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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Yes, Dali would have been great as the emperor.

    But Jodorowsky’s unfinished Dune project still had a significant influence on several major science fiction films and media, despite never being completed:

    1. Alien (1979)
    • Dan O’Bannon, who worked on Jodorowsky’s Dune, later wrote the Alien script
    • H.R. Giger’s designs for Dune inspired his work on the Xenomorph
    • The Alien Xenomorph’s design has roots in Giger’s Harkonnen Castle concept for Dune
    1. Star Wars (1977)
    • George Lucas was reportedly influenced by the Dune storyboards and designs
    • Jabba the Hutt’s appearance may have been inspired by Baron Harkonnen’s design
    1. Blade Runner (1982)
    • Ridley Scott hired Dan O’Bannon and Moebius, who had worked on Jodorowsky’s Dune, to help create the futuristic world
    1. Contact (1997)
    • The opening space sequence was allegedly inspired by Jodorowsky’s planned opening for Dune
    1. The Incal (1980s graphic novel series)
    • Jodorowsky and artist Moebius recycled many concepts from their Dune work into this influential comic series

    Check out the documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013). It explores how the pre-production work and assembled team for this unrealized film went on to influence much of modern science fiction cinema. It’s worth a watch.







  • Oh, wow. Thanks for the in-depth explanation - very interesting. I had never really looked into the technical details. Well, I suppose I’m lucky that my reasonably new smartphone still has a 3.5mm audio jack, so I can continue to use my now rather old, but in my opinion still pretty good, headphones. It wasn’t that easy to find a new smartphone with an audio jack, but then it looks like I’ve actually done everything right when it comes to listening to music.


  • Hi-fi stereo systems with amplifiers, speakers and cables.

    I could be wrong, but I think that old stereo systems generally have way better sound quality than Bluetooth systems, soundbars and the like. Physical media such as CDs or even Flac files (etc.) are of course impractical compared to streaming, but the audio quality is much higher.

    However, since you can also stream audio without any problems, I would recommend every music fan to buy a used stereo system with high-quality speakers from the 2000s or even from the late 90s - in my opinion, excellent audio quality at a low price.



  • I think you can also see something fundamentally positive in the critical attitude of many Lemmy users: namely the fact that criticism of undesirable developments in politics, society, the economy and so on is practiced here at all. In my opinion, this is important and should not be taken for granted. If only because it is impossible for so many people in numerous countries around the world to express their opinions freely and criticize their governments or powerful people in their society.

    In any case, I think that a certain fundamental skepticism towards the existing power structures in politics, media and business is something of a unifying element that motivates many people to participate in Fediverse, after all, this platform is an alternative to the centrally managed social media providers and their functional logics.

    Nevertheless, I think your post is important because it shows that all the negativity that goes hand in hand with a critical examination of the numerous problems in the real world is extremely off-putting for many users. This is of course problematic both for the mass appeal of the Fediverse and to a certain degree probably also for the mental health of the user base.

    Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer as to how to deal with this in a meaningful way. However, I try to stay positive and hope for the best.




  • Trump is directly responsible for these excesses. In the press conference right after the conviction, he said:

    This was a rigged trail by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. (…) This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt a political opponent.

    These are, of course, allegations that have no basis in fact whatsoever. So I wonder: are there no legal means to prosecute Trump for these blatantly false allegations?

    Shouldn’t the mere allegation that the judge was corrupt be enough to sue for defamation? I mean, it has to be enormously damaging to the judge’s reputation if someone makes such serious accusations against him.



  • Yes, that’s probably true. For me, however, neutrality presupposes diversity - at least to a certain degree. As in the maxim of quality journalism: the assumption here is that a journalist can never be truly objective. This is why an attempt is made to allow opposing perspectives on a topic to have their say, so that the reader or viewer can form their own opinion.

    Of course, this principle does not work in an environment in which differing opinions or perspectives are generally unwelcome. This is probably the case with Lemmy and other Fediverse applications for some topics. But I think that this doesn’t just apply to the Fediverse, but to social media in general. It seems to me just as you say: if you only encounter rejection on a platform, in a community or on an instance if you disagree with the majority, you will move elsewhere - which in turn will probably lead to you eventually finding yourself in an environment where the majority of others are of the same opinion.

    Of course, it would be highly desirable if people were more open-minded, but I’m afraid that’s a utopia. In any case, I don’t have the impression that the advent of social media has fundamentally brought open exchange forward.

    On the contrary, I have the impression that political discourse in many countries, for example, is now characterized by the very strategies that make social media posts successful: the abbreviated presentation of complex contexts, the invocation of enemy stereotypes, sometimes even straight-up trolling. But perhaps this is just a perception error on my part.


  • I’m not sure whether there can be an ideologically neutral social media platform at all. I think there will always be a significant proportion of users who are not interested in discussion, arguments and open minded exchange, but rather in seeing their world view confirmed by others or simply being part of a perceived in-group.

    What’s more, the sheer mass of content makes an attention economy necessary so that one can deal with this flood of information. In my opinion, the content that is easy to consume will always prevail over content that looks at a topic in all its complexity (hardly anyone is willing/has the time to read up on it). So it’s often not about who has the better arguments or actually knows something about a topic, but about who sells their posts better. In this sense, it seems to me that social media in general is not really social, but to a large extent a competition for attention.

    I am not aware of any platform that could solve these problems. In my opinion, this is not really the aim, as pretty much all platforms are not really about objective information, but rather about passing the time and entertainment. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find good discussions and serious information. But I think that this kind of content will never be the main focus of any social media plattform. The fediverse approach seems like a good try to me tho, because there can be “special interest instances” that can make their own rules to focus on whatever they are about.