There’s a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she’s at the top of the ticket, she’s gonna get dragged down.

This is just preemptive cope to avoid having to reflect on whether the Democratic leadership and its preferred candidates are actually the thing that needs change, and she’s not even an actual candidate yet. Kamala’s biggest problem is not that she isn’t white. Obama was a Black man, but he had heaps of charisma. Kamala has all the charisma of a plate of lutefisk,and people flat out do not like her. She is also irrevocably tied to Biden and his legacy, likely to her detriment amongst the crowds you would most worry about not voting for her because of her not being white.

When it comes to the Democrats and* the left* — from the Biden campaign on down to the activists

What’s with calling out the left on this, when the closest they get to a leftist organization they take issue with is a climate advocacy group. The left has been pretty clear that Biden is not the man for the moment since the go, and for our troubles, we’ve been called everything from stupid and naïve, to privileged white people who don’t care about insert minority group here (and ignore that not all leftists are rich, white people, there are plenty of POC active in leftist politics, though critics, often privileged white people themselves, do love to erase their existence in the same breath they claim to be looking out for them), to either useful idiots or fully cognizant agitators working on behalf of enemy states. Centrist Democrats and liberals have been the ones trying to tell anyone who will listen that the same old play will not just be good enough, but is actually our only option to win, and they’re trying to leave the left to take the fall for their mistake, yet again.

Some of it is political calculation. If the president steps aside, the logical candidate is Vice-President Kamala Harris, but Harris has struggled in office and her poor poll ratings mirror those of Biden. If the Democratic Party tries to sideline Harris and open the door to other candidates through an open convention, they risk alienating her and her supporters and opening up further wounds in the Democratic coalition.

What, risk all four of her supporters? Oh, darn, there go the chances of winning ever again.

Democrats are not going to win with a staid campaign by the usual corporate boot-licking line of candidates they’ve relied on up until now. The sooner they accept that and get behind a candidate who is pushing for systemic changes on issues that actually resonate with your average Americans and the problems they face in their daily lives, as opposed what matters only to their donors, the better for them this time around. Heck, if they actually follow through and make some of those changes, even better.

In my experience, it’s not just a lack of reading comprehension, but often some combination of an utter lack of curiosity, laziness and defeatism. Many other things, like video games, have escaped the realm of being reserved only for nerds and gone mainstream, yet computers remain something people just constantly assume are hopelessly complicated.

I know for a fact my mother-in-law can read just fine, as she spends most of her day reading novels and will gladly spend the rest of it telling me about them if I happen to be there. Yet when it comes to her cell phone, if there’s any issue at all, she just shuts down. She would just rather not be able to access her online banking in the Citi bank app for weeks or months at a time, until one of us goes and updates it for her, rather than reading the banner that says “The version of this app is too old, please click here to update and continue using it.” and clicking the damn button. If anyone points this out to her, though, she just gets worked up in a huff and tells us “I’m too old to understand these things, you can figure it out because you’re still young.” She will eventually figure these things out and do them for herself if nobody does it for her for a while, but her default for any problem with her phone is to throw her hands up and declare it a lost cause first. I’ve seen a lot of people have the same sort of reactions, both young and old. No “Hey, let’s just see what it says,” just straight to deciding it’s impossible, so they don’t even bother to check what’s going on.

They don’t even need to worry about looking good, all they need is to be patient and wait it out for people to get pissed off enough at Republicans and for things to swing back their way for a term or two.

The exam software my uni uses for instance only runs on Windows & MacOS.

I would say this segment of @Iceblade02’s post would be the issue, in that people are locked into these systems even if they prefer to use open source software. For example, my university based in the UK requires I submit my assignments in an MS Word format that supports Microsoft’s annotations for the tutor to do all marking up and correcting/commenting on the paper there. There are ways to do the same thing with PDFs, but at least on my modules so far, it hasn’t been an option at all. That’s just for papers and such.

When it comes to exams where you’re supposed to be answering the questions and submitting them as you go, there are schools that insist on you installing monitoring software so they can make sure you aren’t cheating, which only tends to be available for Windows and Mac. I don’t know how common that sort of software is outside the US, but it’s certainly a thing.

Where did you pick that nonsense up? Annual US aid amounts to around 15% of Israel’s military budget. That’s $3.8b compared to a GDP of $500b. It is a regional power with or without the US. US aid is in exchange for maintaining a major US military base in Israeli territory and access to Israeli intelligence. Israel spends more money on purchasing US weapons than it receives in US aid. US weapons also rely on technology designed and produced in Israel.

This isn’t just about Israel’s military budget. That helps, sure, but it’s pretty crucial that Israel gets shielded from the consequences of its actions by the US constantly. If Israel were to start facing sanctions or have its saber-rattling no longer backed up by the threat of US intervention, be via sanctions or interceding directly, Israel would be a much less imposing power in the region. Military support is not the only measure of US support for Israel.

Why on earth would Russia or China want to watch Israeli power plummet when they could use it to project power into the Middle East and access it’s resources? Why do you think the US is there?

They could literally do the same thing without a) having to provide Israel ongoing material support and diplomatic cover, b) risk getting dragged into conflicts that don’t benefit them by Israel, and c) alienate their existing allies in the region by backing a hostile power.

Israel provided a convenient foothold for the US half a century ago, when the surrounding Arab nations were more hostile to them. The situation has changed remarkably, and Israel is no longer unique in being willing to work with the US. Israel has, in fact, been a liability in making progress with this until relatively recently. But, sure, let’s piss off the rest of the region so we can get Waze and some Israeli clementines out of things, seems like a good trade on the balance of it.

You want to claim I know so little about foreign policy, but you quite conveniently omit the many drawbacks to supporting Israel, as well as any of its weaknesses.

Israel is only a regional power by virtue of the US propping it up, it cannot maintain that status on its own. Why on earth would either Russia or China want to take that on, when they could just do nothing and watch Israeli power plummet.

Israel is hardly discredited, whatever the hell that means

Israel has no large, international backer that is both willing and able to step up and provide cover for it like the US does, and it lacks the might through its own weight around like Russia or China have long term. Without the constant backing of the US to shield from.the consequences of its actions, Israel would become the pariah state it rightfully should be.

The International community cares about as much about the Palestinians as they do about the Rohingya or the Darfuri, both of which are suffering ongoing genocides that I bet you didn’t even know about.

And a lovely bit of whataboutism to round things out from you. Unfortunately for you, my memory is longer than a news cycle, but cute attempt at sounding like you were digging deep there.

US pulling out of Israel would be the most chaos inducing event in world history.

This is pure hyperbole. The most chaos you could get from this would be from Israel lobbing a nuke before getting taken out, which they already essentially threaten as it stands.

And what US rival is Israel going to find to replace it that has both the desire and means to do so? China and Russia don’t stand to benefit from that, even if they wanted to pump billions of dollars into Israel a year. They already have influence in the region with other powers the US is hostile to, like Iran. Israel is increasingly internationally discredited, so it’s not as though they’re going to get a great diplomatic boost. They already have nuclear weapons of their own and pretty developed intelligence apparatuses. What would be the point of taking on such a massive liability?

And let’s not forget that the region is in turmoil to begin with in large part because the US keeps intervening in it, as well as supporting Israel and other shitty governments in the region that are favorable to the US in some way. Israel itself destabilizes the region.

Maybe I would try an Android version, but Linux would be a pass, nothing they would come up with could displace MPD+ncmpc++ for me at this point.

That sounds more like a reason that western powers should have already nipped this in the bud long ago, rather than a reason to continue to give them carte blanche to commit war crimes. They already dropped the ball on that front, so realistically, they ought to be coming up with strategies to neutralize Israel, rather than embolden it. Perhaps they could take a page from Israel’s book and carry out some strikes preemptively exercising their right to self-defense and dismantle the Israeli military and government.

Israel’s unchecked existence is a liability to everyone, but it’s not going to get any better by letting them go even longer.

abandoning Israel would be a disaster for everyone.

How would this be a disaster for anyone but Israel? Worst case scenario, it’s a disaster for Zionists, the US military industrial complex profitting off them, and whatever portion of Israel’s population opposes Israel’s apartheid ethno-state, and I’ve only got sympathy for the last of them. At worst, it’s an inconvenience for the US with Iran. Other than that, let Israel get rocked by sanctions and smacked around by their neighbors they’ve been antagonizing for decades with US support. Let Israelis go be refugees if necessary and there’s an actual threat of loss of life. Otherwise, whoop dee doo, cutting off Israel means they get what they’re due for. Israel is not some essential nation that the world would fall apart should it cease to exist in its current form.

My previous insurance just wouldn’t cover any long-term prescriptions if I didn’t fill it through Caremark on a 90-day supply. It was so annoying to deal with them. My regular pharmacy is two blocks away, if there’s an issue with insurance or something, they give me a call and have generally been pro-active. Caremark would just sit on their hands until I realized it was weird I hadn’t gotten a shipping notification, only to go “Oh, yeah, when we got this prescription we specifically requested you send through us, we decided there wasn’t enough info to determine if you need it, so you need to call your doctor and tell them to call us.”

I wouldn’t really say it’s anything beyond normal consumption, just like I wouldn’t say someone who buys a hat or jersey once every few years when they see a sporting event live has a sports memorabilia collection. Sure, technically, any quantity of something united can count as a collection, but I think plenty of purchasing just falls within the normal bounds of average consumption and doesn’t rise to the level of meriting a special term for it.

I think curation implies more depth and selectivity to the collection and perhaps a certain amount of active effort to obtain and maintain it. You’re talking about hearing a song you like on the radio and clicking “buy,” where the sort of person who would talk about their curated library would spend their weekends digging through crates looking for the final LP released on some random record label in 1985 they need to complete their collection of what is, to them, the pinnacle of early house music as released in Yugoslavia prior to the fall of the USSR. Even if it’s not as hyper-specific as that example, I would expect them to at least have things meticulously tagged and organized.

Sure, but the barrier to entry is significant enough to still deter most people. Even assuming they aren’t bothering with port forwarding and seeding, most people seem like they can’t be bothered with any pattern of consumption more complicated than finding content on major streaming platforms, and the music streaming services haven’t yet gotten annoying enough for most people. They’ll take a peek, go “Do I want FLAC, V0 or 320? WTF is an APE?” and bail again.

We can disagree as to whether it should be that way or not, but I’d wager that the reach of streaming services for a new band far exceeds that of uploading a torrent to a random tracker and hoping it takes off. Unless people already know of you to look for your music, you need to hope a huge number of them are just auto-snatching anything new. On private trackers, sure, you’ll get a bunch of people who auto-snatch any FLAC upload from the current year, but you’re talking about <50,000 users in those cases, and a good chunk of the auto-snatchers are just people looking to build buffer who won’t even listen to most of what they snatch. On the other hand, nobody is auto-snatching all the torrents going up on public trackers, they’d run out of space in no time at all.

And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.

It’s probably more a case of artists acknowledging the fact that streaming services are one of, if not the, primary sources of music discovery and consumption for many these days. Even if they won’t make money off it, by not being available on these platforms, they may as well not exist for most people. That’s something that only huge, already established names can pull without feeling it.

I see what you’re saying, but I also think it’s actually a mark in Linux’ favor that is continues to run so well on older or underpowered hardware. It’s how I really got into it, being broke and able to eke out years more life on older computers when I could ill afford upgrades. These days, I’m happy that I can get off the upgrade treadmill for longer. The most demanding games I’ve installed are the Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remasters and Grandia. I’m not a programmer, don’t have to render graphical stuff for work, etc, so it’s pretty great that I don’t have to worry about my budget desktop being unusable in 4 years because the OS devs have made it a practical impossibility to run on older hardware. I’ve got 32GB of RAM, and my biggest threat to usability is leaving Firefox running with a ton of open tabs for weeks on end, which can conveniently be solved by closing Firefox and watching my RAM use plummet.

Not everyone is going to be a gamer, graphics designer or programmer that really needs the latest and greatest in hardware. In fact, I’d wager the majority of people won’t notice an improvement outside of a few cases. Upgrading from an HDD to an SSD, <16GB of RAM to >16GB of RAM and from an older graphics card to a newer one that supports 4K are pretty easy differences to note in normal use. Those aside, I think most people would be hard-pressed to identify an objective difference in the quality of their browsing and word processing experiences. Depending on how flexible people are with adapting to different workflows, even those could be minimized, to an extent. I have a desktop I bought second hand twenty years ago that served as my main computer into and beyond my initial forays in university. It has a whopping two cores, and I think I might have managed to get 16GB of RAM into it. It’d probably suck for web browsing and wouldn’t be terribly efficient for power use, but I bet you if I reinstalled things, it would work just fine for serving up my music library via mpd, playing it with ncmpcpp and writing term papers in Auctex, same as it did back then. Even if I put an older version of Windows on it like Windows 7, I bet it would struggle to run those same programs on top of the base OS. That’s legitimately impressive, when you think about it.

Support Israel and lose voters, abandon Israel and lose more and different voters.

So just making sure I’ve got this right. When potential voters say, “This policy of enabling genocide is a deal-breaker for me, I won’t vote for you if you don’t change this stance,” they’re being naïve about the complexity of politics and the current situation in Palestine, if not actually just bad actors, but when other voters say “I won’t vote for you if you stop enabling genocide,” they’re playing 5d chess that us simpletons with morals just can’t keep up with, right? Because that’s basically what you’ve just wrote.

It’s always the left who are being unreasonable for refusing to compromise, but when center-right genocide sympathizers refuse to compromise on their stance, tough luck, kid, that’s just politics. The enlightened centrists here are shrieking about the end of democracy if you don’t fall in line with them, as all the while they happily march down the path to the end of democracy.

Pretty sure they are saying that if you have 10 days PTO and you use one of them when sick, you no longer get a full two weeks’ vacation as you’ll have an uncovered day. With a full 10 days, I could clock out Friday evening, get on a flight to my vacation destination, catch a return flight the afternoon of the 19th and be back to work on the 20th. With only 9, I either need to work until next Monday and get on the plane that night, or cut my vacation short to fly back in the 16th and work the 17th. You effectively lose up to 3 whole days of downtime on vacation for being unable to work due to illness once a year.

True, but you also need to get enough people with the right skills/knowledge who want to live in West Virginia or Oklahoma when those same skills and knowledge likely make them highly employable in markets with more amenities and greater job opportunities without needing to uproot their life and move to a new town/city when the time comes to get a job with a new company.