Diane wrote letters to Idaho’s governor and to Trump demanding Binod’s return. She was “disappointed” by the governor’s response – a form reply – and noted that the White House never replied

This reminds me of those videos you’d see in the early parts of the Russo-Ukrainian War, where some Russians would make some sort of appeal to Putin about some problem, as if he actually cared about some random soldiers on the frontline.

I think you can reach out via txt, just format your message to subtly acknowledge that a response is unnecessary. So, instead of wording your message normally as something that would begin a back-and-forth, word it more like an old fashioned letter, or something else where a response isn’t expected. Can talk about whatever, updates on you, your thoughts about this or that, hopes she/her family are doing better, etc etc. Then just end with an old sounding “hope this finds you well” type of thing. Just avoid non-rhetorical questions or anything that pressures her to return contact. When she’s ready, she can write you back.

Good lord, that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it… Ugh.

Yeah, this has always bugged me too. It slows down our accumulation of old content, which is one of the big draws of platforms like this. People love to go to reddit for answers to questions originally asked years ago, and they could potentially use Lemmy for that too, if our backstock got substantial enough. As a much smaller userbase, though, we kinda need every thread we can get.

Yeah, but I like to try to use it to move in a certain direction emotionally. Like, instead of pure sad, I’ll put on something sad and wistful to move a little in that direction, or sad and angry to shift a little that way, depending on my current needs.

Like, this is sad and wistful, with a touch of determination:

https://youtu.be/es9MQweZzvc

This is sad and angry:

https://youtu.be/6NXnxTNIWkc

This helps avoid wallowing in the pure sad feeling, which I don’t really like.

Five maps so far. Is someone doing this by hand, the hard way? I figured it was an AI someone programmed, but if it’s an individual or small team, big respect. Very neat project.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Seemed to me that pilot could’ve nailed him any time he wanted. Dude wasn’t exactly moving like Batman out there. If you’re really trying to get him, it’s not like you lose anything if you actually try to hit him and he ducks, you just come back around. No actual benefit to toying with him.

Getting him to surrender is a benefit though. Saves a drone, and gets you a prisoner you can milk for intelligence and maybe swap in the future. Prisoners are an asset, and it is beneficial to collect them when possible.

Yeeesh. I get the impression the drone operator really, really wants this guy to just surrender so he doesn’t have to waste the drone on him, but the guy just won’t…

Gave him every opportunity, while the guy is alone, and just looks lost, confused and hungry.

Given the distance required, what kind of economic payoff could be possible from such an expensive project? It’s not like overland would be a cheaper transport option than Pacific shipping routes or anything. It’s not just the Bering Strait being the problem with connecting the two after all, but the fact that there’s nothing in NE Siberia or NW Alaska to bother connecting together. Are we making it for the polar bears maybe? Or are people going to drive the thousands of miles from Juneau to Vladivostok to sightsee?

Big yellow flame probably indicates its not getting enough air mixing with the fuel for complete combustion. I’m guessing something got clogged up with soot, or possibly rust. Look around at all the little holes the gas comes out of, see if any of them are clogged up. If you find some, something like a safety pin can probably get them opened up.

I wouldn’t. Have to remember that a core component of trolling is making things up, so you should not take for granted that any mental illness is actually present. Imagine the troll as a 13 year old, smirking or giggling to themselves while they type. That’s the spirit these things are done in.

Anyway, bringing mental illness into it just insults people with actual mental illness, who generally behave much more maturely.

If you want to actually engage in any sort of positive way with a troll, you need to stoop to their level and draw out more engagement from them, without making it fun. We used to call this counter-trolling. Trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls … ad infinitum. This eats up some of their energy without giving them anything in return, as the time they spend engaging with you is time they can’t spend trolling other people, who might feed them more.

Or save yourself the time and just block and move on. That’s definitely the most mature thing to do.

The worst thing you can do is a short engagement that results in you acting like you’ve gotten upset and then disengaging. This is feeding them more things to giggle about. If you engage, you need to be willing to stay in it for as long as it takes to deprive them of that satisfaction. This can go for multiple days. I don’t really recommend it unless you also find the bantering process amusing.

5/10 interestingness gets 0 seconds of watch time for me, there’s just too much quality content produced in my topics of interest every day for me to keep up with. I already have to miss some 7/10 projects just because there’s only so much free time in a day.

Regarding the time question, for something that barely crosses the “okay I’ll watch it” threshold, 10-15 minutes is probably what I’ll give it. It can be longer than that, I’ll just skip through parts of the video for the gist to decide if I want to give it more time.

Worth noting though, that for extremely interesting content, a 15 minute duration actually dissuades me from watching it, as I doubt there’s enough time to cover much of anything at a decent level in that little an amount of time. So like, for a neat history vid on a topic I’d like to hear more about, if it’s 30 minutes or less then I’m less likely to give it a chance, unless it’s covering something super narrow where there wouldn’t be as much to talk about. But if you’re going to cover a major historical event, you better be at least a half hour. There are some exceptions to this, Indy Nidell(sp?) is a good example, but it’s my general rule.

Yes, absolutely.

I’d probably take something like 10% of it and go ahead and enjoy spending that, you can get some cool stuff for 1.5k that you can enjoy right now.

How you want to invest the bulk of it depends on your plans, but don’t forget that things like a reliable car or a computer you might need for future schooling are also “investments” of sorts into your future.

I’m not so knowledgeable about all the different sorts of investments out there, so maybe someone else can help out there. Knowing what your medium-long term goals are will help them fine-tune their advice though. Are you planning on any sort of post-secondary education or job training?

I find it useful to remember that entertainment products are designed to be both understandable and fun, where real life was not designed to be understandable and fun.

With that in mind, no, I would not.

Yeah, every once in awhile I check my starred pages just to see what random things got fat fingered onto it. It’s mildly amusing.

200 yards would be a pretty normal deer hunting shot, remember that people use scopes. Something actually impressive would be more like a mile. (1760 yards)

Yeah, I won’t say it’s impossible or anything. I just think there’s other reasonable explanations too.

Personally I just avoid mentioning China when I’m over there. lol It’s easier to keep everything civil if you avoid naming names, and China is a particularly sore spot for them. You also can’t forget that free speech is not a foundational part of their ideology like it is ours. They’re more about seizing the means of production than the free contesting of ideas.

It does feel a little like walking on eggshells.

I kinda doubt it. Let’s not forget this is a global community, and Marxism-Leninism has different levels of support in different parts of the world.

If this was a state-funded project, I think the development would have gone a lot more swiftly, and the leads would be even more puritanical in pushing their beliefs. As it is, I’ve argued pretty extensively from a liberal perspective on .ml before, even personally with dessalines, and while they don’t exactly love me over there, I’m careful to respect their rules and they haven’t banned me.

I think they really are just idealistic supporters of communism, mostly from places where that’s a little more common.

When the Generative Agents system was evaluated for how “believably human” the agents acted, researchers found the AI versions scored higher than actual human actors.

That’s a neat finding. I feel like there’s a lot to unpack there around how our expectations are formed.