A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing

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Cake day: January 19th, 2023

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  • maegul@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhat generation are you?
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    2 days ago

    I don’t think this is correct.

    The bit you’re getting confused by, I think, is that some generations are just bigger than others. The boomers were by their name sake a big generation. Millennials are essentially boomers’ kids … and so they’re bigger than both Gen X and Gen Z.

    • Most “generational” definitions span about 15 years, sometimes more. EG, Boomers: 1946-1960
    • There are sensibly defined micro-generations typically at the borders between generations.
      • EG, “Jones Generation”: 1960-1965 … “young boomers” … they had a distinct life experience from “core boomers” not too different from that of X-Gens. Vietnam and 60s happened while they were children, Reagan was their 20s, not 40s, etc.
    • Xennials are notable here because they’re the transition between X-Gen and Millennials (late 70s to early 80s) … probably what you’re thinking of as “older millennials”. What’s interesting though is that the relevance of Xennials is that technological changes mark the generation … they’re essentially just barely young enough to count as part of the internet generations but not old young enough to be ignorant of the pre-internet times. Which just highlights that how you talk about generations depends on what you more broadly care about. In the west, arguably not too much political upheaval has occurred since WWII and its immediate consequences (basically Boomer things) … and so the generations are distinguished on smaller and probably more technological scales.





  • It was a crisis the moment that the Journal system was allowed to be built without any oversight from academia or the government itself.

    A whole class of intelligent professionals performing a public good on public funds were tricked into doing most of the work for profitable companies who then charged these same people to read their peers’ work. They were tricked by appealing to their ego and longing for prestige.

    And so now we have incessant publication/citation metrics and a tsunami of untrustworthy papers while shitty corporations rob the public funds of money that could much better spent.

    Once that system was built, it was a crisis. Not just because it exists (and naturally leads to the current situation and worse). But because it was allowed to come into existence, which speaks to an intrinsic inability to self-govern on the part of the academic community.


  • I think that immunity for explicitly delineated powers makes sense purely from a logical point of view: the constitution says the president can do a thing, therefore a law saying they can’t do that thing is either unconstitutional, or doesn’t apply to the president.

    Yea, it’s an interesting one. AFAIU, the delineated powers are basically command of the military and the power to pardon. I really don’t see how a Crime can generally be applicable to either of those. It’s not like “commanding the army” can just become a crime.

    But regulating what the army can legally do … seems like a very natural thing. I don’t know if individuals of the military in the US can be responsible under ordinary law for anything. If so, then I don’t see why that would extend to the president should they order something that’s obviously a crime. If not, then that’s that. And again, there are probably natural exceptions to carve out regarding the very nature of military action that would lead to preposterous inconsistencies if they could possible be made generally criminal … where again, it seems to me that you don’t need immunity … it’s just the nature of the power that is amenable to falling within the meaning of legislative regulation.

    Beyond all of that though … there’s the opening line of Article II:

    The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America

    WTF is “the executive power”?! I’m sure there have been attempts in the US to give it some shape … but I’d also wager it’s been left somewhat nebulous too, involving elements quite distinct from whatever powers Congress/Law can confer. Does that count as an enumerated power?

    Otherwise … yea I’m with you. The “official acts” thing seems more than wonky to me … seems downright expansive. Excluding military action and whatever “fuzzy” powers may be considered intrinsic … I’d imagine most of the executive’s powers come from legislative laws. So the body conferring power can’t constrain it to “not doing something criminal”!!!

    I’ve wondered since having a brief look at the decision that the SCOTUS is playing a game here … where they do not want Trump’s trials to affect the election and are hoping to clarify this decision and what “official” means at a later date after the election.


  • It’s reasonable to me to say you cannot sue the president for vetoing a bill, or criminally prosecute the president for commanding the military. The constitution says the president can do those things, and that the check on presidential power is congressional acts including impeachment.

    Yea I dunno … why not just have no immunity? It’s not like the whole idea of the separation of powers is to ensure power is freely exercised … it’s the opposite.

    If a president has to pause for a moment before doing something to ask their lawyer if it would be a crime … maybe that’s the point of having fucking legal system and constitution?

    Sotomayer’s dissent provided pretty good evidence (AFAICT) that the framers would have put criminal immunity into the constitution if they thought it wise … because it was a known idea at the time that had been done by some states regarding their governors. They didn’t. Cuz that’s the whole point … “no man is above the law”.

    And as for Congressional impeachment being paramount … I’m not sure that’s either necessary or even consistent with the Constitution (again, as Sotomayer’s dissent addresses).

    For example … Article 1, section 3 (emphasis mine):

    Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

    In short (AFAICT) … impeachment and general legal liability are not the same thing … and the latter totally still applies.

    Beyond all of that, the general law probably achieves everything that the majority’s decision was worried about (while they were conspicuously not worried about all of the other things that one should be when crowning a king). Civil immunity is a well established doctrine (government’s just too big and complex a thing for civil responsibility to make sense). And while I don’t know anything about it, there are similar-ish ideas around criminal responsibilities that just don’t make sense for the very nature of a governmental responsibility, war, I think, being a classic example. Sotomayer again speaks about these things.

    Overall, once you start to squint at it, the whole decision is kinda weird. To elevate the separation of powers to the point of creating literal lawlessness seems like plain “not seeing the forest for the trees”.

    The bit I wonder about, without knowing US Constitutional law/theory well at all … is whether a democratic factor has any bearing. A criminal law is created by the legislature, a democratic body. And also caries requirements for judgment by jury. So couldn’t an argument be made that the centrality of democratic power in the constitution cuts through any concerns about the separation of powers that the SCOTUS had, and enables democratically ordained law to quash concerns about whatever interference the judiciary (or legislature?) might exercise with the executive.

    I know there’s the whole “it’s not a democracy, it’s a republic” thing … but the constitution dedicates so much text to establishing the mechanisms of democracy (including the means by which the constitution itself can be altered) that it seems ridiculous to conclude that democratic power is anything but central.




  • Yea anything big and mainstream just seems super shallow.

    I’m not on top of things to compare accurately, but it was always kinda like that (and is like that here sometimes too). But whenever I’ve gone back, I’ve definitely felt like it has gotten somewhat worse. Some of that could easily be a shifting standard from spending more time on other less “mainstream” platforms though.




  • they drive away potential allies because the concept of harm reduction is anathema to their binary thinking. If you’re not ALL in, you’re the enemy.

    I can resonate with that. But I come back to … “it’s totally ok for people to create their own spaces, especially on federated social media and especially for minority groups/ideas”.

    There are likely plenty of other spaces for “potential allies” to engage and talk about veganism if they want to, or plenty they, or you, could make on their own.

    Tacitly admitting that vegans are usually antisocial zealots. “It’s right in the name!”

    Well, they’re running their own social media platform, so I’m not sure how anti-social they are.





  • Youre right about lemmy-ui, unfortunately it doesnt have enough contributors. I dont know why that is, you’d think a project written in a popular language like Typescript would easily find contributors.

    Random thoughts:

    • Is it obvious enough that one can contribute to the UI separately from the backend and that it’s a Typescript SPA style UI?
      • If not, maybe a bit of a “dev recruitment campaign” could help … let people people know and what sorts of issues could really do with new contributors lending a hand? Maybe even a bit of a “Inferno isn’t that different from all of the other SPA frameworks/libraries spiel?”
    • Is the use of Inferno as oppose to one of the big 3 React/Vue/Svelte a repellent? (perhaps a downside to the “diversity” of frontend frameworks?)
    • Are would-be UI contributors more inclined to make their own front-end or app than contribute to the default webUI?

    More generally:

    • Would a server side rendered webUI be welcome?
      • Then the contributions would mainly be on templates and their “simpler” logic, which might be more attractive or easier to get started on?
      • Plus, it might be more efficient? The current UI feels to me like it would suit server side rendering well.
      • Is this where the new leptos UI is heading … more server side rendering (I don’t know much about leptos)
    • Do you have a sense of usage numbers for the different apps and frontends? Obviously you only run lemmy.ml, but do you have a sense of how much the front-end gets hit versus the API directly?
      • I ask, because If the default WebUI is really the main interface, then it makes sense to try to organise some more contributors (It’s certainly my main, nearly exclusive interface, as much as I’ve like some of the alt front ends or apps)

  • Absolutely!

    The bit I’m conceptually stuck on (not know much at all about how a good plugin architecture would work) is how a plugin can surface or affect the UI, especially in an ecosystem with multiple UIs/Apps/Frontends, and, a federated ecosystem at that.

    Given the apps, I figure it’s not possible without a convention of plugins providing APIs which apps can then implement against when available, which adds a good amount of complexity but should be viable for popular/useful plugins. Though, tangentially, this does affirm for me that the whole native mobile app expectation is a bit of a trap for a social system like the fedi (as webUIs are naturally more universal and maleable).

    So, for immediate results, I can see only two options:

    1. a plugin operates on the backend directly manipulating or creating content not unlike a bot
    2. a plugin provides its own webUI which is made available through a simple and dedicated location in the UI

    Is there something I’m missing about how a plugin system could work?