aasatru

aasatru, 7 hours ago

I was paying for Kagi until recently, but they keep working on functionality I'm not interested in rather than lowering their prices. Other than that it was a fine experience, but too pricey, and the argument that that's the cost of running a search engine doesn't hold when they choose to develop all kinds of extra stuff.

I wish I liked SearXNG better, but the results are sadly not that great for me.

aasatru, 7 hours ago

I think there's a lot of us who would ideally want to avoid both Microsoft and Google, and now that Bing is having problems it's more relevant than ever. I don't really see how the comment is braggy or patronising.

That said, I'm not comfortable using Brave either. I wish Mozilla or the Internet Archive would launch a search engine. Maybe both in cooperation. Then again, it would require Mozilla to bite the hand that feeds it.

aasatru, 5 hours ago

Yeah, fair enough. I read the post more favourably, as a "at least my alternative is still working well for me", but then also being aware that every time Brave is mentioned someone jumps on and reminds everyone that the CEO is a jerk, so it saves us the time by addressing it right away.

Both interpretations are valid I guess. :)

aasatru, 8 hours ago

Is it possible that I miss out on valuable insights by immediately dismissing the opinions of anyone who refers to machine learning as AI?

Sure.

Will I stop doing it?

Sure as hell not.

aasatru, 1 day ago

Israel is withdrawing their diplomats from Norway. I guess that means random Norwegian civilians are slightly safer today than they were yesterday.

Good riddance and get fucked.

aasatru, 1 day ago

One of the agents involved has since testified that they knew they were killing the wrong man.

aasatru, 1 day ago

Spain has been rallying for this for months! They're pulling their weight in this issue.

aasatru, 1 day ago (edited 23 hours ago)

Norwegians are generally leaning pro-Palestine.

In a recent survey, 46% of Norwegians responded that they have more sympathy with Palestinians, whereas only 12% have more sympathy with Israelis. 32% responded that their sympathy with Palestinians has increased in light of recent events.

I can imagine several reasons why Norway is so different from for example Germany and France in this regard.

One is that we have a pretty well-organized civil society, including an organized Jewish community that is actively outspoken about Israeli extremism. My impression is that leading voices in the Mosaic community in Norway are frequently outspoken on the side of humanity.

Another reason is of course that we are still bitter about the collapse of the Oslo Accords. There's simply no question Israel were the ones who killed it.

Even before this, Israel might have had less goodwill in Norway following the Lillehammer affair where Mossad murdered some random waiter who was on his way home from the cinema with his pregnant wife. One of the agents involved in placing 13 bullets in Ahmed Bouchikhi has since stated that they knew they were shooting the wrong man.

More importantly however, it probably relates to the story we tell ourselves as a nation.

We're in all likelihood prouder of our war efforts than most of Europe, and certainly more than pro-Israeli countries like Germany and France. A lot of us (myself included) have family members who helped Jews flee the country following the occupation, at the risk of death penalty should they get caught.

The author of our national anthem took active part in the Dreyfus affair, among other things writing in a French newspaper that the French government was the "most shameless of any civilized people".

Other important national poets dedicated their lives to giving Jews right to statehood, wrote poems urging people to wake the fuck up to the horrors of nazism, or died bombing Berlin.

These people, among others, make up the core of what we consider Norwegian national identity. As a result the average Norwegian might be less afraid of criticizing Israel than the average German (or French), as we consider ourselves to be firmly footed on the right side of history.

Of course, history is more complicated than that. A lot of us will simply not read Hamsun, and never mind that Jews had to be allowed into the Kingdom in the first place. History is complicated, but the stories we choose to tell and the ways we choose to frame them matters a lot.

Also, Norwegians are pretty left-leaning, and we put a lot of effort promoting ourselves as a peace nation. Probably doesn't hurt either.

aasatru, 1 day ago

Yeah, the Palestinians went a long way to reach an agreement, and in the end Israel were the ones to gut it. It was pretty much an impossible compromise to reach, but if anyone had the right to be disgruntled with the Oslo Accords it would indeed have been the Palestinians.

aasatru, 7 hours ago

The vikings got a bit of a bad reputation, probably in large part because they were not too popular amongst munks in England (who were avid writers). Sure, there was raping and plundering, but not necessarily so much worse than other peoples, and there was also trade and coexistence. We had particularly close relations to Scotland, and England is hardly in the position to accuse anyone else of plundering! ;)

Fun fact about the word viking: It literally means someone from a "vik", which is contemporary Norwegian for a cove. More traditionally, it's a dwelling by the coast, which explains the many -wich-towns in northern UK: The vikings would settle, usually for salt supplies, and name the place something ending with -vik.

So a Viking is not a job description as much as someone dwelling by the sea!

aasatru, 3 days ago

Americans would do well to realize that the POTUS is not America. You are. If anything, you caused this.

aasatru, 4 days ago

This is such an incredible story. I cannot recommend it enough.

It's delightfully weird, mixed with the fact that it gets under the skin of the most repressive regime on earth. All conducted by some random Danish guy. Just amazing.

aasatru, 6 days ago

A great thing about the banners is that it's not immediately obvious to everyone that websites are trying to track their every step online. The banners are annoying, but at least it pushes the tech industry to play with open cards.

aasatru, 7 days ago

Love them! When the male has much more efficient camouflage than the female, is this because it has a greater responsibility for gathering food, while she stays in the nest more? Or is the red colour better camouflage for somewhere else outside the tree?

aasatru, 7 days ago

That's amazing! Fascinating that there's so much variation within the species yet next to none between the genders.

Thanks for the answer!

aasatru, 7 days ago

Which hinges, of course, on a free press. Not that it excuses the actions at all, but the democratic argument is sadly not entirely as straightforward as it should be in this case.

aasatru, 7 days ago

It has absolutely not, and it goes without saying (but is nevertheless worth repeating) that this is completely unacceptable. As long as you're free to demonstrate without risking your safety and the outcomes of elections matter, leaders should be chosen at the ballot.

It's an interesting question how bad the state of democracy needs to be before one is justified to stop playing by the rules. There is a breaking point somewhere, and politicians killing off scrutinizing journalists are clearly moving towards it in a dangerous way. But it is nevertheless clear that Slovakia remained far away from the breaking point of anything like this becoming necessary.

aasatru, 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

I think a good approach could be to think about how you could reach users of different platforms.

A lot of Mastodon users follow hashtags, so including relevant hashtags (#accessibility and #blind seem like good starting points) might be a good idea. Tagging groups, such as @accessibility, might also help.

I think Kbin/Mbin might be better suited for this than Lemmy, as it integrates better with other federated networks. You can follow microbloggers and boost content, which in turn makes them likely to follow you back and creates a community beyond which Lemmy community you choose to post in. Your Mastodon followers will see your posts, but it won't matter to them which community you post it in.

It's hard for content to make the jump from Lemmy to Mastodon as Lemmy does not make itself discoverable, but as soon as content reaches Mastodon users nothing stops them from interacting with it (by boosting or replying).

Sadly Kbin.social lacks sufficiently active moderation these days, so you might be better off with an mbin instance. I also have no idea how accessible Mbin is to blind users.

Edit: I over-emphasized the point about reaching a broader audience. If you want to discuss a narrow topic but you don't want most ActivityPub users to see it because you don't value their input, I guess Lemmy is as good as it gets.

aasatru, 12 days ago

If its true that you know a person by their enemies, Greta Thunberg deserves a state of herself in every city.

She's on Mastodon at @gretathunberg. Not the most active user, but not dormant either.

aasatru, 13 days ago

I appreciate your efforts!

In an ideal world it would always be possible to credit the photographer, but I guess that's sadly unrealistic.

If there's an interest for fakes I guess the could be a "Fowl Friday" or something like that every month, where fake owls are allowed/encouraged if properly tagged. I guess the value would be educational, showing people how to tell that impressive-looking wildlife photography is fake. You're an expert of this, and it's very much appreciated that you share your insights. :)

aasatru, 13 days ago

They vote in Brazilian elections. Some voted for Lula, others for Bolsonaro. The latter are directly responsible for this.

aasatru, 13 days ago

I don't care how tacky certain people think it is - I just love paintings of ships at sea.

The light in the water in this one is particularly amazing.

aasatru, 14 days ago

Well, imagine you meet a guy travelling through the US. He's wearing lederhosen, has a freaking feather in his hat, and speaks with a heavy German accent. You ask where he's from, and he says he's American/Italian, as his maternal grandfather was born in the US and his grandmother on his father's side is Italian. However, this is his first time outside of Germany, and he speaks no Italian and hardly any English.

This is what Americans tend to look like to Europeans.

aasatru, 14 days ago

I remember checking out Lemmy in December 2022, it was barely even a proof of concept. Now it's a whole ecosystem.

it's incredible how far it has gotten in a short time. And while commercial platforms will only get worse with time, open source platforms will only get better. Growth might not always be a linear process, but I'm feeling optimistic. :)