I’ve met people who managed to announce they were shitty in the first few minutes of our encounter. I’ve also gotten to know certian really shitty people pretty well.

There’s always a story they tell themselves that makes it okay, though, and it’s always driven by some kind of weakness they have, even if it’s rank narcissism. Evil implies a level of self-awareness that’s never been there.

I can’t say they don’t exist, but they’re damn rare and I’ve never crossed paths with them. Even Nazis have been known to self-improve over time.

Oh. It’s a foundation that provided and provides free access to the new and exciting technology of the INTERNET. The most popular thing now seems the be shell connections to machines running historical OS’s like Unix. There’s also Gopher and dialup and an internet radio station and a bunch of other services. Lemmy isn’t even listed on the main site, but obviously it still is online.

Beyond that I have to admit I’m new and don’t know it all. The foundation’s website itself feels like a mix of a museum exhibit and an actual active front page.

Since it’s my instance and you can probably click to it through my username, I felt like a link would be overkill. But: www.sdf.org.

That was honestly kind of rhetorical, too. It’s been something you could connect to since the 80’s, and it’s still an everyday part of my life, which is related enough to mention even if OP wouldn’t call that a website.

Does SDF count? It’s been going since 1987. Obviously the Lemmy instance is newer, and it’s stretching the definition of website a bit.

Which is kind of the general vibe of BH. They’ve never bought the hype, and have kept going with “boring but practical”.

Uh-huh. What a sacrifice. /s

Well then you’d probably be fine all the way back to premodern times, assuming you can convince clients to trust you with their mine water pump or whatever. As long as you could get along without devoted replacement parts.

Once you reach that point, the modern lathe thing becomes an issue, a commercial foundry might not be around for cast parts, and the technology to cast ferrous metals at all isn’t guarenteed. The ability to perfectly eyeball things and use relatively primitive materials becomes a major constraint. If you master that, you can probably hack it all the way back to early civilisation building crossbows or animal-powered pumps.

So are you an art fan who thinks 4’33" is a work of genius? Or one of the ones who thinks it’s garbage? I’m almost tempted to go for visual art where these controversies are more common; musicians are actually pretty chill about it most of the time. (And I’ll avoid the derogatory term if we’re discussing whether it’s good, as opposed to just if someone in particular is doing it)

Scientists come to consensus, and update that consensus in sync as new discoveries are made. Art fans do not. There’s also anthropology showing the existence of non-Western systems of music completely different from and alien to our own, divergences between systems within Western music history, and a long history of new kinds of music associated with minorities being deemed “wrong”. Meanwhile, other people have known beauty is subjective continuously since Plato.

All that adds up to gatekeeping art being done for essentially the same reasons people gatekeep anything.

Hmm. Before the end of the 19th century you’re going to run into non-standardised/completely bespoke parts problems. How are you on a lathe, or doing blacksmith work? Hot riveting was a separate trade which you wouldn’t have to do, at least.

I’m kinda obsessed with what I call technological bootstrapping, and so I have useful book knowledge about every step along the way. Doing it in practice is another thing, though; the locals are going to run circles around me unless I can invent stuff. (And even the scenario rules aside, not starving or being “disturbed” while I work on whatever project is a thing)

So, I think I have to echo the “it’s not going great in 2025” answer.

If it’s the part I’m guessing it is, it was an accidentally successful interview, too, haha.

Eh, depends what you mean by isolated. I’ve had weird incidents with otherwise fine people. And I’ve definitely ended up doing things that were hard to explain for whatever reason. I’m guessing the brother is generally problematic, though, because that was multiple consecutive decisions driven by thinly-masked cruelty.

I’m not sure what you mean. Try again in a week or two?

I did detect that this was about the whole “LLMs ruin everything” jerk. The thing is, they’re new, and misinfo has been around in other forms for a long time. It doesn’t negate the things you do now - like talking to me, despite the fact we’re probably in different countries - that would have been very hard in the 20th century, and impossible much before then. Relevant XKCD.

Okay, to be a bit glib, why don’t you ask someone in real life? After all, it’s all disinformation on here.

Sure, the information age comes with problems, but do consider what the world was like before. There were a lot of things people just didn’t know and couldn’t ever look up or ask about - unless they were motivated enough to dig through a library.

First few ideas: Talk about how I’m not really big on the whole “working hard” thing, immediately bring up and start ranting about weird political ideas, “I’m worth X, take it or leave it”

Lol, what is that from?

There are people who can do this, I’ve known some. It’s probably genetic, and some people vary in the other direction.

Wat?

Or maybe that was his plan, but he chickened out once it got too real? You’d expect it would still change things if he was at all homophobic, though. As it is, he acted like it didn’t happen until he thought he was being lied to and decided to pull it back out.

Yes, therapists actually seem to love it when you tell them about your feelings about therapy.

(But then again, I can’t help but notice that I was socially conditioned to expect shame, punishment, and destructive guidance if I ask for help.)

This.

They’re always gentle in my experience, even when they’re trying to get you to question something you’ve assumed. Maybe they will say you should give people more of a chance, once they get to know your situation. But, if you just say no, worst case scenario they won’t have any other ideas. And I can’t imagine they’d tell you to deliberately hang around a narcissist.

Alternately, a lot of the most useful things they told me are things I hadn’t even considered, so maybe you’ll be surprised.