Notices by Thanasis Kinias (tkinias@historians.social)

@dubh
Thanks! Yeah, there’s a lot of background noise when I’m at the Y (a regular use case), and I really don’t want to hear the muscle-bro over there grunting and slamming weights around any more than I have to...
@skinnylatte

OK, seeking a tech recommendation: I need new Bluetooth headphones. The criteria are:
– in-ear rather than over-the ear (for use in hot/sweaty conditions)
– sweat-resistant (see above)
– earpieces physically connected to each other (not separate earbuds)
– direct USB-C charging (nothing wireless)
– not expensive (I use them mostly for audiobooks & podcasts, so good music quality is of low priority)
– available in the US

I recently bought a Beats pair that lasted only a few weeks 👎🏽

@evan
looking forward to a world where AI generates video slop and AI watches it

There’s a big Lorne Michaels/Saturday Night Live exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center, which now holds Michaels’s papers, and hearing people talk about how “everybody” loves SNL has me wondering how much it’s really a purely North American thing.

I’ve never thought that SNL really translated overseas—certainly never knew a non-US person who was a big fan—but I’m curious what Fedi thinks. Is SNL only funny to Americans?

(I grew up in the States but was never much into SNL myself.)

Are there any #histodons still on here?

I’ve not been very active recently since I was spending a lot of time on Bluesky—where most of my old Twitter community ended up. I’m not sure how much longer that’s going to be a viable place, though.

As luck would have it, though, just as I’m committing to spending more time here I just learned that my server will be shutting down next month and I need to find a new Fediverse home.

Any suggestions?

@lavaeolus
so... how *do* we explain to laypeople that “AI” (which for most people now means ChatGPT and other LLMs) doesn’t do what the marketing says it does? (different, if subtly so, from “it’s not real”)

@lavaeolus
I’m thinking more informally—like “talking to family over Xmas dinner” where I can’t assign them academic reading 😉

What I often get when pointing out “the limitations, the weirdness, the brokenness” is that it’s early days and these problems will go away as the tech matures (a perspective, of course, predicated on a failure to understand the tech).

@skinnylatte
I also don’t have vivid dreams (and rarely remember dreams at all), but my most recent was a bizarre dream about waking up and finding that the operating system in my phone had been replaced while I slept.

@slothrop
actually hard to find a precise one-word term for it that isn’t thoroughly obscene

Any of my #histodons here know some good recent work on the U.S... *ahem* ‘involvement’ in Nicaragua in the 1980s?

@skinnylatte
but Singapore noodles is a wild one, because the mix of flavors in it actually feels like something that could plausibly have come out of the cultural mixing in Singapore (at least from an outsider’s perspective)

@skinnylatte
well on that front, *many* things aren’t from where their names imply—a favorite for me is “gobi Manchurian” which has AFAICT no connection with Manchuria whatsoever.

It kinda does my head in that Midwestern State University is, in fact, in Texas.

It’s even more confusing that the university is in a town called Wichita Falls.

Next up: We open a University of Saxony in rural Bavaria.

@liamvhogan
as someone who loves Fedi and LaTeX, this hurts

(but it’s not necessarily false)

@RnDanger
I am guessing that NWS was prohibited from making an app for ideological reasons.
@elaterite @ingalls

@CitizenWald @CoinOfNote
Luckily I chose an academic career so that gap shouldn’t be too huge *lolsob*

@CoinOfNote
one of my undergrad profs once said that being a humanities scholar meant having “champagne tastes on a PBR salary”

(not sure if Pabst Blue Ribbon is familiar in Aus, but it’s the kind of beer that they used to run $1 specials on at dive bars when I was younger [and still frequenting dive bars])
@CitizenWald

@CitizenWald
> In premodern society, at least the elites had good taste

Well... I dunno, man. Have you *seen* the Baroque? 😉

(though to be fair, that’s not entirely premodern)
@CoinOfNote

@philip_cardella
Honestly, I think it’s not a very accurate comparison because left-wing and right-wing dictatorships aren’t the same—not that I’d want to live under either, of course, but it’s important not to conflate them.

That said, the Democrats need to be prepared to fight dirty to defeat fascism, and if that means painting Trump—somewhat disingenuously—as being akin to left-wing dictators when talking to conservative Latine voters, then so be it.