Unfortunately, while a respectable and understandable sentiment, there are wars other than the class war. The class war does extend to those other wars too, in that the distribution of those sent to their deaths and those eating caviar at home while crossing off numbers and names from lists are almost always in direct correlation with the concept of class, but the war itself is not merely about class or even the sides of the class war.

There’s more to life than the material. There’s culture, there’s identity, and there are individual humans that do exist standalone outside of their “class”. While the classes and the oppressing hierarchies of the world do play a part in everything, and anything can’t be entirely isolated from those, from that reality, it’s not the sole disagreement between people and bodies of people.

We hold immaterial things valuable, which I think is natural and very human. Some of those exist entirely outside of the class distribution or distinctions. While some immaterial things like power and influence do correlate with material possessions and thus, the hierarchies at large, the classes, some do not. And sometimes things like national identity, attachment to the language you were taught and you speak, your preference in music, sexuality or otherwise, can be the thing you either fight to forbid and exterminate (such as Russia is doing here), or you fight for, to preserve, to defend, to hold dear and be able to hold dear in the future too.

Life is complex. Humans are complex.

Not everything can be simplified and reduced to simple power hierarchies. There are strong, powerful stuff that exists exclusively outside of those definitions. And that’s only because we are irrational, feeling, dreaming humans. And we’re better for it, too.

Edit: I’m taking the middle road here and assuming something around year 1250 or so, not 1100 or 1400 as confusingly set in OP.

Okay, so unlike most other scenarios, I think I would be fine for a while at least. The peoples living where I live would have made and kept more or less regular contact with the sons of bitches from the south that would later crusade us (or I think maybe one of the crusades is presently ongoing at the time…) so while I would both introduce and be hit with diseases or more likely strains of familiar ones new to my body/their bodies, I think it wouldn’t be as destructive as entirely separated landmasses like America vs Europe.

So if I survive the shock my body gets hit with, and I don’t kill everyone around me, I think I would be fairly well received. As far as I’ve read, the languages and dialects were different than after the formalization of the written form, and at this time these lands were just starting to get forced under Swedish rule, so with my basic understanding of Swedish and of course my native language, I think I would be able to communicate well enough to not get instantly killed as a demon or something.

I think my best bet would be to introduce myself as some sort of demi-god, a bastard son of the god of forests and the hunt probably, which would hopefully explain my alien attire and materials used to make them. And the alien accent/dialect of both the local language or Swedish, depending on where I’d land. If the first contact I make aren’t local but crusaders, I suppose I’d have to try and push myself as a wandering preacher of Christ or something. I’d have to hope they’d speak Swedish, since I do not know German well enough to form two words together, and they’d likely be the next likely encounters. Novgorodians I think were fine with the Swedish language in general, so if our current knowledge of history was off enough that I’d meet them here, I’d still be fine. No idea what I’d pretend to be to them though. My limited knowledge of history doesn’t help there. But as far as I understand, they were sort of a melting pot of close-by cultures, and not so focused on these lands at this time, they’d just take me for a local hermit and let me run off clumsily.

If I was able to survive the first encounters and get myself to a village or a hillfort, I’d try and establish myself as a wise one, helping with calculations and engineering and whatnot to the best of my capabilities, which I would think honestly should far exceed those of the locals at the time. So maybe I’d get by just for being useful and knowledgeable.

But I don’t think I’d live a long life. These were a turbulent and violent time and one village elder or the other, fancying themself a king or whatever, would just send assassins to off me for being an asset for the local leader where I’d end up in.

Even if I’d travel to avoid this problem, it probably wouldn’t take until my old ages to have someone or something off me just by happenstance. And I wouldn’t want to live a hermit in a time where internet or computers aren’t a thing. I think the only way to cope would be to focus on a family, try and bring up children and have that fulfill my life as best it can, as long as it can.

Honestly, I consider myself lucky in this scenario. We still have our language alive and in use, the same the locals would speak at that time. This together with the general superstitious nature of the local tribes — which the crusades and Christianity, with overt blood and sadistic violence, would (thankfully later, I hope for my sake here, at least according to our current knowledge) succeed in some amount to water down and turn them to its specific flavor of lame ass superstition — would make it probably at least somewhat likely I wouldn’t be killed on sight or something to that effect.

Before even reading the article, I’m thinking they’re maybe selling it as a good thing along the lines of “do you hate to see those ads you don’t care about? Taking space on your apps and pages? What if there was a way to make them actually useful! Make them feel like content, just for you!”

I feel like I have to point out that this is horrific either way

Edit: I actually talked about this quickly with a few almost tech-illiterate friends and they were honestly excited about that at first, when I didn’t preface it with my reasoned disdain for it or the privacy implications… so despite the way we here react to it, I’m almost sure this will sell amazingly.

Well, I guess sufficient is subjective…

However, consider that whatever you have now in today’s world, not just physical things but also your life experience and expectation of things might not line so well with those that you’d have in a scarcity scenario completely unlike today’s world. What you now consider sufficient might be entirely unacceptable in different frameworks of thinking and living.

That’s probably the worst possible addition. Something like this, you need to be able to depend on. In a no-room-for-errors kinda situation you really don’t want to have a language model hallucinate something and burn potentially ruinous amount of scarce resources in the process, not the least being time. For example with crops.

Edit: and also that’ll burn through the power compared to just reading pdfs… if that’s scarce too, it’s a no go. Not to mention it’d have to really have some bulk for the capability to even run a basic model with extremely hit and miss results and definitely zero chance of retaining any sort of context long enough to be actually useful in this kind of use case. I think people are probably a little bit pampered by the cloud models of today. No chance you’ll be running anything like that in a small device with limited power.

Oh wow, hadn’t heard of graphite/graphene yet, and it looks so interesting! I rarely explicitly thank a comment that gave me a lot personally, but this time I think I have to. The graphene framework and the concept of artwork as compiled programs is pretty intriguing read! Thanks a bunch!

And even if technically notable enough, you still need some objective sources for any claims made, even simple things like profession, even if your works speak for themselves. And what the mods deem an acceptable source seems arbitrary.

I listen to a lot of indie music or local smaller bands, and often, even though they gig a lot and have several albums practically on every digital platform, I can’t find the bands in there, nor any of their members.

Often there’s a red page there with some contributor discussions where they argue with each other about these things.

Seems so wonky to me, since I just came from their gig, having listened to them for 10+ years.

Well, I lived in such conditions most of my adulthood before having a kid to care for, and it was possible precisely because it was just me. Either it was a small town not even close to a big city, or it was a small town at the outskirts of a big city, some 20-30km away. I loved it. Still do.

But it’s so hard to uproot once you have all the other stuff like not only your own job, but also your partner’s. And kid’s school or daycare or whatever. And then having to work out the bus routes for the small humans and figure whether or not it’d be plausible for them to adjust to that and not get burned out or lost or confused or whatever.

And once you need more space, it’s much harder to find places to rent in the small towns. Mostly for sale, if it’s beyond two bedrooms. And in that case it’s much more complicated since you need to go to the effort of getting the place evaluated, arranging the loans and finances so you can pull it off, and that’s a big decision since it’ll probably lock you in there for quite some while, because small towns don’t move houses fast if you decide to go, so you could be looking at years before you get the sale done and another mortgage.

It’s just so hard. Once you are in the city, it’s hard to leave. And the more you root in the city, the harder it gets.

I hate it. I hate the city. I hate most about it.

But I love my family and would suffer in a city until my death if that’s what it takes to keep it together.

But as a positive anecdote, in my life prior to rooting down, as a younger and more adventurous human, I found that maintaining a community and a good group of friends even somewhat far away from the rest of them is easy and most importantly, comes easy. Its natural. I never found community a problem, because I always had a few groups of friends and it was always enough for us to touch ground together only monthly or every other month, so our location wasn’t really a concern. Most of us lived apart anyway. And the actual day-to-day sense of community came from work or uni or that kind of thing. I was never alone, though I lived blissfully far from most everyone.

So the only thing that really makes it difficult is trying to find a way and a good timing for not only one, but three+ people to move at once with all of them being happy with it. That’s a puzzle I’ve found near impossible to crack.

If we had a lot of money saved or good enough jobs to get a nest egg going, the problems likely wouldn’t matter and could very easily be worked around. But alas, we are just lower middle class, and while we are well enough off, moving is a completely life changing and paradigm shifting thing. It’s not something to choose lightly.

Maybe that plays a part within your group of acquaintances too? My work is even WFM and my partner could likely commute easily from most of the options we have within 100km. So technically we have a lot going for it. Should be easier.

But it’s not. Life is complex.

Edit: For context, I’m in Europe too.

That’d be perfect.

I can’t believe how hard it is to find people willing, even on a completely theoretical level, to live in a little bit more closer knit community with some shared facilities and land for common goods. Even if I say it need not be the cliche hippie commune, it can just be people living co-operatively and having just a bit more together time, simultaneously even saving some money and resources, by having shared facilities and lands. Most recognize just one thing about it. Energy and water treatment self-sufficiency seems to interest people, but not enough for them to even consider a shared community “hall” with a kitchen and room for everyone to eat, so that a every single house need not have a full, everything included kitchen. Same for bath and toilet stuff. And electricity utility rooms. Or anything, really, that isn’t your own personal and private as usual living quarters with the basic facilities so you don’t need to be social every time you need to pee or have a breakfast.

I recognize this is practically just an apartment building, but in a horizontally laid out format, I guess, with some space between the apartments for personal space even outside, and some extra niceties like an all-inclusive kitchen with a full set of tools and facilities to cook practically anything, without everyone having to buy all of that individually and also with a fraction of the cost for being shared between all. And some crops for a bit more self-sufficiency, same for electricity and water facilities.

People are fine with large apartment buildings where you can practically always hear your neighbors and have some minor shared stuff like saunas and very basic recreative rooms and the usual utilities like electricity and water and yard maintenance handled by someone else.

I feel like a close knit community — with shared spaces for stuff you don’t need 24/7 but rather only occasionally and in limited periods each day, and increased self-reliance and independence and more national-catastrophe-resistant facilities, with the understanding that some of the lots are saved for specific professionals like an electrician, farmer, animal handler, plumber, etc and require minor extra investment, shared between all, to pay for them handling the day-to-day — would win in almost all fronts against an apartment building, except maybe in that it would have to be a little more remote in location because extra land needs and need for appropriate soil for crops etc. But a commune like that could easily just have a shuttle or two and arrange co-rides even each day to the nearest town or city. Could even save on personal cars by having that.

I don’t know, I’m rambling now.

I get frustrated because I’m probably not seeing the value other see in living alone, separate from others living alone all around you. Or the proximity to more densely populated areas maybe? Or whatever it is that makes people not even consider a community such as the one described. There must be a lot of things I’m not seeing that normal people see, and it makes me so anxious that I can’t see them. But then again I’m not neurotypical. Not the first area of interest I seldom get to share with someone, anyone.

You know, I just realized how removed I am from German as a language.

I saw those lyrics and in my head I couldn’t help but read it in the voice and musical style of Rammstein.

That sounded pretty good, too.

But I also realized I don’t really have any other exposure to German, outside of singular scenes in some movies or tv-shows.

This is probably just to point out the bias in the original question and our incapability to actually answer it or similar questions, but I actually think this is probably the one thing that separates hell and paradise here on earth.

Well, not the only thing, but once all the basic needs are covered, most of how this feels, probably comes down to what you focus on. Intentionally or not. We’re not very in control of our focus or our minds, after all.