I don't get this. AI bros talk about how "in the near future" no one will "need" to be a writer, a filmmaker or a musician anymore, as you'll be able to generate your own media with your own parameters and preferences on the fly. This, to me, feels like such an insane opinion. How can someone not value the ingenuity and creativity behind a work of art? Do these people not see or feel the human behind it all? And are these really opinions that you've encountered outside of the internet?

I love having some chill LoFi in the background, but I detest all the AI slop that's now dominating YouTube. Literally thousands of AI generated channels and no way to filter them. Some of my favorite channels that still seem to post real music are SteezyAF, bootleg boy and Jazz Hop Café. Does anyone else have any nice recs of channels posting nice LoFi compilations?

Of course it's not an explicit expectation, but the news cycle is dominated by a mix of 24/7 news and daily summaries. It's rare that I see weekly, bi-weekly, monthly summaries. I'm thinking, is there really that much that can happen in a day and that warrants our attention? Most news are clickbait focused on the negative, making us feel depressed and feeds our negative emotions. I wouldn't be surprised if the news actively contributes to the mental health crisis.

At the same time I think it can be of importance to have some understanding on what's going on in one's local area, one's country and in the world. For me I think a weekly summary would be good balance, but those are weirdly hard to find. What are your thoughts?

Or am I the only one remembering this opinion? I felt like it was common for people to say that the internet couldn't be taken down, or censored or whatever. This has obviously been proven false with the Great Firewall of China, and of Russia's latest attempts of completely disconnecting from the global internet. Where did this idea come from?

I was just reading this post https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1gmv76n/is_reddit_going_to_remain_the_primary_space_for/ and many barely see the fediverse as an alternative and they seem to have a negative bias towards it. Super ironic when it comes to the self-hosting community. Yes, some instances are problematic, yes, some devs might have had problematic views. But it doesn't really matter when it's federated and FOSS. I think it's clear-cut that the selfhosting community on Lemmy is a perfect alternative to reddit. Why is there such a negative bias?

I've tried Raven but it's archived and not maintained anymore, Fluent Reader and Feeds both of which doesn't feel smooth at all. Any recommendations? Preferably desktop and not a self-hosted service.

I know these federated communities exist as well as raddle, but it still seems like most people will stay on toxic and corporate-run platforms like reddit or Twitter. I'm far from perfect myself and I still use reddit sometimes, especially for more niche communities, but when it comes to ideologically strong communities like the anarchist ones, it just feels wrong that the majority still hang out on reddit. Or you know, moving to something like Bsky when Twitter became too toxic but which is still run by a large, for-profit corporation (if they moved in the first place). What are your thoughts? Is there any justification for this?

I've been trying to lean back into using RSS again after realizing I shouldn't let the algorithms decide what I see. What RSS feeds do you people follow and why? Any recommendations? Do you tend to follow the RSS feeds of Lemmy as well?

So I'm just being introduced to the concept of using a VPN or something like Tailscale to access one's services, instead of opening the services directly to the web, but I'm thinking for streaming purposes or just accessing your services on the run, isn't it an annoyance having to connect to your home network all the time? Or do you keep the VPN running on your phone for example? What if you use a VPN provider for privacy purposes, wouldn't one need to then switch VPN connection?

I've had real issues trying to search the fediverse. I've had bad luck with the search function of both Lemmy and Mbin, and while https://fedi-search.com/ exists the Whoogle server is down and either way the search just seems to be a list of various fediverse instances and nothing fancier (which also means that it's not a complete search?). Other than that it's quite the hassle to list all the instances you'd like to search for every search. What's the best way to search the fediverse? What works for you? And is it somehow possible to add a shortcut to e.g., DDG that searches specific sites without having to type for example site:lemmy.dbzer0.com and all the other instances all the time?