[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

They quickly accelerated their way out.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

Tech support workers who may or may not speak English as a second language or with a strong accent can sometimes be of actual help and sometimes not, much like people with possibly more familiar accents can. A call center AI has never been anywhere close to solving a problem I've had.

You're no less fucked but instead of a human being getting underpaid for the trouble, a shitty tech corporation is overpaid.

14
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

MoreWrite preface: I wanted to get this out of my system and now that I've written it, I'm not sure if I want to post it anywhere else. Due to the sneer-like attitude of it I seem to have ended up writing it with the imagined audience of awful.systems readers, but since it's not really about anything rationalist or techbro adjacent, it's kind of off topic for anywhere on this site except MW. If any of you know a place where this essay might be appreciated, I can consider editing it for publication elsewhere. Most likely I'll just leave it here as a practice piece, though.

I know I could rephrase much of this with shorter sentences and fewer ten-dollar words, but I like to indulge a little: reach for some juicy words to spice up the task of putting thoughts to words. It feels good when writing for the sake of myself, but makes the final product sound pretentious, which is embarrassing, and possibly harder to understand, which should be the main concern but isn't. I don't feel like editing down the indulgence right now, so please be gentle about it.


A seemingly genuine invocation of a particularly annoying thought-terminating meme made me think about a great work of contemporary literature occasionally mentionied on this very website: the ostensible Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal by XXXbloodyrists666XXX, alias Tara Gilesbie.

The story begins with the protagonist's self-introduction:

Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!).

Let's dive deeper into the hair color specifically. What does the description tell us? The color black carries some very strong connotations in western cultures. It's associated with death, darkness, fear, sorrow and cold. Purple, on the other hand, is a somewhat uncommon color in nature, mostly found among things that have evolved to intentionally stand out, such as flowers signaling to pollinators. Historically its rarity has made it desirable and expensive, even a royal color sometimes only worn by kings and emperors. It's a color of mystique, magic and arcane arts. Red is associated with blood and fire, danger and warnings. It's a color of passion and emotions of love, desire, anger and elation. It's considered an especially strong complement and contrast with black both visually and symbolically.

Ebony Way is a moody teenager obsessed with the dark side of human emotions, who romanticizes death and depression. She's devoted to emo pop (or in her terms, "goffik") bands like My Chemical Romance and Good Charlotte and the fashion associated with the genre. Even among her cohort of witches, wizards, vampires and "preppies" she stands out, simultaneously seeking attention and lamenting the burden of being at the center of it. She often becomes smitten with love and sexual lust, and can be driven to anger and violence. Her hair color is literary shorthand for her entire personality.

This characterization through the colors of Ebony's hair — and soon afterwards, other fashion choices — works on multiple levels. On a surface reading My Immortal is just an exceptionally badly written piece of fiction. The story suffers from an unstructured plot, inconsistent characterization, ignorance of source material, lack of continuity, shaky grammar and chaotic orthography that both overuses deliberate non-standard spelling for an effect and also contains a plethora of non-stylistic misspellings. Despite the numerous faults, the author's use of color symbolism is perfectly fluent and idiomatic. Ebony's hair colors communicate exactly what the author seemingly wants to communicate through them.

Another way of reading the story is as a self-aware parody of bad writing. In this reading, Tara Gilesbie is a caricature of the worst possible fan fiction author. The ur-author maintains the persona of a dreadful writer and deliberately indulges in all the hallmarks of poorly written fanfics. The passage parodies the tendency of self-insert characters to describe their appearance in excessively florid detail to match an idealized version of the writer. The description is misplaced and disproportionately detailed and the author persona's fashion sense is gaudy and juvenile. Ebony's hair color is exactly what Tara-in-kayfabe would consider cool precisely because of the connotations associated with those colors and how they reflect her (misidentified) subculture.

Whether you read My Immortal as failed sincere writing or as ironic metafiction about bad writing, Tara Gilesbie is obviously a terrible writer. The work is disastrously bad on nearly all conventional metrics, but even as a simulacrum of the worst conceivable writer she understands the semiotics of her character's hair color. The choice to specify Ebony's hair color is indisputably a deliberate one and it successfully communicates both how Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is meant to be seen and how the character herself wants to be seen.

So the next time someone spins a tale of a book saying "the curtains were blue", an English teacher insisting on reading symbolism into the color of the curtains, and the author of the book confirming the passage only means the curtains were blue, remember that the author of My Immortal has a better grasp of color symbolism and conservation of detail than your anti-intellectual interlocutor and the imagined author in the thought experiment.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago

You're finally awake! That fall looked really bad. Cookies? SEO? What are you talking about? Let's go play some browser games on Miniclip.

53
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

A tale of a man on the Internet who caught a cold

Based on a true story

Damn, the fever is down and the cough is easing up, but my nose feels like it's lined with sandpaper. What to do? Look it up!

Duck Duck Go: dry sinuses

Results:

  • (Amazon) Dry Nasal Passage – Deals on Dry Nasal Passage [ad]
  • (Thrive Market) Banyan Sinus Nasal Drops – Organic Sinus Remedy [ad]
  • (Healthline) Dry Sinuses: Inside Nose, Throat, Symptoms, Headache, and More…
  • (Medical News Today) Dry sinuses: Remedies, causes, and how to treat them – Medical…
  • (Healthline) 5 Effective Ways to Treat a Dry Nose

Alright, I'll take the bottom Healthline link, the one that doesn't look like it had a stroke.

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While we continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will allow all readers to experience our ~~vampirism~~ content, we are providing you with 10 articles that highlight the breadth and quality of our content, because that's why you're here, right? To read random articles about random medical conditions you didn't fucking ask about? You are on this page because you disallowed the purposes listed in the “How we use your data” section of our Privacy Settings page and don't forget to feel ashamed about it.

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They're the same fucking site. Alright, maybe this is another of those cases where DDG is easy to SEO game.

Duck Duck Go: dry sinuses !g

I'll just fucking ignore the AI answer before it tells me to eat glue. Oh, the results are the fucking same, but there's a Mayo Clinic in there. I know from experience that one has also cucked itself from the EU. Fine, I'll throw the Healthline link to archive.is

To verify you're not a robot, please click on tiny pixelated images of fire hydrants for five minutes while an actual robot pretends to know better than you what fire hydrants look like. Doesn't this make you so confident about self-driving cars?

One eternity of downloading later:

How to treat dry sinuses

Dry sinuses occur when the mucous membranes in your sinuses lack proper moisture. This can lead to dry nasal passages, discomfort, nosebleeds, and similar unpleasant symptoms. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur sagittis eros vitae elit vehicula congue. Curabitur pellentesque risus sit amet ipsum vehicula, nec elementum sem iaculis. Mauris fermentum egestas est non tempus. Aenean urna diam, bibendum ac aliquet id, vulputate ut nunc. Ut luctus leo eu lacus consequat vulputate. In consequat augue at cursus tempor. Aenean tristique felis id fermentum tristique. Maecenas fermentum nunc vitae purus efficitur, id malesuada dui elementum. Etiam lobortis viverra turpis eu eleifend. Integer ac efficitur lacus. Nullam rutrum nisl lacus, bibendum maximus turpis vehicula eu. In at turpis lacus. Etiam libero tellus, imperdiet a fringilla non, tincidunt id ligula. Ut sodales convallis mauris sed semper. Nunc laoreet eros eget nulla mollis consectetur.

What are the symptoms of dry sinuses?

Aliquam sem tellus, interdum non mattis eget, imperdiet nec odio. Duis est mauris, posuere at risus vel, eleifend iaculis tortor. Vivamus in nisi sit amet sapien vestibulum ultricies eu eu ante. Integer eleifend augue mollis, vehicula orci et, condimentum orci. In et ultricies ligula. Praesent vitae lacus neque. Aliquam venenatis aliquam nulla ut dapibus. Integer a ligula a tortor consequat interdum in quis mi. Nam hendrerit mauris vel augue mollis ullamcorper ac ut justo. Curabitur aliquet eros ipsum, sit amet tempus ipsum tincidunt ac.

What causes dry sinuses?

Ut elementum elementum sapien, et interdum dolor commodo eu. Integer euismod rutrum augue in consectetur. Cras vel ultrices odio, nec congue massa. Proin et congue erat, et feugiat magna. Curabitur blandit vitae ligula sed sollicitudin. Nunc et suscipit quam. Morbi convallis, nisl vel tincidunt tempus, nisi dolor porta tellus, quis rhoncus urna enim vel libero. In iaculis ut elit sed interdum. Aliquam et felis at ante sodales pellentesque non vel diam. Donec consectetur eget metus aliquet gravida. Ut diam ipsum, ornare ac ullamcorper ac, tempus ut tortor. Maecenas dapibus auctor laoreet. Donec varius congue velit, id gravida ex ultricies vitae. Donec scelerisque condimentum erat. Donec auctor lacus sed risus vehicula placerat.

How are dry sinuses treated?

There are many ways you can treat dry sinuses at home to alleviate discomfort caused by seasonal allergies, irritation from chemicals, or drying from medications or dry air. To get relief, you can:

  • place a humidifier in your bedroom at night to keep the air from getting too dry
  • stop taking drying medications, such as antihistamines (or ask your doctor or pharmacist to help you choose something with fewer side effects)
  • drink plenty of water to stay hydrated get some fresh air if the air in your house is stale or stagnant
  • remove as many allergens and irritants from your environment as possible
  • irrigate your sinuses with sterile saline using a neti pot or similar product
  • use nasal spray to hydrate and lubricate your nasal passages and sinuses
  • take a hot shower and inhale the steam
  • diffuse essential oils like lavender, peppermint, or lemon for allergies

In some cases, your doctor might need to recommend treatment for your dry sinuses. Make an appointment with your doctor if you:

  • have an autoimmune disorder like Sjögren syndrome
  • praesent eget ipsum bibendum turpis blandit vulputate hendrerit quis lorem. Sed aliquam feugiat bibendum. Pellentesque ornare erat id quam fermentum congue. Proin vitae pretium urna. Nunc tincidunt, lectus id fermentum aliquam, felis justo molestie est, quis viverra erat mauris at nulla. Fusce viverra justo dapibus, venenatis metus at, hendrerit dui. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Fusce eget neque luctus, euismod elit at, finibus erat. Vestibulum semper nunc a enim sagittis tristique. Praesent vestibulum tincidunt ex, eget luctus tortor iaculis et. Maecenas sit amet purus non orci dapibus pellentesque nec vitae lectus.

Alright, take it easy with antihistamines and dig out that nasal spray. Thanks, internet. This definitely needed all these steps to solve.

Edit: archive link to the actual article in case it'll save someone else a couple of minutes

26
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Now that AI got involved it's on topic for TechTakes I guess. Making a containment thread because there might be a lot to sneer about this.

Train wreck at Montparnasse Station, at Place de Rennes side (now Place du 18 Juin 1940), Paris, France, 1895.

Boring version of of the main story: https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5345802

Skynet declares trade war on penguins: https://archive.is/Nn5MC

Reactionary news outlet celebrates 77% drop in stock price by taking everyone else down with them: https://bsky.app/profile/brianmfloyd.bsky.social/post/3lluybov3i22o

8
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I'm noticing an issue where the posts on the front page have been the same for a few days now, excluding the pinned Stubsack post. The default "Active" sorting mode seemingly fails to update its ranking of the posts. I see new posts when switching to "New" mode, but "Active" and "Hot" just show stuff from 5 or 6 days ago.

The comment ordering seems similarly static, and I feel like the default "Hot" algorithm isn't prioritizing new comments like it used to, but it's harder to tell if it's bugged or not since older comments tend to have more upvotes, as do the higher up sorted comments.

The same thing happens on mobile and desktop. Is this just my end or are others noticing the same?

[-] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago

RATIONAL/LOGICAL
You: 80 (superior tactics)
Her: 15 (emotional, reactive)

EMOTIONAL REGULATION
You: 70 (cold, intermittent bursts of anger)
Her: 10 (in the middle of a panic attack)

VICTIM MENTALITY
You: 0 (the exact opposite of a victim and knows it)
Her: 85 (default mode of victimhood)

CONFLICT HANDLING
You: 100 (extremely direct)
Her: 30 (focusses on past, but quick to refocuss priorities)

HIT POINTS
You: 100 (full health)
Her: 15 (bleeding out from a gunshot wound, about to pass out)

[-] [email protected] 53 points 8 months ago

The name and face of the most subscribed man on YouTube keeps changing every few years but my perpetual dislike of him keeps being validated.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago

It's the least of this thing's problems, but I've had it with the fucking teasers and "coming soon" announcements. You woke me up for this? Shut the fuck up, finish your product and release it and we'll talk (assuming your product isn't inherently a pile of shit like AI to begin with). Teaser more like harasser. Do not waste my time and energy telling me about stuff that doesn't exist and for the love of all that is holy do not try and make it a cute little ARG puzzle.

[-] [email protected] 59 points 8 months ago

Yea yea guns don't kill people, bullet impacts kill people. Dishonesty and incompetence are nothing new, but you may note that the wedding planner's unfounded confidence in ChatGPT exacerbated the problem in a novel way. Why did the planner trust the bogus information about Vegas wedding officiants? Is someone maybe presenting these LLM bots as an appropriate tool for looking up such information?

[-] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago

You know what's really good for mental health? Work that makes you feel guilty and politics you don't have any influence over.

[-] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago

Same guy earlier upthread

Public transit fares are generally malformed. I personally never pay the LA Metro fare. Why? Because I pay the Metrolink fare, which by their own admission covers same-day Metro transit. But police will actively seek me out as a person who looks like they have money and give me a hard time for not “tapping”, all while folks who very clearly have no money waltz on into the metro, stopping only to smoke crack on the elevator up. There’s a general problem in this country of what to do with law breakers who do not have money. It seems like the answer is to make them work and garnish their wages, but for whatever reason we are against that.

Yea the police are always giving such a hard time to people who don't look poor. It's so unfair that someone who can and does apparently pay for public transit has to prove they did.

10
OpenBSD 7.5 (www.openbsd.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
3
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Safari, Chrome and Firefox on iOS (AKA three different Safari skins) keep logging me out when doing things like refreshing the page. Possible cache issues again? I hope I don't have to do a full browsing history reset yet again.

28
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Someone ported this 8-bit miniature Unix-like from Commodore to Nintendo.

The YouTube title is a little bit clickbaity, but the project is cool so I don't mind.

320
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Also a bunch of somewhat less heinous cringe shit.

25
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

A follow-up to this TechTakes post

Saw this live at the congress. The presentation was great and the hall was packed. It was hard to find a seat in a huge auditorium even 15 minutes ahead of the talk.

[-] [email protected] 52 points 2 years ago

Me, a nazi? Preposterous, no nazi would idolize ancient warlords or cultural works from Japan.

24
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

It was only a matter of time that we saw a TechTake from this guy. I'm sorry to inflict Peterson on y'all, but this was too funny not to post.

19
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Global outage on fetching posts. Funny enough, some features are still working as evidenced by the fact #TwitterDown is trending.

Two HN threads about this now, looking forward to some excellent takes

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38717367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38717326

[-] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago

People have been modifying the code to copy housing designs without permission from the original designer. As such, it is in the housing community's best interest for updates to the code to no longer be published. The MakePlace community agrees with this approach too.

I might not respect the terms of free software licenses, but MMO interior designer IP rights are sacrosanct!

1
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Direct link to the video

B-b-but he didn't cite his sources!!

view more: next ›

bitofhope

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