The result of the “Golden Age of Television”

Seems like you clearly didn’t follow the instructions to turn off your brain.

I have an old iPod that I got from eBay. I’m running Rockbox on it which allows me to put music on it with almost any format. Ive used it for about 4 or more years now and it’s working fine.

I can connect it easily to other old “dumb” tech. It just works.

Edit: it’s an old iPod classic of the last generation. There’s a bunch of mods/upgrades you can get online like HDD replacements with microsd-cards. You can increase the capacity that way. The battery even lasts longer then. Or you can get a bigger battery with a bigger metal case to fit.

Nicely done!

Were these plastic cups already standard back then?

Same. But someone colorized it somehow. The colors look weird and I had it in black and white.

The Pianist

“Meteor” by Dan Brown (could be a different name in the original language). It was the first time I read something that was bad. Up until then book were cool and fun and interesting. It was a puzzling experience.

Edit: it’s called “Deception Point” in the original.

I really would like to see some studies on that topic “does cognitive decline skew your position to the right”. If it does it’s usually slowly over many years. But fetterman had a huge decline suddenly and basically in love with genocide now. (I still believe he didn’t think like that before).

Would make sense in a way - stripping away all nuance from the world by means of deteriorating perception makes people only see good and bad or my team / their team.

We need Paris-Pickup-Parking-Prices everywhere. They’re 18€/h. If you want your stupid tank within city limits pay for it.

Schon mal im Laboratory?

Well in a way all Art is being done indirectly by some sort of instrument. Only the degree of sophistication or degree of separation of this instrument is different. A pencil drawing is in principle also done by the pencil, but I provided a lot of guidance through my hand. A pencil - almost no sophistication - is on one side of the spectrum and Midjourney/Stable Diffusion etc is on the other side of the spectrum.

I don’t want to judge AI “art” in general - there’s so many awful traditional artworks that AI art doesn’t really stand out.

What rubs me the wrong way is that it is a tool that no human can understand reasonably well. Everybody can understand a pencil. It’s possible to understand a computer renderer that renders digital art. But no one can understand the totality of an LLM which was trained on terabytes of images. It’s a lot of trial and error, because what the tool does generate random images even with precise directions. It’s throwing dice until one likes the result.

The one thing I give this “artist” credit for: he was very early (maye even the first?) that entered AI art into a contest and fooled the jury. Being the first is often enough historically to make “great art”. Where art is more measured n the impact it has on a societal discussion. So I give him that.

But a court already decided you can’t copyright AI art, because it’s trained on other art without permission. So he can get fucked.

“Famous” A"I" “Artist”

Maybe you can dip your toes into using lineage os or graphene os?

Everybody has to support the new new underdog Intel.

There are still phones that have it. Sometimes even pretty good ones. It’s just that they are not advertised so heavily. I recently learned about HTC U23 or 24 or something. Now I feel dumb because I never bothered to check because I always thought all good phones don’t offer headphone jacks anymore.

It depends.

It’s the reason I stopped making so much fun of people that recreate the “MAMIL” trope - “Middle Aged Men In Lycra”. Meaning men who start their midlife crisis buying an expensive bicycle with neon-colored bicycle clothes and bicycle glasses and all the other stuff.

Why don’t they just start riding their bicycle they already got? They can use their sunglasses and normal sport shorts. What’s the problem?

But I some cases or age-ranges people want to make a change and get out of their usual habits. A real phase shift. People think they want to work out more regularly. Or really start a new hobby. Buying a bunch of expensive stuff can increase the need to go through with this phase shift - at least in the minds of the people buying it.

As an adult picking up a new hobby often means that other things in their life have to make room. It’s usually not that adults in their (let’s say) mid 30s until early 50s have problems filling their day. So whatever new hobby or task they want to do has to push away other habits and stay there until these new habits can take root.

So starting with some expensive shit can be something I can understand - if one has the money.

If I would start making music again, I’d probably start by buying an expensive synth like the super-6 from UDO (that I always wanted to buy) instead of a bunch of bleep-bloop-machines that need a lot of initial time for understanding them and then only fulfill one specific function in my music.

Why do they have the data in the first place?

Your communications on telegram are not encrypted by default. You can have e2e encrypted 1on1-conversations, but group chats are blown for them to do everything.

They had a hilarious argumentation where they claimed that the key to unlock your chats is stored on a different server than your chats are and therefore they cannot access it. A company that argues like they (“trust us”) isn’t trustworthy.

Signal has been audited over and over again by internationally respected cryptographers. They cannot decrypt your chats by design. No need for “trust us bro”.

True.

I’m very much opposed to and sad about an international pop star and apparent progressive taking a private jet all the time.

But there’s two things at play that should be differentiated.

1. The role model aspect. She has millions of fans that look up to her. She could lead by example and use different means of transportation.
2. She’s obviously a unique figure. She’s not replaceable or generic in the position she’s at. Her “position” cannot be replaced by someone else as would be possible with the Starbucks CEO. She’s not “some CEO” taking a Jet to work and thereby normalizing this as a habit for CEOs". Right now there are few if any other celebrities with her status l, so she stands for herself.

The precedent of Starbucks CEO commuting by jet is much more of a blueprint that might be applied to other CEOs. Or already is. I don’t even know his name FFS. So he’s making a precedent that a lot of other people could readily adapt.

I don’t want to excuse anything. I just think that it would be more beneficial to attack CEOs for taking private jets. There’s a lot more of them. They areuch more susceptible to the pressure if the companies is seen as a polluter than Taylor Swift might be. She’s much more independent than any CEO. She doesn’t have to worry if the board of directors or the shareholders are going to replace her if her if her habits are becoming a PR problem. So our energy might be more productively applied elsewhere.

I’m still sad about a seemingly progressive and apparently Intelligent pop star like her flying that much.

Ahh the event in 1054… Yeah that event was a banger!