How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Very true - although I’d add an “almost”, at least in a few cases, authentic letters - or for the modern era, recordings - can at least root the fundamentals in something that actually happened. (Although even then, whatever gets tossed around as a parable/proverb will be heavily embellished and/or stripped of context, of course).

Funnily enough, I’d say there is a disparity between good content (there already is a lot of that, especially for FOSS and hobbyist content) and engagement - where there is a lack of engagement with said content. From what I’ve seen, there’s quite some creators publishing on PeerTube by now - sometimes even as their main or even only platform - that basically get no comments, likes and just eyes watching in general.

Yeah, I love how she highlights rather unknown composers. I bet a lot of what she records is the first/only recording of some of the music she performs.

I found this article from last year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

Our preliminary estimates suggest that annual electricity use from cryptocurrency mining probably represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption.

The wide range should not be too surprising, it’s a mess to keep track of, especially with the current administration. Since then, with Trump immediately pledging to support the “industry”, I can only imagine it consuming even more now.

I don’t think books ever had the same amount of discussion of how they impact our global carbon footprint, and where it comes to “houses” - I doubt people in the neolithic said about their new invention what is being discussed with AI. It is a disingenuous comparison. (And sure, someone somewhere may have said something like that about basically anything, but usually not a large part of professionals from within the field, like is the case with AI.)

This is also not simply Ludditism, the nature of how AI is used currently goes far beyond where it is genuinely useful in a case of investor hype FOMO, and the hidden costs for our efforts against climate change are real, as are the problems for creatives - who sadly need a lot of the “bullshit work” that AI can substitute to survive while honing their craft - as is the quality drop in journalism, as are fundamental questions about how far generative AI models can truly evolve in quality for the massive amount of energy invested, so the usual “just wait until the tech gets better” is not the easy way out to justify draining said energy (and fresh water) on top of what crypto mining has been wasting with data centres in the past years.

Now, those problems aren’t simply problems of the technology, but also of how that technology manifests within market dynamics. But the technology still is not just neutral, and even if we view it as an inevitability, that inevitability does not have to manifest without regulation and within the context of hyped, often unwanted application to basically everything.

Without mechanisms to address problems and to enforce regulation, in lieu of fundamental changes to what market/investment dynamics demand, this is indeed a very questionable technology at this point. And also: To truly love something abstract, like “technology”, means being able to - sometimes harshly - criticise it. Think the meme of a “tech bro” with a fully automated house vs the IT guy who barely has tech stuff beyond their PC and some stuff tinkered on passionately in their own time.

Thanks, that should be enough for diving down a research rabbit hole!

Sounds like the Chinese variant of Diogenes at work, I’d love to hear more details - was this something that really happened or a clever tale constructed later? If those people were real, what else did they produce?

Fun fact: Linux is the name of a German-Swiss washing detergent brand:

Morton Künstler (August 28, 1927 – February 2, 2025) was an American artist known for his illustrative paintings of historical events, especially of the American Civil War. He was a child prodigy, who, with encouragement from his parents, became a skilled artist by the time he was twelve.

Holy nominative determinism, Batman! (Künstler means artist in German)

Now, if it had been three city bears - those fuckers would have deserved it, of course.

Their channel is great overall, they are putting their microscope to good use - very entrancing and relaxing videos.

Whoops, corrected now. I was already surprised I had gotten a result not hosted on joinmbin.org - but just assumed maybe the docs were hosted somewhere else for some reason. Should have taken the extra minutes to check what exactly I was linking there.

Thank you!

Ah, yes, that was right at the time where I was having peak personal stress/health issues and only did the bare minimum admin work on Lemmy and my other platforms, no wonder I missed it. Glad to see people actually responded to the call to action, though!

They posted asking for people to stand up for them.

Ah, that makes sense - I missed that, but have been happily giving them a bit of money for years now. I don’t have a lot to spare, but every little bit helps with crowdfunded stuff like that.

Great, now I won’t be able to unsee that ever again!

Check the sticky post about rules concerning this:

!fediverse@lemmy.world is not a place to file your grievances with “free speech”, disrupting users, moderation, etc.

If you have problems with users: File complaints to the mods or just block them.

If you have problems with mods: File complaints with admins of the instance or just migrate to an alternative community.

If you have problems with an entire instance: Just leave it.

And to add: If you do want/need to highlight misbehaviour, stalking or even just rant about injustices happening publicly, there are places like !fediverselore@lemmy.ca (rules prohibit stuff you are personally involved in, though) and !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com where it concerns mod/admin abuse.

I’ve unfollowed everyone and set my instance to pull from ptindex.btfree.org and it’s not autofollowing yet. So either I messed something up or it’s on a timer.

Unless things have changed since back then, it does indeed seem to be on a timer, check the dev’s answer here: https://framacolibri.org/t/cant-automatically-follow-instances-of-the-public-index/8138

I wondered the same when I first followed the “official” index, and it started to follow isntances eventually.

the existence of wrong information doesn’t negate the existence of good information on the same medium.

When there are no proper ways to sift through and structure that information, it kind of does, but your point overall is still not wrong, just this part I think misses part of the picture.

people just don’t want to put in any work and want to blame something other than themselves.

Yes, although I dare say that it is not as simple as saying “just do better” and “putting work in” - when there’s a massive amount of work and resources put into getting people de-facto addicted to primarily ad-driven engagement with mostly garbage information.

case in point: maga–how many of us have been outright shouting that trump is a conman, and here’s the literal proof–the information, which is good, is right there. and yet people still choose to death threaten dr. fauci because they “don’t like” the good information.

That, however, very much stands. The original vision really, really thought that truth and quality would win out in a “marketplace of ideas”. However, narcissistic appeasement and a combination of humiliating and then making people feel powerful by proxy wins out, especially considering there is no guiding consensus.

Availability to information is important, and that includes making it possible to sift through the mountains of nonsense, including teaching how to spot nonsense. But on top of that, it requires a solid foundation for society, and a consensus to direct what is true and what not (science, functioning professional journalism, etc.) Otherwise, when there is no consensus guiding towards (but not setting completely in stone) “truth”, it will always be whatever is emotionally convenient from individual to individual - and the dynamics of the system will favour information that both panders to narcissistic self-affirmation (not necessarily positive emotions), as well as beating you down in a way that you crave those from your ego being made fragile to begin with.