Yea I try to post from mastodon when it makes sense. You’re seeing the mentions as that’s how mastodon links things together. Here on lemmy, the connections are all more structural and so implicit.

This is about as good as lemmy-mastodon interaction can be: when someone posts from mastodon to a lemmy community.

Though now, with automatic hashtag-ing since v 0.19.4, the two can work together better. See https://hachyderm.io/@maegul/112720255264101773

One area that I am somewhat knowledgeable about is image/video upscaling

Oh I believe you. I’ve seen it done on a home machine on old time-lapse photos. It might have been janky for individual photos, but as frames in a movie it easily elevated the footage.

Yea this. It’s a weird time though. All of it is hype and marketing hoping to cover costs by searching for some unseen product down the line … even the original chatGPT feels like a basic marketing stunt: “If people can chat with it they’ll think it’s miraculous however useful it actually is”.

OTOH, it’s easy to forget that genuine progress has happened with this rush of AI that surprised many. Literally the year before AlphaGo beat the world champion no one thought it was going to happen any time soon. And though I haven’t checked in, from what I could tell, the progress on protein folding done by DeepMind was real (however hyped it was also). Whether new things are still coming or not I don’t know, but it seems more than possible. But of course, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a big pile of hype that will blow away in the wind.

What I ultimately find disappointing is the way the mainstream has responded to all of this.

1. The lack of conversation about what we want this to look like in the end. There’s way too much of a passive “lets see where the technology and big-corp capitalism take us and hope it doesn’t lead to some sort of apocalypse”
2. The very seamless and reflexive acceptance that an AI chat interface could be an all knowing authority for everything in life … was somewhat shocking to me. Obviously decades of “Googling” to get the answers to things has laid the groundwork for that, but still, there was IMO an unseemly acceptance of a pretty troubling future that indicated just how easily some dark timeline could arise.

The number of people I’ve come across who also dislike the character limit, the number of platforms that don’t have it, the number of times people write long microblogging threads and the prior and continued existence of the “blogosphere” count against this defeatist pessimism IMO.

The truly dark take here, IMO, is that we shouldn’t underestimate the power of a medium’s configuration to shape not just the content and culture on it (that’s obvious) but the way its users come to think.

Yep this.

It’s gotten to the point where a character limit is itself a seriously toxic part of big-social social media, up there with algorithms and shitty moderation choices. But all of the Twitter people don’t see it.

Sure there are threads through reply chains. No one reads the chain. The first post is all most will see. Context collapse and superficiality is inevitable with this simple constraint. The fediverse should move on. Sadly, mastodon is the only platform still dedicated to it and they’re 80% of the fediverse.

If you like short funny quips and shit posts, that’s fine, there’s no character minimum! With long character limits, short quips still abound. Instead, when necessary, you can opt in to longer form text when necessary.

Yea, that the term “Blue MAGA” has arisen out of this is kinda telling. Once you see it in the “Biden is our president, if you’re not voting for him you’re part of the problem” types, you can’t unsee it.

I saw someone put it well on mastodon:

Non-Americans care about US elections for the same reason a hostage cares about the mental state of a gunman.

https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/112766969146106942 (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)

A saddening phenomenon that’s likely to happen if this continues … is people opening up about how they saw the decline way before the debate but presumed it was a “one off” or “bad night”. I think it’s already started somewhat.

But the picture that could emerge with pretty high clarity is that “the issue” was covered by an inner group and ignored by those peripherally exposed to it … all instead of the party preparing for it, preparing new potential candidates, and taking seriously the notion from Biden in 2020 that he wouldn’t run in 2024.

Losing to Trump a second time by sticking to a party elder is going to be a big deal (if it happens of course). It will probably look more like the Dems losing than trump winning, and it prob will look like the Dems allowing it all to happen out of hubris and stupidity, not unlike the RBG fuck up. Could seriously shake the party up?

Stewart offered what seemed to me a thoughtful path forward: Be the party of democracy and transparency, listen to voters, and run a convention to pick the candidate …

… and, you know, maybe don’t be strangely authoritarian about who gets to be the candidate while claiming you’re also the only part that can “save democracy”.

yea, heard good things.

The thing about firefish is that at the time there was still an energy among newcomers to mastodon to look for and even build new things. It’s death and the way it happened genuinely burned some people I think and definitely let an opportunity slip.

Yea I was part of the firefish hype from pretty early … it was a sad moment for the fediverse.

Discourse and NodeBB developments are definitely awesome to see!

The other microblogging services have apps? Like akkoma … has a mobile app? Is that what you mean?

From what I’ve gathered, there’s a decent amount of widespread bitterness out there about mastodon and gargron’s choices exactly like what you’ve just expressed.

Mastodon is gargron’s personal project. He runs exactly how he wants to and doesn’t care too much about what others think. Except it’s the one big player on the fediverse and has been put there because of a lot of other people’s work and adoption.

It’s influence and dominance over the fediverse is likely a serious problem because of exactly what you’re talking about. There was a moment last year when fedi-enthusiasts kinda realised that some platform diversity is likely necessary in the fedi microblogging space. Some efforts were made (firefish was the one I was closest to), but no real inroads were made.

Personally, I’d like to help the threadiverse (lemmy and other group-first platforms) provide that diversity. I think these platforms can grow into providing user-based features similar to k/mbin but in a way that’s not beholden to the microblogging baggage of twitter while also providing other features, structures and spaces.

They have a groups implementation on the road map. How long it takes, I don’t know … but mastodon aren’t fast generally, so it’s not happening soon in all likelihood.

Lemmy devs have taken a look at their spec for it and stated that it’s not at all consistent with lemmy’s implementation of communities over AP … so even when it lands it probably won’t help that much, at least at first.

Lemmy’s communities aren’t the only groups on the fediverse. The friendica/hubzilla groups have the same problem with mastodon’s handling of groups (they’re the only platforms apart from k/mbin that does both groups and users). Mike Macgirvin, the original dev of friendica/hubzilla, doesn’t have a high opinion of mastodon’s commitment to sensible standards (actually he’s been quite scathing in the past). I haven’t seen him comment on mastodon’s plans for groups, but given his prior criticism I take it as more likely than not that mastodon will do groups in their own way and in a way that won’t work well with the other group-based platforms.

Sorry for no links … this is all impressions and recollections.

The automatic hashtags in lemmy since v 19.4 makes it much easier.

See a quick post from me on it here: https://lemmy.ml/post/17563476

I think it’s entirely on mastodon.

They don’t have a “subscribe” mechanism. Only following. And so everything coming from a group like a lemmy community looks like it’s coming from someone you follow, so you see all of their posts.

The alternative, which is also a general problem on mastodon, is that you wouldn’t be able to see any of the comments at all, because you’re not following the users making them.

Yea. I’m not from the US (so an outsider’s and probably naive perspective) …

but the whole Biden thing seems off. Trump is a known quantity. The point of his running, at a basic level and besides vengeance, is to try the MAGA thing again without COVID “interfering”. Also, if you think back to the 2020 Dem primaries, where no one was really happy with any candidate and many were asking of the Dems “is that the best you’ve got” … a Trump sequel is kinda republicans forcing that question again.

As for all of the attention … well there’s a lot on the line here: Trump’s a known quantity … so, Dems, how you going to defeat him this time? Because … if you lose to Trump, twice, both times by standing by a party elder … that’s maybe “shame on you”. Moreover, we all knew Biden was old. A single term was sorta, kinda part of the deal because of that (remember, he wasn’t doing well in the primaries, he never has really). So, has a bargain been broken here? A gamble lost? A mistake, perhaps all the way back in 2020 but certainly behind the decision to run again, come to fruition?

Beyond all of that … I thought excessive media attention on Trump and the free publicity he gets was a bad thing (he’s probably jealous about Biden’s media attention lol)?

So, genuine question … who’s willing to predict whether Biden will go to the election or not?

I’m a not a USian or plugged in that much, but this topic feels strangely fractured. Anyone with some certainties they’re willing to put online?

Edit: not a USian.

I don’t think this is correct.

The bit you’re getting confused by, I think, is that some generations are just bigger than others. The boomers were by their name sake a big generation. Millennials are essentially boomers’ kids … and so they’re bigger than both Gen X and Gen Z.

• Most “generational” definitions span about 15 years, sometimes more. EG, Boomers: 1946-1960
• There are sensibly defined micro-generations typically at the borders between generations.
  • EG, “Jones Generation”: 1960-1965 … “young boomers” … they had a distinct life experience from “core boomers” not too different from that of X-Gens. Vietnam and 60s happened while they were children, Reagan was their 20s, not 40s, etc.
• Xennials are notable here because they’re the transition between X-Gen and Millennials (late 70s to early 80s) … probably what you’re thinking of as “older millennials”. What’s interesting though is that the relevance of Xennials is that technological changes mark the generation … they’re essentially just barely young enough to count as part of the internet generations but not old young enough to be ignorant of the pre-internet times. Which just highlights that how you talk about generations depends on what you more broadly care about. In the west, arguably not too much political upheaval has occurred since WWII and its immediate consequences (basically Boomer things) … and so the generations are distinguished on smaller and probably more technological scales.

Cheers!

I think that immunity for explicitly delineated powers makes sense purely from a logical point of view: the constitution says the president can do a thing, therefore a law saying they can’t do that thing is either unconstitutional, or doesn’t apply to the president.

Yea, it’s an interesting one. AFAIU, the delineated powers are basically command of the military and the power to pardon. I really don’t see how a Crime can generally be applicable to either of those. It’s not like “commanding the army” can just become a crime.

But regulating what the army can legally do … seems like a very natural thing. I don’t know if individuals of the military in the US can be responsible under ordinary law for anything. If so, then I don’t see why that would extend to the president should they order something that’s obviously a crime. If not, then that’s that. And again, there are probably natural exceptions to carve out regarding the very nature of military action that would lead to preposterous inconsistencies if they could possible be made generally criminal … where again, it seems to me that you don’t need immunity … it’s just the nature of the power that is amenable to falling within the meaning of legislative regulation.

Beyond all of that though … there’s the opening line of Article II:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America

WTF is “the executive power”?! I’m sure there have been attempts in the US to give it some shape … but I’d also wager it’s been left somewhat nebulous too, involving elements quite distinct from whatever powers Congress/Law can confer. Does that count as an enumerated power?

Otherwise … yea I’m with you. The “official acts” thing seems more than wonky to me … seems downright expansive. Excluding military action and whatever “fuzzy” powers may be considered intrinsic … I’d imagine most of the executive’s powers come from legislative laws. So the body conferring power can’t constrain it to “not doing something criminal”!!!

I’ve wondered since having a brief look at the decision that the SCOTUS is playing a game here … where they do not want Trump’s trials to affect the election and are hoping to clarify this decision and what “official” means at a later date after the election.