Reddit refugee here.

…I just want an aggregation of different news sources that isn’t run by Nazis. Apparently a tall order on today’s internet. Kbin looks promising!

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • You’re conflating disagreeing with behaving like a Nazi. I don’t give a fuck what was acceptable back in your day. Today we draw the line at human rights If you get butthurt at being ridiculed for lamenting at the opposition you face when you try to marginalize other groups, then keep that shit to yourself. Or better yet, make an effort to actually get to know some people from the groups you’re directing hatred at - might find you actually start caring about them, and suddenly their rights will mean more to you than the pushback you get for posting slurs online


  • So, bigoted opinions? Yeah those should be banned.

    If we’re talking about whether or not you like pineapples on pizza, no one gives a damn which way you lean.

    If we’re talking about human rights, there’s a very clear wrong answer. If your ‘opinion’ falls on the Nazi side of that aisle, this might be your cue to ask yourself “are we the baddies?”



  • If “Secret World Legends” isn’t already on your radar, it might be up your alley.

    Haven’t played GW1, but SWL has a moveset similar to what you described.

    It’s set in modern day, with the premise that all myths, conspiracy theories, urban legends etc are all true - and frequently need to be contained. There are three factions: STRONGLY recommend you choose Illuminati (best faction story line by a long shot).

    The investigative missions will make you feel like a moron, but in a weirdly good way. SUPER satisfying to figure them out without looking up hints online.


  • Hate:

    Lazy UI porting between PC and console. It goes both ways - radial menus showing up in a PC game or a joystick-controlled-cursor in a console game. M+KB vs controller are not comparable input methods, so trying to manage the UI with one that was built for the other is always a massive pain in the ass.

    Inventory restrictions in games that throw a LOT of shit your way. Looking at you, Bethesda. Fortunately there’s usually a mod of some kind to make items weigh like 0.01 lbs, or kick your slots up to 9999 or something. Sometimes realism adds to the experience… inventory management isn’t one of those times.

    Sluggish controls. I want to actually enjoy the Dark Souls games SO BAD - they look beautiful, I fuckin love that dark fantasy setting… but moving and combat feel like I’m driving a school bus with boxing gloves on my hands and diving flippers on my feet. I get that the cumbersome controls are a huge part of what makes it difficult, and that the difficulty is what a lot of players are after, but personally that’s not a flavor of difficulty I’ll ever be able to enjoy.

    Love:

    Good QOL features, especially involving the topics above. Like ‘Hot Deposit’ certain items to all designated storages in range, or AoE loot when a bunch of foes die in a pile. The quick loot style menu from Fallout 4 is another great example. Love that stuff!

    Lore. Good story writing, believable/relatable characters, ESPECIALLY the antagonists. Hitting the sweet spot there is a quick ticket to my all time favorites.

    Environmental challenges, with fun ways to overcome them. When I was new to Ark, one of the biggest challenges in my first play through was getting into the super cold zones and not freezing to death. My cold weather gear didn’t cut it… the solution I came up with was to tame a paracer (kind of an elephant looking dino) and build a platform on its back: and made like 6 camp fires on the platform. So the I was, trudging through an insanely cold environment on a flaming elephant, cozy as can be. As a veteran player now, there are SO much more efficient methods to solving that problem, but the experience gave a unique sense of accomplishment, which is the kind of thing that got me hooked on that game.

    Escorts matching the move speed of the player. 'nuff said.



  • Nursing student here. Quizlet has an AI function that lets you paste text into it and it outputs a studyset.

    Most of my classes provide a study guide of some kind - just a list of topics we need to be familiar with. I’ll take those and plug em into the AI thing: bam! Instantly generate like 200 flash cards to study for the next test.

    It even auto-fills the actual subject matter. For example, the study guide will say sometime like “Summarize Louis Pasteur’s contributions to the field of microbiology” and turn that into a flash card that reads:

    (front)

    Louis Pasteur

    (back)

    Verified the germ theory of disease

    Developed a method to prevent the spoilage of liquids through heating (pasteurization)

    Developed early anthrax and rabies vaccines

    So I take my list of AI generated cards, then sift through the powerpoints and lecture videos etc from class: instead of building the study set from scratch, all I have to do is verify that the information it spit out is accurate (so far it’s been like 98% on target, often explaining concepts better than the actual professor, lol), add images, and play with the formatting a bit so it reads a little easier on the eyes.

    People always talk about AI in school in the context of cheating, but it is RIDICULOUSLY useful for students actually trying to learn.

    Looking ahead, this tech has a ton of potential to be used as a kind of personal tutor for each student. There will be some growing pains for sure, but we definitely shouldn’t ignore its constructive potential.





  • The concerning part is that a lot of the data is the most conservative available, so as to not seem alarmist. When even that looks grim, it’s hard to hold onto any hope that our planet is on track to becoming anything other than a hellscape. A lot of climate change is the result of positive feedback loops – self-aggrivating conditions. E.g., warmer arctic climate causes the release of methane previously trapped by ice (methane is a ridiculously potent greenhouse gas… something like 30x more potent than CO₂), so its release causes the climate to warm even more, which melts more arctic ice, which releases more methane, which makes the climate warmer, which melts more arctic ice, etc…

    Even if every human just suddenly got thanos-snapped out of existence right now – no more cars, no more shipping, no more deforestation, no more industry of any kind… full stop on pollution and active environmental destruction… even then, the positive feedback loops we’ve set into motion aren’t just going to stop on their own. The process would be slower, sure, but Earth is (rather, the things on earth that make it more than just a dead rock floating in space, are) fucked.

    On the plus side, we’ll only be alive long enough to see the start of the ‘find out’ era. It’s the generation after you that’s really fucked; and the generation after them that’s really, REALLY fucked, rinse and repeat until humanity is an eco-dome filled with oligarchs, or just straight up extinct.

    At this point we’re dependent on a (series of) miracle-tier scientific breakthrough(s), or literal divine/extraterrestrial intervention. I don’t see the latter two happening. Vote for candidates who give a shit about science if you think there’s any hope in that route.




  • I’ve been here for about a week now, and still feel like there are features I don’t understand or completely overlooked. The concept of the fediverse is simultaneously really simple (e.g. email analogy) and confusing (still not really clear on what makes kbin different from lemmy; and I have to subscribe to like 8 iterations of what is effectively r/worldnews… and there’s a fed youtube-like that I haven’t looked into yet, but haven’t run into here so far… I can see lemmy content on kbin, but I can’t log into Jerboa with a kbin account…)

    It’s a lot to take in.

    …and honestly, ^that makes it kinda fun. Reddit gave me the middle finger, so I gave it right back by building my own theme-park with blackjack and hookers. Thoroughly enjoying the blackjack and hookers; but the “building my own theme-park” bit is a challenge - one that I (probably most of us here) find engaging and gratifying, but very much a challenge, and that isn’t what everyone’s looking for.

    When I can show my tech-handicapped boomer mother a 2-minute video explaining the the whats and hows of the fediverse, it’ll give the reddits and facebooks a run for their money; until then the fed will remain fairly niche. Which isn’t a bad thing - finding and engaging with a niche you enjoy will ALWAYS feel better than engaging with generic shit built for mass marketability.

    Subjective bit, but imo our branding also kinda sucks. “Fediverse” sounds like some clunky .gov message board that the FBI uses to share crime statistics with the CIA and ATF. Anything “-iverse” comes off as hyperbolic. “Lemmy” sounds like “lemming”. “Beehaw” sounds like an apiary manufacturer based in Alabama. “kbin” evokes imagery of a trash can for…‘k’. I mean, it’s all nit-picky shit, but the connotation of our chosen labels lean negative. It wasn’t a barrier to entry for any of us here now; but you know there are potential users who take one glance at the word “fediverse”, conclude that it sounds stupid, and move on without a second thought. All that said, I’m cool with folks like that staying on reddit!