The_Grinch [he/him]

It’s comfy in the center. You never have to defend any actual stance, because that’s just the way things are. You need only poke holes in and minimize the arguments of anyone trying to change anything ever.

Even a struggle which appears futile on its surface can be very useful. Look how many of us were libbed up (myself included) for Bernie in 2016, and were radicalized by our failure We did everything “the right way”, Bernie was incredibly popular, but still we got fucked over. That allowed us to correctly identify the real roadblocks.

In this post Contra repeatedly points at the roadblocks we already know exist and offers no solutions to removing them from our way. Maybe there is value in repeatedly crashing into them.

Arch. I think when people say “bloat” they don’t mean it in the traditional sense of the word. Most people are installing plasma or gnome and pulling all the “bloat” that comes with them. To me at least it’s more that no one is deciding what they think you’re likely to need/do, and overall that makes the system feel much more “predictable”. Less likely to work against what I’m trying to do.

Ignore all the comments about Arch being hard to install or “not for beginners”. That view is outdated. When I first installed Arch when you had to follow the wiki and install via the chroot method. Now it’s dead simple to install with the script and running it isn’t any more difficult than any other distro.

Mainly though it’s because of the AUR.

I don’t like how so many distros ship with discover configured to install flatpaks by default. It’s a huge newbie trap when you click “open file” and uh where are all my files?? You should only install a flatpak if the program is not available for your OS, or if the native version doesn’t work for some reason.

I used to think I generally liked most people but it feels like covid made people go feral or something, the vibes are definitely off somehow. Just walking through the grocery store or anything in public feels much more tense than it used to and people are generally much more hostile.

For me the main selling point of epaper is that the device can write to it then turn entirely off, for potentially multiple weeks of battery on a charge.

Authoritarian is a non-starter for me on account of the fact that it doesn’t actually mean anything. Is it the opposite of democracy? What is democracy in this context, and what would your revolution look like?

So you admit it will be violent revolution then?

You can be as smug as you want about it, but the people who benefit from capitalism as it exists aren’t just going to let you change things.

Maybe you will meet someone like that and maybe you won’t I don’t know what to say besides the fact that they definitely exist and you will know it when you see it.

I have. Maybe it’s unkind to say it but they’re kind of a drain on everyone around them. They can’t even go to sleep without a podcast or the TV on.

That’s gonna be a what from me dawg. I agree that people’s empathy is often coopted to let the people actively doing harm get away with it, but holistically speaking shooting a Nazi for example is an act of kindness and empathy.

We accept that it’s unhealthy to be a shut-in and never leave your house, never interact with others if you can help it, but equally unhealthy is this sort of toxic extroversion where the thought of being alone with yourself for even a few hours is torture to you. If this is you, clearly you have some shit you need to work out that you’re avoiding. Take a week off from the internet and going out. Don’t talk to anyone. Maybe go camping alone for a couple days. You will survive, and be much more comfortable with yourself for it.

I agree, Gnome can CSDeez nuts. They’re really ruining my tiling window manager experience. Worse still than the death of global menus is the death of unity HUD style interfaces which were just catching on (press alt button to start a search interface for all the menu options) they were so nice for the likes of gimp and open office.

Sorry if it’s moderately less “ooh ahh shiny” but it’s objectively an incredibly efficient way to find things. Gnome has posed no valid alternative for this and several other features that they have sunset.

As a sway user even I agree with this move. We don’t need our own apple-like entity directing the course of Linux UI design toward pretty walled gardens. We can have our pretty and approachable UI cake and power user/traditional desktop features too!

And what precisely is the moral issue with stealing? Depriving someone of their personal property, which piracy is not.

They want >$100 a month to come out with maybe one movie and maybe two TV shows worth watching each year? No thanks, piracy for me has become more of a means to assuage my fear of missing out and keeping in touch with the cultural moment than actual enjoyment of the media they’re putting out right now.

I do not believe the quality would go down if their budgets were cut significantly.

It feels like you should do your best to repeat the pronunciation they give you, shouldn’t you? I’m just an American doing my best here :grillman: