts them into entertainment mode. Books signify learning, it helps the kids get into the right headspace.

  • [HN] Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools
  • No, getting rid of smartphones in classrooms is the only way to actually teach critical thinking. Using devices in classrooms teaches kids that all the answers are on Google and that they don't need to think, only search.

    Google/wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool, but before you learn to use them you first need to be taught basics. The scientific method is the first things kids need to learn: how to observe the world around them, form ideas of how it works, test those ideas, change them based on further observation. This kind of reasoning is sabotages when the kid learns that if they just use Google they can get the answer without learning how to do the work.

    Takes like yours generally come from a place of well-meaning but are far removed from the actual reality of the classroom. Kids need to learn first how to figure out information in the real world hands-on before they are introduced to the abstract digital world.

    You actually can successfully ban devices in the classroom through a variety of methods.

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  • I agree. Ideally everyone would be free to eat ribeye everyday. Unfortunately we live in the real world where that's not possible. Cutting down meat consumption is the reasonable, economical choice. I still eat meat for sure, it tastes good. But in my daily life I've cut down significantly and saved money.

  • Twitter Turning Into X Is Set to Kill Billions in Brand Value
  • Twitter isn't and never was useful as an organizing tool. Arab spring was a failure. Twitter is actually more useful to the ruling class than not because it gives a way for the masses to expend it's restless energy without changing anything.

  • I hate my parents
  • It's okay to be angry, and to have big feelings. But also, remember that your parents are people. There's two sides to that, everyone has biases and perceptions that they can't see past, but there is also the spiritual and beautiful things that transcend all of that.

    Beauty and love surpass all the other stuff. Look for the ways that there can be love between you, even when it also means holding the tension of love and anger together. It can work like that, and sometimes that's just what family is. Also before you know it you'll be on your own and that will give you a whole new perspective on family as you build a new life for yourself.

    I remember when I still lived with my parents it was impossible to see past their flaws. But now as an adult on my own, I have a much greater appreciation for how easy it is to be shitty and how hard it is to be good.

    At the end of it all, sometimes you just gotta feel your feelings, hoping that at the end of it you'll be a little bigger and a little more expensive, able to hold more of life together and not less.

  • Is now the right time to switch to Linux?
  • As a non-technical user, I think if you have a modicum of technical knowledge it's easy to switch to Linux. But it still takes time and patience. I'm using Linux now on all of my devices (if you count Android as Linux). There is still a lot of idiosyncracy to the ecosystem but overall it's usable. I've found Vanilla OS to be a great experience overall. I had some troubles with Pop_OS! On my Nvidia GPU, that was because it's still using x11 and I use a 4k monitor with a 1080p monitor and needed fractional scaling. Haven't had any issues on Vanilla OS because it uses Wayland. But boy, I had a hard time figuring out what was going on and why my apps were blurry and games weren't displaying properly. Took a lot of googling and perseverance to figure it out, as I didn't know what a display server.

  • Neo-Nazis Surged Into Central Florida And Found A Tough-Talking Sheriff Who’s Determined To Take Them Down
  • I appreciate the community-focused approach he's taking, building bridges in his community among different groups. I just am annoyed that the publication immediately highlights his old-school dirty harry style. Like, that's exactly what we don't want cops to be like going forward.

    It seems clear to me that Sheriff Mike is doing good work. The crux of it seems to be building a coalition of local Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities against hate, and that is so key. Why not lead with that?

  • I laugh at the Ford every time I see it. Today i got at chance to park next to it and the the size difference is comically large.
  • What I dislike about these threads is that it always devolves into shitting on blue collar workers. Of course pickups are useless city cars but have you all ever met somebody from a town of 1,000 people where every single person works in a blue collar trade? These things do work that you can't do in a different type of vehicle.

    Threads like this are echo chambers of privilege. Maybe instead of shitting on tradespeople, shit on car and oil companies who enshittify the whole system.

    Also pickups in 2023 that look like this are more powerful and more fuel efficient than more modest looking pickups from 90s or 00s. You may not like the aesthetics of it, but who fucking cares, you're not driving it, you're just the one judging someone else for having different taste.

  • Denuvo wants to convince you its DRM isn’t “evil”
  • From your source:

    With the exception of recently released blockbusters, there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales

    Denuvo is used almost exclusively in exactly the scenario where the study supports the idea that piracy hurts sales. I don't think the study helps your case.

  • The Far Invisible: Thomas Pynchon as America’s Theologian | Alan Jacobs
    hedgehogreview.com The Far Invisible

    Pynchon diagnosed our idolatry of the inanimate.

    A master class in close reading, and a towering analysis of novelist Thomas Pynchon. Really good piece for being an essay published in a relatively laid-back periodical.

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    Romance in the 21st century

    Hello friends, if you'll allow me, I would like to rant for a moment about the state of dating in an urban setting.

    I don't want to immediately say things were better decades ago, but as someone who is monogamous, vanilla, just wants a steady partner, it feels impossible to date with the current apps. I am in hobby groups, I'm on Bumble, Hinge etc., I meet new people. Yet I can't seem to find anyone. I'm despairing friends, I'm despairing.

    I feel like I'm picking people off an algorithm. The room for surprise and delight has been cut off. Now there is only space for cold hard data. Lots of pretty people with good education and it's so hard to see them as people and not just another part of an ever growing list. Another dot in the scatter plot.

    People who are in LTRs, how'd you find your partner? What keeps you together?

    Other single folk, how are you finding dating to be in your current locale? What things have brought success or failure in your mind? How do you define success or failure?

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    Mountains in wilderness don't need hardware
    www.chieftain.com WOTR: Mountains in wilderness don’t need hardware

    Dana Johnson shares her thoughts on the “Protect America’s Rock Climbing Act," and argues that "Wilderness needs our restraint more than ever."

    WOTR: Mountains in wilderness don’t need hardware

    The rock climbing community has long found itself at odds with park rangers. Very rarely intentionally! But today there is a silent battle between a small group of climbers trying to reform the wilderness act to allow fixing permanent anchors to rock in the wilderness.

    The use of fixed anchors, also called bolting, makes routes far more accessible to the average sport climber. Without fixed anchors, climbers must build their own removable anchors on the wall as they climb (called "trad climbing"). This is difficult enough that the majority of climbers won't do it, only the dedicated few. While fixed anchors in themselves do not have an environmental impact, any route that gets bolted in the wilderness will undoubtedly see a large increase in human activity that would harm the local flora and fauna. The Protect America's Rock Climbers act is a misnomer at best, lie at worst. There are already hundreds of bolted rocks within the US, with more than enough sport climbing to last anyone a lifetime. Furthermore, if anyone wishes to climb in the wilderness, they are allowed to, provided they are dedicated enough to climb it in the trad style. It is far more important to protect the wilderness that we have left than it is to create a few more pretty rock climbing routes.

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    What is your process?

    Do you set aside a time each day to write? Do you write five pages stream of consciousness then trim it down into something that makes sense? Are you a planner? Do you write in a notebook? Do you write once, edit once? write twice, edit once? Write once, edit thrice?

    I don't have a consistent process. I've been experimenting with writing in a basic markdown editor, maybe 500 words at a time, then stringing together multiple entries as best I can. What I find is I have lots of ideas and thoughts that are separate, and critical to my ability to form complex thought is correlating multiple seemingly unrelating things, which then creates a new more complicated and hybrid whole. I can't sit down and write 5,000 words on one thing, but I can write 500 words on ten things, and then use that as the basis of a mosaic piece that (when edited well) comes together into a unique whole.

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SL
    SlamDrag @beehaw.org
    Posts 4
    Comments 36