oh god no

I don’t think Lemmy supports community-wide custom theming yet, only kbin. I’d like to see that too though - I went to check the git repo and it looks like someone opened an issue for it just a couple hours ago https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3429

Hmm, I see what you’re saying - call me optimistic but I still think the fediverse will keep growing from here. I started writing a point-by-point rebuttal but it started feeling kind of silly with how theoretical this all is, so I’d just like to clarify my perspective:

Traditional social media, being led by a single body whose goal is not to make the best experience for the user, will eventually do something some group of people don’t like. It might be years until we see issues at the level of recent Twitter or Reddit stuff, but the combination of one-size-fits-all rules and aim of profit over people are a poor fit for a universal platform and make problems inevitable. If the fediverse can be a viable alternative for the average user, which I don’t think it’s a stretch to say is likely to happen after a few more years of development, mistakes made by big social media companies will send users over.

Federation means there isn’t a single point of failure; issues that would affect an entire platform are confined to an instance. If a user has a problem with their instance’s management, they only need to go to another one rather than a whole new platform with different UI, none of the same people, none of the same content. Though, tbf this is much less relevant on isolated instances like Burggit.

It’s also worth mentioning that in my personal experience, younger people in particular are slowly moving back towards a more personal and deliberately curated internet experience. Teen mental health especially is at an all time low, and while there are a multitude of contributing factors, we’re realizing that the typical doomscrolling social media experience constantly trying to feed itself to us certainly isn’t helping. I do believe we’re seeing the very beginnings of a larger cultural shift towards the small web and its philosophy - so applying this to the topic at hand, the things people value in a platform can change over time, and my impression is that the direction things are going is one that lines up with the fediverse.

I think there will always be reddit users who use it because they don’t know different, like facebook now. In my eyes Lemmy is already successful in providing cozy places to talk with like-minded folk, though in terms of pure popularity my prediction is that Lemmy and/or Kbin will be at least known by the average recreational internet user within five years, and have an active userbase, say, 25% the size of reddit’s within ten.

But who knows - maybe it’s a fad just for technical people that’ll slowly die out over the next few years, and traditional social media sites will clean up their act and bring everyone back. Only one way to find out haha. It’d be fun to look back on this a decade from now and see how close we were.

What finally sold me on the fediverse was the idea that its strength is in its stability, not its ability to quickly pick up users. It’s playing the long game; despite its own set of issues it’s much better protected against the kind of platform-killing social media company shenanigans that killed things like digg and are in the process of killing reddit and twitter. I think it’ll take a long time, but as people keep repeatedly experiencing the issues with traditional monolithic social media, a move towards more stable and open platforms is inevitable.

On a side note, it’s interesting which sort of communities migrated from reddit - the people who are fed up with Reddit enough to put the effort into learning a new platform is an odd intersection of groups.

You’re right, it does work that way - it’s why ‘a photo of an astronaut riding a horse’ is the standard demo for SD, to show that it can create things it wasn’t trained on by remixing and extrapolating elements. Even without that though, it can do things like turn a cartoon image into a realistic one (or vise versa) with img2img without necessarily needing to know what the content is at all.

Also, it’s possible to recursively train models - create a rough model, use its output as training data for a more refined model, rinse and repeat. I’ve found it works well for getting a strong and consistent face LoRA, but I imagine the same method could be used to create any sort of model without using real photos.

I really like movies! There are a lot of great ones I recognize in this thread, a lot I have yet to watch. Scott Pilgrim, Inglorious Basterds and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly are some of my favorites too. I still need to see Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell, though I don’t watch a lot of anime so my anime backlog fills up fast haha. Here are some of my favorites:

• Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: I know this is such a basic choice but I can’t help it, this movie hits me like nothing else. It’s been a year and a couple rewatches yet it can still make me cry if I think about it too hard.
• Xanadu: Modern-day Greek muses in neon and legwarmers, an animated sequence by Don Bluth, absolutely baffling interactions, Gene Kelly in roller skates, a guy jumping into a mural and arguing with Zeus, dated but visually great special effects, outrageous costumes, a soundtrack by Electric Light Orchestra… Just pure fun. Also I don’t think there’s ever been a movie this easy to pinpoint the exact year it came out.
• Summit of the Gods: Strikingly unique and gorgeous atmosphere, with subtle but powerful plot and dialogue that make it feel whole. I don’t know how it manages to wrap so much awe and intensity (with a touch of intrigue) together in a way that makes it feel as meditative as it does, but it strikes that balance perfectly and ends up as one of those movies I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching.
• Dial M for Murder: It’s a pretty simple Hitchcock thriller, what makes it stand out is the perfect execution. Not one to watch more than once or twice but I still remember how gripping it was the first time I saw it - it’s just totally engrossing.
• Tron: Legacy: Plot and characters are iffy but as a feature-length Daft Punk music video it’s amazing. The world feels so internally consistent in its otherworldliness, it completely transports you if you let it. Nothing quite like it.

Ooh, this movie looks like fun, adding it to my to-watch list!

Such good friends <3

Body-wise I’m pretty good. I haven’t been exercising as much as I’d like, been smoking and drinking a bit too much, and I haven’t been eating very healthy; but my threshold for physical discomfort is low and I’m very sensitive to feeling off, so I generally don’t take anything unhealthy too far before I start feeling too yucky to keep on that track.

Mental health is another story. It’s been a rough few years, months, weeks, days. Genetically I’m kind of fucked in that respect, but I’ll also probably be physically healthy into my 80s and 90s, so at least there’s that.

That bottom left one is so goddamn adorable

The smaller the boobs, the more concentrated the love

I think their point is that it’s hypocritical how people often mean that (‘people should be intolerant of things I think are bad’) when saying the opposite (‘intolerance is bad’). For those who do care about intolerance and do think it’s bad - certainly not no one - it’s confusing and frustrating and sad.

The discussion there makes me sad. On a practical level defederation is a reasonable inevitability, but the level of vitriol in there is neither productive nor healthy, for anyone.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Five Guys has great burgers, and being able to get exactly the toppings you want is nice. Great fries too. But of the more standard fast food places I’d also say Wendy’s.

Man, I’m right there with you WRT beauty. Mainstream beauty standards are just so far removed from what I actually find attractive, I can’t even tell when someone’s supposed to be hot. Also

Government scales poorly.

I couldn’t agree more, that’s a great way of putting it.

Looks like I’m on the same page with a lot of people here.

• How pedophilia is treated in (US) society leads to repressed, unstable people who are more likely to harm children than if it didn’t have as much stigma. Harming real kids is a hard line that should not be crossed, but as long as people can enjoy violent gory horror without becoming a serial killer, people should be able to get off on whatever fantasies they like. Same applies to any alt-sex stuff, really: incest, zoophilia.
• Reality is subjective, the only way objectivity can exist is under subjectively defined parameters. And the really controversial part of this; I think those who can’t see how made-up everything is are egotistical and/or lacking in empathy; you can’t go through life and think everything you don’t understand or don’t believe is incorrect without a very narrow view of the world.
• Sugary things are gross.
• Military service should be mandatory. Every individual needs to understand that wartime deaths aren’t numbers from a news article, that you, your friends, and your family’s lives aren’t any more special than theirs. It would also improve both military and civilian culture if every able-bodied adult from all walks of life had to learn how to coexist and work together for a year or two.
• Basically every third person AAA game made in the past decade is ruined by squishy and unresponsive controls - including games that supposedly handle well like Dark Souls. I want direct, mechanical controls, not strung-together QTEs. (MHW < MH4U)
• Mid-late 2000s/early 2010s pop is as dumb and fun as 80s pop.
• The concept of identity is extremely harmful and a detriment to society. Gender, race, and sexuality are the obvious hot-button manifestations, but also any beliefs along the lines of ‘I am a person who is x’. Be multifaceted person you are, treat others as the complex individuals who they are, don’t try to shove everything into these boxes so you can make judgements (and then complain about the subsequent cognitive dissonance). I don’t particularly agree with the communist parts, but this article does a great job at putting into words my issues with identity.