One foot planted in “Yeehaw!” the other in “yuppie”.
Agreed on aperture fever. I find 10" the largest manageable size unless you get an Obsession Ultra Compact for $$$$$.
Didn’t really consider binos for OP since viewing anything more than 45 degrees up is a pain without a proper mount. A dob is easier to use near the horizon than using a bino to view straight upwards.
For 200 you could probably land yourself an old criterion telescope or used Skywatcher. The important part is the aperture. For good nebula and Galaxy viewing, you’re going to want at least 6 in of aperture. But more is better.
Definitely check Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, and cloudy nights classifieds.
100%
So many self-identified progressives or leftists aren’t deemed moral enough to even be allies with.
I have far more moderate friends than I do leftist friends.
I have more conservative friends than I do leftist friends.
And to become moral enough for the left, you need to cut out everybody else in your life except the left.
The left expects you to cut out all of your support network, but then refuses to be a support network in and of itself. Leftists are the shittiest friends I’ve ever had. The constant judgment and moralization just drove me away.
I disagree. The modern left is too busy and moralizing consumption, people’s personal mistakes, and vilifying them before they even get to the table.
If you listen to the lefts big influencers, you would have to cut out your family, a good chunk of your friends, and are expected to maintain exclusively left-leaning relationships.
The left needs a heaping dose of pragmatism.
I say this as a person who identifies as a leftist. I say this as a person who’s tried to spread the word of multiple community actions here in Tucson, only to not get resources because the various progressive organizations don’t deem me progressive enough.
So yeah, I have an entire website, that could advertise crucial community action. But people aren’t willing to send me graphics to upload in the various languages and won’t forward me to the organizations that initially planned these things. All because I don’t measure up to their moral standards.
All in all. Fuck The Democratic socialists of America. Fuck modern progressivism.
They are all no show pieces of shit.
The moderates in my life all do far more for their community than anybody on the left.
It’s moderates I find running the soup kitchen. It’s moderates that decide to start businesses and grow their local power.
Pretty sure it’s against the TOS to do that. So if found, the account is simply terminated and it ceases being valuable. That means that even if it’s sold - it’s value isn’t in the games, but your friend network - as a sort of trojan spam/burner account. Which also means that it’s not worth more than a few dollars at MOST unless you’re some big-time twitch streamer with a vast network of steam friends.
So yeah, just be aware of what you’re getting into. It’s not likely some guy who wants an instant steam library - it’s someone who wants to exploit your friends, family, and acquaintances for money via scams. Don’t be that guy.
I liked it just fine!
I know there are a lot of Asimov diehards that found it disappointing. I don’t know why. The iRobot book wasn’t even really a book, it was a collection of short stories. Not exactly an easy thing to adapt to a movie.
I think this take is starting to be a bit outdated. There have been numerous films to use Blender. The “biggest” recent one is RRR - https://www.blender.org/user-stories/visual-effects-for-the-indian-blockbuster-rrr/
Man in the High Castle is also another notable “professional” example - https://www.blender.org/user-stories/visual-effects-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle/
It’s been slow, but Blender is starting to break into the larger industry. With bigger productions tending to come from non-U.S. producers.
There is something to be said about the tooling exclusivity in U.S. studios and backroom deals. But ultimately money talks and Autodesk only has so much money to secure those rights and studios only have so much money to spend on licensing.
I’ve been following blender since 2008 - what we have now is unimaginable in comparison to then. Real commercial viability has been reached (as a tool). What stands in the way now is a combination of entrenched interests and money. Intel shows how that’s a tenuous market position at best, and actively self destructive at worst.
Ultimately I think your claim that it’s not used by real studios is patently and proveably false. But I will concede that it’s still an uphill battle and moneyed interests are almost impossible to defeat. They typically need to defeat themselves first sorta like Intel did.
Ha…
I listed only a mini tripod under “always”, which - in the age of social media - is rather common daily carry. Everything else is software or under they “TRY” category.
But sure, be the internet contrarian you’ve always wanted to be. I’m sure your ancestors would be proud.
I mean, regional instances don’t have to stop folks from engaging primarily with interest based communities.
Some regions will dominate certain interests for example - here in Tucson we’re consider one of the Amateur Astronomy capitals of the world. If mander.xyz were to disappear tomorrow, Tucson would make a good home for all of the fediverse’s astronomy needs even though its a region based instance.
Further, there’s nothing that states an interest-based instance needs any registration. One could imagine a world where local instances have all the users and identities, and the interest based instances simply provide communities to the larger fediverse with no users of their own.
But yeah, it’s definitely a paradigm shift that makes interest based communities a bit more difficult to find.
Oh okay! I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.
???
I don’t particularly have any issues with them.
But if a user did, they don’t have much recourse. I’m talking about that as a structural aspect. Not a moral one.
But sure if you just want to claim this puts me in the !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com community by ripping it out from any relevant context, go ahead I guess?
Hi there! Admin of Tucson.social here.
I think that the only way the fediverse can honestly handle this is through local/regional nodes not interest based global nodes.
Ideally this would manifest as some sort of non-profit entity that would work with municipalities to create community owned spaces that have paid moderation.
So then comes the problem of folks not agreeing with a local nodes moderation staff - but that’s also WHY it should be local. It’s much easier to petition and organize against someone who exists in your town than some guy across the globe who happens to own a large fediverse node.
This model just doesn’t work (IMO) if nodes can’t be accountable to a local community. If you don’t like how Mastodon, or lemmy.world are moderated you have zero recourse. For Tucson.social - citizens of Tucson can appeal to me directly, and because they are my fellow citizens I take them FAR more seriously.
Only then will people be trusting enough to allow for the key element to protecting against AI Slop. Human Indemnification Systems. Right now, if you wanted to ask the community of lemmy.world to provide proof they are human, you’d wind up with an exodus. There’s just no trust for something like that and it would be hard to acquire enough trust.
With a local node, that conversation is still difficult, but we can do things that just don’t scale with global nodes. Things like validating a person by meeting them to mark them as “indemnified” on a platform, or utilizing local political parties to validate if a given person is “real” or not using voter rolls.
But yeah, this is a bit rambly, but I’ll conclude that this is a problem that exists at the intersection between trust and scale and that I believe that local nodes are the only real solution that can handle both.
Well, in the cases that I saw documented it happened in one of two ways.
Spotify assumes a record label submits good faith information. Many of these impersonation attempts come from “brand new” lables like “Gupta Music” and such. Since they are in the system as a label, it’s more permissive and Spotify generally assumes that it’s not their place to ask why a Band using one label is suddenly using another. These are the worst offenders and actually impersonate real artists.
Another approach that’s been reported is to not actually impersonate the artist, but to confuse the user that this is the artist visually. Take for example, The Weeknd - AI artists might upload a band named “Weeknd” or “The Weekend” or some other similar permutation - banking on genre similarity to get the algorithm to present you the song and hoping that you don’t notice the misspelling. These are still bad, but a bit less so since I can usually find the real band page for the “right” info.
As for new artists that get recommended, a quick search should be able to make it clear if an artist is a real person / group no? With tour dates or pictures and stuff?
I echo xuxxun’s feedback here, the newest bands often lack any sort of presence - especially with their first single or EP. A notable one back when they first released was Apocalypse Orchestra - basically ZERO info on the artist except for a newly created facebook page with no images or anything. Obviously that changed in just a few short months. It’s definitely not a method that would reliably sort AI from Human - but I do agree that it’s more likely to catch the AI stuff.
I read a bit of it. And while I understand the desire to get away from folks on the internet being harassing. That is the problem of the internet right now. I’d be remiss to say that if I had a thin skin, Tucson.social would be a lot harder to run. I’m not excusing the meanness of the internet when I say this, after all, it’s one of tucson.social’s goal to deal with that. It’s just a pragmatic fact.
There’s also the fact that the Creator has no desire to hand this off. I understand that is work. And that I am not entitled to their work. However, it seems to perform a defeatist narrative. Which just doesn’t feel constructive.
I’m in no way trying to be mean.
It’s just that this Creator is coming across as “taking his/her/their ball and leaving.” It kind of makes it harder for the community to pick up where they left off. No platform, no code base. And I think it’s fair to criticize that. It comes across as “returning the meanness they received and redirecting it at people with good intentions”.
I’m the type of person who is well resourced enough to pick this up and continue. Had I known about this project earlier, I might have been pitching in this entire time. But reading these posts now make me feel pretty unwelcome at least in that capacity.
I too am optimistic about community picking up where they left off. It’s just that it’s a lot harder to do when there’s not even ashes to rebuild from.
I’m sure the Creator is a good person. And I have no ill will against them. But I am a little bit upset that what they built will be lost in entirety.
I think, going forward, open source will be a requirement for any sort of platform like this for me. I just don’t want to be forced to lose something good because the Creator has made that decision for me.
But to your point, I probably shouldn’t have called them an ass.
As an aside, I think you shouldn’t be recommending this site. If it’s going to shut down, then what is the point of learning about this? There certainly isn’t any ability to swoop in and try to keep it going. I hope the existing user base enjoys the sunset celebration! But as a new user it just doesn’t make sense.
Looks like this is about to go away. 😢
EDIT: Looking at the persons thread as to why they are shutting down is… odd? Like, okay dude, you aint handing this over to anyone and nuking it - being an ass about it doesn’t help. And I say that not as a random internet denizen, but someone who supports multiple websites including tucson.social. I know there will be a day to dim the lights or pass the torch, but I’d never play up being the victim quite like this creator has.
Bandcamp, Qobuz, 7digital
Yup, I do that where possible now. Usually only for albums though.
I also buy a lot of band merch these days and try to go when they play locally.
I only take to the high seas in the event I can’t find a particular hifi release or something equally niche and eBay is no help.
CD’s have a nostalgia appeal to it for me, and since I’m finally financially stable I’ve been wanting to get back into collecting physical media. It’s just hard because not many new bands bother with physical media at all anymore. At least outside of limited run releases.
As an aside, I don’t get the resurgence of tape players at all! Tape being lower fidelity coupled with the shorter lifespan was something I thought people disliked.
UPDATE:
RYM is awesome. Thank you!
feeds on Bandcamp.
I have a Bandcamp account, but weren’t they acquired and sorta lost their souls as well? I’ll go check it out again and see what’s there!
I wondered the same thing actually.
After some googling I saw two trends emerge so far that impacted me.
The metalcore one hit me hard as I just got into the genre and don’t yet have enough familiarity to find the generated stuff uncanny.
Basically that’s why it’s music discovery that’s impacted - not listening to already established bands.
As an example of this, one of my favorite bands is VAST (Jon Crosby) but he’s pretty inactive and doesn’t report songs that have been mistakenly added to his artist profile. I know this artist so well that I can tell within seconds if it’s actually him or not. So this AI problem is much more manageable for bands I already know and love.
Discovering new music however, has become a terrible experience full of disappointment and confusion.
Praise the code! 🤘
I mean, FWIW, if it’s made for a 1-4 year-old it’s probably at least non-toxic to consume.