VinesNFluff

Is porn an annoying project [spams a bunch of thinking emoji]

Been a long time since last I've seen a good honest Snafu

I guess it does feel like 2016 in here with neofascists on their way back to power in the US and all that.

Rare dotworld mod W

Yeah, sex is cool, but have you ever closed like 50 browser tabs after finishing an annoying project?

One mostly exports the genocide to the third world

The other wants to bring it home.

I'm from Mastodon

But I got to Mastodon from Reddit, so idk if that counts. :P

The entire system is alien to me, with the districts and the electoral college and (...)

It's so -- Simple -- Here.

WELL

At least presidential choice is simple here, the legislative houses are their own beast.

But yeah here it's just: Each (properly registered, though registration can be done through the internet) adult person gets one vote, if a candidate gets 50%+1 they are in, if none manage to get that there is a run-off round with the top 2 or 3 candidates.

Over there it's like people from certain states have their votes be worth more than people from other states, and then there's the whole "winning the district" thing and the whole idea of red/blue/swing states. So much complexity.

Adding to what everyone else has said.

.... You know what helped me learn how to write (which I now do for a living)? Yes, talking in comment sections -- But specifically.

I spent a lot of time in fandom forums.

Why does this matter?

Well.

TV Show fandoms are very low-stakes, you know? If you're learning to swim you start at the kiddy pool, not the olympic one. So you can participate in discussions, make up headcanons, and learn how to express your ideas... And if you do get picked apart or something, even if you actually, genuinely, fucked up and were straight up wrong. It's... Y'know. It's just a TV show. So you can, in fact, let it go.

It's different from when you're talking about something serious, something important. If you're writing about something technical and you mess up, you can end up spreading misinformation. On a political discussion, being clear on what you mean is important because the stuff being talked about matters. Not so for a fandom.

Oh and -- Re-read what you wrote, and use that edit button if you catch something you missed.

When it's not under threat of being crushed by an angry moon, Clock Town is a very nice place.

Lindblum from Final Fantasy 9 (roman numerals are for goobers)

I adore the concept of a Castle Town where the castle is so big it sorta consumes the entire town. And the whole steam-punk techno-fantasy vibe of the city is extremely pretty.

If you specifically mean LLM/GenAI:

• Some of my friends enjoy fucking around with those character AIs. I never got the appeal, even as an RP nerd, RPing is a social activity to me, and computers aren't people
• I have seen funny memes be made with Image Generators -- And tbqh as long as you're not pretending that being an AI prompter makes you an "artist", by all means go crazy with generating AI images for your furry porn/DnD campaign/whatever
• https://goblin.tools/ is a cool little thing for people as intensely autistic as I am, and it runs off AI stuff.
• Voice Recognition/Dictation technology powered by AI is a lot better than its pre-AI sibling. I've been giving it a shot lately. It helps my arthritis-ridden hands.

If you mean anything that utilizes machine learning ("AI" is a buzzword), then "AI" technology has been used to help scientists and doctors do their jobs better since the mid 90s

I wish it was socially acceptable to call people lazy for certain computer-related woes.

I often have to "rescue" my mother because her computer 'broke'. -- What is actually happening is that windows is doing the usual Windows thing of nagging you about updates/microsoft edge/whatever. It's a matter of reading what it's saying, but she just... Doesn't read the message or look for the button. This woman has a PhD. Like. She isn't stupid. She's incredibly smart, actually. But she just doesn't want to learn.

Like, the computer itself can tell you a lot of stuff. You just need to read and click around. But when it's a computer screen it's like some people develop selective blindness. I legitimately wonder if people who are 60+ have some eyesight thing going on where content displayed on a screen and specifically on a screen is unreadable to them. Because if anything is in a different place or it does something unexpected, they just lock up like a deer in the headlights instead of like. Reading what is on screen.

Mate

The fake ass AIs we have are straining the power grids of the entire world

AGI literally cannot hurt humanity because a minor brownout would kill it in its cradle.