AnarchistArtificer

A phrase I read a while back that has pretty dystopian vibes but is pretty useful as a concept is "algorithm domestication". It's more or less what you describe in your comment.

I think there'll always be weird nerds getting excited about niche things. It's exhausting to have to keep finding new spaces, but to some extent, I think that's our lot in life: we're like lyme-grass growing in sand dunes — pioneer species that grow where other things can't (or won't), putting down roots so other things can grow.

Unfortunately, the pioneer grasses can't survive indefinitely in the communities they build; their existence acts as a windbreak and encourages more sand to settle, causing the sand dune to form quicker than they can grow, eventually being smothered by the dunes they helped established. They have to find somewhere else to grow, somewhere new — the sand dune of tomorrow. That's why, when there's a series of sand dunes at a beach, you see a sort of progression, moving from more established sand dunes to younger ones as you get closer to the shore.

Maybe in 20 years, Linux will be unrecognisable to us, and maybe that space will no longer be home to nerds like us. But we'll always find something new to be excited about; the community won't be vaporised, it'll just be rejigged a bunch, as we discover new areas to put down roots. That is sad, but I think the alternative would be sadder, in a way. I don't mean if Linux doesn't become widely adopted, but if people stop trying to push for that — at the core of this movement/community is a bunch of people saying "hey, look at this really cool thing I care about".

It's easy to blame the Marram grasses for crowding out the early pioneers, but we do this to ourselves, by building tools for others to use, and working on outreach. In a way, that's how we survive, because our community relies on people who are excited about building something new in an unexplored problem space; more gatekeepy communities may maintain their "ideological purity" for longer, but they inevitably die out.

It sucks to feel crowded out by the masses, but there'll always be new spaces for people like us, because we're good at building and tinkering. After all, look at where we are right now. Lemmy isn't especially radical or new, but the atmosphere here is incredibly different to Reddit. I'm way more likely to find thought provoking discussions like this thread, for example, and to care enough to write comments like this.

Something about potential wide scale fraud came out recently about a prominent Alzheimer's researcher. This article covers it quite well: https://www.science.org/content/article/research-misconduct-finding-neuroscientist-eliezer-masliah-papers-under-suspicion

It's grim, especially when considering the real human cost that fraud in biomedical research has. Despite this, like you, I am also optimistic. This article outlines some of how the initial concerns about this researcher was raised, and how the analysis of his work was done. A lot of it seems pretty unorthodox. For example, one of the people who contributed to this work was a "non-scientist" forensic image expert, who goes by the username Cheshire on the forum PubPeer (his real name is known and mentioned in the article, but I can't remember it).

I've heard from a few transfem lesbian friends that one of the hardest parts of coming out to themselves as trans was that it would also mean acknowledging they're not straight, because if you're someone who feels like you're failing at being a man, attraction to women can be pretty grounding. "It was the one normal thing about me" - whole lot of internalised misogyny/transphobia/homophobia.

But that's our assumption, it's true that it might just be a dude that likes being feminine, no trans involved.

Quite right; labels like straight get pretty wibbly in situations like this. I find it sad because the current prevalence of homophobia and transphobia makes it hard for us to collectively understand what would it mean to be a cis-het femboy who takes HRT — for us to conceptualise of a world where that isn't a contradiction. Bigotry makes it harder for people to explore their true selves, regardless of their gender or sexuality.

I really respect people who edit comments to acknowledge when they're wrong, but leave the original mistake intact (but usually strike through). Like this:

~~I delete my comments when I'm proven wrong because it's embarassing and I don't want to perpetuate misinformation~~

Actually, I'm leaving my mistake up, because then people can follow the conversation easier and see how I came to realise I was wrong

I think I saw a paper on this kind of thing over a year ago. Iirc, it said that engagement is lower on Mastodon, but higher quality.

I agree. Whenever I get into an argument online, it's usually with the understanding that it exists for the benefit of the people who may spectate the argument — I'm rarely aiming to change the mind of the person I'm conversing with. Especially when it's not even a discussion, but a more straightforward calling someone out for something, that's for the benefit of other people in the comments, because some sentiments cannot go unchanged.

You're right, that is pretty funny. I didn't notice until you pointed it out in this comment

You've bamboozled my attempt to make the same joke at your expense by only mentioning one number in your comment, giving me nothing to add to it. From this point on, I conclude we should only ever mention one number in each comment, for clarity.

A friend of mine came out as straight to his parents, because he understood that this is someone one does when becoming aware of one's sexuality, and as a young teen, he had his first crush on a girl. A few years later, he came out as bi.

Edit: just finished reading your story properly and it's really sweet, thanks for sharing. I find the split model of attraction (romantic/sexual) super useful because of situations like your friend's; like many bisexuals, I had a period of being "am I ace tho? What even is attraction?" and even though I'm securely bi now so nothing has changed, I appreciate some of the terms and frameworks I've picked up from the ace community. Invisible members of the queer community solidarity!

Memes that are autistic memes without explicitly mentioning autism

Thanks for sharing that post, it was super interesting.

I wish I could see behind the scenes in the Windows UI discussions, to see how we get to what we have today