Not much of a gamer these days, but I love this format and what you are doing here. Keep it up!

There’s a few people I know who use it for boilerplate templates for certain documents, who then of course go through it with a fine toothed comb to add relevant context and fix obvious nonsense.

I can only imagine there are others who aren’t as stringent with the output.

Heck, my primary use for a bit was custom text adventure games, but ChatGPT has a few weaknesses in that department (very, very conflict adverse for beating up bad guys, etc.). There’s probably ways to prompt engineer around these limitations, but a) there’s other, better suited AI tools for this use case, b) text adventure was a prolific genre for a bit, and a huge chunk made by actual humans can be found here - ifdb.org, c) real, actual humans still make them (if a little artsier and moody than I’d like most of the time), so eventually I stopped.

Did like the huge flexibility v. the parser available in most made by human text adventures, though.

If you’re not daily driving Arch, btw, did you even join Lemmy?

I know you’re not daily driving Arch because you didn’t mention it.

(Jokes, obvs. Congrats on the self-discovery!)

Give this a shot maybe? I know there’s some other archive collections as well you could try digging into.

https://geocities.restorativland.org/

Erowid is still good, though I wish there was a little more info about current operations and projects outside of maintaining the experience report database. As far as I can tell, both Erowid Monthly and Erowid Extracts are dead, Ask Erowid is dead, DrugsData is not currently receiving samples, etc.

There’s reason to play some stuff close to the chest, obviously, but there used to be more activity than just the experience database, and it’s sad to see the other functions languish. But as a repository of drug information it’s still pretty great.

A newer good harm reduction/info site is tripsit.me, which also has a trip sit via chat service. Can’t speak to the quality of the chat service, over something like the Fireside Project which has been around for a while now, but the infosheets on tripsit are pretty good.

Edit: Ugh, going through the other Erowid sections again…beginning to think I need to step up and see if they want more volunteers. Lots of dead links where Wayback can probably help a ton, the Character vault can probably be expanded quite a bit, etc. But this all might just be the focus moving on a bit. I just wanted to see Ralph Metzner’s blog, since you hear so much about Tim Leary and Ram Dass but Metzner was right there with 'em.

Does it? If you set up an instance for your local community/city/whatever, and name it something that makes sense for your intended userbase, I think it would be fine.

It goes from “I sold my couch on FlohMarkt” to “I sold my couch on Local Ottawa Marketplace” for the ‘normies’ out there. They’re not going to care about the underlying software so long as their couch gets sold.

Do recommend a DIY local advertising strategy if trying to get something like this running, though - posters at IRL flea markets, adverts in small community papers for antiques and collectibles, crossposts/links to postings on stuff like MaxSold/Kijiji/Craigslist/GumTree/FB Marketplace/[insert online marketplace operating in your area] by first adopters, that kind of thing.

Focus on the current primary use case of centralized marketplace services (buying shit from your neighbours), then introduce the “Oh yeah, we’ve also set it up so you can see postings on Local Toronto Marketplace, Local Kingston Marketplace, Marché Local de Montréal” etc. from there.

I really, really think talking to people in terms of specific instances over the overarching platform/protocol is a way around ‘normie’ confusion about the Fediverse when first trying it, then getting exposure to how it works in practice will help them understand the nitty gritty stuff better. Is this problematic in some cases, like with Lemmy? A little bit, yeah. For something like FlohMarkt? I think less so.

(‘normie’ in quotes 'cause I’m not the biggest fan of the term, but it’s a useful shorthand)

Might be talking about the Bookwyrm client on F-Droid?

Cool idea!

Friday, April 13, 2029

Can’t help but wonder if it’s bad luck if it hits us, or bad luck if it misses us at this point.

(/s shit’s fucked but I still prefer getting missed)

Real talk: I’ve been using YouTube without an account and with some ad blocking stuff installed. Based on what I’m seeing, I’m pretty sure the algorithm’s datapoint for me is “He was born with a penis and is ok with that.”

When I lose my better judgement and start scrolling shorts like an idiot, It is fight videos (IRL, movie scenes, UFC and boxing), auditing, Charlie Kirk and right-wing influencers, and the occasional clip from Shoresy on the basis “He might be Canadian too, idk”.

It is noticibly weird, and I have brought it up to my kid who uses an account, is not what Youtube believes me to be, and whose shorts feed is very different.

We do both get that guy who opens Pokemon cards with a catchy jingle, though.

This is a good place to start: https://fedidb.org/software/

I like the idea of PeerTube and hope it catches on, but I wouldn’t call it a YouTube replacement at this point. There are services that feed youtube content to users remotely though (there is/was a link-converter bot that went around that annoyed some people here, but a) can’t remember the name, and b) can’t remember the actual software involved).

I caught it, but tensions are high in this thread (I get why), an /s would help a lot.

Thanks Blaze! This looks really interesting. Network effect is a factor in what I’m bitching about, but we’ve got OK enough general fediverse participation where I am that this could be/get real useful for me.

Appreciate it, and what you do to promote fediverse stuff in general. Said it before and I’ll say it again - you’re doing good work.

I’m going to tell you my core problem, just to get some feedback/vent a little: i’ve wanted to end my Facebook account since Cambridge Analytica. I hate the feed. But Facebook has one key thing keeping me locked in at the moment - Events.

Back in the pre and early Facebook stages, there were websites that had well-curated, broadish event calendars for my city. These are now universally dead. Websites dedicated to the local music scene? Also pretty much dead (RIP punkottawa.com). Some have tried to get something going independently in later stages, but all have failed. Even my favourite college radio station, which has folks super tied into the community and local music scene and plug stuff on the air frequently, has pretty much abandoned their community events calendar. The problem gets worse if I’m travelling outside of the city, in that I have no clue where to even start looking effectively outside of Facebook (@ me, Montrealers and Torontonians in particular). Stuff like bandsintown is ok, but misses a lot when you’re more into bar gigs than concerts

I’ve yet to find a non-Facebook approach that captures events I’d be interested in that doesn’t miss something. RSS feeds from websites for known gig spaces (either natively or with a web2rss thing) can get part of the way there, but there’s been cases of stuff happening at new/unexpected venues (a hot sauce store here, at some point, became a gig venue) that I’ve only found out about via Facebook. And this ignoring non-music related stuff that occasionally comes up serendipitously.

I’ve yet to come up with a great solution, and that kinda ticks me off.

Year of the Linux storm.

Physicians are a highly-regarded professional class, and rightfully so in the vast majority of cases. But any role with that kind of social cache, you’re bound to have some complete asshats aim for that position.

What’s the joke again? What do you call the person who graduated medical school at the bottom of their class? Doctor.

(Also not to discount those folks going into medicine for the right reasons who burn out and become deeply cynical, bringing out their worst traits. As you obviously know, it’s not an easy job - I sure as hell couldn’t do it, unless I specialized in Pathology. Maybe.)

Excel is a dev environment for us folks who aren’t 100% sure what a dev environment actually is.

I’ve at least evolved to the point that I know better options exist, and higher ups should talk to the people who know what those options are and how they can leveraged. Those people are busy, though, so the cycle continues…

Two choices:

1. Medical mask and sunglasses (preferably those boxy ones people wear over regular glasses). Few people question medical masks these days.
2. Embrace the lunacy, and wear whatever mask/facial covering you think is cool/funny. Life’s short and a lot of people would do well to embrace harmless weirdness.

Start here for inspiration: https://piratebox.cc/faq

Man, ever since the early 2010s I’ve thought about Ender’s Game a LOT - and it’s always this part of the book, never the zero-g laser tag or genocide-by-arcade-machine parts.