Super interesting! Thanks !

That does should plausible, some version of reward/threaten/drain. Thanks ! Even if it isn’t what was intended, I can believe it meant that and thus makes some sort of sense.

That’s quite an image!

Sure, it’s gatekeeping coffee - the reason we build walls with gates is to keep the barbarians out! I wasn’t trying to ‘gatekeep caffeine’ in the slightest, those concotions are defintely cafffinated hot drinks. And of course, by some standard they’re ‘coffee’ and so is tiramsu.

Apple jacks pop tarts are made from apples (apple powder, but apples nothertheless), and while it might be a small fraction of the total, the point where it stops being fruit and becomes a snack is an arbitary line. I assume you consider a drink made with instant coffee powder still coffee?

Obviously, it’s a silly semantic debate, and someone could equally judge me for wanting my coffee beans roasted and ground “why not eat the berries fresh if you say you love coffee‽”.

That sounds super interesting! I’d love to hear more about middle earth magic as law, if you can be bothered saying more (or if you know of any articles or videos) about it. I assume by legal standing you mean how gandalf’s authority (once returned as ‘the white’) is what grants him power over saruman, and such. Is that right? What do you mean by precedent?

Possibly, the general style of those “product history” pieces is pretty grounded. It’s not formal academic history, but it tries for a historical reporting vibe that makes me doubt theyd just throw in a nonsense phrase or in-joke.

But if no one can explain it, then it’s certainly a possible explanation, although if it really is meaningless I’d lean towards typo.

Everyone’s entitled to as much caffeine as their bodies can handle, but it is pretty odd to ‘love coffee’ but actually love ‘coffee-flavoured hot milkshake’. Like saying ‘I love fruit’ but really meaning ‘I love apple jacks pop tarts’, it’s not wrong, just a bit odd.

Mediknet felt like that for me, but I had good responses to Ritalin LP and Xaggatin (an off-brand Concerta, which was good despite Concerta not working well for me…)

I looked into it and Mediknet has a much shorter duration than other extended release methylphenidates. My experience was it started too strong, making me feel too racy, and then finished early leaving me exhausted. What made things better was eating breakfast first, and splitting the dose (take half after breakfast, and other half 3-4 hours later).

Yeah, when life wasn’t going well I’d sometimes buy a lottery ticket just to indulge in a fantasy of what would happen if I won. But then I’d find myself focusing on what would happen if I died and how I’d write my will…

As a casual suggestion, it’s fine by me. I like the broad idea of encouraging people to upvote and encourage stuff they want to see more of, rather than focus on down voting stuff they don’t agree with. But I suspect most people already upvote much more than they downvote so the ratio of 2:1 wouldn’t affect many people’s behaviour (although be interesting to see some stats on that!). And my prejudice is the small number of chronic downvoters would work around any rule, just like the freekarma subs on reddit.

So putting aside the technical difficulties, it seems like a change that wouldn’t substantial modify general behaviour, and wouldn’t prevent bad actors (although it might make their lives a little more hassleful, which isn’t a bad thing). I think that’s why people have been suggesting psychological solutions, because developing a lemmy culture where people don’t care about points is probably less effort and more effective than adding ratios that don’t change much. But it’s not an awful idea, and if it was introduced it wouldn’t bother me. Tbh, I’d be fine with removing all up /down votes and we could go back to forum style of actually writing what you liked or didn’t about a post.

Yeah, as far as I understand it the way that fediverse communities work is that whoever makes and moderate them get to decide what they’re for, what rules, etc. and then there’s a level of emergent culture that arises depending on what users actually engage in the community, even if it doesn’t live up to the name.

I can totally sympathise with frustration about what different communities end up being like, and being told “why don’t you make your own c/globalnews?” isn’t a simple solution. But as others have said, perhaps it’s not as bad as it feels to you right now. If you’ve been the victim of online bullying (which is what someone going through your post history and blanket down voting everything is) of course that’s going to feel awful, but the actual down votes are a very small part of the issue. Lemmy doesn’t have that many posts, so I come across loads of low (and even negative) rated posts. If there’s groupthink that leads to some of your posts being down voted to oblivion, it’s not nice to see, but plenty of folks are still seeing your posts. And when I see something in negative votes I will often check it out just to see what’s up, and sometimes it’s something dumb and awful, and sometimes it’s just a unpopular opinion. So while banning down votes might feel nicer, because it would mask all the people disliking your posts, it probably wouldn’t find lots of people who suddenly agree with you.

I think if someone is sad and obsessive enough to go through a user’s post history to give a hundred down downvotes… Then they’d probably also be fine with scrolling through All and up voting two hundred posts first.

I would imagine my ratio is at least 20 upvotes per downvote, but I still wouldn’t want it throttled. A lot of my down votes are when I think something doesn’t belong in a community, and I feel like I’m contributing positively to lemmy by downvoting inappropriate or dreadful things. If they were rationed I’d be tempted to just avoid contributing to 'save them".

If there was going to be a weird rule about downvotes, I’d be more tempted to limit them to members of the communities. That way people on All don’t downvote some niche post that isn’t to their tastes but is perfect for the little community it was posted to.

As people age their faces sag due to changes in skin elasticity (and also often gaining weight), this can lead to a “resting sad face” compared with perky youngsters. But, as a middle aged person, I’ve also started to notice that I often get absorbed in my thoughts and realise I’m sitting there with a thousand yard stare and a drawn facial expression I associate with being sad or very sick or very hungover.

But inside I’m not sad, I’m just thinking about something I need to do or whatever, but I feel like I need to consciously “inhabit” my body again and “power up” my facial muscles so I look thoughtful, or determined or something rather than a blank “my family has just died in a car crash and I can’t decide whether to call the ambulance or kill myself with a shard of broken windscreen” expression.

The isolated, rural place I grew up did something like that. There was a young guy who had grown up here, but was born in Asia. I can’t remember the exact details, but basically he got a criminal record for something (although it was commonly believed that he’d actually taken the blame for something he hadn’t done to protect his girlfriends brother who was on probation or something) and because of some recent anti-immigration policies from central government, he was going to be deported back to Thailand (or wherever) even though he didn’t speak the language and hadn’t been there since he was a baby.

The local community were outraged and campaigned against it, saying he was a valued and responsible member of their community, then when immigration officers were sent they protested and prevented them from taking him. No idea how they came up with a legal justification in the end, but he was allowed to stay. And it certainly made me respect the place more.

Who was that? Or any more details? I’m intrigued!

Edit: do you just mean marx? That’s less intriguing, not wrong, but less intriguing.

That’s an interesting point, because in terms of wealth inequality and unbridled exploitative capitalism stuff was pretty fucking dreadful back then too. But I don’t think there was as much interest in the super rich taking control of the government, because the government didn’t do that much and had never really been a problem for the wealthy (apart from that time they tried to abolish slavery…)

I’m normally a “folks need to work together, big problems need big solutions” European lefty, but seeing the horror of what a powerful central government can do when it’s in the hands of crazy dipshits… It certainly highlights the benefits of small governments and localised power. Maybe this will lead to growth of some forces of progress that aren’t the federal government? The question is whether after the inevitable crash and burn, the next government will be willing to introduce the actual constraints, checks and balances to not let this happen again?

Been rebinging Warehouse 13 (dumb but I love it). It stayed as an attempt to trick myself into doing some long overdue paperwork - even doing it slowly while half watching show is better than continuing to avoid it completely. That worked for a day or so, but now I’ve descended to just cycling through savoury and sweet snacks and watching a season a day…

Thanks for the info! But honestly, I’m not looking to watch anyone. I just remember it being a thing people talked about in the past, and wondering if people still did it or if social media had replaced it. As a piece of culture, I find it intriguing - but I’m the sort to watch YouTube at double speed because of impatience, no way I’m sitting through any sort of stream, let alone a pointless one.

Uh huh, forgot. :p

Good to know webcams are still a thing! Although mostly that site seems to be outdoor cameras and a ‘adult’ section, not someone turning their life into the Truman Show.

And just for clarity, this isn’t something I’m searching for (I’m way on the other end of the attention spectrum from people who want to watch someone do nothing). I’m more just curious about if it’s a thing, and why people would want to stream or watch something like that