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Powderhorn

@[email protected]

Editor and tech enthusiast

At some point, I have to admit neither is true. Let’s see …

Wage slave and vandweller.

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Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

This sounds like a problem for commercial real estate that the free market will take care of. As such, the only likely outcome is using taxpayer dollars from the working class to bail these speculative rentiers out while further consolidating ownership in the sector.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

The year is young.

Powderhorn,
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The whole article's a noncohesive mess. This piece at Flying Magazine seems to provide a better overview.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Maybe the general public is more compliant than I am, but my money for YouTube creators goes to them via Patreon. Google not knowing how to break even on a bandwidth- and storage-intensive property it's owned for more than a decade does not constitute an emergency I need to have any part in paying for.

If very recent history is any guide, this is exactly how you get people searching "YouTube alternatives uBlock." No one is saying there aren't enough ads on the site; the increasing malignancy of ads over the years is why people categorically reject whitelisting youtube.com, and "more ads" is not a solution to any user-facing problem.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

The ol' "let's make some waves ahead of our slide into irrelevance."

There's not an inherent problem with having a far-right Sunday paper. I wouldn't read it, but I'm not going to stand in the way of press freedom. There is, however, a problem with "France’s flagship Sunday newspaper" using decades of goodwill to lurch right and hope people don't notice.

This sort of shit has a larger effect than whatever content they decide to run: further confirmation that "the media" as a whole can't be trusted because "even the most respected papers" (oh, yes, it becomes plural in people's minds) are abandoning any semblance of objectivity.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

It's a little early to be piecing together the details and impact. The Post is being more cautious with their initial full story in terms of definitive statements.

But, as it stands, the hed of "Supreme Court restricts use of race in college admissions" directly conflicts with Sotomayor's dissent quote in graf 7: " ... It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits," which more closely matches the breaking-news stream hed.

I'm not saying there's no reason for concern; rather, the things to be concerned about have yet to come into specific relief.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I'm getting back into Python for unrelated reasons, and last I was using it, JSON wasn't on my radar yet.

I'm curious about the .json() method here, which seems to be exposing posts et al. for further manipulation without parsing. Is this really as simple as it appears?

Powderhorn,
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Thanks for the link! This looks like an absurdly powerful library for HTTP needs and output manipulation from the perspective of a scraping neophyte.

Powderhorn,
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Update's probably coming Tuesday, once the tractor beam is installed.

Powderhorn,
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The cynic in me sees a symbiotic relationship between Google and Reddit.

I started messing around on Reddit around 2007, but it felt like a firehose. Google's results covered what I was looking for to the extent that I didn't need a second source for most searches, and my job involved reading the AP wire, so I was decently covered on news with additional RSS feeds at home.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm noticing the pattern that most genuinely helpful information is coming from Reddit (as well as no longer being in a newsroom), so I join, and the experience is far better with subreddits (sorry, hipsters). It wasn't yet readily apparent that Reddit was not only getting better at being comprehensive, but Google was also getting worse.

In the late beforetimes, maybe 2019, Google became useful for searching Reddit and finding product information for items I already knew about. And nothing else. Even with coding questions, there are a lot of red herrings. Without Reddit results, I'd have noticed Google's search irrelevance far earlier.

Oregon Finally Legalizes Pumping Your Own Gas After 72 Years (www.thedrive.com)

Oregon’s Senate has repealed a 72-year prohibition against self-service gas, with new legislation requiring gas stations to staff half the available pumps, while allowing the rest to be self-service. The bill, responding to industry staffing shortages, also prohibits charging more for full-service than self-service, likely...

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

If you have not experienced the lines for gas at an Oregon Costco, you've really missed out. End of an era.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

If your starting assumption on the internet is that each keystroke is ephemeral, Lemmy is not the problem.

If that is not your starting assumption, this is not news.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

"It looks like you're trying to defraud people. Would you like help with that?"

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Rules make for great starting points, but consider that people are at different levels when it comes to their understanding of what news is.

Use the same titles as the article itself

Good rule unless the hed is useless or sensationalized. This likely means you have the wrong source, but now we're in the realm of editorial discretion, which is not historically the strongest skill the public at large has developed.

No blog spam, link to the source

Subjective. Doctorow's piece on enshittification was a blog post.

Political news, should go to the political community

Again, expecting people to know the difference is a big ask outside of a newsroom.

No dupes of same topic

Same URL, sure. But tick-tocks are not the same as analysis and generally garner a different sort of discussion.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

For example: a limit on authors’ statements of opinion.

What did The Economist ever do to you?

Seriously, a hard rule (zero) on that excludes that pub and would exclude almost everything, but would still be far easier to implement than drawing a subjective line for each post that satisfies no one.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

It's more nuanced than that. A tweet can be news:

[insert Twitter citation in all caps about the Big One hitting somewhere in Southern California]

But a story we're going to have enough to discuss is going to need to wait a bit.

Also, I've seen a lot of tweets with links to relevant news where the reaction before the link is the news or the link requires the context provided by the tweet to make any sense.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Is it subjective, though? Politics is what people do up until someone or a group commits an act of governance, at which point it's news. Reactions are right back to politics.

Powderhorn,
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Just woke up, read the Post's feed, then The Economist's coverage, and I can safely say I have no idea what's happening. Suffice to say, I'm not grabbing popcorn yet.

Powderhorn,
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Beau has three videos out on it already. He's really good for context on military things.

Powderhorn,
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"This is not a coup" is roughly akin to "I'm not a Nazi" ... you've brought up something outside daily norms to such an extent that you're engaging in framing.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Speculation is pointless; all one can do is keep up via nonsensationalized channels.

This is going to be one of those days I miss being in a newsroom.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I've not done a deep dive into his background, since he's clearly been in journalism for a long time with the choice of tangents he goes off on and presumed questions he addresses. I needed only one video to know he was becoming part of my daily news diet. If he does not have a military background in some way, I would be surprised.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I appreciate the background. I've worked with a lot of journalists with checkered pasts and am one myself, so that sort of thing doesn't bother me so long as he's good at predicting the things he can based on experience and data and is clear when he can't. That his politics align somewhat closely with mine makes it easier to watch, but I'm there for the analysis.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I am so happy to see Arizona finally getting its shit together.

I was born there. So many people thought they were doing some sort of self-reflection by moving there, and we were like, "So, Minnesota or Wisconsin? Oh, god, not Chicago." And then there was the enemy to the west, which was so awesome they didn't want to be there anymore.

If one lives in a neighbouring state, the only thing Californians provide is making things more expensive. That housing is expensive and you chose to leave does not mean I am somehow responsible for your efforts to double housing prices in a few years.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

No. I'm now in Texas.

Powderhorn,
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Plot twist: By way of AZ>WA>AZ>VA>OR>WA>NM>MN>WA>OR>TX.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

True, but that's been the case since before currency was invented.

Powderhorn, (edited )
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

As far as I'm concerned, we're already a failed state. The government works exclusively for the people who don't have to pay taxes on any legitimate scale. We pay for everything so they can get what they want.

Residents of my city can approve a ballot measure by an 80-20 margin, and the state will introduce a law making whatever four out of five voters approved illegal. In the most recent case, we got a bit of a reprieve only because GOP lawmakers were too lazy to squeeze a vote in the House in on the final day of the session.

Just because your city isn't facing this doesn't mean you're remotely living in a functioning representative republic.

W's 2004 win is the only election since 1988 where the GOP nominee won the popular vote, and 2004 is an outlier because of the post-9/11 rally-'round-the-flag environment the election took place in (Remember when people utterly ignorant of the cut-and-paste Soviet experience thought invading Afghanistan was actually a good idea?), and said reelection was of someone who lost the popular vote the first time.

If you think one billionaire funding dirty politics is worthy of so much as an eyebrow raise, you haven't been paying attention.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Holy shit! This is amazing! But how will I ever know what's REALLY IMPORTANT without ALL CAPS and a shitton of BANGS?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Powderhorn,
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Unless it's pointing to a red circle.

Powderhorn,
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What the fuck is wrong with people?

How much time do you have for an answer?

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

We're pretty much in the "find out" phase at this point. It's not pointless to make an effort to improve the world, but the reality is more and more people are so focused on trying to survive that there's no energy left.

I turn 44 next month, and the most purchasing power I've had was on the first day of my first job a month after 9/11. Newspaper editing was in retrospect a poor industry to go into, but what we faced starting 15 years ago is now what everybody's facing: the industries willing to pay for experience are niche, those jobs are only available if you met the right people in college, and everyone else is expected to smile and pay more than half their wages to housing.

I know every generation thinks they have things uniquely bad, but for those younger than me, the '80s and '90s were an era where people still bought a house to live in, not as a way to make money in three years. Starter homes were still being built. That's what we were told to expect. Work your ass off in your 20s and 30s, fix your housing costs and enjoy the income experience nets you.

It's a farce. My annual raise this year vis-a-vis my rent increase has left me with a singularly shitty choice: food or rent. No, I shouldn't have to get a roommate decades into my career. No, I shouldn't need a side hustle. Those are the options people immediately jump to, which comes with a starting proposition of: you don't deserve the basics your landlord did.

Fuck that. I'm not renewing my apartment lease. I'll find a vehicle I can live in and deal with the hassles of that instead of the first $20K a year I make after taxes and after insurance going to someone who got into the property market while it was about places to live instead of gambling.

I relay all this because the answer I found is not participating in the parts of society that will never benefit me. The only way I've found to lessen the existential dread is to question more and more assumptions that were fed to me growing up.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I've been sober for a bit over a year. The only thing that's really changed is I'm now cognizant of how fucked I am at all times.

But I appreciate your reply and thoughts, and no need to apologize for taking a few hours to respond on a website.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I was only a mod briefly (basically created it as a honeypot for mods I thought would be good), but given my actual career, if I were 10 to 15 years (or even more) into it and faced with this bullshit, it might be worth riding it out and then watching it die. External force saying it's time to move on.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

The mod’s post also announced a vast number of changes to the subreddit’s rules that hew more closely to Reddit’s general requirements, while also undoing many of the norms and rule tweaks that were in place to improve the quality of content. The changes include no longer requiring users to do basic research and lowering the standard for what the subreddit counts as spam. Reddit has its reopened community, but at what cost?

Looks like Reddit's cunning plan is to compete with Quora.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I believe it! I'm older than I've ever been myself.

Powderhorn,
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Putting my nerd hat on, I could see there being some sort of equilibrium on a large enough timeline that we vacillate between above and below, populationwise. Population itself becomes the overarching economic cycle as we swing between periods of rampant capitalism and whatever replaces it. It does not appear we would learn the first time.

This is, of course, all assuming we don't roast or blow ourselves up first.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

The only way to make the world a better place is to gut the government agencies that hold businesses back from their true potential!

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Great way to ensure someone builds a habit of using your site and monetizing them after a slow drip.

Powderhorn,
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Homer warned against letting your wife set up an OnlyFans.

Powderhorn,
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I figured the context provided that. 🙂

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I've had the luxury of only seeing what hasn't been removed by mods here, and I've reset my baseline for Beehaw comments accordingly. I can hit people over the head with satire if need be, but it's neither as effective nor fun as being subtle.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

That's an exotic synonym for "dank."

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Learning the truth about Nestle made finding out about Santa seem tame.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I looked at my clothes and said Eddie Bauer and then came up with a wildly embellished tale of how I grew up with their sleeping bags in my closet, and now they're the only jacket I'll buy because they make quality products. I don't know ... I did well enough through the blind rage to get the job.

Turned out my new boss' background was in journalism, so what I thought was a liability was actually an asset. The job wasn't terrible. I hated coming up with flowery descriptions of pedestrian English muffins and exhausted any and all citrus and citrus-adjacent puns known to man. And then we lost the contract less than a year later.

I found out about that the day I got back from hauling a truck from New Mexico to get my stuff out of storage.

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