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zlatiah

@ zlatiah @lemmy.world

Posts
51
Comments
237
Joined
2 yr. ago

Ask me about:

  • Science (biology, computation, statistics)
  • Gaming (rhythm, rogue-like/lite, other generic 1-player games)
  • Autism & related (I have diagnosis)
  • Bad takes on philosophy
  • Bad takes on US political systems & more US stuff

I'm not knowledgeable about most other things

  • None of this "what are you thankful for" shit today. What's something you hate?

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  • Recently and a slightly hot take: reckless drivers/cyclists. My take is that urban planning should be pedestrian-centric so... And yes, I did specifically include cyclists too: I would prefer to be hit by a bike rather than an automobile, but I'd much rather prefer to not be hit by either

  • Would you pay for online services like search and email if they offered a better experience than Google?

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  • For search engine: I'm self hosting SearXNG so I'm already indirectly paying via domain registry/VPS? So yes. Technically this can be done for free though (local docker, random RasPi laying around, ...)

    For email: paid (mailbox.org), worth it. Selfhosting email was too much of a headache at least for me

  • People who have moved away from your home town/area, what do you miss most?

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  • Moved from a mega metropolis and got shuffled around a lot

    Might be an oddity here but... I basically missed nothing. I grew up pretty sheltered, and on top of that my hometown didn't really have much going for it despite its size. Probably the only redeeming quality is the high-quality public transit... which isn't remotely as good as it seems if you actually live there

    I think now that I've grown up & have more defined interests, my hometown is starting to feel a bit more exciting since there are all kinds of hobby groups & such... But still feels mostly soulless to me IMO

  • People who can understand multiple languages, or have moved to another country, or otherwise traveled abroad; Do you feel like you experience existence from a PoV that nobody else can understand?

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  • Fluent in three languages. Mathematically speaking, there are enough people with my specific migration route (or even language combination) up until the point I left the US that there should be lots of ppl who think the same... But yes I do feel like my PoV can be a bit unique

    The various forms of neurodivergence I have certainly don't help... like for example I don't have an internal monologue, which changes my PoV a lot. Actually the neurodivergence probably shaped my PoV even more than the languages; I never really fit in even at where I was born

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    Permanently Deleted

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  • Because the owner/maintainer is based in EU (Stux is Dutch)... literally just that. Lemmy.world being a decent size certainly helps

    I also originally created an account on Kbin, gradually used it less and then the project had its fair share of issues, so I just registered a new account instead

    I have floated the thoughts of selfhosting an instance, but it seemed a bit unnecessary given the forum/aggregator nature of Lemmy... In hindsight, I even closed my microblog instance (Firefish, a whole story of its own) because it was too much resource/headaches, so it was probably a good choice I never selfhosted Lemmy

  • If you were forced to play one professional sport as your job until you were 65, which would you pick?

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  • If esports count, I'd like to be like this guy and get a contract to play rhythm games professionally

    Otherwise... Probably swimming or race walking, not too many professional sports I could think of that one can do into their 60s without wrecking their body

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    What's something which you pay more than "it's worth" for the sake of good quality/experience?

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  • Not personally, but my parents would pay much, much more for cooking utensils than what "it's worth". They live in China, and I don't think the locals (especially their generation) trust Chinese manufacturing that much... so for anything food- or health-related my parents would just get stuff from say Japan, the US, or the EU. Quite sure mom side still insists on buying kitchen knives from Zwilling whenever she's traveling

    I guess this is becoming more relevant now that Temu is a thing

  • People who are learning a foreign language: what are you learning & how is it going?

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  • Brussels. Officially bilingual but most people speak French; English is commonly spoken but not official. I'm also legally allowed to get things in Dutch (the other official language) but I know even less Dutch than French... I promised myself to start learning Dutch once I get to B1-B2 French

    Due to historical reasons, language is... a sensitive issue here. And since I work in academia (which were at the center of said language issue), my employer communicates everything in French, despite the fact that academia itself uses English (probably funnier at the Dutch-speaking unis but I digress). For example I think half of the HR and IT teams don't speak English at all so all my work emails to them have to be in French...

  • People who are learning a foreign language: what are you learning & how is it going?

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  • It just feels like any regular Meetup tbh. The Japanese one I've been going to obviously has a much higher proportion of ppl who are into, say, anime and manga (since it's a group of ppl who willingly chose to learn Japanese without external motives), but other than that they feel like standard Meetup events

    Japanese is not an easy language: good luck!

  • People who are learning a foreign language: what are you learning & how is it going?

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  • Ohh nice! If you happen to be interested in manga: someone at my local Japanese language exchange recommended よつばと! which seemed like a cute & quite useful manga series for learning Japanese

  • People who are learning a foreign language: what are you learning & how is it going?

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  • I... don't think I need motivation when my employer, my landlord, and even my government are legally obligated to establish all legal communications in French (facepalm)

    I also suffered from motivation before moving here though, so I'd love to know as well

  • What are popular, iconic, and must-listen songs from where you are from?

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  • 周杰倫(Jay Chou) - 青花瓷 (Blue and White Porcelain). YouTube link

    So Jay Chou (Taiwanese actually...) was an absolute phenomenon in mainland China when I was growing up. Just about all of his songs are good & have mass appeal, but specifically I think this song was something I've heard just about everywhere and anywhere (including from a street performer when I visited again a few months ago!) so I'm nominating it as a must-listen

    Also don't worry too much about the lyrics; Jay Chou is known for rapping a lot & I couldn't understand half of his lyrics when growing up...

  • Someone with your last name commits a heinous crime and their name becomes infamous, would you change that name? Why or Why not?

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  • Jokes on me there are close to a hundred million people with the same last name as me, I'm not changing

  • What have you looked up on Wikipedia recently?

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  • This was yesterday. High speed rail in Japan/China and in Belgium/Netherlands

    I was watching an RMTransit video last night, and just realized how almost comical it is that Belgium and the Netherlands (which together is not much bigger than the Tokyo or Shanghai metropolitan areas) have multiple high-speed rail lines

  • What is the most attractive quality in a person that instantly makes them desirable?

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  • Where would you live if money and/or visa requirements weren't an issue?

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  • I'd pick Berlin too. Frankfurt was mostly an afterthought and the only advantage it has for me is that it is interconnected so...

  • Where would you live if money and/or visa requirements weren't an issue?

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  • If I am being realistic, probably Berlin, Brussels, or Paris (maybe also Frankfurt). Specifically these cities, not anywhere else in the associated countries

    I'm using the following metrics (and possibly some personal bias):

    • A highly developed region that is internationally well-connected and has a strong passport... which leaves us with parts of Europe and some Asian countries. I'm personally excluding UK because of Brexit
    • OP didn't mention that "culture weren't an issue", so sadly most of Asia/Scandinavia/Central Europe are out due to difficulty for outsiders to integrate... and among the rest, choices are limited to large, diverse cities that are easy to integrate
    • A place that is resilient to climate change, so the entirety of the Netherlands is out (or maybe I just hate NL)

    The conclusion is that I should really get aggressive at learning French and German now just in case

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    I have a theory about AI and I'm wondering if I'm wrong?

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  • I mean that is pretty much what AI bros want to do... and/or maybe already doing

    From a researcher/developer perspective: the biggest bottleneck that affects current-gen AI is the lack of high quality training data; the more high-quality (a.k.a. human-generated and not complete shitposts) training data, the better. What people write on their computers would probably overwhelmingly be high quality. That means, without major technological advancements... if AI companies have access to the types of contents you just described, it is very much in their interests to use them

    I don't 100% agree with this view, but if you subscribe to Prof. Emily M. Bender's thought of seeing AI models as plagiarism machines, maybe you can say that AI is "stealing your soul"

  • Multilingual people, do you feel better about yourself than those that only speak one language? Monolingual people, do you envy/admire Multilingual people? And why?

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  • Can relate, in fact I still use Chinese for anything related to numbers because all the numbers are one-syllable 💀 (why remember "seven" whey "qi" does the same?)