Imagine that all of the instances existed first - before federation even existed.

So imagine dozens of little, independent message boards - this person created one at this address, and this other person created this other one at this other address and so on.

Okay - then imagine that federation came along, so then all of those individual bosrds started sharing content with all the other boards.

So you were on this one board called lemmy.world. You never moved - you still have the same account at the same board. But now you also see, for instance, content from some other board called lemmy.ml.

Now here’s the important bit - you aren’t actually looking at lemmy.ml. You’re looking at a mirror of it - literally, you’re looking at lemmy.ml@lemmy.world. So like this community we’re on right now - neither one of us is actually on AskLemmy@lemmy.ml. You’re on AskLemmy@lemmy.ml@lemmy.world and I’m on AskLemmy@lemmy.ml@sopuli.xyz. But every few seconds, all three of those actually separate communities sync up with each other, so it acts as if it’s just one community.

Does that help?

It appears that every action is a reaction (or to use the more customary terminology, every action is an effect of some number of causes, and is in turn a cause for some number of effects).

However, it must either be the case that there was a first action, which would necessarily be an uncaused effect, or that time is either a loop or is infinite in extent, such that there is no beginning and thus no need for an uncaused effect.

And none of those possibilities is really intellectually satisfying, so it’s an open question (which doesn’t stop people from insisting on the nominal truth of one or another of them).

Obviously they not only laid off the wrong people, but kept the wrong people.

US elections

Live action anime

McDonalds

Imagine not recognizing that central authority is the problem.

Discworld, no contest.

It’s those roughly squared off, dirty, slushy heaps of packed snow that were plowed out of the way after the snowfall and are the only thing left after the rest of the snow has melted.

And so on, and so on…

If my government the government that’s managed to weasel its way into power over the land on which I happened to be born proposed an initiative to tackle fraud, I would look for the catch, because it’s guaranteed there would be one.

This has apparently become a new vector for transferring bribes - Trump files a suit, and then the corporation that wants influence pays a “settlement.”

Never loan anyone anything unless you’re willing to give it to them, because that could well turn out to be exactly what you’re doing.

ETA another one that just came to me, that I’ve always liked because it’s a witty turn of phrase in addition to being useful:

If you’re doing something that leads you to wonder if you should have some safety gear (gloves, particle mask, hearing protection, etc.), then the answer is “Yes.”

I’ve been posting on internet forums for almost 30 years now. It’s just a thing I like doing.

I’m here now because it’s the best place I know of at the moment.

Intelligence is a measure of reasoning ability. LLMs do not reason at all, and therefore cannot be categorized in terms of intelligence at all.

LLMs have been engineered such that they can generally produce content that bears a resemblance to products of reason, but the process by which that’s accomplished is a purely statistical one with zero awareness of the ideas communicated by the words they generate and therefore is not and cannot be reason. Reason is and will remain impossible at least until an AI possesses an understanding of the ideas represented by the words it generates.

The first time through, I read them in publishing order, starting with The Colour of Magic. That way, I got to see how it all unfolded in real time, and got to watch Pratchett’s skill grow (and eventually decline).

Since then, I’ve either followed specific characters (Vimes or Granny or Tiffany or Death) or just read whatever caught my attention at the moment.

People on every single relatively small forum ever in the history of the internet have gotten frustrated and angry when other people do that, because it’s spammy.

Do you not know the history of the term “spam?”

It’s from a Monty Python skit

That’s what the front page of a forum (or the inbox of an email account) looks like when someone “spams” it - like “spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.”

Just the opposite. I’m the one who goes off to do something else at family gatherings because they just talk and talk and talk.

Though it’s not so much that they talk so much as that it’s just the same stuff over and over - alternately, my brother slavishly regurgitating right-wing techbro quasi-libertarian bullshit and my mom reciting in excruciating detail some anecdote that’s maybe vaguely related to the topic at hand and that she’s told countless times already, because it’s her go-to every time something in that vicinity comes up.

And what I wouldn’t give to know them less well…

I don’t believe that my approval or anyone else’s is at all relevant.

My position is that there’s only one person who has the right to decide whether or not it’s acceptable to trade sex for money, and that’s the person entering into the trade. Assuming that all other contractual requirements are met - they’re of legal age and acting of their own free will and so on - it’s just as much their right to trade sex for money as to trade ditch digging or code writing or coffee brewing or meeting taking for money.

(edited for clarity)

I would go so far as to say that it’s vital that Biden handles court reform, because it has to be done before the election.

We can already be sure that Trump and his backers are planning legal challenges on whatever grounds might vaguely appear to be something resembling legitimate in the event that he loses, and we can also be sure that at least Thomas and Alito will rule in their favor, no matter how ludicrous their arguments might be, simply because they’re entirely and completely compromised. They’ve already demonstrated that law is irrelevant - that they serve demagoguery, shallow self-interest, bigotry and corruption. And given the chance, they WILL do their parts to destroy democracy in the US.

We can’t afford to give them the chance.

And that could be Biden’s legacy - the president who led the efforts that saved America from a fascist coup.

I’ve seen no evidence that they are.

What little organic commentary I’ve seen has been cautiously optimistic at worst.

The barrage of anti-Harris stuff that all started appearing at essentially the same time reeks of astroturf.

The Song That Doesn’t End