Here’s a video from an all-hands meeting the day after she quit. (Reddit, sorry.)

The following is a transcript if you’d rather avoid Reddit:

(speaker 1, Linus) So we called this meeting because it’s come to our attention that we need to have a quick chat about the best way to handle HR related feedback and rumors. We won’t be giving any names for what I hope are extraordinarily obvious reasons, but what we can do is give you the following guidelines for problem solving and conflict resolution.

Sorry that this is all boring and corporate, but here we are. Number one, always stand up for what’s right. We’re only a team as long as we’re all working together and working for each other. That’s the most important one. Number two, always reflect on your own personal experiences and use your common sense. Few things in life are truly black and white. Number three, always wait to hear both sides of a story before passing your own judgment. Be cautious when you know that one side is bound by legal and ethical disclosure guidelines, when the other is not. Carefully consider what it says about the character of someone who would engage in that type of gossip against someone who has no power to defend themselves.

Number four, always encourage openness and transparency. If you have a problem, you need to speak up. We want to fix it. If you receive feedback about somebody else at this company, the first response is, have you spoken with this person? Followed closely by, you need to speak with this person. We don’t solve interpersonal issues here, or really anywhere in your life, if you wish to live in a drama free zone, by engaging in water cooler politicking. So, if for any reason that individual is not comfortable approaching the person they’re having a conflict with, we have a chain that they’re supposed to follow.

So first, you advise them to take the problem to their manager. Followed by me or Yvonne, followed by our third party HR firm. I hope that you all trust that we’re here to make this a safe, fun, and productive workplace, and we won’t tolerate mistreatment of any of our team members.

If you have any reason to believe otherwise, then I refer you again to point number four, which is to address the issue with the individual directly, or bring it to me or Yvonne, or bring it to our third party HR firm. Since I’m not at liberty to share any details about what occurred, uh, all I can do is ask that you trust me and Yvonne.

Um, some of you know us very well, I’ve been here a very long time, um, some of you have not been here for as long, but I like to think that whether you’ve been here for nine years or nine days, you’re here for a reason and you believe that we are utmost to run this company with integrity and compassion.

Um, We can’t solve problems we don’t know about though, so on that note, I’d like to invite anyone who has concerns about a fellow team member or about a manager to submit their feedback either by speaking with their manager, me or Yvonne directly, or if you would prefer to provide your feedback anonymously, we have an option for that as well.

It’s the manager and co-worker feedback form. Uh, Yvonne, if you’re not aware of it - show of hands who is not aware of it? Hey, a lot of people aren’t aware of it. Good, so now we all know. There’s an anonymous form, if for whatever reason you’re not comfortable either talking to me me or Yvonne directly about it - and that’s okay, that’s fine, we understand, that’s why we have these options - Yvonne’s gonna post it in the general chat.

It’s a safe space to provide us ideas for improvement, or if you’re consumed by the holiday spirit and you want to say nice things, you can do that too. Does anybody else have any questions?

Not a single question? Wow, that must have been a really good speech.

(speaker 2, James) You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?

(speaker 1, Linus) That’s it! So, um, Yvonne, did you have anything you wanted to add?

(speaker 3, Yvonne) (inaudible) Somebody said (inaudible) if you guys want to sanitize your hands, help yourself with free (inaudible)?

(speaker 1, Linus) Yeah, that was actually just totally random timing. It came up the stairs a moment ago. Dennis is on it. Alright. Thank you everyone. Have a wonderful and, uh, productive rest of your day. And weekend.

Agreed. Fuck tankies.

There’s a great video about this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs

Essentially, it looks at why conservatives vs. liberals approach the world differently. Democracy vs. capitalism is inherently a logical contradiction; in a true democracy, everyone is treated equally and all voices have equal weights. In capitalism, some people are more equal than others - it’s a pyramid. Fascism is when these “some people are better” is because of something like genetics, or culture. (The video doesn’t touch on this, but modern Communism falls into the same trap as well, where “some people are better” because they know the party leaders or they’re technocrats. It’s a mindset that humans have and not something exclusive to capitalism.)

Where you wind up on the American political spectrum is based on where you fall when the ideals of equality vs. hierarchy clash. There is no middle ground because the two are fundamentally incompatible - if everyone was truly treated equally, you couldn’t have people with more power/status than others. If you accept that not everyone should wield power and that at the end of the day there must be some rich and some poor - some that have power and others that do not - then you are therefore arguing that people shouldn’t be treated equally. From there, the pyramid structure is the natural order of things (“always a bigger fish”).

Because the structure is fundamentally at odds with itself you can’t have both at once. You have to compromise on one side more than the other. Hence there is no such thing as “apolitical”, even with technology - it will hold a bias one way or the other.

https://www.wikihow.com/Test-Dopamine-Levels

!Disneyvacation

Tankies have really been doubling down the last few days. I hate that this place is infested with them - and it seems to be growing as they start to scare sane people away.

Well… maybe.

Artists are able to work off of commissions, assuming that there is a demand for their art. (Getting that demand is the tricky part.) If people don’t want their work on its own, then they have to work at a corporation - maybe making concept art, or drawing animation cels, or whatever. None of that art is owned by them; it’s typically in the contract the artist signs when they become employed. Anything they make belongs to the corporation.

I used to work for Disney - in their theme parks, not as an artist - and even my employment contract said that any idea I had while Disney was my employer was property of Disney. Literally, if I had an idea on the job, I could not monetize it. If I thought of an idea for a video game or novel or movie, Disney owned that idea just because they were my employer.

Now. Could they enforce that? No way. But they could try, and as Tom points out then it doesn’t matter if I’m in the write or not - Disney has expensive lawyers, I do not.

Scientists need grant money to do science. You have to convince a panel of experts that you have a good idea, and that your idea is worth throwing grant money at. Then you use that grant money to pay yourself and your assistants while you perform an experiment. This grant money can be from a university… or it could be from a corporation doing research and development for new concepts or ideas. If you make a discovery, the corporation might be able to patent that, since you were on their payroll at the time.

Making things Creative Commons doesn’t magically make money appear. When you get paid by someone wanting to publish your work, they are specifically buying out your copyright on that work - they can do whatever they wish with it after. (Famously, this is why the first Harry Potter book is called “Sorcerer’s Stone” in the US, because the publisher owned the copyright and changed the name.)

Creative Commons, therefore, is completely at odds with traditional publishing, since you can’t sell your copyright to them. You can still self-publish, of course… but that’s a whole can of worms. Not to mention that it’s incredibly easy these days to have AI churn out 80k words of BS and sell it on Amazon for $1.99. You don’t need many sales to break even.

100%.

It gets tricky, though. For example, I’m using a website called “Sudowrite” to help me write a novel. I’ve been kicking this idea around since 2007. I have a general idea for what it should look like, but I always struggle with Act 2.

Literally over a decade’s worth of notes. And not a good Act 2.

But I was able to use ChatGPT and Sudowrite (especially its “Story Engine” tool) to finally understand what Act 2 was missing. And now I’m able to rewrite what I’ve already done, making it better. AI is a tool just like a word processor is a tool.

Lest anyone think I’m writing an ad here - I’m not. Per their FAQ, Sudowrite says that I own the copyright on anything that I generate with their stuff.

Who owns the copyright to what I write?

You do. Anything you write in Sudowrite and anything Sudowrite suggests for you belongs to you.

But if I don’t modify it, that’s clearly not true (as you mention). Furthermore, I can actually have it suggest things that might run counter to that idea.

I’ve had it suggest lines from Kafka - good lines, too. I’ve read Kafka, so I recognized them… but what if I didn’t? I don’t own the copyright on those lines, as Tom Scott points out in OP’s video. Kafka’s original German is public domain… most translations are not.

You can highlight some text in the tool and say “Write this in the style of Douglas Adams.” It knows who Douglas Adams is. It knows what his work sounds like. And the only way it knows is because its model was trained on his work. When I did this, one of the suggestions included Zaphod Beeblebrox, which was certainly not mentioned in my text. It also suggests spaceships and aliens and futuristic gadgets, all written in the kind of prose that you’d expect from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

How would it know that, if it hadn’t read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

It’s why Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI. While the model may be a bunch of statistics, it also must know what her text is like - to some degree. We can argue over how, but going back to the AI suggesting Zaphod Beeblebrox… if I didn’t know HGTTG maybe I’d think that’s a cool name for a character? How can Sudowrite say I own the copyright when it’s clear that they don’t own it, either?

Which sort of brings me back to the beginning. AI has the potential to be a wonderful tool - again, like going from a typewriter to a computer. I have had this idea for literally 16 years now, and Sudowrite was literally a game changer. I knew all of act 1, act 2 was… ehhhh, and then act 3 was never satisfying without a good act 2. I knew where I wanted to go, but not how to get there. AI really helped, because it understands story structures - and how to make good stories (with some prodding - it’s not perfect). And now, whenever I’m stumped, I can type some stuff into the prompt and it’ll generate ideas for me.

But that only works if we really figure out where the line is for copyright. I’m trusting what Sudowrite is telling me… but I’m taking a risk, because what if they’re wrong?

https://web.archive.org/web/20091210094533/http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html

@Sproux for you as well.

Yep! The Reddit version, at least. Dunno if the Lemmy/Kbin sorts are the same or not.

Before that, it was sorted by top. I think subreddits were top/day, and comments were top/all time. Frontpage was top/day for all the subreddits you were subscribed to (or top/day for a selection of “default” subreddits if you didn’t have an account).

Things change over time.

For example - I want to see the broadest possible choice of content in my feed. I want to be able to interact with anywhere that’s not outright hateful and/or malicious. So when I was choosing an instance, finding a permissive (but not too permissive!) admin was important to me.

But when Threads started making waves and the fedipact started becoming a thing that people were discussing, things changed out of left field.

I still wanted to federate with Threads. I think fears of EEE are overblown; Facebook has to comply with the Digital Markets Act and guarantee third-party interoperability. EEE on the fediverse runs counter to EU law. Additionally, most of my friends are folks who don’t “get” the fediverse; I tried coaxing my fiance onto Mastodon and she lasted 1 day before going back to birdsite. She uses Threads actively now, and I’d love to be able to see her posts and interact with her without needing to sign up for Threads myself.

I had hoped that the semi-permissive admins I’ve found would tolerate it, but a lot of them decided to draw the line and join the fedipact (including my Mastodon admin).

Which now sucks - it feels like a bunch of bullies are trying to use intimidation to tell me where I can and can’t post. By threatening to defederate everywhere that’s not in the fedipact, there’s this feeling where now I can’t join a server that curates the way I want because if I do, I’ll be cut off from the rest of the fediverse. If I run my own server, there’s a good chance these other instances will use bots to catch that my server federates with Threads and pre-emptively defederate me.

Defederation is used as a weapon and a way to bully other instances, which I really don’t like. I understand the need for defederation as a tool but it sucks seeing how easily it’s abused, and how you really can’t trust that admins of a server you join won’t be intimidated into compliance by these fedipact bullies.

So now, if I want to like my fiance’s posts… I basically have to join Threads and help Zuck directly, or have an account elsewhere that basically can only federate with Threads. Thanks, fedipact.

Based started on 4chan. People stole memes from 4chan, where it spread and became Zoomer slang.

Cringe I think has a similar but slightly different etymology; I don’t know if it necessarily came from 4chan or if it came from Reddit.

/vp/ used to be really good at good Pokemon info back in the Black/White days.

That said - I haven’t been back in quite a while, but even back then you did occasionally see folks who obviously were from /b/ or /pol/ posting. I’m sure it’s probably gotten worse over the years, as people start growing out of 4chan…

To be fair…

There are alternatives to Lemmy. Kbin, I’d argue, is superior in most respects. (Kbin is still obviously young and rough around the edges at times, though.)

I don’t like the Lemmy maintainers, and that was a big jump propelling me onto Kbin. It just made me feel squicky knowing that I was tacitly endorsing their software by using it when there was an alternative available that did exactly the same things. I also don’t like using communities on Lemmy.ml because the admins there have a history of removing stuff that doesn’t suit their political views.

I don’t think these two situations are equivalent, mind, but I do think there is more weight behind “avoid using Lemmy” than “avoid using Calckey/Firefish”.