Waldelfe @ Waldelfe @feddit.org

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9 mo. ago

Most cafés don't, but I like to go to the smaller ones, not the big chains, and they can sometimes get very creative with almonds or hazelnut deco. It's not the majority, but I don't like to waste food so I always ask.

I don't know, as someone with a nut allergy I don't get why this is supposed to be funny. This is just my everyday life. Especially salad often has nuts like walnuts or almonds as decoration so it's one of the foods where I have to be extra careful. Just like I always have to follow a coffee order with "no nuts, please", because coffee is often decorated with almonds. The tweet makes it sound like asking for no nuts on a salad is as outlandish as thinking there might be a bee in the steak, but walnuts, cashews or almonds are pretty common decorations on salads.

I don't know where you've been but most libraries I've seen in Germany have little carts where you put the book you don't want to check out. Our university library even had signs asking to please put books on the carts and not reshelve them yourself.

That's why you write it in white on a white background. A human can't see it but the computer will.

I didn't drive for many years because I always lived in cities with good public transport. When I drove again for the first time in 2021 I was shocked by how basically everyone went 10 over. I really feel this has gotten way worse in the last 20 years. Going 60 where the speedlimit is 50 seems to be the rule, not the exception nowadays.

Signatures were so silly but fun. I doubt you could do something similar today. Too many people are so cynical and would dismiss it as stupid. Back then you could be more silly on the internet without immediate backlash of people putting you down.

I wrote and posted some stories over on !writingprompts@literature.cafe .

So eine Überraschung. Wie, einen Haufen Tablets verteilen führt nicht zu tausenden neuer Programmierern?

I fully agree. This was decades in the making. Good grades became the only important thing, we told students every day they won't amount to anything if they don't have straight As and then act surprised when they panic and use any tool to make it.

But we also leave them alone with a bunch of technology way too young which fosters a mentality of "Why do it myself when I've so many ways to have it done by a computer".

The most common way to catch AI is to write instructions in white. Something like "Use the exact sentence xyz in the second chapter".

I miss them, too. I was a member of a writing forum. There were maybe 30-40 very active members. You'd come to know them even if you didn't know their real names. But you'd read from Flower123 in one post and then there was always a category for smalltalk and you'd recognize Flower123 when they wrote about being sick or their hobby. We even had regional meetings for a big poetry forums where 10/15 came to a café. There was just a feeling of being a community.

Unfortunately I am not sure if this would even work today, even if we replicated the forumstructure 1:1. People are more used to consuming media online. You can see that here in Lemmy, too. Many people complain about the lack of content, but not many post or engage. People want to consume, not take an active role in a community. The only reason reddit still kind of works, apart from the bot content, is that it has a giant, international user base so it still feels like a lot of content even if only 10% are very active.

The whole internet culture has shifted from a light-hearted playground to a consumption-based minefield. People use the internet for different reasons. It's a huge difference if I come home from school, ask my parents to use the internet for an hour, go on that one poetry forum that is 80% of my internet activities and interact with the same 30-40 people every day or if I have the internet with me every second of the day and have an endless supply of consumable content that is enjoyable without interacting. People don't really feel like they can/should be an active participant in the discourse anymore unless it's by posting their own, standalone content on platforms like tiktok. And then it's not really an interaction with other people, it's more like everybody is yelling into nothingness.

Most instancss I have experienced of tailgating are when people want to drive too fast or unsafely:

1. I'm going more or less exactly 50 kph, which is the speed limit in the city, but someone thinks because the street is broad and straight they should be able to go 70+.
2. I know the route and know some dangerous curve or sudden intersection behind a curve is up ahead so I slow down but someone behind me doesn't like it.

Sure it happens that people are going too slow. Even then it's no excuse to tailgate. All that does is make everything less save for everyone including you. You can honk or overtake at the next opportunity, but all you achieve by tailgating is risk your own life.

Krista couldn't tell for sure when the room first appeared. She only knew when she first noticed it. It was a hot night in August. She couldn't sleep due to the heat. After lying awake for several hours, the three cups of valerian tea were starting to take their toll. Krista got up and stumbled through the dark room. She didn't want to turn on the light and wake herself up completely. The hallway was even darker than her bedroom, so she stumbled through it with one hand on the wall for guidance. The first door on the right was the office. The next was a small storage room where she kept some old boxes from when she moved in. Probably photo albums and christmas decorations, but she hadn't checked them in years. The next door was the bathroom. She opened the door and stretched out her hands to feel her way towards the toilet. but where she should have felt the tiles of the wall her hand touched nothing. She took another step into the room, but again she touched nothing. Slowly her tired brain began to realize that this was not the bathroom. The air was a bit too cold and even without opening her eyes fully she could sense that the room was too big. The air held the faint smell of old furniture and unwashed carpets. For a few seconds Krista stood in the doorway and tried to wreck her brain which room she had stepped into. The house wasn't that big. As her half-open eyes adjusted to the darkness, it became clear that the room was empty except for a rather big chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Krista did not remember having such a large room in her house. Her bladder reminded her why she had gotten up and she quickly turned to the next door hoping it was the correct one. Fortunately the door did indeed lead to her normal bathroom with the blue tiles and the small shower. After finishing what she had come for Krista quickly walked to her room, making a point of not looking in the direction of the half-open new door. As she fell asleep part of her brain wondered if it was possible to completely forget about the existence of an entire room. But she was too tired and the thought slipped her mind.

The next few days went by uneventful. Kista lived her normal life, went to work, came back, cooked dinner and watched some movies. The new room stayed quiet and blended in with the old house so well that it was really hard to notice unless you stumbled upon it by accident. Like a tiger on a hunt it could lie in wait for a long time if necessary. And like a tiger, it also blended in so well with its surroundings that it easily slipped one's mind.

Krista forgot about the room for a week and a half. The next time she stepped into it was when she had her new wardrobe delivered. She had meant to replace the old one for some time now. Money was tight since Mark had left her, but she needed to do something about the bedroom that held way too many memories of him. She had found a nice cheap wardrobe on the internet. With the money she got from selling the old one she could even afford to have it delivered and set up for her. The delivery men came in the afternoon and carried the parts for her new piece of furniture down the hallway. "Where should we place it?" one of them yelled. "Next to the make-up table," Krista yelled back.

She followed the sound of the confused murmurs of the delivery men into the room. When she stepped inside it felt as if something had shifted. As if reality had rearranged itself. One part of her suddenly remembered finding this strange room for the first time a couple of days earlier while another part tried very hard to convince her that the room had always been there. In the middle of the room stood an old-fashioned bed made of dark wood with a dark blue canope. A wardrobe made of the same dark wood, adorned with carved images of flowers and birds, stood in one corner. Through the window she could see her garden with the large cherry tree in the middle. One of the delivery men cleared his throat impatiently. Krista flinched and quickly showed the men to her bedroom. As she grabbed the door handle an idea came to her. She quickly slipped out of her right slipper and left it in the door to keep it open.

This time she did not forget about the room. She could not. At first she considered finding an exorcist or one of those witches from Instagram, but then she saw the fees. Next she thought about calling a priest, but abandoned that idea as well. Mysterious rooms didn't seem to be the kind of thing a priest could help with.

Krista was a pragmatical person and therefore decided that renting out her new room was the best course of action. Why let a perfectly good piece of real estate go to waste? And she could really use the money. Maybe she could later pay an exorcist. In her head she began to calculate the rent, factoring in that she would have to put money aside for a lawyer if things with the renters went wrong. Luckily there was a large congress center in the city so there would be no shortage of business travelers. It took Krista a few weeks to get everything ready. The room kept adding new furniture as if it was excited for the guests. And she might be imagining it, but she felt like it looked especially beautiful on the photos she took for the advertisment. When she lay in bed in the evening she sometimes wondered what the room was getting ready for. But in the morning those thoughts were quickly forgotten.

It didn't take long for the first guest to book her room. That was no surprise considering that the price was cheap and the room looked like something from an interior design magazine. Her guest was an engineer visiting for a conference. Judging by his expensive looking suit and bags he was doing well for himself. He was very short with her, refused her offer to make dinner and quickly disapperead, presumably to go out for lunch. He came back late in the evening. Krista was already in bed. She could hear him rumbling around. Just the usual sounds of a person unpacking and getting ready for bed. Then she heard muffeled talking. He was calling someone. Then everything was quiet. The next morning she did not see the business man. She tried to tell herself that he might just have gotten up very early and left for his conference, but she didn't dare to look into the room. In the evening it was still quiet and there was still no sign of her guest. For an hour Krista sat at the kitchen table, drank hot chocolate and thought about what to do. It accured to her that she was the last known address of a person who had just disappeared. "I wonder if it thought this through," she mumbled to herself. Suddenly she felt like she needed to get clarity right now. Without further thinking about it she got up and walked to the door. It was closed. And yet she hadn't forgotten about it. On the contrary - she couldn't stop thinking about it.

When Krista opened the door she was met with the faint smell of flowers. The room was beautifully decorated in blooming cherry twigs. The bed in the middle of the room had changed to a double bed with a bed frame made of bamboo. In one of the corners there was even one of those little fountains with a bamboo log that moved up and down and made a soothing sound. There was no sign of blood or a body. At first she was confused about the sudden change in atmosphere, but then she remembered seeing posters for an upcoming anime convention. "Seems like you have chosen your next lodger," she whispered. Suddenly she noticed a small chest that stood in front of the bed. It had her name written on it in curved golden letters. She hesitated, then she left one of her slippers in the door and quickly tiptoed to the box. It was heavier than she thought. Inside were gold coins. A lot of gold coins. She stared at them. With her fingertips she carefully ran over them just to confirm they were real. Looking up and around the room she said out loud: "You know, eventually the police will catch on." The room stayed silent apart from the sound of the bamboo fountain.

Krista left the room slowly. New pictures would have to be made. And she needed to find out how to sell the gold. The thought of not putting up another advertisement, not giving the room another victim crossed her mind. But she felt certain that at this point she didn't have a choice anymore.

It is useful to understand how society works. How we name and talk about things has an effect on how we perceive them. Just some recent examples that come to mind:

What effect does the social media censorship have on our discourse? Does it change how we perceive certain topics when censored words like grape for rape or unalive for suicide sneak into our vocabulary?

It's also interesting to clear up debates that have been going on for a while. For example there are studies that show that in a dialogue between a man and a woman, the man will talk more and interupt the woman more but afterwards feel like the woman talked more and interupted more often.

The practical application is not direct but more in the form of awareness for problems and guidance on what rules are helpful for us as a society.

I mean to be fair it was not "designed" at all. They needed to get a body out of the way in one episode and didn't have time to rewrite/reshoot so one of the writers was just like "Well, the body just gets shot again and disintegrates..."

Ich find buttons immer gut. Hab schon so viele neue Dinge kennengelernt, weil im Bus vor mir jemand einen Button hatte und ich es aus interesse gegoogelt habe. Oder Aufkleber, das funktioniert besonders gut auf Studentenlaptops. Je mehr es ins Auge springt desto besser.

It can be pretty difficult in the workplace. You try to network, get along well with your colleagues, be helpful and smile just to find out some guy thought you were flirting. Depends a bit on the work culture and industry, but in some places guys will go out together and help each other/build a network but as soon as you try to do the exact same thing with male colleagues they think you're flirting.

My guess is a mix of a) techbros like Zuck pushing it because more regulation always makes it easier for big companies who can quickly comply with new laws unlike smaller competitors, b) all governments being run by people 60+ who grew up believing the internet is scary and needs to be regulated as much as possible and c) rising right-wing parties who hope to use that surveillance infrastracture for their goals once in power.

Hot tea with honey (there are plenty of herbs that will help like chamomile). Slowly sucking on a spoonful of honey also helps with a sore throat. I also find it helps to move from the bed to the couch because I'll get sick of the bed and the bedroom and being in the livingroom changes things up. Also hot showers and changing the pyjama. Just anything that makes me feel like I'm not marinating in my bed 24/7.

No, actually she worked on one of Kamala Harris' campaigns and proudly wears the campaign tshirt. Which is why her attitude confused me so much. I'm not sure what's going on with her other than that even a well educated American can still have a lot of indoctrination and believe the American way is always the best way.