I have (had) accounts over on diaspora* since 2014-Sep-28, but seeing that Friendica has a "calendar" function, I thought it was time to give it a try. (I'm considering finally de-Facebook-ify myself later this year?)

So, about me?

You could say I’m your average anybody.

I like #reading — #books, but also #comics, both in paper and digital form. I tried audiobooks, but it didn't fit at the time. I do enjoy books read on the radio, and radio theatre, and listening to radio and "pods", though, so maybe I'll give audiobooks another try later on.
A few years ago I got myself an e-reader, and with age it's really convenient to be able to choose the size of the letters myself.
I mainly read #fiction, but there's the occasional non-fiction #book as well.

I listen to #music, but not as much as I used to. (I visited Roskilde festival 10 years in a row. It’s been more than 20 years since.) The music I enjoy may range from #alternative / #indie / #NewWave, over some #classics, and #pop, and #synth, to certain #rock, to #EBM; I enjoy #ska to a certain extent, but I’m really not that fond of reggae.

#Films are usually #nice, but if it’s too hetero-normative romantic I may start feeling uncomfortable. It doesn't "have" to be #lgbtq, though.
But horror #film is not my thing.

I used to spend time #geocaching, which then more-or-less got faded out by me playing the mobile app game Ingress.
Now I'm more into #krokning (it's called #TunisianCrochet in English, but there's nothing "tunisian" specific about it) — a yarn craft which, unfortunately, is less social / mobile.
But I do try to exercise. Considering that I have #rheumatism, I aim to get back to my exercise 2–3 times a week routine — but that very same thing also makes me prone to catch colds, and when I get it, I'm down for 10-14 days, and it always takes a bit to get back on track …

I used my #Jolla phone as my daily driver. With some Sony's in-between, I now have a #Fairphone 5 instead.

I liked #CrunchBang (#!), and then continued over to #BunsenLabs. I'm on Windows 11 now … (and still wish I was better at #Linux).

I'm a cis-gendered Kinsey scale 5 female, and, should we go into detail, the Klein sexual orientation grid is probably a more refined "but messier to describe" tool. Also, I guess I'm more bi-romantic, than -sexual? ⚢

I like #languages. It would be neat if I could just "transfer" them into my head. Studying a #language is hard, and if you don't maintain it, it's gone.
I’m #adopted. My first language is #Swedish, and I think I manage ok in #English.
Being #Scandinavian, I can usually understand #Norwegian and #Danish - at least as long as both sides concentrate on making themselves understood.
I can understand German so-so, but some of the German I studied went out the window when I gave learning Dutch a go. I’ve been studying Chinese (as an adult), and tried to learn #Esperanto (as a teen). I can’t really say my attempts of learning Spanish or Japanese, or Swedish sign language, have stayed with me.
I’m not good at grammar as a subject.

I like #mathematics. I’m no longer that good at #maths as when I was in school. I like the #scientific approach on things, even though I wish I was better at grasping and explaining — e.g. as in: understanding why things work the way they do. ♇

I understand that we as human beings wants to "believe in something bigger", but we shouldn’t forget the #sceptic approach. To blindly trust things without even questioning them is seldom good. Then again, to question every thing, to the point of seeing conspiracies all around us, isn’t logical either.
I’m a close-to-atheist #agnostic. I have an equal hard time understanding fundamentalist atheists as I find it hard understanding fundamentalist theists.

I’m a #feminist. Being #female ♀ myself, that wasn’t a hard decision. When I was younger, I preferred calling it "being pro-equal treatment", or "pro-equal rights". Then I understood that there are branches of #feminism, and that calling myself "pro-equal treatment" instead of "feminist" only hurt the bigger cause, and that I don’t necessarily need to connect myself with the branches that (in my opinion) have the "wrong" view of feminism.
I don’t want women to rule over men, with sex/gender being the only denominator, just as I don’t want men to rule over women, with sex/gender being the only denominator. We’re in this together, and to make things work we need to listen to, and learn from, each other. I'm not always good at this, but I hope I'm trying.

I wish I was up-to-date with #programming — what I learned in the 1980’s / 1990’s (Basic, Pascal, Ada, Prolog) is either out-of-date, or buried too deep in my brain-archive.
I think I can be quite good at contributing ideas, though.

I’m really not that unique.
We may even have things in common.

additional tags that may or may not be relevant: #NewHere #NyHär #average #unique #anybody #läsa #bok #böcker #serie #serier #library #bibliotek #literature #litteratur #musik #alternative-music #indie-music #klassiskt #cinema #movies #yarncrafts #reumatism #lesbisk #lgbt #hbtq #hbt #gsm #språk #adopterad #GenX #svenska #påsvenska #svensk #svenskar #Sverige #SE #inSwedish #Sweden #SWE #skandinav #Skandinavien #skandinaviska #dansk #Danmark #Denmark #norsk #Norge #Noreg #Norway #finlandssvenska #Åland #Finland #nordisk #Norden #Europa #Europe #matematik #science #vetenskap #astronomy #space #TheUncertaintyOfDoubt #rambling #TooLongForSanity #over-tagged

Now, what about you?

write.as/leastaction/on-pollin…

leastaction

2025-01-13 02:49:40

On polling and propaganda

For almost two years now polls in Canada have shown that the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Pierre Poilievre, Canada's answer to Donald Trump, have a commanding lead over the governing Liberal Party led until recently by Justin Trudeau. There is no doubt that this was a major factor leading to Trudeau's resignation, in the hope that the Liberal Party might recover lost ground under a new leader.

At the same time, I can't help feeling that the polls have a lot of influence on how Canadians will vote.

I wrote a thread on Mastodon about how this might work. The Conservative Party's messaging consists simply of repeating “Justin Trudeau is a horrible person and he should resign”. This is spread both by conventional media and corporate social media as news and commentary.

Then one day you get a phone call from a polling company asking whether you agree that Justin Trudeau is a horrible person and he should resign”. What are the odds that you will say yes, if you've been exposed to the statement repeatedly?

Polls are viewed as representing the most probable outcome of an election “if it were held today”. But that probability is only conditional. It is the probability that you will vote one way or another given that you've been exposed to a certain propaganda. I am sure that if in a parallel universe where the Conservative Party of Canada has not been hammering the message about Trudeau for years a similar poll was conducted, the result would be quite different.

But there's more. The poll itself has an influence on the election outcome. One reason is what is known as “social proof”. Gil Duran has a great post about this in The Framelab. He writes

People tend to copy what other people do. If something is popular, we tend to trust it more. When many other people buy a product or follow a trend, we tend to assume it’s good. Our brains are wired to look for clues from other people’s choices. It’s a basic human instinct to follow the crowd. “Monkey see, monkey do.”

If you see that a majority of your fellow voters will vote Conservative, you are more likely to do so yourself. Marketers know this very well.

The poll may also have another effect on the outcome of the election: If you are not a Conservative voter, but you are convinced that the Conservatives will win, that makes you less likely to take the trouble to vote. The poll becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I see propaganda as a process, where a certain political message is spread to as many people as possible and then polling is a feedback mechanism that confirms that the message is true. Polling skeptics will scrutinize the methodology and the statistical methods, and I have been one of them, but I believe now that that is missing the point. The polls can be quite accurate in that they reflect popular opinion, and yet be a key component of the propaganda process.

#Democracy #Elections #Statistics #Propaganda

Jedi Mind Tricks: The persuasive power of 'social proof'

The 'wisdom of crowds' and the power of persuasion

^{Gil Duran (FrameLab)}

OK, been playing Satisfactory since December 25th, when I got it as a Christmas gifts.

I'm struggling in the game. I think I hit the mid-game blues, and it's just frustrating at this point. I tried to do the Ficmas event, but because I was new, I didn't have the equipment to make what I needed to make. So I had to pause, work on getting the machines, then restart the ficmas stuff. The dependency trees are kind of obvious. How to work around terrain, less so. I've run into dependencies I can't do anything about, like mycelium. The first branch in the mycelium research tree is 5 mycelium. Guess how much I got the first and ONLY time I found mycelium in the game? Yep, 4.

I recently upgraded my scanner to find enemies, and now I'm too scared to actually explore. I don't know why-- I was relatively fearless before. I finally sneaked around till I found an impure quartz node so I could work the quartz research tree. I'm about 50 game days in (hard to tell-- I died twice.)

I see pics and videos of really gorgeous Satisfactory setups, and I'm so impressed. And then mine? Mine looks like this:

Just absolute spaghetti. Anyway, I know I'm just complaining, but what is the Internet for but to whine about video games, right?

I think I'm going to put this one down for a while and do something more productive with my time, like eat yogurt or burn things.