• 95 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • In a recent series of experiments, we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X. After a month, they reported feeling 23% less animosity towards other political groups. In fact, their experience was so positive that nearly half the people declined to refollow those hostile accounts after the study was over. And those who maintain their healthier newsfeed reported less animosity a full 11 months after the study.

    Twitter got a lot better when I unfollowed the peeps whose tweets I hated. But it also got boring, so I stopped using it (this was loooong before Trump, Elon, etc).

    There’s probably a lesson there.






  • My kids are slightly older. We didn’t get a baby box, or a mattress.

    I think we kept the stuff our kids were swaddled in when they left, and got an extra blanket or two. There may have been a day’s worth of diapers. I believe we got pamphlets on swaddling, feeding, and important dates (check ups, immunizations, etc).

    I wasn’t expecting anything, so the blankets and diapers were nice, but it didn’t feel comprehensive.

    The nurse who was supposed to visit us at home after a few weeks didn’t make an appointment or show up. That still makes me grumpy.

    This was in Ottawa.



  • I dunno, the following looks suspiciously like Gregor “I don’t want home prices to go down” Robertson is gonna declare victory with just 8 urban wards updated:

    In March, then-federal housing minister Nate Erskine-Smith warned Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow that any deviation from a citywide policy permitting sixplexes would result in 25 per cent less federal funding, …

    Gregor Robertson, Canada’s new housing minister, has not indicated whether he will follow his predecessor’s lead. In a statement to CBC News on Thursday, a spokesperson said the federal government is working with Toronto to meet its sixplex goals.

    “The Housing Accelerator Fund rewards ambitious housing initiatives from local governments, with a focus on reducing bureaucracy, zoning restrictions, and other red tape. We are working closely with the city of Toronto to meet these goals and remain ready to work with all levels of governments to tackle the housing crisis,” said spokesperson Mohammad Hussain.



  • If I were an evil fascist I would fill this place with bots to keep the lefties arguing with the void instead of going outside for direct action.

    Sadly, there aren’t enough people here to make that worthwhile.

    Other than that, curious programmers watching their creations interact in the wild?

    Even with LLMs, getting appropriate responses is a bit of an effort. So is integrating with Lemmy. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that we’re really lazy, and it’s unlikely that there’s a significant volume of bot coders here.

    Just Google the number of Lemmy bots. There are disappointingly few.






  • If there’s stuff you enjoy, and it’s healthy for you to enjoy (eg, you feel more connected, and are learning about stuff that interests you) then you should keep doing it.

    I have constructed this “superior” all different character of mine only to find I just don’t have the personality irl to back up the character I’ve created and was longing to have something to be relatable to people.

    Who does the character benefit? If it isn’t you, or the benefit of being superior is outweighed by the cost of being different, then you should stop.