Harp

@Craigp it becomes really obvious now when you compare the UI to GIMP today and also Krita, which iirc is the spinoff of GIMP-for-people-that-noticed-the-name-wasn't-great and it turns out that "people who noticed problems with the name" and "people who are willing to work to a comprehensible UI" is a venn diagram that's just a single circle. now GIMP is ruled by people who don't think users need any thought in terms of user experience, they just need to 'toughen up and get with it'. and completely expectedly, GIMP remains hell to use and actively user-unfriendly lol ...this is admittedly part of my even hotter to perhaps lukewarm to even possibly ice cold take, temperature depending entirely on audience, which is "FOSS hasn't taken off because a lot of it is perpetuated by people who like the snob appeal of 'to understand this you need to already have gotten your compsci degree, or done the equivalent work as a hobby'. it's part of the culture and that's why the year of FOSS finally becoming mainstream has now become kind of a joke: a lot of FOSS doesn't want to be mainstream and actively will fight against that, or even against any idea that there should be a sort of noblisse oblige towards people who don't have compsci degrees". ..........then the even hotter take is "FOSS as a movement is also driven by lionizing Richard Stallman, a known serial sexual harasser and abuser, and he was given basically a slap on the wrist and then allowed to come back under the radar, because he is the chosen FOSS genius (and never mind the women he harassed out of computer science altogether)". and this is absolutely connected to the failure of GIMP that flows from the name: it is a declaration that the culture is very okay with inappropriate sexual discussions and has in fact elevated them to a beloved funny joke. when the name is showing how rotten some of the foundation is, well, the name meaning something is a flop isn't... as the joke goes: it's not a bug, it's a feature. it's a feature that GIMP is supporting this culture. aaaand it's also a feature that it's failing for that reason. good riddance, imho. kill the FOSSbro to save the FOSS movement

@hannah@posts.rat.pictures this is like the far-more-usefully-employed-and-practical version of how the bjd girlies and the warhammer dudes just knowingly nod at each other, and begin to bond over our mutual nemeses of "hard paint very small thing" and "right clear coat very important" and "oh no.... my coffee cup.... my paint water cup................."

@lapis@elekk.xyz ah i think i can help answer this a handshake deal is something where most of the time, you are expected to treat it equivalent to an actual deal. the problem is that it's incredibly easy to exploit if you do one in bad faith, because the idea is that you shake on it, it's agreed, and the verbal contract is as good as a written one. sometimes (often nowadays with people who are wise to this), a handshake deal is a prelude to the real deal being made on paper. the agreement is made, you just need the office to finish drawing up the paperwork and then it gets signed later and everything's copacetic. but. like any contract that is verbal, it is... legally a bit ephemeral. you can legally enforce a verbal contract but as you can imagine it takes a hell of a lot more work to actually show that agreement happened (usually a recording etc). meanwhile, the contract on paper is the contract on paper because... it's your literal paper trail. it's much easier to produce a paper that both people have signed as evidence that an arrangement was made, than to say "we had a conversation and we both agreed". it also makes it a lot easier to refer back to the contract, too. now there is i think definitely an element of honor that creeps in on a cultural level. the idea of a handshake deal being a handshake is, on some level, "we are both honorable people and not out to screw each other and therefore our handshake is as good as a written contract." if you ask for a written contract, it sometimes hits as "well sure i trust you enough to shake your hand, but i don't trust you THAT much." and if you're going in to the deal with 100% good faith, people can take that as having their honor questioned in a way. there's also some cultural baggage of "we don't need to get the government into this" at play, too - like it really is more fuss and bother to get a written contract, to go down to the notary public and get those signatures notarized yada yada yada. it's the additional cost of getting lawyers involved, basically. so not only is it the perceived insult of "you don't think my word is my bond? you don't think i really mean it when i shake your hand and say we have a deal? you want a piece of paper because you don't trust me like that??", it's also "you don't trust me enough to settle this between ourselves, and instead you want lawyers and all to be the ones enforcing it????". it's almost like how some people get offended by a pre-nup. because they're going into the marriage with the idea it will absolutely be forever, and if you plan too much about what's going to happen when it's over, it can feel like the other person is not committing to you on the same level (or is even one foot out the door). it's "i'm trusting you that this agreement is for real. why aren't you trusting ME that this agreement is for real?". so in this case, thankfully, those bad feelings didn't happen! instead it was two people who came to essentially a verbal contract and decided that they have an agreement and they trust each other enough to have it be just a handshake deal. the refusing to sign could have been "i am planning to be dodgy", but in this case, i think that it was more "let me prove to you that i am trustworthy enough and take this seriously enough that you don't need my signature. my word is my bond and it's just as good." the other guy who wasn't a celebrity was probably sitting there going "okay, this isn't ideal. i would really like a signature for full legal protection. however, a handshake is way better than nothing and no deal at all, so i'll take it." if i'm getting the vibe of the conversation right, it's because his side of the agreement had a lot less power in the situation than McConaughey. (i'll even speculate that he perhaps knew he couldn't actually make a legal contract. to have a contract, you need both an agreement, and consideration. in other words, it can't be just "you stay out of Australia for a year." there has to be some consideration - something of monetary value - in exchange for the agreed-upon action. it can't be just one-sided. it would need to be "you stay out of Australia for a year, and in return i do this." without consideration, if that contract - even signed! - goes to court, it would have the courts going "there was not a real contract here so whatever you all agreed to doesn't fucking matter, there was never a proper agreement in the first place".) so basically one side had no real way to enforce 'stay out of Australia', and nothing they could really strong-arm him with to sign the contract (especially if they knew it wouldn't be a real contract). in that case, a handshake really is better than nothing. if McConaughey was going to screw them over, then he was going to screw them over regardless. so why not make it about an honorable handshake when that's kinda the only thing you can do about such a thing? in this case, the australian gent was doing a big social-and-legal trust fall. they didn't really have a way to breach their side of things - they just had to sit tight and see if McConaughey would follow through. and McConaughey did! so all is well and the handshake agreement becomes proof of honor on both sides, basically.

@lapis@elekk.xyz i will say the contract law here is in part explained by uhhh this atlanta personal injury lawyer that keeps coming up in my youtube shorts feed so i'm like yeah aight https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pNzzJOWW-TM anyway here he is explaining "bad news elon, you did a real contract ha ha"

@wakame@tech.lgbt @hannah@posts.rat.pictures honestly one of the reasons i'm sad that the bjd convention i went to a few times is no longer running is... one of the late night events was D&D With Dolls. just. run a one-shot. and you bring your own figurine, and by figurine, we mean a 1/4 scale jointed doll. and i was always bushed by the time it happened and went "oh i'll go next year" and now here i am, deprived of armored battle dolls: tabletop warfare (ok just kidding i think they took over a ballroom floor because 1/4 scale is bigger than you think)

honestly the more i think about it the more this becomes a "i wish the capitalists would fucking pretend to at least be competent about doing a capitalism" like ok imagine you're a company holding a vaccine patent you've got countries around the world threatening to, as there is an ongoing international crisis, just take it anyway. getting money after that may as well be like getting blood from a stone you've been given government funding for development of this anyway, so the cost of that (often the most expensive part!) is highly subsidized there may be complex legal issues of how much you own of the damn thing anyway you're already riding a wave of good press for making the vaccine why not double down and say... "we're making the patent free!!!!" it is potentially the best investment in PR you could ever fucking make. your company would wear that halo for years if not DECADES after that. the general public will go "oh, that company! the heroes that made the vaccine free so anyone could make it around the world!". plus you will be using it now as leverage especially in those places threatening to just take it. suddenly your company goes from enemy of the state to new savior. it could be a wonderful foothold to expand your business into an entirely new country. i do not think you could ever run a super bowl ad or pay for enough reps to go around to doctor's offices to ever meet that kind of impact. and if you ran the numbers, this is probably going to be one of the most effective forms of advertising that anyone could ever come up with. plus it's not like you will entirely not get any money as things continue. you still have your factories set up ready to make the thing - giving you a crucial lead as opposed to other places that have to scramble to also set up production. in fact, many places might see your company in such a favorable light that they'll buy vaccines from you anyway, because "they've been so generous! it's the least we can do, really, to reward them for being so heroic!" this is a fuckin no brainer!!!!!!!!

there was also apparently legal questions of "but we're using everybody's research, can we even patent this thing?" that went into the decision to just not patent it and i think you could very convincingly make a similar case for the covid-19 vaccine, as there was a great effort to pool resources and data to get a solution as quickly as possible ...now if only somebody had enough money to hire enough fancy lawyers to ominously shake that particular can full of pennies at the situation