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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • For me it’s a necessary compromise.

    I’m a Linux user on my other devices and I’d love to have a fully libre and open phone, but the most important thing for getting my life tasks done is that apps work, so I’m somewhat hostage to where the apps are available and will run.

    Graphene is me trying to achieve that in the least-bad way I can.



  • That’s a legitimate security benefit, fair enough.

    I do get actual businesses sending me SMS notifications with links, and they aren’t in my contacts either, but it’s a valid decision for Apple to have made in terms of weighing off reducing scams vs creating inconvenience when genuine messages aren’t clickable.

    On a personal level I’m happy for everything to be clickable on my phone, because I trust myself to be cautious about scams and think carefully about the legitimacy of a message before I click anything.





  • My favourite story about the Sistine chapel relates to the wall fresco above the altar, The Last Judgment, which Michaelangelo also painted.

    The fresco shows the final judgement of humanity, when souls are all sent to either heaven or hell.

    The Vatican master of ceremonies Biagio da Cesena disliked the amount of nudity in the fresco and criticised Michaelangelo for it, also badmouthing him to the Pope. In response, Michaelangelo painted a likeness of Biagio da Cesena into the painting as King Minos in Hell - with donkey ears, naked, and with a snake biting him on the dick.

    Cesena complained to the Pope, but the Pope brushed him off and told him basically “If it was Heaven I could maybe do something, but Hell isn’t my area.”


  • My favourite story about the Sistine chapel relates to the wall fresco above the altar, The Last Judgment, which Michaelangelo also painted.

    The fresco shows the final judgement of humanity, when souls are all sent to either heaven or hell.

    The Vatican master of ceremonies Biagio da Cesena disliked the amount of nudity in the fresco and criticised Michaelangelo for it, also badmouthing him to the Pope. In response, Michaelangelo painted a likeness of Cesena into the painting as King Minos in Hell - with donkey ears, naked, and with a snake biting him on the dick.

    Cesena complained to the Pope, but the Pope brushed him off and told him basically “If it was Heaven I could maybe do something, but Hell isn’t my area.”



  • As a software dev who is interested in AI, I’ve spent a lot of time building a personal AI chat app, and I feel like that gives me a view on things.

    I can totally see how people become enamoured by this stuff, because on the surface level it can be very convincing, and very compelling. It feels like a person. But in my position - where I’m writing the code and can see every interaction happening under the hood at the base level - it becomes very clear it’s nothing more than a rather competent predictive text. Just a probability engine filling in the blanks. And I’m glad for that, because as much as I might interact with AI, I’m never going to start believing it is sentient, or that it cares about me in any way.

    AI is a glorified autocomplete, and nothing more. Please don’t believe otherwise.




  • For me, the performance of the main voice actors is THE single most important moment-to-moment element in how an anime hits. Shows with pretty poor animation can be rescued by amazing VA performances, but even the best animation can’t save a show if the acting doesn’t land right.

    And in dubs, the voice acting almost never reaches the quality of the original.

    The voice actors usually sound like they are just reading a script alone in a box, with no proper context of the emotional setting or tone, or awareness of who they are saying it to, or any feeling that they care about the words. The delivery is flat at times it should be spirited, or dialled to 100 at times where it should be nuanced.

    Simply put, it’s very clear you are listening to an actor, rather than the actor being invisible (as good performances are) and letting you hear the character.

    Even in the cases where dubs are actually competent (Ghibli movies, as a prime example) the process still introduces changes - entirely unavoidably - and this isn’t just true for anime, it’s true for all foreign films and shows.

    The original casting directors chose the actors they did for a reason, and it’s those people whose performances I want to hear.