Spyke

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Why paganism in Europe died, where polytheism in Asia survived?

Besides the other reasons mentioned here, i think there is a strong factor in the social and intellectual sphere. Christianity was a cohesive standardized institution with a written holy book (or set of texts, before the council where they canonized which books would go to the bible), and later became a part of enforced state policy. That mixture of standardization and officialdom allowed it to essentially accumulate 'capital' to such a degree it could (after absorbing lots of ideas and practices) overwhelm the local polytheistic societies and religions.

Local polytheistic religions were extremely varied, and each village tribe or city had its own gods, beliefs, etc. The mess of beliefs meant that the religions spread organically, not in an institution with quasi industrial ways (standardized beliefs, practices, texts, even rows of clergy trained in the same ways on churches and monasteries). They could be challenged and be overwhelmed by the bigger faith, in intellectual ways (evangelization) or by demographic superiority. Or just by immigration to other regions (which many people did, like the barbarians in late Rome or Imperial legions and soldiers since always), where multiple contradictory faiths coexisted, until a cohesive unified alternative popularized.

All that is inverted in India. Hinduism was (is) varied, but way less than paganism from ireland to iran, and it is a formalized institution with written holy texts supported by the state (or by castes, specially the Brahmins), very constant and stable over many generations. That inertia even allowed it to not become muslim majority (except in a few regions).

Other countries in Asia actually have Buddhism as the main religion or state religion (or main historical religion). Even if buddhism absorbs lots of pagan deities, ideas and praxis, the core institution is solid and formalized, and dominant. Japanese Shinto is very different from pre buddhist times. China had buddhism, and confucianism and taoism as also very standardized formalized state institutions (aka not a different religion per village). So asian polytheism is very reduced compared to european one.

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*Permanently Deleted*

The Peertube protocol developers should develop a central hub webpage space for newcomers, allow accounts there to follow all channels in every instance (and to only follow and block specific instances too), and then develop apps for smart tvs. It's the only realistic FOSS alternative to Youtube i can think of, and i dont know why the first point is still non existent (having already subscribed to several channels in 3 instances using separate accounts).

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youtube getting more agressive blocking users after 3 videos

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Depends on how you consider several subjective factors, including political, economical, technological and ownership/control.

Closest to lemmy might be TILvids (Today I Learned videos) → https://tilvids.com

They use Peertube protocol (FOSS), are sustained by donations (patreon), and there is a few big FOSS influencers there already, like the french developer from The Linux Experiment.

There is a few corporations that are pretty much national versions of youtube, like Nikoniko (Japan), Rutube (Russia), VK (Russia), Bilibili (China), Aparat (Iran) etc that would be nice if they were competitors cause they already have all the infrastructure in place to receive everything in youtube in one swop if we neeeded, but alas they obviously will not be taken. (sorry nikoniko)

There is some minor corporations like Odysee, Rumble, Dailymotion, Vimeo. But they are still private profit-driven corporations, so they can go the youtube way eventually. There is some rumours that Tiktok might launch a separate app and site for youtube-style videos too, but again, it is another private corporation and controversial.

The scale of capital needed for video hosting is several orders of magnitude bigger than text and images, this is why youtube became a de facto monopoly on most parts of the world. There is several text-driven social media sites, including this one, but only one big youtube.

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Favorite horror movie?

The Witch (2015)

Since you asked the favorite, i will have to describe it, trying to avoid the spoilers.

It is a masterpiece on many aspects at the same time. It is a historical movie, focusing on an isolated devout settler family living on the frontiers in the beginnings of US history. It is a dramatic and heavy movie with believable people, showing their realistic hardships in everyday living, how they really live and think the world through their strict religion, and how they react realistically to the supernatural events that unfold. It is a Horror movie that gradually builds the mystery, tense and fear thorough the relatively long stretch of time it takes (months i guess), and the actual terror moments felt deserved (i.e. not a cheap scary gag).

For all that, it is considered one of the more 'artful' horror films out there, and i'm sure it will (or already is?) considered one of the Greats in the genre with Dracula 1932 and The Exorcist 1973. It however leans on being slow and heavy, not good if you seek a lighthearted film.

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Youtube adds setting for uploaders to allow third party AI training on videos

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It's going to be fun navigating Youtube in the future when 95% of it is robotic videos with 95% AI comments below to match.

Honestly, I wish it was the other way around, a video-to-text service that writes a good synthesis, a complete transliteration with formating, or even an expanded version, with screenshoot images if deemed necessary. So many videos could be turned into nice essays and commentary.

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YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog

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There are people here not from western europe or north america, we felt all of that and beyond with capitalism too. Do you think Asia and Africa, who received aid and support from the soviet union to free themselves from capitalist Europeans will fall for that ? Where did you arrive at ''multiple famines that killed into the hundreds of millions" ? Even the soviet famines of 1930s and chinese great famine 'only' killed at maximum intervals of estimation 9 and 50 millions each, and this article over-viewing all atrocities maxes at 150 million, with a low 10-20 million estimation, not hundreds of millions in famines alone.

Are you paraphrasing that 'Black Book of Communism' shtick ? It is a propaganda tool not valid in actual academic research, even by liberals that are not fraudsters, because the author twists every single communist countries-adjacent deaths as ''mass killing caused by communism'', including brilliant takes like total number of abortions (ex: France, that practices 250.000 abortions per year must be enraged with a capitalist regime that killed 5 million people only in the 21st century !) and all WW2 eastern front deaths (so both the nazi germans and allies that invaded USSR and USSR soldiers and civilians killed count as 'killed by communism').

Last but not least, the USSR had much higher GDP per capita and living standards than the average third world capitalist country (which is where the demographic majority of capitalist people live), so even if the USSR could not equate Switzerland, they achieved a good quality of life better than the world average.

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YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads

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You must be young (or without memory). YouTube ads started exactly with picture ads (horizontal banners), but that was not sufficient, and ~12 years later there already are 2 unskipable videos at start, middle and finish (and several at the middle if in a long video). Your ad at the pause may start with pictures even, but videos and later longer videos will follow.

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Apple to Buy TSMC's Entire Supply of 3nm Chips for 2023

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Honestly, if not for security patches, most people could probably use a top of the line 8 year old smartphone, like the Iphone 6, without almost missing any feature or functionality, maybe for 20 years or more. Would certainly be great for the environment if we could use a smartphone for 15 years or more, with all the computational power already available this should be doable on the technical level. Unfortunatelly, it will not be allowed to by mnanufacturers, and we do not have a universally compatible functional linux for phones, that also can pass the locked bootloaders.

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It's fascinating that while languages vary wildly by speaking speed, information transfer is fairly similar.

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English is vocabulary wise a neolatin language like french. More than 50% of english words are of latin origin, from roman latin to anglo-norman-french to modern french. English has also lost almost all noun declinations present in german and old english, with the exception being the genitive 's like dog's tail), and the plural, that takes an -s suffix (apple apples), which makes it similar to french and neolatin languages. So, there is something to it.

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EVs are cleaner than gas cars, but a growing share of Americans don't believe it

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Someone has to see Not Just Bikes. Capitalism was the driver to the sub-urbanization process made after WW2 in the US, as a national economic policy to orient growth around building detached houses, private cars and suburban infrastructure (and secondary security considerations of reducing losses and damage in case of nuclear bombs in cities). The US was not a ''very spread out' place before WW2 (i.e. for the vast majority of its history), in fact cities like San Francisco were world leaders in mass transit, and trains were the axis of transportation of both people and goods (even existing suburbs were connected to trains, in whatever shape and size they come). The us cities spent and spend an enormous amount of money and debt to pay for all the road infrastructure, that even neoliberals say it's not economically sustainable, and that money can also be better used paying for higher quality mass transit, not the tertiary thought they give it now (horrible buses that stay in traffic with the cars for the poor people that can not afford a car). Most people do not work remote all the time, even flexible / hybrid workers need to transport themselves some trips per week. Not to mention that full remote work may over time trickle to foreign countries that do the service cheaper, and the work remaining onshore is work that the owners need-want at least hybrid or on site workers.

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Computadores Antigos FUNCIONANDO com Linux

Eu tenho preguiça de tirar foto video etc, então só vou relatar que eu ainda uso um notebook Toshiba de 2006 com Linux Mint XFCE, tendo só maximizado a memória RAM para opulentos 3 Gb e colocado um SSD de 500Gb. Serve para estudos comuns, ler PDFs de apostilas e escrever textos (obsidian e libreoffice), navegar na internet surpreendentemente bem (vendo aula e youtube, mesmo que prefira colocar em 720p para rodar liso sempre) e páginas normais no firefox (mas nunca mais de 5 abas por vez pra garantir). E usando Ublock Origin + LibRedirect (instâncias alternativas livres de sites comerciais (como invidious pra youtube) para minimar o rastreamento e anúncios, e que de quebra tornam a navegação muito mais leve e rápida também).