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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Yup. For minor issues, first aid is all that is needed; you don’t need to see a doctor for a minor cut, as long as the first aid ensures it’s not infected. But for larger things, secondary aid is what provides more long-term recovery.

    If someone dislocates a shoulder, first aid is putting it in a sling and bracing it against the body, so it doesn’t get worse (for instance, the tendons and ligaments in the shoulder joint can tear) before they can get to a hospital.

    If someone is massively bleeding, first aid is stopping the bleeding to keep them alive until they can get rescued.



  • Yeah, toxins are often the bigger risk when dealing with bacterial or fungal issues.

    For instance, botulism is caused by the toxin produced by botulinum bacteria. The toxin is a paralytic. The bacteria itself can typically be dealt with by the immune system, but the toxin wreaks havoc on the nervous system.

    That’s also why you should never feed honey to babies; botulinum is commonly found in honey. Babies’ immune systems aren’t equipped to deal with the botulinum bacteria, which allows it to bloom and start producing the toxin after they ingest it. This causes something called Floppy Baby Syndrome, from the baby being paralyzed by botulism toxin.





  • Yeah, this can be an unpopular opinion on Lemmy, because there’s a giant Linux circlejerk. But the unfortunate reality is that changing to Linux does have some major stumbling blocks. The “switching is so easy, just do it” crowd totally glosses over it, but that’s kind of rhetoric doesn’t help long term adoption. Because if some new user has only heard “switching is so easy” and immediately runs into issues, they’ll be more likely to go “well if it’s super easy and I can’t figure it out, I guess it’s just not for me” and abandon things.

    There’s also a very vocal (and toxic) part of the Linux community that basically just screams “RTFM” at every newbie question. New users shouldn’t be expected to dig into a 350 page technical document just to learn the basics of their new OS.



  • My current tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory is that’s exactly what they’re banking on. They’ll draw the trial out until right before the midterm election… Then Trump will use the resulting riots to declare martial law and cancel the upcoming midterms, so he doesn’t lose control of congress. After he has cancelled the election, he’ll make a final push to clean house, and will start ousting liberal congress members by accusing them of being riot conspirators.

    The Mangione Riots will be Trump’s Reichstag Fire.



  • The fact that you don’t need to actually supply any real CSAM to the training material is the reasoning being offered for supporting AI CSAM. It’s gross, but it’s also hard to argue with.

    Yeah, this is basically the crux of the issue. When you get into the weeds and start looking at more than just surface-level “but it needs CSAM to make CSAM” misconception, arguments against it basically boil down to “but it’s icky.” Which… Yeah. It is. But should something being icky automatically make it illegal, even if there are no victims?

    I hate to make the comparison (for a variety of reasons) but until fairly recently homosexuality was psychologically classed as a form of destructive/dangerous kink. Largely because straight people had the same “but it’s icky” response whenever it got brought up. And we have tried to move away from that as time has passed, because we have recognized that being gay is not just a kink, it’s not just a choice, and it’s not inherently dangerous or harmful.

    To contrast that, pedophilia has remained stigmatized. Because even if it passed the first two “it’s not just a kink/choice” tests, it still failed the “it’s not harmful” test. Consuming CSAM was inherently harmful, and always had a victim. There was no ethical way to view CSAM. But now with AI, it can actually begin passing that third test as well.

    I don’t know how I feel about it, myself. The idea of “ethically-sourced” CSAM doesn’t exactly sit right with me, but if it’s possible to make it in a truly victimless manner, then I find it hard to argue outright banning something just because I don’t like it.

    This is really the biggest hurdle. To be clear, I’m not arguing that being an active pedo should be decriminalized. But it is worth examining whether we’re basing criminality purely off of the instinctual “but it’s icky” response that the public has when it gets discussed. And is that response enough of a justification for making/keeping it illegal? And if your answer to that was “yes”, what if it could help pedos avoid consuming real CSAM, and therefore reduce the number of future victims? If it could legitimately help reduce the number of victims but you still want to criminalize it, then you are not actually focused on reducing harm; You’re focused on feeling righteous instead. The biggest issue right now is that harm reduction is very hard to study, because it is such a taboo topic. Even finding subjects to self-report is difficult or impossible. So we’ll have no idea what kinds of impacts on CSAM consumption (positive or negative) AI will realistically have until after it is widely available.





  • Do yourself a favor and soak them in some vinegar water after you get them home. About a 1:4 mixture of white vinegar to water. The acidity will kill the mold spores that cause the berries to go bad, and it won’t be strong enough to affect the taste after you rinse them.

    I usually just dump about a cup of vinegar into a mixing bowl and top it off with water when I’m getting groceries in. First thing I do is drop the berries in to soak. Then I put away all of my groceries, which gives the berries a few minutes to soak. Finally, I dump the bowl and give the berries a quick rinse with the sink sprayer.

    I haven’t had strawberries go moldy since I started doing it. If I forget about them in the fridge for a week or two, they’ll simply dry out instead.


  • It will only take two years if people actually fucking vote in the midterms. But midterm turnout is historically… Well… Complete dogshit. And republicans are statistically more likely to vote in midterms.

    That’s why Trump is moving so fast to try and secure things; He doesn’t truly have four years to cement himself as god-emperor. He only has two before he potentially loses his majority in congress. So he has to be crowned before then.

    But even with that being said, I don’t have high hopes. As I said before, republicans are more likely to vote in midterms. Maybe Trump’s antics will be enough to get some blue voters off of their asses. But at this point, I’m not holding my breath.




  • If you already have a Plex instance running, Prologue is an app that turns it into an audiobook host as well. Plex doesn’t natively support audiobook metadata like chapters, but Prologue simply uses Plex’s remote access to reach the files.

    All you do is throw the .m4b audiobook files into a music library on Plex, sign into your Plex account on Prologue, and Prologue handles all of the metadata for the audiobooks instead of using Plex’s built-in music player.

    I mention this because I had massive issues trying to get ABS to work on my setup. It simply refused to read or write any data from my NAS. After a day or two of throwing myself at it to no avail, I found Prologue and haven’t looked back. I already had Plex running for some friends and family, so setting up the music library was as easy as dropping the audiobooks into a folder.