I think the person you’re replying to is arguing that whilst exercise can have myriad health benefits, that when it comes to weight loss, it’s more practical to focus on one’s diet. I also hold that view, and it seems to be the consensus amongst weight loss specialists. You can’t outrun a bad diet when the difficulty of burning calories is so much higher than the ease of consuming calories. If someone who wanted to lose weight was going to focus on either changing their diet, or increasing their activity level, then diet is the sensible choice.

Of course, framing it like that is a bit of a false dichotomy, because the health benefits associated with exercise are so significant that I’ve seen some research that suggests it may be healthier to be fat and fit than to be at a healthy weight and unfit/sedentary. Personally, I struggled with disordered eating for many years, but I was finally able to lose weight in a healthy way after I started powerlifting. The impact was mostly one of morale: whilst the increased muscle mass and activity level increased the number of maintenance calories I needed, it wasn’t too huge of an impact when compared to how much I was eating before. What actually changed was how I felt about my body, and how I thought about food, as well as my overall energy levels.

I’ve also seen that kind of homophobia amongst straight girls and women, though it manifests somewhat differently. The most uncomfortable thing about same-sex changing rooms as a person who experiences same-sex attraction isn’t actually the attraction (because checking out people in that context would be weird, regardless of gender or sexuality), but people who treat you like a predator because you’re queer.

For me, I would say that the magnitude of my attraction is roughly 50/50, but qualitatively, the attraction I feel towards a man is distinct from what I feel towards women.

A significant aspect that plays a role is also how I present to the world. From my appearance, most people would conclude that I am LGBTQ, and that usually means assuming I’m gay. This is useful because any bisexual’s dating pool is biased towards opposite sex partners; if I want to find gay or bisexual (or pansexual or asexual) women to date, it’s strategically useful to wear my sexuality on my sleeve, so to speak. This has the helpful side effects of filtering out the kind of straight asshole who says “why would you shave your hair like that? You might get more male attention if you made yourself look pretty”

Sexuality is messy. The attraction I feel is pretty equal. How the world perceives me is more gay than straight (because the world likes to pretend that bisexuality doesn’t exist, and then act like I’m changing my mind when I “switch from being gay to straight” or vice versa (/facepalm). In terms of who I actually date or hook up with, the balance is probably skewed towards men. These three components (attraction, outward identification/presentation and behaviour) make sexuality complex, especially for bisexual people; I would wager that there are many people who identify as straight and have had no same sex relationships, but who experience some level of same-sex attraction. It also gets more complex when one considers that many people experience sexual attraction and romantic attraction differently. For example, I have a friend who is asexual, but homoromantic.

You might find it interesting to read about the Kinsey scale, which looks at sexuality as a spectrum, with exclusively [homosexual/heterosexual] on the extreme ends of the scale, and degrees of bisexuality between them.

They get more human written text, which is one of the most powerful things in their doomed attempt to forestall model collapse

I keep a small list titled “illegal heroes”, and these hackers are on that list. It’s bullshit that they’re being hounded like this.

I love this dude’s work. He’s so chaotic, and it makes me happy to see someone thriving by leaning in their ADHD

In school, when I was 13, one of my friends was “dating” a 19 year old. I vividly remember how cool we all thought this was. Reflecting on it makes me feel sick.

Which is your project?

As an aside, your comment has hit me in a surprisingly profound way. I think it’s because it can be too easy to forget about the people behind the software we use. This is especially the case with proprietary software from big companies, but it can also happen with open source or smaller projects from individual devs. I think that it arises in part from thinking about software as a product, which neglects the messy relationality of how things are actually made, maintained and used.

It’s sweet to see such a serendipitous exchange of appreciation. It makes the world feel smaller, but in a good way.

I ended up wading into the world of WINE prefixes when I tried to mod some older games. I got it working in the end, but it sure made me grateful for how easy I have it with Proton

I share your enthusiasm. I wanted to learn Linux because so much scientific computing in my field relies on it, but when I dual booted, it was too easy to just retreat to Windows as the path of least resistance. I decided to fully make the switch to Linux as an attempt to force myself to learn stuff, but the big thing that held me back was nervousness about gaming.

Turns out that this fear was completely unfounded, and I have been utterly astounded at how easy gaming on Linux was. It wasn’t completely pain free, and there were a couple times that I needed to tinker somewhat, but it was no more difficult or frequent than I needed to do similar stuff on Windows.

I get what you mean about logging on feeling like home. Besides the scientific computing, a big part of what pushed me to Linux was how ambiently icked out I felt by using Windows — it didn’t feel like mine. Running Windows feels like renting a home from a landlord who doesn’t respect your boundaries and just comes in to make changes while you’re sleeping. Like, it’s not even about whether those changes are good or bad, but how weird it feels to constantly be reminded that this home is not truly yours.

“if you can accurately call it “scraping” then it’s always fair use.”

I think you make some compelling points overall, but fair use has always been more complex than this. The intent is taken into account when evaluating whether something is fair use, but so is the actual impact — “fair use” is a designation applied to the overall situation, not to any singular factors (so a stated purpose can’t be fair use)

I saw a paper a while back that argued that AI is being used as “moral crumple zones”. For example, an AI used for health insurance acts allows for the company to reject medically necessary procedures without employees incurring as much moral injury as part of that (even low level customer service reps are likely to find comfort in being able to defer to the system.). It’s an interesting concept that I’ve thought about a lot since I found it.

Ugh, Andreeson is such a creep.

Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives More Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Even More Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives All the Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives Knives

I am glad that he tried to assassinate 418, because the massive outcry that led to 418 being saved is something wholesome that I love.

Link with context for anyone unfamiliar with the context: https://save418.com/

Something that I have enjoyed recently are blogs by academics, which often have a list of other blogs that they follow. Additionally, in their individual posts, there is often a sense of them being a part of a wider conversation, due to linking to other blogs that have recently discussed an idea.

I agree that the small/slow web stuff is more useful for serendipitous discovery rather than searching for answers for particular queries (though I don’t consider that a problem with the small/slow web per se, rather with the poor ability to search for non-slop content on the modern web)

With respect to the presentation of your site, I like it! It’s quite stylish and displays well on my phone.

It’s baffling to me how customisable some fruit features can be. I know someone who works in plant genomics and cultivation and it’s really cool how they can use genomic analysis alongside selective breeding to select for traits. I imagine that imported papayas are cultivars that are easier to transport internationally.

I agree. I replied to Kris elsewhere saying this, but I am super glad to have been a part of this instance because it feels like a nice balance of being large enough to be robust and diverse, but small enough to have a distinctive culture. I don’t often interact with the communities that were on the instance, but I always enjoy seeing my peers crop up in the comments of various posts — it’s one of my favourite parts of Lemmy being federated (db0 is another example of an instance that has such a distinctive vibe that seeing it as someone’s instance is often useful metadata that affects how I parse their comment)

(speaking as a slrpnk user): Another backup communication strategy (once things are backup) might be to designate somewhere on a non-slrpnk instance as a place where people can check for updates if things go down; when I first discovered the outage, I wasn’t sure where to go to check for info/updates.

Unrelatedly, I hope that this unexpected outage isn’t causing you or other admins too much stress. Whilst the extended nature of this outage is unfortunate, I respect that you’re using this as an opportunity to migrate to a more robust solution. This kind of resilience focussed response is a key part of the solarpunk ethos, in my view.

Some people have said that such a long outage seems likely to kill an instance, but for my part, this community is worth waiting for — I have enjoyed having an account on this instance because it feels like the perfect blend of small enough to have a distinct culture and ethos, but is large enough to be robust and diverse.