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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2023

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  • My journey was Windows-> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Arch.

    (Infuriatingly i still use windows for gaming, but nothing else.)

    Did i mention that i use arch?

    More importantly:

    fucked up all my data with no backup.

    One time i messed up a script and accidentally copied 40,000 mp3s to the same filename. 20 years of music collecting, literally going back to Napster, all gone.

    Well, not completely gone. I’ve got everything uploaded to iBroadcast, and I’m pretty sure i can download my library. But I’m not sure i deserve to.



  • So you’re saying you want a federated wiki that uses a blockchain??? Genius.

    Kidding aside, you’re absolutely right. Wikipedia is one of the very few if not ONLY examples of centralized tech that ISN’T absolute toxic garbage. Is it perfect? No. From what I understand, humans are involved in it, so, no, it’s not perfect.

    If you want to federate some big ol toxic shit hole, Amazon, Netflix, any of Google’s many spywares – there’s loads of way more shitty things we would benefit from ditching.


    Edit: the “federated Netflix” – I know it sounds weird, but I actually think it would be really cool. Think of it more like Nebula+YouTube: “anyone” (anyone federated with other instances) can “upload” videos, and subcription fees go mostly to the creator with a little going to The Federation. Idk the payment details, that would be hard, but no one said beating Netflix would be easy.

    And federated Amazon – that seems like fish in a barrel, or low hanging fruit, whichever you prefer. Complicated and probably a lot more overhead, but not conceptually challenging.



  • You’re being downvoted because people people think you’re being obtuse, but, as a person that overuses logical thinking to a diagnosable degree, my suspicion is that you’re doing that. Also because your tone is kind of…not good.

    The whole point of the Serenity Prayer (“accept the things I cannot change”) is that it includes “change the things I can” – so the things Davis is changing are things she CAN change, by definition.

    But her point is that she is reframing what she believes she can and cannot change. Recategorizing, if you will.

    She’s invoking the third part of the Serenity Prayer: the wisdom to know the difference. As we grow and learn, our wisdom increases, so the things that belong in the first two categories will shift.

    Things that used to be things that can’t be changed are becoming things that she can.

    To understand the quote, you just have to give it some space to breathe, and not be so logical about it.


  • I’m not sure it was ever accurate for people who weren’t already conservative.

    It makes a lot more sense that, as you get older, you stop growing and learning, so as society progresses, your formerly progressive views become commonplace and eventually anachronistic.

    (That’s 100% what happened to my mother, who was a hippie, literally flowers in her hair, and now “just doesn’t really get the whole trans thing”)

    And, if a person was progressive, but had some secret conservative or regressive values, those values come into sharper relief when their other views become commonplace – and, as you get older, you’re less interested in hiding your flaws and/or shameful values, so they come out more.

    (That’s what happened with my dad, he was in folk music groups in the 70s and then became a doctor and didn’t like the idea of poor people getting some of his money (even though it was those same programs that kept his mother afloat after his father didn’t come back from Korea).)







  • One of the things that I thought of to help with this problem is, like, what if we figured out how much it costs to meet like all the basics in life - a house (not a rental!), food, soda, internet, heat/hot water - all that stuff. Then add some more, so that people could do nice stuff and enjoy their lives, save for retirement, go on vacations, etc.

    Then - now here’s the crazy part - we make a law requiring that everyone in the country needs to be paid at least that much money. It would be like a “Floor Wage,” or, like, a “Minimum Salary.”

    If the increase in the cost of doing business didn’t eliminate billionaires altogether, I bet people would at least stop giving a shit about billionaires and their gold piles because the rest of us aren’t living in debt while they build yachts for their yachts.


  • I just wrote like a 10 page response to another comment on that same post I made so I don’t think I have the energy to go too deep on this - so, to keep it short:

    1. I was just rebutting that person’s claim that a car and a digital object have the same relationship to value, and they don’t; physicality requires resources that “digitality” doesn’t.

    2. I feel like you might’ve agreed with me in the second part? Or, if not, I think you managed to destabilize the entire data economy in like 2 sentences, so, fuck yeah.


  • First off, I was specifically addressing your concern about the car & it’s physicality. Value of physical objects is directly related to the scarcity of the resources; digital content pricing is skeuomorphic (sp?) at best and absolute bullshit at worst.

    Surely the sale of that copy of the movie has value

    Secondly (and thirdly in a sec), this is the fundamental misapprehension that surrounds piracy. Each instance of piracy does not mean one lost sale. In terms of music (I read a study about music piracy a few years ago), this is rarely the case, and in fact, it was the opposite: the study found that the albums that were pirated more resulted in more sales, since the album’s reach was extended.

    Thirdly, one of the core issues with the entertainment industry at the moment is that the streaming services have no way to gauge the draw of a specific show, movie, or song, since subscribers just don’t approach their subscription that way - you don’t subscribe to Spotify because your want to hear Virtual Cold by Polvo; you subscribe because you want to have access to their entire collection, as well as all the other awesome 90s noise/math rock - even though, let’s be honest, you really just listen to Virtual Cold over and over.

    As a result of this clusterfuck, streaming services can’t correctly apportion payment to their content - they do an elaborate split of the profits. So - the best way for the “content providers” (ie copyright holders) to increase profits is to reduce the amount of content on the streaming service - so the profits are spread over fewer titles.

    This is massively hurting the production companies - please note none of these fuckers are getting any sympathy from me, this is just an explanation - they’re having a hard time finding a balance between how much they can spend given that half of their productions’ profits are pennies. (Oops, forgot one element: because of streaming tech, no one buys films in tape or DVD or whatever - which was half of a film’s profit.) Do they make a bunch of huge budget action movie sequels that fill the theater seats? Or do they make smaller-budget films with smaller profit margins?

    It’s a shitty situation, and I don’t know what the answer is - but I know that the answer isn’t whatever the fuck this is. And, until they figure their shit out, I’m just going to step outside the market for a bit.

    I’m not living in some dream world where piracy doesn’t reduce profits. I know that the underground bands that I like are usually supportive of piracy because it helps them more than it hurts - and when it comes to film and TV, when those companies complain about piracy , it’s just like those bullshit shoplifting claims - attempts to turn their “line not go up” on poor people. Piracy is a grain of sand in the Sahara - they have way bigger problems than that - though I do think increased piracy metrics might help encourage them in the right direction.

    Anyway, if you got this far, I appreciate your time.



  • Before Obama, I could still remain quiet when people said “voting for anyone is implicit approval,” or whatever - and for the most part, they’re right - voting is a pretty low level of change.

    I voted for Obama because even if he is a bit of a tool, he’s black, and now a huge group of minority kids saw someone who looks like them in the white house. I voted for him not because of the “HOPE” on his signs but literally to give black kids hope. (And yeah, for the most part, it’s false hope, just like it is for white kids, welcome to the club.) He was a positive symbol and, if it’s a symbol who is also a centrist Democrat, that’s better then a centrist Democrat that isn’t a positive symbol. And a shit ton better than Mitt Romney or whoever the other guy was.

    And then Trump happened, and any respect for the “don’t vote” viewpoint drained out. If you still think both parties are the same at this point, you might want to start asking yourself what else is going on with you - because “not great” is not identical to “fucking terrible”…

    Biden isn’t doing what I want him to do - health care, income inequality, corruption in Congress, etc - but the infrastructure bill isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing, we need it. We need a lot more, but 1 > 0.


  • All of this. The reason why the “trans debate” is so problematic is because of the “debate” part. I don’t give a shit about whether gender is a performance or a genetic thing - i care that trans people are murdered at an alarming rate, and that their rights to health care are significantly under threat - or gone already. My concern is that trans and gay people still have to worry about their safety when they come out of the closet.

    I care about providing safety and normal human treatment for people who aren’t getting it.

    The “debates” can happen after these people stop being murdered and abused. You can tell me all about your religious doctrines and how god made Adam and Eve or whatever after we agree that humans need to be treated like humans.



  • Idk if I would say it’s looks > usability, and it’s certainly not gaudy… There are theming styles that are much more unusable and gaudy than the “riced” look.

    It’s an aesthetic that idealizes a kind of barebones utility, and while it often will lean towards the look over the usability, the look itself is like a “beautiful utilitarian” - minimalistic, uncluttered, etc.