Ask Lemmy

A year ago my cat was living on the street. Today she has enough passive income to hire her own chef and masseuse. Follow her for more advice.

Don't know nifty I'd be qualified, but the Fediverse and self hosting

"So you're probably wondering why I'm pissing on the floor".

Gathered friends. We come here once again to recite the tale of Bionicle.

And then I keep the audience busy for 12 hours.

How I sold everything and started traveling the world full time.

I'll talk about how just purely spewing bullshit about big companies, taking them to court for no reason, wasting their time, filling their "unlimited plan" s with garbage, chaotic compliance - is one way to stick it.

I'd either extrapolate on the importance of self negativity and it's how it's been lost in modern culture, or the tragedy that is the loss of teaching civics in schools.

Or maybe I'd just geek out on Laplace transforms and how they allow you to solve complex non-linear systems as if they're DC circuits.

Or how recreational access to psychedelics are just as important as therapeutic use.

"Quit buying shit, take more walks in the woods, and read more."

How the dark fleet works and why it is merely a symptom of a broken consumer system.

(I actually spoke on the first part of that last Tuesday.)

Aphantasia, it blows someone's mind every time.

"The art of improvising a seminar while nude"

How insurance actually works, so dipshits can understand the real value of a single national health care plan.

At the beginning of my talk, I would have everyone turn off their phones and any other electronics. Then for the rest of the 15 minutes, I would have us all just sit around and veg out.

No talking, no distractions, no demands. Just day dream about whatever. You can take a nap if you like. You probably need one if you do.

And then my "talk" would end with "Let's try this every day."

random unexplained teleportation of individuals.

Optimal crop tables in Stardew Valley.

The title of my talk is “Innovation as Rebellion against Complexity.”

I’ll start with my experience studying and teaching music history, and demonstrate how every major musical stylistic shift over the past 1500 years or so can be seen as a revolt against excessive complexity developing in the previous style. One example would be the shift from thick, complex polyphony that had become the norm in late Renaissance music, to the relatively simple and much-easier-on-the-ears style of early homophonic music. But I’d actually touch on all periods of music history.

I’d then challenge my audience to ask themselves and each other if this trend can be seen in other fields as well. Do we see such innovative rebellions in, say, art? Or literature? Architecture? The sciences? And what about technology…

…and are we on the cusp of a new rebellion against the massively complex technology that’s thrust upon us today? What does that look like? What innovations await us at the conclusion of that revolution?

I mean I’d be winging the fuck out of it with only a few seconds to prep but wouldn’t that be great to talk about?

You can see I’ve done a lot of thinking about this lol.

The importance of a social safety system and a good (non employer related) healthcare system in order to have a productive workforce and society, and why everyone should have access to good healthcare, food, and stable, clean, pest free housing, regardless of their physical or mental ability to work.

The way we treat our sick, injured, disabled and elderly is atrocious and we should all be ashamed that we let this happen.

I work in EMS and the amount of people I've seen living in the most horrific conditions simply because they got sick or injured and are now permanently disabled absolutely haunts me. I've gone into places that I wouldn't even let an animal exist in and there are people living in absolute squalor. They aren't "lazy" or "looking for handouts" or any other shitty thing that people like to call them to other them, many of them simply had the misfortune to get sick or injured and not have a safety net in place. If you get disabled and aren't lucky enough to have people around you to help support you or haven't been rich enough to be putting money away to live off of for the rest of your life, you are fucked. I have no one in my life and I live paycheck to paycheck on a strict budget, and I see these people and know their life will be my future if I get sick or injured.

Some of them were always going to be permanently disabled, and some of them could have recovered and lived productive lives except they couldn't access the care they needed because of cost and now they're living in shitty poverty situations, still unable to access what they need, and it's too late to recover.

I could go on for a long time about this, and I could add in many other subtopics.

On a slightly related note, I don't in any way shape or form believe that a person's life or value should be linked to the workforce or their ability to labor and I think that's a disgusting concept, but I could also frame a solid argument along those lines and maybe win over some hardcore capitalists who maybe wouldn't give a shit about people otherwise. "Hey those people you don't care about, if you invest some money to ensure they are as healthy as possible and are happy, they'll get back to work creating profit for the company and will be way more productive than if they are sick and unhealthy, which will be way better than spending money paying out disability for the rest of their life."

How TED talks are stupid bullshit and the audience that consumes them are all vapid idiots.

the entire thing is a self-congratulatory circle jerk for rich douchebags to listen to pseudo experts, from which nothing of substance or merit comes other than everyone feeling very intelligent and that the answers to problems are So Simple.

I remember seeing my first one in like 2007 and thinking what is this crap. They are intellectual candy, the equivalent of pop science and pop psycho books that are NYT bestsellers that people read and think they are geniuses because the read it, when a lot of the information and arguments contained are massively simplified and generalized and to be at odds with the complex reality of the topic.

"Punishment is the wrong way: Why Rehabilitation will always win out, and how it ties in with poverty, crime and mental health"

I could easily talk half an hour about that thematic complex without getting boring and making a pretty good argument why throwing a substantial portion of your population in jail is just slavery in disguise.

I rant about the grasshoppers eating the lettuce in my garden box

Crash course on how to have a panic attack/nervous breakdown during a live broadcast

Edit: uh oh, my stalker null@piefed.nullspace.lol is back

Why I'm Not Wearing Any Pants (the starter) followed by Furry BDSM: Roleplay Online and IRL, from Vanilla to CNC. I'm your host, Midnight Wolf.

(I'm in the bathroom and the title said "right now" so fuck it, I'll do it live!)

The reality of life-saving measures in health care, and why a having a DNR (that isn’t a surprise to your loved ones) is so important.

About https://keepandroidopen.org/

It’d be a bit disorganised but I’d talk about how recipes are not standalone processes but transferable blueprints for how to cook certain ingredients.

Probably the experience and implications of non-consensual teleportation. It would definitely be the most notable thing I'd done in my life thusfar.

I immediately panic run off stage and cry to myself in embarrassment for hours.

Tsukomogami and Patina: In Praise of Old Things

It's the concept that old mechanical things like typewriters and camera lenses (for example) all age individually. They develop their own quirks and foibles as they are used. They almost (as in Tsukomogami) develop a soul.

We are fundamentally losing that to a society that is about consumable mass-produced trash, and on a long enough timeline, it's going to mean losing a fundamental piece of who we are as a society.

How to write and test and deliver high quality software.

It's... It's what I do.

I was reading a thread where people were talking about Japanese pronouns and remembered that this is my favorite icebreaker question.

My topic is Japanese pronouns. How they differ from English, a little bit of the history, and broadly why they should make us reinspect how we construct identity and how they complicate the idea of "individualism" vs "collectivism"

I could fill 25-30 minutes easily with no preparation.