The dashes thing is really only a tell for high schoolers and obvious illiterates –writers can and do use them. Next we need to teach GPT about interrobangs.
thank you for saying this. I'm not a writer, just vaguely literate, and I find em-dashes to be extremely useful as a way of approximating conversational speech without a string of comma splices.
Additionally, the observation about AI using dashes really only applies (if it applies at all) to informal text conversation, not published articles. Here's a random NYT article from 2014 that uses 4 em-dashes within the first 3 paragraphs. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/fashion/the-year-of-taylo...
It seems like everyone watched some video essay about how em-dashes are a sure sign of AI, and they're just parroting it without question. The thing that apparently goes over people's heads is that the reason AI tends to use a lot of em-dashes is because the text in their training data uses a lot of em-dashes, and the training data is largely published articles and books, so it's a terrible heuristic for whether a published article or book was written using AI.
The thing that actually is somewhat more telling is that many people will use hyphens instead of dashes, eg on a computer, I typically type '--' instead of an em-dash, partly because my xcompose setup is inconsistent, partly because I write most of my text in editors that use monospaced fonts and the distinction between -, – , and — is extremely subtle in most fixed-width fonts, for obvious reasons. But on macs and many phones, as well as in google docs and similar, by default a hyphen will be autocorrected to an en- or em-dash depending on context, so it's not really a tell that the entire thing was written with AI, just that there was possibly non-human involvement. But also, a lot of people actually just know how to type and use dashes. It's not really that hard.
Depends on what you want. some places you can find just as high quality. There is a lot of junk out there to wage through. They also have a "allergic reaction" to the thought of an algorithm to curate feeds which throws the good out with the bad.
More like which niche. I find transit advocates do a lot on mastodon. There are also a lot of great open source projects (the curl maintainer posts some interesting stuff). Those are niches I'm interested in though, YMMV in anything else.
Reddit also occupies the space that otherwise might permit a more useful, benevolent internet platform. From a certain perspective, Reddit is standing in the way of an internet that better facilitates the enjoyment you describe.
You could say that about nearly any good thing in life. Your current job/relationship may be holding you back from an even better one. Those leftovers you grabbed out of the fridge are occupying the space that could be taken by an even better meal. Every minute you spend watching a TV show you've already seen or a videogame you've already played is taking away time from your finite lifespan you could be spending on new, novel experiences.
If there's a better platform for giving you what you want, I'm sure you'd leave Reddit and never look back. If this platform you're imaging doesn't exist, how do you know it even could ever exist?
BBEdit is invaluable to me and I will use it forever. That said, it has some persistent window focus bugs that spill over into finder that I dearly I wish that they would iron out. Otherwise, it is one of the most stable, reliable, and useful pieces of software that I have ever touched.
Respectfully, I disagree. Google and Bing both deliberately pollute their own search results based on advertising and SEO. This is a user-hostile practice that they can get away with because of inertia and oligopoly. At some point, they will become so user-hostile that an alternative will become appealing.
For example, a search engine that made a good-faith effort to filter out SEO-optimized junk like listicles and slideshow "articles" would be extremely interesting to me. Bonus points for allowing me to permanently blacklist entire domains from search results.
Yes, societal institutions have a flywheel effect of normalization on those who pass through them. This is foundational to a cooperative society. They provide a background context to evaluate actions within, and define oneself in, or against.
Consider your Shannon Information. Meaning does not exist without context.
While I am very ready to be critical of Reddit, including its creators, community, interface, and aesthetic, I am not personally offended that a couple jabronis posted a bunch of stuff to build up some initial momentum.
I like reddit because it's a bunch of millennials and has been from the start. My old manager, he talks all glowingly about the haydays of usenet. He's a gen-Xer. Given the equivalency of social networks features, the most important thing is just going to be the identity of the users consuming them.
