Notices by Martin Ruskov (mapto@qoto.org)

@freemo "no matter how he looks, baby, it's the inside that counts." And the inside of your shit,is also shit. Quite different with babies, and what it took to a person to take them to this point of independence.

@freemo I guess one has to put choices in context. In this context, it's extremely hard to understand your position. The guy is simply unfit to be a president. Whereas she has plenty of experience taking on very hard jobs and dealing with very complex situations. Any third choice leads to one of these choices.

@freemo in my ignorance, I'd say more fiber is not a problem, but wouldn't bet on it

@freemo interesting idea, but doesn't a healthy diet also need fiber?

@freemo @mapto @mosseri

Wow, congrats! I wasn't aware of the news. Is this for QOTO only or for your wider projects?

@freemo my argument has its flip side. No one doing something for money can dedicate the resources necessary to compete with someone who does it with passion. Ultimately, monopolies are grown by someone who is both passionate about the product and pedantic about money

@freemo mainstream might be one of the important ways to do it. As you say, a broad coverage of the long tail might be another. Someone who cares about revenue would be much more attentive to these things than someone who is passionate about any literary genre.

@freemo I never said they sell mainstream books. I said they know better how to make money because they care more about money in comparison to a bookstore with management that cares about books and readership

@freemo is Amazon with bigger turnover or Ocult Bookstore?

@freemo someone focused on money would have much more "valuable" (in market terms) bookstore. Someone into books would have something that doesn't necessarily sell well, but relates to others passionate about reading, e.g. niche literature

@freemo of counting money is your goal in life, you'll probably end up doing it much more often and better than someone else who likes being with people or reading books :)

Apparently just these days Google have discovered web search. To use it, I had to dig into other search results and click on "Web"

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24074314/google-now-offers-web-search

This is why I use https://duckduckgo.com instead.

@mmasnick @dangillmor
First of all, thanks for responding. Certainly, a necessary first step to have a healthy discussion.

Although as a parent I have my observations on the topic and have researched game-based learning in the past, this discussion is not within my current research interests, and I have only limited time to dedicate to it. I'm really sorry for this, but my response is correspondingly very limited.

On the topic, in his response Haidt does say "My story is about two major factors (end of the play-based childhood, rise of the phone-based childhood)". However, your interpretation is "that social media and smartphones have made kids under-protected". Speaks of itself.

I also appreciate that writing for popular audiences might require some stylistic adaptation, but from my reader perspective I find your writing quite demagogical and seeking conflicts where there aren't (parents protecting children or not, multiplayer-over-the-network games and lack of physical interaction). I find it also oversimplifying in insinuating that the lack of sufficient evidence for a phenomenon is a proof of the absence of the phenomenon.

I do think you make some valid points. However, due to the all-out denial you engage in, I find it very difficult to identify these myself. Probably, it is due to my own biases and perceptions.

@volkris @freemo @avlcharlie I agree with your other comment.

My diagreement is not with the current calculation of the costs. I claim that any explicit calculation by default (due to the complexity of the real world) excludes some implicit aspect that optimisers then readily ignore.

Also, utility is not only contextual, but subjective. To someone a million dollars might be enough to secure a lifetime, to someone else it could be enough to buy a house, to a third person, it might mean buying some nice nice stuff to show off.

@freemo @avlcharlie the problem is that environmental cost are not part of the final price. Instead they are internalised by those with weaker negotiation power.

Examples:
- miners from poor countries pay with their lives to extract resources that unaccountable mine owners then can sell at competitive prices
- wildlife gets pushed away from investment-grade land

I can go on with Amazonian rainforest, Russian taiga, Australian Coral reefs, African rhinos, l Mediterranean fish, orangutans, polar bears,...

@freemo @avlcharlie maximisers would invest for profitability and not for sustainability. Clearly this conversation is way too abstract and way too generalising, but rich people investing in cheap resources is a real problem in times of pressing change.

Optimising is by definition deprived of vision, ask effective altruists ;)

@freemo @avlcharlie well, unless people attempt to develop some level of sophistication, efficiency turns into greed, because thoughtless accumulation is the easiest thing to do. This is reinforced by a social environment where chronic accumulators are considered successful by chronically accumulating media.

@freemo no need to waste time rushing it, no worries

@freemo Nono, I use it from a different server. If no blocklist , I guess it might be some issue with the feedsin.space service itself. Have come across other issues with them in the past. Thanks for the quick response.

Hey @freemo , is it that an RSS-to-mastodon service at https://feedsin.space/ is blocked on #qoto? I've been using this a lot from my Bulgarian-language account, and I just noticed I don't have access from here.

I find such services very useful. If there is an intentional block in place, could you share the reasons and if you could suggest alternative ways to follow RSS feeds from here? Just trying to understand if there's a solution that would work for everyone. Thanks!