A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. Also, I like to write and to sketch.
https://thefoolwithapen.com/

  • 21 Posts
  • 518 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 26th, 2023

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  • My wife has to eat a snack with her medicine she takes before bed or she gets nauseas. I have struggled to find an alternative to goldfish because I agree, it’s garbage. Any thoughts?

    What is a goldfish (beside a fish, I mean)? If you mean an alternative to snack, has she tried fresh fruits (an apple, pear, a few grapes,…) or maybe things like nuts? The idea being to no eat heavily processed food at all and not too much of anything. If she is not into fresh fruits (that would be sad), at worst I would suggest a slice of fresh bread (here again not the industrial hyper-processed kind of bread, real bread) with something, maybe a little jam?




  • Hi! I just stumbled across this community.

    Welcome :)

    I write something every day but the only rule is I have to write something, I don’t require a certain number of words or to cover anything in particular.

    That’s smart. I try to write daily too but I don’t really.

    I’ve been journaling for 50 years and beside a few short periods I don’t think I ever managed to do it daily. Alas, I cannot check since for decades I regularly destroyed my journal. Something I quickly learned to do as a child in order to escapee my mother… inquisitorial habits and her not liking what I was writing in it; and what I was telling about myself. I don’t have much regrets in life—not that I’m that faultless perfect nice guy that never do any wrong, I’m not but I also tend to assume all my poor choices as well as the bad things I may have done—but this regular burning of my journals is one of the two things I regret doing in my life and wish I would be able to undo traveling back in time.

    I don’t think it’s helped my memory (In the end I’m pretty sure I just have ADHD, with plenty of memories but no control over retrieving them).

    Any specific reason to make you thing it doesn’t help? I mean, I consider writing the best help to train my memory right after having long (interesting) discussions with (interesting) people.

    When I was starting I put some thought into the medium and decided for searchability I wanted it to be digital, and for longevity I went with plain text files.

    Text files are great, and they’re very reliable in the long-term so, since you’re making backups, there is little risk of you not being able to read them in the future.

    Like I mentioned in another comment (moments ago), I’m committed to analog myself but I still have devised a search/indexing system that works wonders. It’s based on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten (a fancy name to describe a shoe box of some sort filled with… index cards). The meaningful parts of my journal ends up indexed in that Zettelkasten so I know I will be able to find it, in no time be it tomorrow or in a few years.

    I have a folder for each year, then name them with the date such as 2025-01-13.txt for today. I feel these are going to be really important to me when I’m older, as important as photos, so I have them stored across a number of free cloud storage providers, that I update every few months (every day to one, the rest in bulk).

    Looks like you’re very well organized :)

    I’m not sure what I’m hoping to get out of the community, but I’ve subscribed anyway and we will see how it goes 🙂

    It’s a real small community, and one that only very recently started to move out of hibernation. Imho, what you will get out of it depends a lot what you will be willing to put into it. What I’m pretty sure of is that the more people decide to participate and contribute content, the more new users could be tempted to participate themselves ;)

    Once again, welcome!


  • I keep the list for a few reasons, one is that I wanted to read more.

    I remember, that was many years ago, my reading had dropped to almost nothing like with almost all my activities that were not related to work. I was persuaded I was too busy and had no time available for them, that I had better/more important things to do. Indeed, at that time I was very busy with a very demanding job but much more than being busy I was… not very well organized and I wasted a lot of time and energy and it showed. I started to use lists a bit like buckets I would fill (freeing my mind while doing so), simple lists of whatever were my goals and what was the next action I should do for every single one of them and to regularly review those lists. The review part was the real key, allowing to quickly check how things moved along, see where I failed, and adjust what needed adjustment. To say this helped me a lot would be a gross understatement. Lists are a blessing when they’re accompanied by regular reviews.

    And the other reason is that I want to be able to search for a book to see if I have read it (and how long ago).

    Indeed. I also want to be able to search even if my system is analog. That’s one of the two jobs of my Zettelkasten (an index card system) in which I index every meaningful bit of info, including journal entries I consider potentially useful and now book review entries. Even if it’s 100% analog it’s a great system that works wonders, I would not want to change it, but I must say it’s still not as instant to find anything as using Ctrl/Cmd-F ;)

    My personal list is not about reviewing the book or thoughts on the book, it’s simply a list of books I’ve read, along with dates I started and finished.

    I understand that, my approach is not as precise (no clear start/en date but I’m still able to rely on the dates in my journal) , I will have to see if it’s an issue and if I need more.


  • I wake up between 4-5AM every single day of the week, and all year long. I don’t even need an alarm clock. I can go to sleep at anytime

    • No screen before bed. No computer, no phone, no tablet, no TV (we don’t own a TV, so we don’t have much choice here ;). What do I do instead? I read a book, journal, write, chat with my spouse or friends, play chess or board games,… I do various stuff just not on a screen. Not even using a Kindle.
    • No coffee in the evening. No alcohol at all (evening as well as in the day: I was an alcoholic many, many years ago). No soda either. Either I’ll drink water or herbal tea.
    • Light & healthy diner. I don’t stuff my stomach, don’t eat garbage pre-packaged industrial ‘food’ either (this alone was a huge change for me, the day I quit eating that absolute turd a few years ago and my health has jumped through the roof, pre-packaged food is just poison in a fancy packaging and a lot of marketing, I would not be surprise if it was to become the tobacco of the XXI health-wise).
    • No snacking, no candy, chips, or whatever.
    • At least one long walk during the day. Every day.

  • I’m from France, Paris. Yes, depending where you’re looking it’s a real nice city but, no, I do not have a direct sight over the Eiffel tower. That said, my spouse and I can enjoy breakfast with fresh handmade croissants by our nearby baker right on our balcony, when the weather is cooperating (which means not for the time being ;)

    I’m a dude, well into my 50s. Beside the few early years, I’ve always worked from home. I’ve been journaling since I was a 7 year-old, both as a way to escape my childhood that was not the most peaceful, and as a way to understand better what was happening to and around me. Decades later, I still journal mostly to keep a short record of my day (nothing newsworthy in my journal, sorry historians) and as a way to put some order in my thoughts too. Something I have always considered journaling was incredibly useful for.

    I have been journaling analog (pen, paper, notebook, typewriter, cassettes, I even tried video tapes, and so on) and digital (Word files, Markdown, and journaling apps like DayOne). I’m now fully committed to analog (pen and paper). I also sketch (poorly) in my journal (ink and watercolors).

    I’m a lifelong fountain pen user, I’m old enough that we were taught writing using a fountain pen, back in school. But I’m not obsessed with it either and will happily use whatever is at hand’s reach.

    If you’re wondering why I use two different accounts, one with the blue icon and the other with a red one, it’s just that I wanted to avoid interference between my administrative role and my role as a member of the community. I post with the red icon, as a member without any privilege, while the blue guy, with all the power, is only there to admin the community. He doesn’t post content beside whatever is related to the life of the community itself (like this very post), he doesn’t comment and he doesn’t vote either. He is not allowed to, that is unless I mix the two accounts which happened once already but since then I’ve tried to be more careful. Edit: Well, it looks like I managed to get it wrong once more :p


  • Where on lemmy is there discussion about news, culture, and zeitgeist without people defaulting to boring and predictable political takes?

    I swear sometimes I feel like I’m reading a bad newspaper comment section, like everyone is a poorly trained AI that just spouts default politically-oriented replies.

    • Have you tried discussing with people about those very topics instead of politics, or without yourself bringing your political opinions to the table?
      Sorry to say so but looking at you recent post history it doesn’t look like you’re exempt from talking ‘political takes’ yourself. Why complain about something it seems you’re also actively contributing to?
      (If you’re wondering, I seldom have the ‘opportunity’ to talk politics on Lemmy because 1) I don’t browse the communities where that kind of content thrives and 2) I refuse to waste any more of my time in any discussion the moment it starts shifting toward politics because I consider online ‘political discussions’ are more often than not akin to having a tantrum, when it’s not pure hatred or unadulterated dumbfuckery, none of those helping in regard to politics nor offering any sound base to discussing it, or anything for that matter.)
    • Have you tried discussing with people in niche communities? I frequent a few such niches and there people don’t really speak politics. Why would they? It’s not the what the community is supposed to be about. Obviously, doing so and being on Lemmy it also means you won’t have as many discussions or as many participants as you might have in broader communities but you can’t have it both, at least not for now, not for as long as there will be so few Lemmy users.


  • Interesting thought about the lie, I guess sometimes it’s hard to determine what is a criticism against a use case of a tech and what is criticism against the tech itself.

    Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s perfectly fine to criticize ‘the tech itself’. What would you say about a tech that would allow a government or anyone for that matter to read your most intimate thoughts just by pointing some device toward you? Would you be ok for that tech to be used (say, hoping that it will be used only against ‘perverts’ and ‘terrorists’ in order to punish them for crimes they have not yet committed and do not even exist) but knowing perfectly well that such a tool will be used against the entire population, including you and your child/spouse, because as the saying goes:

    Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely

    Edit: I would be hostile, plain and openly hostile, to such a tech.

    What I was saying is not that. I was saying that it’s not being hostile to a tech to criticize it.

    It’s not because one criticizes something (tech, or whatever) that someone wants that thing to be gone. To criticize something is to consider its merits and faults, that’s all it is. It’s pointing out strengths and weaknesses. It’s not blaming or crying. For example, chemo is a great (tech and) therapy that saves many lives all year long but should it not be constantly criticized in order to make it better than it is? Say, to make it less painful and less destructive (which it is) to the patients being treated by it? Of course, it should. That’s criticism. And that’s why scientists are constantly trying to improve it (and labs too, but then they’re also motivated by increasing their stocks value ;)

    What I’m not saying is that if something can be done (tech, AI, thoughts reading, whatever) that something should be done no question asked and that the rest of us (all of humanity and, in our present situation, the entire ecosystem of our planet) will just have to deal with the consequences and fuck us all. Once again, see my (silly?) thought-reading example.

    I’m saying that it should be discussed. I know it won’t (the perspective of becoming ‘Musk-like’ rich and powerful can seldom be resisted). It never was. It probably never will be. But I still think it should be discussed because we ought to be less stupid than we always have been (stakes are much higher than ever), we ought it if not to ourselves to the next generations. I mean, I would not want to be a 10 or even a 20 year-old today when I see what’s to be expected in the following decades. Heck, for the last 20 years or so my spouse and I were pretty sure we would have passed away long before shit really start hitting the fan, we’re not so sure of that anymore.

    Edit: typos and clarifications.




  • But does it not sound like the horse farmers when the car came out?

    but I also accept that it is inevitable

    Look where we’re heading as regard to pollution (to which all our engines are not a little factor) and ask yourself: would have we known what we know today, was this ‘inevitable’ path we decided to follow (ultimately it was a choice, nothing more: the choice of using much cheap(er) energy and workforce as a way to gain more power/money faster) was it really the smartest one? Or should we have tried to follow another less obvious path but maybe less destructive? Destructive, like AI is in regard to the OP question but it obviously is not limited to AI.

    fighting against technological advances has rarely worked historically.

    That’s one of the most glaring lie (not yours, I mean it in a general way) in regard to tech: criticizing it or one of its form is not being ‘against tech’. It’s a critic of tech and/or a refusal of a certain type of tech. The choice is not between '‘using tech’ and ‘being a caveman’. It’s about questioning the way we use tech (to do what? Do we really need machines to do creative work?), how we control it (who decide what it’s allowed to do and how it is trained), and who owns it (who get all the money? Not the artists they were trained upon, obviously). And who controls all of that?

    Also, keep in mind that exactly like AI or the smartphone are considered ‘high tech’ today, the horse and the cart were also considered high-tech back in their days. Do you think their users were hostile to tech? I don’t think so ;)




  • Libb@jlai.lutoFedigrow@lemm.eeCommenters in other communities
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    5 days ago

    If you have regular commenters that you like in your community, but you see them being kinda shitty in other communities, does that affect you?

    It’s only an opportunity to remember that we’re people, with many flaws. And that’s true for every single one of us. No exception.

    I don’t know if I should just ignore it, but I don’t feel there Is really any ideal way to discuss

    My approach is that if a message is not addressed to me and if I have nothing nice to say (or if I feel like being judgmental, like you said), I’d rather say nothing. And if the message is addressed to me, well, it’s more or less the same: if I have nothing positive to say, I will not reply and ignore it. If the person insists a little, I will say ‘sure, thx for sharing your opinion’. If they insist more, I will block them.

    as I don’t want to alienate people from my content.

    I don’t worry about people disagreeing with me. In fact, I quite appreciate diverging opinions as they can be opportunities to learn new things and to revise my own certainties. But I also don’t care at all about alienating anyone that I would consider a pain because I don’t think there is much (new) to learn from that kind of pain.


  • Libb@jlai.lutoForum Libre@jlai.luGrammalecte est mort ?
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    5 days ago

    Merci pour toutes ces infos.

    Pas de quoi.

    J’ai toujours peur d’un changement d’API chez LibreOffice qui rendrait le plugin obsolete, je vois ça souvent dans mon travail.

    Difficile d’imaginer qu’il n’y ait pas un dev francophone pour reprendre le flambeau de cette excellente extension si son dev devait décider jeter l’éponge mais ça pourrait arriver, c’est certain.

    Note que c’est le cas aussi avec les softs propriétaires. Tu as beau payer ta licence, le jour où ta version est considérée trop ancienne pour être maintenue (ou si la boite ferme les portes) genre avec le correcteur/dicos Antidote ! Ils ont décidés de ne plus proposer de version pour Linux depuis la dernière version… malgré que j’aie acheté un paquet des versions précédentes pour leur montrer que j’appréciais leur choix d’en offrir une et ils ne me proposent aucune mise à jour pour migrer la dernière version sur une Debian récente.

    Perso, j’ai pris le pli de ne plus me soucier de ce genre de choses et de réagir quand/si le besoin s’en fait sentir. C’est d’ailleurs aussi pour cette raison que j’ai réduit au strict minimum mon utilisation du numérique. Ça et l’idée que le respect de ma vie privée ne devrait pas être en option.

    Le petit Robert qui est sur mon bureau, tout comme le Grevisse, ou le Merriam Webster (ou même le dictionnaire de la mythologie), ont tous plus de 10 ans d’âge et je ne te parle pas du Littré (édition en sept volumes, qui est toujours un régal à utiliser malgré son âge mais lui n’est pas installé sur mon bureau) et pourtant ils fonctionnent aussi bien que le jour où je les ai achetés. Alors, oui c’est une vieille techno, sans Ctrl∕Cmd-F et sans correcteur automatique, c’est aussi un peu plus encombrant et plus lourd que son pendant numérique, mais elle tient plutôt bien la route dans la durée et m’a rarement fait faux bon (et c’est une techno qui respecte ma vie privée ;)

    edit: typos.



  • I heard a bunch of explanations but most of them seem emotional and aggressive, and while I respect that this is an emotional subject, I can’t really understand opinions that boil down to “theft” and are aggressive about it.

    Why the anger?

    How do you earn a living yourself? Or even better, what is your most precious hobby? Whatever it is that you love doing for the love of it (that’s the definition of a hobby) try imagining being told one day, out of the blue: ‘Guys, my fancy but completely soulless computer can do as good as many of you. And it can do it in seconds. Wanna compete?

    Now, imagine it’s your job and not your hobby, the way you earn your living (and pay your rent/mortgage and those always more expensive bills) and imagine being told 'That way you used to earn a living? It’s gone now. It instantly vanished in a magical cloud of 1 and 0s. This AI-thing can do in mere seconds something that would take you weeks and it can do it well enough that quite many of your customers may not want to spend (a lot more) money to pay you for doing the exact same job even if you do it much better. How happy would you feel about that?

    So, yeah, like you said it’s kinda ‘emotional’ topic…

    is there an argument against models that were legally trained?

    Being 100% sure there exists such a database that contains no stolen creation, and then that AIs were indeed restricted to it for their training is already something worth debating and doubting (the second it is not open source), imho.

    There had been a similar problem a few centuries ago, when photography first appeared many painters rightfully considered photography a threat to their business model as one could have their portrait (edit: or have a picture of a landscape) made in mere minutes (it was a longer than that, early days photography was far from being as quick as we know it but you get the idea).

    What happened to them and their practice?

    1. Some painters had to find rich sponsors that were OK to pay in order to get a portrait that would be more unique than a pĥotography (I know what I would prefer between having my photo taken by even a decent photographer or, say, a painted portrait made by Sargent), others found niche domains were to could still earn a living, while others simply went out of business.
    2. Others decided painting could be much more than just being realistic like it (mostly) was before photography became a thing and they quickly started offering us amazing new kind of paintings (impressionism, abstract painting, cubism, expressionism,…)

    And here we are in the XXI century. Painting is still doing fine in its own way (exposed in art galleries and in the home of rich people). There is also a lot more hobbyist painters that will paint all they can including realistic scenes no matter how much ‘better’ a photo could be. They don’t care. Next to those, there are many photographers taking countless photos (many of which being worthless too), some of them trying (and many failing) to earn a living selling them.

    is it something past the saying that AI art is lifeless?

    Maybe it will get better, most probably it will, but so far I feel real sad for people that are unable to see, to feel and to understand how lifeless and how clueless AI art is.

    Edit: typos (yeah, this was handwritten without the help of any AI :p)