A few hours ago I finished reading Fahrenheit 451, it was hard for me because I rarely read books, but it was worth it, and oh, I felt like I read about our time, people in this novel are like people are now. People watch TV shows, movies, anime created by people and at least think a little, but it happens that people do not think at all and also watch only created by AI and their consumer soul is happy? or even better communicate with AI as a friend and not only, they are, in my opinion, similar to the wife of the main character of the novel; Maybe they will even face a similar fate?

I would say many more things, but I would be glad if you say.

I know it's not a good idea to compare fiction with reality, but it's hard not to compare this book with reality, don't those who have read it agree?

Honestly, I didn't expect this book to look like it was going to describe the future very accurately, I thought it was just about people refusing to think. I even recognized myself a little in this book.

I find it hard to get into anything new, (especially tech) as I always want to learn how everything actually worked leading up to it, and I'm usually of the mind that most older things were better than now. However I figure I should branch out.

What's something new you've been getting into?

Ou bien: Zijn er andere Belgen op Lemmy ? (nl)

It seems an interesting language to learn, can you use it as a daily driver like Python?

Been wondering that after playing Undertale Yellow (great game, btw)

Romhacks would fall into a different category, more like modding the main game.

My wife is pushing for one of these very expensive home water treatment/filtration systems, but it all feels like a scam to me. No one I know has one, so turning to random strangers on the internet for opinions.

Edit: We're on city water in a decent area. No well water. It's more about removing the chlorine and microplastics than anything.

Hi, folks. I currently looking for a DNS provider that blocks AI websites. I feel the ublock list is still not extreme enough. So, ummm I need some recommendation

A lot communities have "Posts older than 365 days will be removed." in their description, but what does this mean exactly? It never says.

• The database of posts only goes as far as 1 year, everything older gets wiped? I hope and assume that's not it.
• Posts with links to articles older than a year get removed?
• If a thread is over a year old, no new comments will be added?

Posting a guard on duty accomplishes nothing. Putting a guard in an isolated dedicated security room, with live cameras, means the silent alarm is always triggered.

I (23M) grew up in an extremely abusive household. My older brother learned to imitate the violence and lack of remorse my father modeled, while I hid in my room for most of my childhood and slowly deprogrammed until I learned to trust safe people and assert my needs and boundaries. Now that I know what safe people are like, I also know what they absolutely fucking aren't.

I think most people would consider my brother a psychopath. He beat his girlfriend's cat to death, brandished a knife at my father in a screaming fit of rage for insulting him, strangled a bird and displayed its corpse hanging in a tree, fantasizes about mass murdering "liberals," said without hesitation that he would kill me in a "civil war," spoke extensively about his desire to break women down and control them, drives recklessly and amasses unpaid speeding tickets, and, most importantly to this discussion, insists that he will have to "take care of me" and "force me to live with him" after my father dies, because I will supposedly be too incompetent to take care of myself. He also has an extremely fragile ego, and any perceived slight or defiance can trigger a violent rage that he admits causes him to lose control of himself (hence the cat's fate for "misbehaving").

Suffice it to say, I don't want to be kidnapped. None of the money or outside communication I have will do much good if he takes away my access to them. What can I realistically do if he makes me live in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no money, and no transportation? It may be a fate worse than death.

I've been in therapy for half a year and reached the point where I am no longer stuck in a perpetual freeze response and can assert my needs and boundaries. This caused subconscious shifts in my behavior that my narcissistic parents have reacted with hostility towards, calling me "crazy" or "aggressive" for asking to be treated with respect and standing my ground. My mother finally snapped and said she wouldn't do anything for me anymore... I was frightened at first, but my life barely changed once she withdrew her support, because I was doing most things by myself already without realizing. I don't feel so helpless and dependent anymore because now I know my family was bullshitting me the whole time, and now it's even more clear that my brother has predatory intentions when he paints me as incapable of taking care of myself.

I've been working on a flexible plan to make a clean break from this situation. I can run away tomorrow and my brother won't be able to find me. But there's one problem that prevents me from truly disappearing: he has access to my full name, date of birth, and social security number, if not because he knows it, then because my mother will readily tell him.

Getting a job and a place to live can leave a paper trail that links my name and SSN to my new location, allowing me to be found no matter where I live in the U.S., and emigrating out of the country isn't a realistic option. It's also worth noting that my brother travels a lot and regularly takes road trips spanning several states, so it's not like geographical distance will deter him.

Is self-defense going to have to be a part of the solution here? Or making it almost impossible for him to get away with whatever he might pull if I tell him no? I would really prefer a solution where I could just disappear off the map and live my life separately; I would hate for the situation to have to come to this.

It's worth noting that I have not explored legal avenues yet because I don't want my brother to be notified of any actions I take against him, which I fear will escalate the situation.

I expect that no matter what, I will have to make some difficult decisions here. I spend every day in constant anxiety so severe that I am afraid to get food or use the bathroom for fear of encountering my brother. But I have to face reality and accept that hiding in my room isn't going to protect me from him. I think staying and trying to seek stable employment or education under such extreme threat is an unworkable solution.

I plan on visiting my local library soon, where I will be able to make phone calls without anyone in my family hearing.

Any ideas? I think having a trusted contact to stay with might be a decent temporary solution that will help me get my bearings, but I'm going to have to deal with the discoverability issues eventually. I would also need some way to find people I can trust in a limited time window, which seems inherently risky. But does that really compare to the risk of doing nothing? Staying at any shelter that will allow me to stay might also be a temporary solution, but given the finite number of shelters, I run the risk of being discovered eventually.

I've noticed that I often struggle to express what I actually mean during discussions.

Sometimes my main point gets lost because I phrase it poorly, use a weak example, or realize later that I misunderstood what the other person was saying. I often leave conversations thinking, "That wasn't what I was trying to say." or "I am not being taken serious."

For those of you who used to have this problem:

How did you get better at expressing your thoughts? Did you practice in a specific way? How do you make sure you're responding to someone's actual point instead of what you think they mean? Or is it really just keeping your mouth shut if you aren't knowledgeable about something.

It has gotten to the point that I find myself just not wanting to jump into the discussion, because I feel like that it's more about who is right , than understanding and being understood.

I'd love to hear any advice or habits that helped you become a clearer communicator. Book recommendations are also welcome.

Lemmy doens't have Social Skills community(that i can find) or anything so sorry for posting this in AskLemmy.

Reflections so far:

Be curious. Socratic method; phrase your statements as questions. It helps soften your dialogue quite a bit and makes the conversation a quest for discovery.

Try to formulate things simple. The simpler u can explain something, the better u understand it and the less words to be confused about for both parties.

Rhetorical Triangle: Ethos, Pathos and Logos

Write more. It forces u to think critical about things. And gives u the opportunity to reflect on your own opinions.

Don't take yourself, or other people too serious.

Bear with me here, lol.

“Meaning is not an external substance waiting to be proven. It is what reality does when conscious beings encounter possibilities that can go differently.”

This feels like a useful way to think about artificial consciousness. An AI might technically become conscious or even sentient without its experience resembling animal sentience. A mind arising through silicon and computation would interact with reality differently from one shaped by metabolism, hunger, pain, reproduction, and biological evolution.

Star Trek plays with a similar idea socially, among some species, behavior that humans interpret as hostile might instead communicate respect, trust, or friendship. Different forms of life divide reality into different categories of harm, value, threat, and opportunity, so understanding them requires more than projecting human preferences onto them.

Historically, the difficult problem has been that we cannot directly know what is conscious. But perhaps we can ask whether a system has an integrated point of view within which possible outcomes become meaningfully different for that system, rather than merely being classified differently by it.

This would not prove that current AI is conscious. But could it give us a substrate independent framework for recognizing unfamiliar forms of consciousness? What is this idea missing?

This is a bite valve from a hydration bladder. I'd like to disassemble it so that I can clean it out and let it dry properly. Is there any way to do that? I tried searching online but the results were either AI garbage or did not apply to this bite valve in particular. Pulling with mediocre force on any of the parts doesn't seem to do anything, and I don't want to pull any harder in fear of destroying the valve.

Edit~hey gang, when I posed this question and had some opinions. I realized I don't really feel one way or another about it and I can't really articulate a stance (probably just too tired). I won't be engaging. I don't want to just delete it though because some people made interesting points. Up to mods what to do with this.

I mean those people who you look at them and they have the body and responsibilities of a 43 year old but then you hear them talk about other people or other ethnicities or other situations that people are experiencing elsewhere and the person had might as well be a remorseless 3 year old that was raised wrongly.... The thing that floors me is hen you meet a very old person, Im talking in their 60s or older, and they start spewing some of the most idiotic, narcisisstic garbage a person could ever talk of... 'How have you spent all these years learning nothing?!'

Is it really THAT hard to break free of the chains of your terrible childhood and develop just a little empathy , understanding and humanity towards others? I DEFINITELY didnt have the best childhood seeing as how I was bullied and ostracized for decades , even by my parents lol, but I came to realize that 'Hurt people will hurt people.' so why am I going to go out of my way to be selfish and make more people who are hurt? But on the other hand I see , and Im sure most of you also have seen, that humans are not a very logicsl species sometimes. We have the potential to be more logical than Einstein but it doesnt always play out like that... We as a species do A LOOOT of things based on anti-logic, emotions, our pains, our traumas, or our cognitive distortions and this in turn sometimes creates more 'hurt people' ...

Im not saying that humans have gotten worse over time cause anybody here can open up wikipedia and read about all the awful things we used to do to each other , if anything we have gotten better just a little bit. But why are there STILL in the year of 2026 people who choose to just not 'grow up' ?

TL;DR too many adults , and even seniors , Ive emcountered have illogical and sometimes psychopathic opinions . Why do so many people choose to not grow up and be more understanding?

What is your take on something like this?

Edit: from what Im seeing there are couple takes I ld agree with 5o explain this phenomena

1. there could be neurological disorders like CTE , schizoaffective disorders, etc... that causes an older individual to do and say unusual things ....and hurtful things. Cures for these are barely existent so if someone suffers from them? Theyre just out of luck and hvlave to hope they dont do anything too hurtful

2. The overal lack of mmental health care , mental health breaks, mental health interventions , and psychiatric medication access globally. Some people are lucky and are born in a region that has such things easily. ..others sadly arent...

3. Some people get stuck in a cycle of self destructive cognitive distortions that impairs their ability to grow. there is the possibility that it is a reactive defensive mechanism that one has in response to our very flawed societies that humans have evolved from thousands of years that although it was probably w useful reaction thousands of years ago the current world is very much differenr than it was thousands or years ago . So these cognitive distortions become detrimental more than they are beneficial. Very few people are born innately malicious and/or with an antisocial personality disorder , but a person can clearly become both of these things with enough prompting. And not all humans are the same we all have different genetics ans different stories , all because one oerson reacts in a healthy and self-loving manner to malicious stimulation that doesnt mean all other peoole will do the same. This also has the chance to lead to echo chambering or self imoosed isolation and both if these makes recovery and interventions from external sources more difficult. So basicallt both nurture and nature can play a role in the self-destructive practices abd thought process a person conducts in response to the sad and lonely society of today.

4. Humans havent really evolved to or adapted well to modern society. Like empathy of other groups or for other groups of people on the other side of the planet may be difficult for some people to understand and learn. Humans have created and stuck tio 'outgroups' and 'ingroups' for millenia and very rarely have humans acknowledge the truth that 'We are ALL part of. the ingroup since we are ALL humans' . I dont think this completely excuses a person to treat other groups of people in awful ways though.

5. Soceties that have encouraged ignorance all in the name of listening only to a few politicians and very rich people will clearly create more and more ignorant peoples. And this clearly occurs tor the detriment of those people who cjoose to be ignorant. Being very rich or a politician doesnt mean that you kniw everything that each human needs

I need to quench my thirst for knowledge and learn something new just for the sake of it.

I've already learned:

• Equations and pivot tables in Excel

• Vector graphics in Inkscape

• Music mixing in rekordbox

• Personal VPN on a raspberry pi 4 with OpenVPN

• LAMP stack web hosting

• Streaming & video capture with OBS

• Manual & automatic backups with FreeFileSync

Things I'm open to:

• FOSS (even beta) or free-as-in-beer software

• A high or low learning curve

• Tools for niche fields that I'd otherwise have no reason to learn

My friend's on reddit a lot, uses it for support questions and reviews mostly, but got fed up with the bullshit toxicity there.

A few days ago I suggested she check out Lemmy, there's less content, but generally fewer toxic communities and we scrolled a bit.

She checked it out, didn't understand a meme on WomensStuff, had me ask them about it, and was so put off by their responses that was the end of lemmy for her.

I'm thinking things like "Same-sung" For Samsung, because all their products look kinda generic and boring, or Ford standing for "Fix Or Repair Daily" because of the engineering and build quality, or "McDiabetes", for obvious reasons.

Or any lesson for that matter

My go to would probably be the 7th generation (i.e Xbox 360/PS3) just for the community alone.