• 0 Posts
  • 30 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 25th, 2023

help-circle
  • That’s an awful lot easier but likely less accurate and what happens whenever establishment Dems lose. “Hillary lost because of Bernie Bros” is the first and loudest instance that springs to mind. But even if that statement were true, In hindsight we know that she and her campaign sorta rigged the primary, which looked more obvious than they probably intended. That disenfranchised some voters and they didn’t vote.

    That’s not the voters fault, the candidate did something that made those voters not vote for them. Just like Kamala/the DNC did with running an ancient dude, not having a primary, running the ancient dudes VP, supporting the genocide of Palestinians, loving fracking, and onwards. I was really optimistic early on with her VP pick but that seemed to be the moderate leftmost edge of her campaign.

    I’m of the opinion that until the DNC stops appealing to disenfranchised Republicans this steady slide right will keep happening. Running as R-lite hasn’t really been paying off as well for them as it did in the 90s.


  • To be clear, the EU developing an operating system for EU use is not a dystopian vision without assuming many things about the theoretical future project. The petition is asking for this for transparency and independence from an actual dystopian vision coming to fruition in a ‘forced’ Windows standard. That doesn’t really lead me to imagine a dystopian nightmare where the EU forces everyone to install their distro (A potentially comical vision on its own).

    I rather like the idea that governments contribute to open source projects, sounds a lot better than the same contribution going to private institutions. The use of open source software may introduce some vulnerabilities, but those are replacing vulnerabilities that are already there. I would also imagine investment in some open source projects would encourage more development in adjacent areas, much like Valve, Proton, and gaming.

    I would be interested to hear what alternative you have to solving the problems that the project in this petition is attempting to solve. It’s easy to shoot down something for not being perfect but it’s pretty challenging to come up with a theoretical proposal that pleases all.


  • So much of our modern political system is poised around vibes, because that’s all the older voters (seem to) really care about. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of having a beer with George W, I’d have more dollars than I do now.

    I think in contrast younger voters care about a vast array of issues very deeply, making engaging in politics a much more complex task that they probably don’t have time for. Given that so much of the coverage consists of no-meaning political lines with no coherent policy right now, engaging in traditional ways is pointless until they stop having vapid “debates” and “interviews” with no content, and start forcing real policy discussion.

    I think Bernie was popular with younger voters because he brought so few vibes and so much policy. I went to a Hillary rally and a Bernie rally during the primary in 2015 and the difference was night and day. Hillary talked about the positive feeling of continuing the Democratic legacy, while Bernie talked about sustainable agriculture and straw polled the attendees about wind power.

    To be clear I bet this held true 50 years ago when our old voters were young too, no hate on the olds here, priorities change, though I hope mine don’t. Also I wonder if this is all still true for the new young voters, most of my interactions are with millennials and gen z. My few interactions with the folks graduating now have been tainted by my old and out of touch self and by their (in my opinion) under-practiced interpersonal skills from covid years at home. Again, no hate intended.


  • I use MXLinux, picked it somewhat at random when I was frustrated with windows 10 privacy settings and haven’t looked back since. I tried mint, mint cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Fedora before MX, and Fedora is the only other one I have stuck with, to use on a Surface Pro (I needed Wayland for the touchscreen).

    MX has been really stable, light on resources, and has worked really well through two complete hardware upgrades. I play games on steam, some brand new some old, and I haven’t found one that I can’t play yet. That is due to steam/proton/proton GE more than the OS I expect but I’m happy nonetheless. I also run my home entertainment box on MX on an old PC (I know there are better choices for os for this, I was just comfortable with it).

    I like it because I haven’t felt any reason to try anything else, perhaps someday I will and I’ll just find a new OS then, but until then it’s my favorite I think.




  • Along with potential reasons mentioned in this post, right wing folks also have fewer obvious places to go troll now that twitter is just filled with them and Hershey’s or whatever. Perhaps they are coming here looking for trouble specifically.

    It’s also possible they’ve always been here and have just found more reasons to engage recently. Either way, the amount of bad faith discussion and derisive language is frustrating and upsetting.

    I have just been blocking individuals if I find myself getting frustrated, but I also took a long break from social media because I felt like the discussions about Gaza were bordering toxic, so I’m not sure my approach is sustainable.



  • If I’m reading that right, that could also say that Instagram is suppressing anti-israel content? It’s just saying that in comparison to Instagram tiktok is showing more x, y, z. But Instagram is absolutely not a neutral point to measure from.

    For starters there’s different demographics on each one, but I’m sure you could adjust for that, maybe the study did. But I don’t think you can adjust for the impact the US government has on Meta. I don’t believe for an instant that some US agency isn’t manipulating algorithms or requiring certain tweaks to steer discourse just like they did with US news outlets.



  • I had a very similar experience but just kinda glumly stuck with the broken experience in that in between, and just played what I could get to work. But now with proton, specifically the ge version, there’s isn’t a game that I can’t play (that I have wanted to play). It’s pretty amazing how quickly the changes and improvements to gaming on Linux have come.

    I also have an AMD system now, which might be a big part of why it’s so painless now.


  • I am not traveling to go see this one, but did for the one that went across the US a few years ago. I thought it was really cool and would go again if it weren’t so far away. The way the hot Tennessee day got so much cooler, the way the evening bugs came out, the birds stopped singing, the shadows looking like they had a bite out of them, all together with being able to see the suns corona for a couple minutes made for a really really cool experience for me. It was also a big party/camping trip with friends so that helped too.

    I could see it not having that impact for everyone, but I figured I’d share.


  • I’d argue that, while reductive, “it’s bad” is probably a pretty safe takeaway from this, given that the article says if you are of a healthy weight and activity level that you can get away with eating a less balanced diet. Most people in the areas interacting with this post aren’t probably doing that exercise and weight thing, so the carefully balanced diet it is for us. Based on North American red meat consumption this is likely much less than the reader currently eats, so they should probably cut back.

    Internet translation of that resoning: “it’s bad don’t eat it”.


  • It’s odd to me that the reasoning given here and in the article for this problem for the Democrats is that they aren’t acting Republican enough and they are too leftist. It is so clear that the Democrats have managed to do very few of the things they say, and what they do accomplish is either just what Republicans would do, or hamstrung by the Republicans and media blitzed. That’s why they lose ground. Becoming Republican will also lose them different ground. It doesn’t feel like the data should need an explanation in the first paragraph like that, it skews the interpretation of what is pitched as objective.

    I think all these economic and business interests are just desperate for the old Republican party back and are trying to sculpt the Democrats into it because they were close enough already. Probably successfully. It’s pretty bleak all around.

    Also I’m sorry I can’t leave it, but are you saying that the BLM “cohort” prefer trump in there? I’m not going to say that anyone is enthusiastic about Biden, but Trump encouraged beat downs across the country and threatened to march the military on these folks. (Would have done it too if it weren’t for the woke liberal adjenda of General Mark Milley).


  • But it is often additionally used as a software package distribution platform, so it would be helpful for some developers to reach their users by having a clearer path to the most current release.

    I can personally do without a special button, and the op is obviously making a joke, but why not improve the UX for some users? It’s certainly possible to do this without impacting the smelly nerds who wouldn’t use the button.


  • We had a mold issue stemming from a shower vent not connecting to the roof and just dumping humid air into the attic so we wanted to fix that. Found rotten newspaper from the late 40s as insulation mixed with vermiculite under a thin layer of cellulose, which we treated as asbestos and had that professionally removed. Under that found a whole spiderweb of live knob and tube which wasn’t connected to any devices, was disconnected from many of its knobs, and was missing insulation in many places while it was draped loosely over some metal plumbing up there.

    The project started as a disconnected shower vent causing mold, and ended up with a whole rewire of the lighting and outlet circuits in the house. Wild stuff.

    We were also swapping out the breakers for ones up to code since we had messed with the circuits, and one a/gfci breaker just kept tripping. Found a light fixture that had evidentially been sparking away up there for who knows how long.

    Feels really good to have had eyes on every box in the house and know that what’s there now is leagues safer than what was there before.



  • Caususes are a way some state political parties choose to pick out their favorite party candidate for the November election.

    In most states they have a primary which is just a normal election by US standards. In a few, including Iowa, they gather in a physical room and move from location to location to physically show who they support.

    That means if I’m “caucusing for Bernie” I’d go stand next to the Bernie crowd. This ends when a certain candidate has a majority (I don’t remember the exact amount). So people move from candidate to candidate as they see theirs isn’t winning or as they are persuaded by others there.

    Every state has their primary or caucus on a specific day, so yesterday was Iowa’s day, and it’s often very cold this time of year in Iowa. This year it’s pretty brutal, high of 3°F and low of -3°F today (-16C and -19.5C), and it was colder a few days ago.


  • Their coffee tastes the way it does because of how they roast it, it’s a purposeful style thing (that tastes terrible and is horribly overpriced imo).

    Their roasts are also darker than they say. Everything they have is dark roast, with their ‘blond’ coming in closer to a medium.

    People go nuts over the sugar, caffeine and perceived status, it has nothing to do with the taste of the coffee. As a fellow black coffee drinker, my recommendation is to avoid Starbucks unless you happen to be near a union store where the coffee is guaranteed to taste more like freedom, but still like ashes soaked in oil.

    In case you want more details: The way coffee roasting works is you move beans around in a real hot container, and you try to keep them to a specific point on a temperature graph at each moment as they roast. A different roaster would roast them a bit slower, but Starbucks just blasts those beans with everything they have, then they don’t stop until the beans are burnt. This gives them their “signature taste”. This is largely because of Howard Shultz, the guy who drove the company to be a cafe, and until recently the CEO. That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.