The_Sasswagon

Gimme a break, I don't expect you to know everything that goes on here, just as all I "know" about Australia is "you" made Murdoch, continue to abuse native people just like us, and dingos regularly eat babies. Like asserting that no Australian people care about those issues is wrong and obviously my fundamental understanding of the country is flawed, it's also wrongheaded to assert the American people are all broken and spineless for years and have bad moral fiber (I'll assume this is a normal saying for y'all elsewhere, but that sounds like a nationalistic dog whistle to my ears).

It is especially bizarre to claim that Americans are incapable of direct action a few years after the country had some pretty explosive sustained protests against police violence and racism. The US is filled with broken people, yes, but not because of some nebulous moral failing, and it's the broken government you have an issue with, not the poor fools who were born here.

Looking to the mentioned protests a few years back might explain the lack of similar reaction now. They burned youth prisons, occupied police stations, ran for office, took to the streets, were shot at, gassed, and went to jail. For what? Nothing changed endured, the establishment "left" abandoned the movement and helped undo any change that occured, the government clamped down harder on dissent, and Trump got reelected. Maybe the methods of resistance have to change to succeed, you cant keep fighting the war of yesterday and expect to win after all, and you sure don't have to publicize your actions for online strangers to check your moral fiber.

Posting may be meaningless, but I'd say all this to your face if we were talking in person too. Communication is how we change and change minds, and leaving nonsense unchallenged is how we got into this mess in the first place, and I won't make that mistake here or in my non digital life.

I'm pretty sure Seattle has an ordinance making changing a park to something else very challenging to impossible. Technically golf courses are parks, though I'd argue terrible ones, making it a much smaller lift to turn them into better (actual) parks and let the golfers go out of town.

I'd just recommend against NVIDIA GPUs if you don't want to tinker, I'm sure it's not as bad as it was back when I had NVIDIA cards, but faffing around trying to get NVIDIA drivers to play nice was the bane of my existence (and where I was forced to learn the most about Linux).

Oh and the screen tearing was a nuisance too that went away as soon as I got an AMD card.

Looks like you got lots of great advice on the OS. Good luck, and enjoy whatever you end up doing!

It's a really good video. He did a very good job putting words to my thoughts too, I've struggled to say why I don't like AI beyond "it's not very good at things", but as he touches on in the video, that is only one small part.

I was also very surprised by the 3% statistic, I think I watch nearly everything from my subscriptions, the recommended is either completely useless from whatever the algorithm has decided I want or showing me videos I intentionally didn't watch.

I went and followed him on Mastodon, and in that thread learned you can just add a channel to an RSS feed by using the link to their channel. I'm sure that's old news to some, but as I already use an RSS app, I'm going to start switching over I think.

I just finished watching the series for the first time the other day. I started out a little skeptical it would have aged well and there's a few moments that reminded me it came out in the early 90s, but wow what a fantastic show. And what a time to be watching it, some of those newscast episodes hit close to home.

I think it'll be on my rewatch list too now.

but congrats to Rep. Jayapal, she probably was able to send some great fundraising emails about trying to overturn Citizens United.

Normally I'm pretty cynical about performative politics too, but in this case, with how apathetic congressional Democrats have been when it comes to the unravelling of our federal government, it's nice to see someone performing something that isn't acquiescence.

Jayapal is also fairly high on my list of "ok politicians". She did good work before she was a rep, did good work as leader of the progressive caucus, and has done good work as a rep. I think if our government were filled with people like her we would be in a much better place. All that is to say, I'm not sure the progressive rep from Seattle is a great target of derisive comments about fundraising emails which may or may not exist.

Depending on where you are sweet potatoes are often grown as an ornamental vine but the tubers are literally what you eat. You can grow them in the ground or in pots (I recommend pots so it's easier to harvest, ymmv). Tomatos, blueberries, herbs, sunflowers, and strawberries are probably pretty easy to get away with too as long as you keep them organized looking.

If you don't have an HOA and you live in its native range, central north america, the sunchoke is a crazy good source of food. Honestly too crazy, once you start growing it, it'll be there forever and it'll try to take over everything, but you'll have the food there buried waiting for you year round. You can also grow it in pots, just be careful with the tubers and the soil, they will seriously spread out of control.

I think there's an argument to be made that with the way it was going we may have ended up in this ballpark either way. For Biden's time in office Democrats were flying rightward on immigration, just accepting the rightwing narrative and saying "yeah but we are hard on immigration too".

Ideally Democrats would learn from this election that it was the incorrect move, then shift more progressive accordingly, and I imagine some folks voted/didn't vote based on this hope. In truth I don't think they learned that and instead will continue to adopt ever more conservative positions, chasing the Republicans to the bottom.

I also don't think it's people who care about immigrants fault that trump won, nor is it productive to dunk on various demographics for holding to their morals or for being duped by poor education and siloed media. When/if we have another election and when/if we have to fight for one, we are going to need everyone who cares to be on board.

You should totally give it a try sometime if you're feeling up to it and have a multi speed bike. It's really hard the first time, but so much of the challenge is mental hurdles like feeling tired, balance when you're going slow, and shifting. The physical challenge is a lot less than you might think.

I accidentally opted into a really tough commute a few years ago (~400ft ascent which is about 122m) and it was really challenging at first but it's amazing how fast you can improve.

I also bought an ebike. They are incredible for days you aren't feeling well or need to grab extra groceries. Good luck with your conversion project! I bet you'll love it

I don't think the US is as bad (in this respect) as media would have you believe. Having grown up in a relatively large dwindling industrial city in the Midwest, visited Chicago very regularly for a time, lived in the southeast, and now in one of the cities often cited as 'crime ridden', I know one person who was mugged and they knew their assailants and it was in my hometown which no one would recognize.

I have friends from St. Louis and Detroit, some of the percieved 'most dangerous' cities here. While they recommend caution or street sense when I visit, I haven't experienced anything but kindness or indifference from strangers. On the other hand, one of my friends was hit and killed by a car in Detroit, and when I left town in the southeast once, saw a bunch of white power banners on someone's house, which is kinda a promise of crime.

None of this is to say I think the US is better than Brazil or Estonia or anywhere else, I've got endless criticism for this country. I mean that the crime reported on is usually exaggerated, and the likelyhood of experiencing the crime that does happen increases as the money you have decreases.

And not to make this even longer, but the people with the means to move to another state much less another country are the wealthy. The poor, who are the ones who might benefit most from moving, are unable to, trapped in the cycle here.

You're probably right, I said that with no data to back it up, only personal experience. I grew up in a relatively large metro area in the rust belt, and our city council made up of pizza shop owners, lawyers, car salesmen, and the like gave up so much to try to attract Walmart to town. It fell through but in the process the council bulldozed a very large neighborhood for the project. The professional staff, in this case the City Manager, was strongly opposed to the project, due to future loss of local business, but the council proceeded anyway.

I would argue, though, that being short sighted about the economic health of communities does imply some level of incompetence on behalf of the local government. They could encourage new local small businesses by starting an incubator program, or offering subsidies for business with less than a certain number of employees. They can find the money to subsidize Walmart and that money isn't ever coming back, whereas the money spent locally does.

To counter myself on that, maybe that's only short sighted because we're looking back and it's obvious in retrospect. Conventional wisdom at the time Walmart was expanding so rapidly may have been, "more big business means more tax revenue means more nice things for the city."

Edit: Sorry, I didn't realize this was two weeks old, it feels like just a couple days ago

I agree, the president should be the best we can get, but infortunately we don't elect people to be good at the job. The nature of elections selects the person who is best at elections at that moment. Sometimes that person happens to be really competent but that seems to be the exception and not the rule.

I'd like to think this is a problem with American voting specifically, or maybe first past the post election systems, but I worry that this is the trend of democracy as a whole. It seems like all democracy is sliding that direction, and I can't think of many safeguards in place to resist it.

I sat with it for a moment, and I think parliamentary systems do seem more resilient since they require experts to be appointed or hired to do the real work, while the elected officials are steering the general direction. That falls apart of course when the appointed experts are selected for reasons that have nothing to do with expertise.

I don't know what a solution to this is, and I think that is by design too, though it may just be the way the human brain works, I don't know. It's very hard to imagine new ways of doing things that are very different, and it's even harder to see a clear path to that different future. I'm hopeful because good people are working on it, but I'm worried because the problems are so titanic.