Bougie_Birdie

How many tickles does it take to make a squid fly?

I figure it's got to be about ten tickles

I think it depends on what you may or may not have an opinion about.

Extreme example: if you don't have an opinion about nazis, you might be a nazi

There's a couple things at play here when you talk to people online.

Ultimately, there's a difference between feeling attacked and being attacked. Both are common in online discussions.

Why do people attack people?

The anonymity and distance of the internet makes it easier for people to share strong opinions - for better or worse. There's a certain amount of psychology around the design of social media that pushes people towards confrontation.

Sometimes aggression is the default state for people. Depending on your world view that might be either sad or necessary.

That said, I believe there's a difference between a justified attack and an unjustified one. If someone is spreading hate, we all owe it to the community to fuck that person up with our words. If someone shares a harmless opinion then there isn't much call for a personal attack.

Why do I feel attacked?

If you feel attacked on the internet, there's ultimately two possibilities: you're being attacked or you're mistaken. For the sake of this section, let's say you're mistaken.

Non-verbal communication is an essential part of communication between humans, and is something that's hard to replicate in text. Ultimately, our non-verbal cues set an expected tone.

Sometimes when writing we recognize this and use a tonal indicator to set expectations. Emoji 🙄, gestures *rolls eyes* and, appending flags /s are all ways that we might set tone. These three examples all indicate "sarcasm" which for many people seems to be the default way to express themselves.

Sarcasm in particular is problematic because it often inverts the meaning of what was said. The phrase, "oh yeah, brilliant idea" has opposite interpretations if you're being sarcastic. Sometimes the writer assumes the reader will know what they intended because they were feeling sarcastic when they typed it. Of course, as a reader we have no way of knowing what the writer's feelings were at the time of writing.

Another element at play here is that a good deal of conversation on the internet is debate. Some people equate disagreement with condemnation, so if your feelings are hurt by that it's common to lash out. Many debates on the internet start civilly enough and then deteriorate to name calling and cursing in short order. It's wise to try to be the bigger person and assume no malice, because once it gets out it's hard to put back.

Statistics and Bias

You probably had the right idea that only about 1% of users are active commenters. Similar to that, there's also a phenomenon where the most vocal (and often inflammatory) users represent a similarly small portion of the group.

Our brains are evolved for survival, so they pay special attention to negative stimuli. Basically, they're always looking for trouble, and if you're looking for trouble you're likely to find it.

What this ultimately means is that we remember the bad things far more memorably than the good things. It also means that even if a small percentage of people are attacking others, because they dominate the conversation we start to believe that everyone carries that opinion. But as you point out, 99% of users aren't even commenting, so we really don't have a good grasp on what the larger population is like.

It also means that if you exercise your block list, you don't have to put in too much work to remove the most hateful people from your feed.

Closing

Anyway, I think you have the right idea. It sounds like you don't go looking for fights.

I try to keep a similar philosophy. If I disagree with someone then I'll seek to empathize or educate. However, if someone is vocal about my erasure or directing hate and violence towards people then I'll let them have it. I figure those people are looking for trouble and by golly I'll give it to them - it's always morally correct to punch a nazi.

Most of my college coursework was around OOP. That said, they actually did a pretty lousy job of explaining it in a practical sense, so since we were left to figure it out ourselves a lot of our assignments ended up looking like this.

At the end of the program, our capstone project was to build a full stack app. They did a pretty good job simulating a real professional experience: we all worked together on requirements gathering and database design, then were expected to build our own app.

To really drive home the real world experience, the professor would change the requirements partway through the project. Which is a total dick move, but actually a good lesson on its own.

Anyway, this app was mostly about rendering a bunch of different views, and something subtly would change that ended up affecting all views. After the fact, the professor would say something to the effect of "If you used good objects, you'll only have to make the change in one place."

This of course is only helpful if you really appreciated the power of OOP and planned it from the start. Most of us were flying by the seat of our pants, so it was usually a ton of work to get those changes in

Coolio, thanks for the detailed reply

I've got lots of new stuff to check out now!

Sounds like you need an ice cream eating partner.

I volunteer as tribute

I kind of hate to say it because I'm not a big fan of it, but video content seems to have the widest appeal.

I don't know that you'll ever be able to get to a single absolutely clear method though. People have different learning styles. For example, I prefer reading a book by text, but I just can't absorb an audiobook. Meanwhile I have several friends who can't focus well enough to sit through a dense book and can retain the whole thing through audio.

Anyway, videos check a lot of boxes that other formats miss. For example, so much of our communication relies on non-verbal cues which are missing entirely from books. While an audiobook might capture the tone, you still miss the body language.

Another advantage to videos is that depending on the tutorial, it can be both visual and experiential. A step-by-step video recipe is more accessible for new cooks who might not know what "mix until smooth" actually looks like.

So why don't I like videos? Well, to use the cooking example again, I already know how to cook. I don't actually need step-by-step guides, and usually I just need to refer back to the ingredients or a single step. It can be difficult or time consuming to scroll back through a video and find the exact right spot. My personal peeve is all these tiktok videos that get shared to me showing a recipe, where each ingredient flashes once for a half second, and if I miss it I have to let the whole video loop to find it again.

So anyway for broad appeal and for introduction to a subject, I think videos are probably the most enjoyed format. For a deeper dive or a reference it's got to be text for me.

I was in a thread the other day about what things make us feel stupid, and for me it was front end development. Saying it out loud made me realize that I should probably take another kick at the can, and I'm starting on React today.

Software's one of those tricky things where sometimes you never feel like you're very good at. Every thing you learn makes you realize there's more to learn, and as you become more knowledgeable sometimes you might actually feel less knowledgeable. The Imposter Syndrome kicks many a new developer's ass, so try to bear in mind that you probably know way more about software than before you started, and now you have about a year's experience to boot!

Good luck to you!

Oh hey, that's really cool! A lot of the music I like to sing along to frankly isn't popular enough to get the karaoke treatment

How do you get started learning about that? Do you need a high quality source with a separate vocal track, or can you somehow isolate the vocals from a simple rip?

Super cool hobby, good luck to you

How do you know they're a clown if they're naked?

They might just be a juggalo

I heard a report recently that suggested that Microsoft Recall (the program to take a screenshot of your PC every few seconds to process in AI at huge ecological damage for dubious benefit to the user) is an unlisted dependency for the file explorer.

What that means is if you somehow manage to remove Recall entirely, then you won't be able to view your files.

And sure, they'll probably fix that. And they'll probably also include a "disable AI" checkbox hidden eight levels deep in the control panel to give the user a small sense of control over their own machine - which will turn itself back on with each update because Windows

I don't think you'll be able to actually remove AI from Windows. At least, not easily, and not permanently. Your plan to switch to Linux seems like it'll be less headache in the long run

I feel like if I stocked up, I'd then feel more tempted to shop as my supplies dwindle. I also find that if I have a large supply of something, I use it faster than expected.

That said, there's a few replacement parts of things I use regularly that I have no idea where I'd shop for something compatible physically. Things like produce savers for my fridge and filters for my air purifier