This is one answer to the fermi paradox that makes no sense to me. If we did live in a dark forest universe where everyone was hiding from some oppressive existential threat, how would any of the civilisations learn about it?
They would need to be in contact with one another to discover that other civilisations were being wiped out, but for that to happen, the wiping out civilisation would have to be able to find them as well. If they destroyed civ A, they’d definitely be able to find references to civ B in their ruins, somewhere. I see no mechanism by which a civilisation could observe this enemy in action without being detected.
Unless someone has come up with an answer to this issue, in which case I’d like to see it.
Also, if you can detect them, just telling them that you’ve detected them should change their strategy, because if a basic civilsation like ours can do it then they’re not actually that safe by hiding. The dark forest seems like a really fragile arrangement.
So intelligent talking people-rats can run a five-star restaurant but can’t understand the concept of hygiene? Why? Because “Rats are unsanitary”, apparently. Sounds pretty bigoted. Sounds like you found a big-worded sciency way of calling them icky. You’re a scientific ratcist.
If they have to live in the walls and don’t have sanitary living conditions that’s a societal issue, also due to deeply entrenched anti-rodent bigotry.
I can’t wait for Ben Shapiro to clip this and use it as evidence of the crazy woke left.
I remember a writing prompt that talked about how we’re broadcasting all our TV and radio for years then we get a reply that says, “Be quiet, they will hear you.”
Oh okay, so this insular civ broke radio silence to transmit something that will definitely be a big deal and recorded in our news and science papers in extreme detail, and they’re not worried that when the threat arrives they will trace that signal back to them?
I’ve never heard a good explanation for how the dark forest develops and stays stable for any length of time.
Right but then that relies on not existing in a dark forest. That is, you can detect signs of alien life, but then those signs tell you horrible things.
The situation we have is that we see nothing.
I guess the answer is that some civilisations reach a point where they broadcast themselves and get destroyed, whilst other civilisations reach a point where they receive those broadcasts and don’t reply before hearing the other civilisation get destroyed. So somehow they were listening at the exact right moment to discover that others are getting killed without responding, and that happened enough times that there is a whole universe full of quiet civilisations.
I still don’t see the A to B. I cannot imagine any species curious enough to detect alien life and insular enough to not respond. If we got those signs we would reply immediately, almost definitely.
You’re right, they aren’t trying to make something sustainable. I guess I was giving them too much credit when I said that.
The problem they’re facing here is that if they can’t sustain even the appearance of a functioning site that investors might want to buy, then they fail at that too.
So maybe the best way to fix this is just to ride it out and not close the subs, but if they’re just full of users that have finally clocked why mods are needed and that the place sucks now, that’s also a bad look.
If the search engines start to realise that it’s a cesspit with nothing worth linking to anymore, then that really hits their metrics. I’ve just realised I really need to get onto downloading my posts and deleting them.
I really like the idea of an activitypub platform tailored towards writing, fanfic or otherwise. You wouldn’t need to specify because the various styles would probably gravitate to different instances.
I’m sure someone will pick it up eventually, because it just makes sense. I actually do have programming skills but no time to devote to something like this. I have no idea how much work it would involve but the general rule I have for things like this is “more than I expected”.
I’d say they’re different to bone apple tea because that’s a nonsense phrase whereas these could conceivably stand in for the original.
Eggcorn in particular has somewhat replaced acorn in a region of the US where those words sound the same, and the reason it’s not wrong is because it is a corn - a seed - and it does have an egg shape in it, so “eggcorn” is descriptively accurate.
Unfortunately alt-right crypto weirdos have coopted the term “decentralised”, and so it is with this site. It’s a crypto-based… video… hosting… platform? I cannot for the life of me figure out how it works other than that it mines crypto in the background while you have the site open and if you have an account, you get a cut of the crypto you mined.
I have tried looking into it, but they don’t explain anywhere in their promo materials, it’s literally just “earn while you watch!”, which… yeah no thanks. I’ve been on the internet and paying attention for more than 5 minutes, I know that grift when I see it.
“Decentralised” isn’t enough, you need a way to ban people that is also decentralised, and that’s where federation comes in.
I don’t know if they’re eventually going to coopt “federation”. I wonder if that’s the ultimate test of a social technology - if it can be coopted by reactionaries. The less able they are to do so, the better it is.
I have firefox and ublock and they’re not always working, so I just open the video url in any video player that supports it. In potplayer I just copy the video url and use ctrl+v in the main video window and it opens with no issues.