Not spam per se, but there does seem to be a sharp uptick in brand new accounts making tons of posts and getting banned. It seems every day I see numerous posts made by users that are already banned by whatever community they posted in (by the time I see them.) Mods must be working overtime.

I was thinking about this just the other day. There’s a popular market in my home state, one I’ve been going to since childhood. It’s a single store, not a chain, and it’s almost always packed. I’ve never seen nor heard a single ad for it in my life. Naturally, that makes me like the place even more.

Some people like to say that nobody’s immune to advertising. Maybe so, but there are definitely some of us who aren’t as affected by it. When most ads you see are for things you’d never buy anyway, all the crap kind of blends together.

For me, no amount of fast food ads, car ads, vacation ads, etc. are going to have any meaningful effect. I already don’t buy fast food, don’t purchase new cars (and if I’m shopping used, there are certain criteria that matter far more than a brand or dealership), and am way too poor to take a vacation. Yet, the ads persist.

Even if I weren’t muting and skipping them at every chance, you can’t get blood from a stone. End stage capitalism, man. Can’t spend money I don’t have!

Oooh, so that’s how ICE agents are born. Dripped from a German gargoyle’s ass. It all makes sense now.

I didn’t expect to start my day with a potato-rorschach test.

Somebody else already said they see poodles, and now I can’t unsee it. So in order to answer your question more organically, I decided to flip the image upside down and try again.

This is a fun game. What does everyone else see?

Or like one of those people who is two people genetically.

Chimeras are fascinating.

You’re absolutely right, too. A member of my polycule is in a triad that co-parents a child. The little girl has two moms and a dad, and that is the only life she’s ever known. I’d be jealous of their situation if they weren’t living in Florida.

Looking at the examples on the second link, it feels creepy. Granted, I’m not a Grindr user; I’m not even male. If there are gay guys interested in having AI in their app, more power to them. But as a human, I don’t like the idea of an app trying to decide what I like about people instead of letting me put in my preferences for myself. Imagine realizing that you’ve gotten yourself into a bad pattern of dating people who are toxic for you and the app decides, “Hey, since you liked talking to people who have traits of X, Y, and Z, we’re going to suggest more people like that!”

Or, shockingly, you’re into people of diverse stripes, and find the most satisfying experiences to be novel ones. Well, too bad, the AI’s going to assume your past patterns should inform your future patterns, so prepare to be assigned to a niche you can’t opt out of.

“Over the course of a year, You [sic] and Eli had an on-again, off-again conversation that swung between flirty, honest, awkward, and quietly intimate.” Wow, thanks for the creepy stalking of my personal conversations, that totally makes me feel more comfortable. Imagine all those chats culminated in a bad time with Eli and that’s why you stopped talking to him, but the app keeps suggesting that since you had some fun times earlier on, that means you should totally try again. An app doing the work of a pushy ex without being told to. Or maybe your interactions went the other way, and you and Eli now text and meet-up regularly in the real world. But the app doesn’t know that, so it keeps telling you to reach out through their own platform.

Either way, I’m a grown adult capable of identifying my own preferences and making my own dating decisions. It makes me uncomfortable to imagine an AI trying to make those calls for me. Although I’m not their target audience, I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of Grindr users feel similarly.

Fascinating! I’ve seen massive groups of ants before, and I’ve watched them because it’s just so cool to see. I never got down and tried to smell them, though.

Now your comment has me thinking of my dad. He has an uncanny sense of smell far beyond what I have. There are some flowers I can’t smell unless I bend close to them, but which he can smell from across a field. I’ll have to check with him and see if he can smell ants.

I learned about the Photic Sneeze Reflex when discussing the frustration of cancelled sneezes (you know, when you feel one coming on, but then it just doesn’t happen and it leaves you feeling weird.) He told me, “When that happens, I just look at a light.” I had no idea what he meant. Meanwhile, he thought it was normal for everyone. We both learned something that day.

That’s weird, because the videos I watch are 1-2 hours long (or longer.) Informational deep dives are practically the opposite of Tik Tok.

I’m sitting here pondering how it is that there’s so much overlap between coders and femininity. Is there a connection between the habits of coders and a desire for comfortable stockings? Am I just seeing a small sample size (due to this being Lemmy)?

Or, perhaps, is it simply the spirit of our coding foremothers calling coders back to their ancestral roots?

Either way, carry on, you lovely people. Rock those socks!

Care to share what you read? I’m curious, too.

It could be the same smell, maybe just a different concentration of formic acid.

And no, I can’t smell anything from dead or distressed ants. I’ve never smelled anything from an ant, either dead or alive. It’s definitely not an “everyone can smell that” thing.

Edit: I just read this comment which says it’s not formic acid. Though they don’t cite any sources (yet), so I don’t really know.

I was watching “deep dives” on Youtube yesterday and was getting confused by all the censoring. Even the word “sex” was censored, and like… what? Not just SA (which I understand censoring), but sex itself? In a video ostensibly designed for an adult (or at least teenage) audience?

It’s hard to follow a story when words get censored that you don’t expect to get censored. In my mind I think something much worse is being said, and have to pause and rewind to ensure I understood correctly. The best part is, the creator wasn’t even from the US, land of the Puritans. I expect Europeans not to be afraid of sex, but I guess this is what Youtube is doing to the world?

I’m with you. Can’t smell ants, but cilantro is soapy.

There are lots of little genetic quirks out there. I experience Arnold’s Reflex, that is, I cough when I stick a cotton swab in my left ear canal. (Only my left. My right doesn’t react.) There’s also the Photic Sneeze Reflex, which is where you sneeze when looking at light. I don’t have that, but around 35% of the population does.

I’m sure there are countless more little things like this that people just haven’t talked about/gathered enough data on yet.

I’ve known multiple dogs that put items in a spot, then brushed their noses over them, as if burying them with invisible dirt.

However, I figure that’s an instinctual behavior, similar to digging/burying food. Not evidence of imagination. Just evidence of dogs interacting with invisible objects.

It’s astounding, time is fleeting

Could you go back in time and tell my mom that?

Getting teased at school by bullies, then coming home to get teased by my mom was very confusing for me as a child. It didn’t help that when I got upset, she just told me I had to “learn to laugh at myself.” As if it’s my problem that her words were the same as what bullies said to me.

I interpreted it the same way. The “body language” of the one in the back, leaning backwards and to the side, combined with the text context, makes me think they’re trying to subtly signal to the parent, “Say no, say no, say no.” It’s easy to imagine them shaking their head side-to-side, while out of view of the asker.

But that’s the funny thing about art - it can be interpreted in different ways. I don’t see someone eagerly awaiting a “yes,” but maybe some people do?

The Pareto Principle - 20% of the users do 80% of the things