I would like us to be trying to change that and not to make things more and more centralized. Because that kind of civilization will fail.

In fitting natural conditions your house can fly too, just not whole and not for long

I mean, it’s crazy, but I’m more fascinated with smaller airplanes. Imagine it, you can make something like a Piper Cub almost as easy\hard as 1000 years ago it was to make a good hauberk.

And for those mentioning computers - my feeling is the same about computers. It’s nice to have a laptop with Linux or FreeBSD (not counting corporate malware), but a machine much simpler, but one that can be produced entirely in an area of 10mln people, full chain, would be much cooler for me.

I’m in awe of distributed production lines being possible and allowed by today’s machinery.

I think that is something we have to rediscover. Centralization is stifling humanity’s advancement. At the same time in the real world rather unpleasant people’s power depends on it, so it won’t be quick or easy. But I think it is happening anyway, just very slowly. Evolution, not revolution. Surely I would be glad for it to be a revolution, to see it as a (yet) young person.

I understand everything, but not the older German “s” instead of usual English one. And that use of “u” is awful. Especially since it’s inconsistent. Why are you doing this?

Right, for him when Trump or Harris wins, the election is fair and transparent.

I’m sorry for the conspiracy tone, but they do keep playing you for fools.

Charging the last terrified rapscallion

OOXML is Microsoft’s proprietary format it itself doesn’t implement consistently.

Either you meant OpenDocument or you meant that you want a magic wand.

Linux is still mostly US-dependent as a project.

That already works, even India and China have (unnoticed by Western public opinion) transitioned from growth to stable situation, and it’s predicted their populations will be shrinking.

We are going to have the problem of too few people, not too many.

There is a correlation, but massacres of civilian population were nothing unusual for the Ottoman Empire of any time.

was the organisation spearheading the Armenian genocide.

Turks like that narrative, but the Armenian genocide honestly incorporates Hamidian massacres and many other massacres before.

Da fuck is dat.

I knew Britannica was low, but not that low. Holy shit.

(For those who didn’t follow the link) The main ethnic conflict problem of the Ottoman Empire was apparently not perpetual small-scale extermination of Christians and Yazidis, but the fact that some Christians still existed in, ya knaw, Eastern Roman, Assyrian and Armenian lands, and to flavor that turd they wrote something about blood libel against Jews - in the Ottoman empire, o-ho-ho.

that only turned into the Armenian genocide after the Turks turned secular.

They never turned secular while still being Ottoman Empire. It was formally a Caliphate. The Ottoman Sultan called himself Caliph among other things. It had “nations” separated on religious basis inside, with their own governing hierarchy etc.

There was a short era of Tanzimat, which is treated by people ignorant of history as some sort of it turning into a civilized state, but it was still monarchy, and Christians were still slaves. It was, however, enough for Muslims to feel a lot of hate because of even the appearance of some kind of emancipation.

you just has to pay higher tax as a non-muslim, but they left you in peace.

No they didn’t leave you in peace, just the tax part wasn’t optional.

Half is maybe too much, but a portion of Bavaria bordering Austria and Czechoslovakia would make sense. With a piece of Danube too. Looks nice and useful for transportation of goods.

It’s different between countries, I suppose.

Also people want different things. For me customizable desktops (say, FVWM however I want to script it) are important, because I easily get distracted and overloaded. I also can’t ignore aesthetics, and in my subjective taste Apple style is concentrated bad taste combined with arrogance. Also there’s something in their UI design making me feel nausea and get tired faster. I don’t know what it is.

Other people want something else.

It comes from subjective experience in a country where Apple is traditionally not very popular.

I also can’t separate their disgusting advertising from their products, subjective again.

I’ve met some folks who’d use an Apple laptop as part of their general attempt to look more competent than they actually were, for managers and such. Or maybe just for their ego.

If your choice is between Windows and MacOS - I dunno. Depends on how AuDHD-tolerant one can make MacOS. What I usually see doesn’t inspire confidence.

We have some client’s engineers who use MacBooks. I’ll just say that I’m wary of anyone technical using MacOS at this point.

Though some of our devs use them too, but from what I’ve seen, they could just as well use Linux.

I’ve recently seen a nice description of that - “peasant mindset”.

People who are not ready and willing to peacefully discuss reality with literally anyone, and most of all marginal and weird viewpoints, like sovcits and antivaxxers, because those are more interesting, - have that “peasant mindset”.

(I’ve found something like that in my head too this morning, so sharing the thought.)

Aggression is a sign of fear, and fear is something we feel when we are not ready to change our mind if we get some good arguments, or when we get bad, insufficient arguments, but are pressed to change our mind anyway.

Why can we not be ready for that, feel powerless before that possibility of deciding to think differently 5 minutes from now?

Because there’s something that we follow like a peasant follows their master. It’s the assumed identity, the family, the group, the party, the state, the nation. Such a decision, and a decision to discuss reality preceding that, is an act of defiance toward those. It’s a conflict, and we as humans sometimes try to avoid conflicts. It’s like discussing orders. Only there’s not a single soul above us who is entitled to order us how we vote or how we think.

Every decision worth making is destructive, everything new comes in the place of something old and something that could be, there’s nothing to fear.

Changing one’s mind by a conscious decision after careful consideration is a sign of having personal dignity. Not changing one’s mind in the same situation is too a sign of having personal dignity.

Keeping your head down and trying to eat anyone not in line is not.

(too long again)

I thought I’m alone. A rather obnoxious person just plainly refusing to reason.

Surprisingly few. I usually block people who think it’s a good idea to incorporate my comments into their witch hunt and go my way with a pitchfork. That is, those who use offensive or derogatory tone instead of arguments.