DreamyDolphin

Actually, one bizarre research finding is that, “among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day is associated with a lower risk of heart problems”.

No one’s quite sure why or how or whether it’s some sort of odd correlation (but it does seem to resist all attempts to p-hack it out of significance), and there’s not much appetite among researchers to look too closely into it because everyone knows that ice cream is bad for you.

The Marseillaise scene is an excellent choice - a lot of the actors in that scene were actual refugees from the Nazis, so their emotions were genuine and powerful.

The bank heist opening of The Dark Knight is perfectly structured and paced.

And apparently it is adult-themed and explores millennial angst and disenchantment, because reasons. Yes, really.

Helpful tip: if, hypothetically, you come across a prolific poster who seems to only thrive on bitter negativity, you can go to their profile and click the “block” option next to the “follow” one near the top of the page and they’ll never turn up in your browsing again. Good for peace of mind.

My obscure nostalgia moment from the N64 was the game Blast Corps, where you had to destroy buildings with a range of vehicles to clear a path for a nuclear missile on a truck. Getting the side-swiper to skid just right was so satisfying.

And of course Banjo-Kazooie, as much for the immersive soundtrack as the colourful worlds.

The problem is one of those evolutionary arms races, for a reason in your observation: if the points are useful in seeing the popularity of a given post or comment, then why not simply create a bunch of fake accounts to boost said post/comment (which is exactly what the OP was complaining about in the first place).

Individual karma ratings allow a weighting for upvotes so that, in theory, contributors who have a track record of constructive interaction can be the ones who have more influence on what rises to algorithmic prominence. But, of course, everything can be gamed, hence upvoting bot/sock puppet-rings like the one OP observed, or people buying accounts on reddit that had pre-established karma to let them astroturf away with impunity.

No idea what the long-term solution is, beyond the vague “build a community of known faces/names” which runs the opposite risk of turning cliquish or closed-off to new content. Or maybe abolishing all algorithms and just sorting everything by new (which brings us back to the ancient commenting issue of a whole chain of people saying “first!” rather than adding any meaningful observations).

That’s a good question, and probably too early to know for sure given all the shifts and changes currently happening. I’d say the platform could go either way, and probably will oscillate between the centralised/decentralised extremes over time.

On the one hand, the idea of it is obviously focused on decentralising and letting everyone have their own instances; on the other hand, people tend to cluster, we like to see and be seen, there’s a thrill of pride in having people acknowledge and react to your words and a converse feeling of emptiness when you make a brilliant observation and no one is there to notice it. It’s that desire to be part of a larger group that will inevitably lead to some centralised nodes in the fediverse and a bunch of ghost-instances floating around with one or two dedicated/lost individuals posting into the void. Within those busy nodes is where the same cycle of push-pull between “everyone gets a say no matter how unhinged” vs. “I’m in charge here so I decide who gets to speak” will play out.

Yes, on par I lean towards it being a good thing as publicly available information rather than shadowy mud-slinging. I had one post downvoted by someone who apparently has done nothing else before or since, which takes a bit of the sting out of it. There will probably be debates about it at some point, and probably the occasional tit-for-tat attacks around the place, but overall I think it does link a bit more identity to the person who does the up- or down-voting which creates more of a community feel instead of hiding behind total anonymity.

Absolutely, power has been agglomerating in larger and more consolidated bodies over the past few decades in the western world (notably right-wing parties fuelled by rage and the tech behemoths fuelled by cash), so it’s a question of whether there’ll be grass-roots energy pushing back to claim more power for people or whether it will end in a more forceful consolidation of power, either by oligarchy or would-be king (though the latter seems unlikely, as there’s no one both charismatic enough and driven enough to claim the crown, but who knows).

Fingers crossed that the end result brings us a better world.

The 3rd party apps are closing at the end of this month, which means there’ll be somewhere around a week or so of people realising just how bad the official app is, plus decreased quality content as the actually-motivated people who post things continue their gradual migration away from reddit and driving redditors to seek other places to gather.