My first distro was Debian and I loved Gnome so much that I’ve never gotten around to trying anything else despite being on my 3rd distro hop.

I’m an old head and a firm believer in keyboard first computing. And I think an OS’s job is to be invisible until I need it. Gnome get’s out of my way until I summon whatever I need from it with the keyboard. For someone who’s labored under Windows for so long, Gnome is like escaping Plato’s cave.

Social media companies will target teenagers with ads for impulse products if they calculate that the user is stressed or tired.

You should let your community college people know that graduates from prestigious universities are being paid seven figures to influence not only how they spend and save, but also what they earn. Let them know that it’s their personal responsibility to overcome the efforts of trillion dollar industries that have captured the media and government.

Bitcoin is for dodging sanctions and the influence America has over the international banking and payment systems. It’s also may shield third parties from sanctions the US may impose on those who transact with Iran.

Sure, but advocates for prison reform don’t have to be incarcerated.

People leaving Twitter now is not very impressive. Less “seeing the light” and more “Trumpgret”.

I’ll remind you that the Debian project left Twitter over a year ago. So the EFF isn’t as fast moving or comfortable with change like … Debian.

I’ve never trusted full disk encryption because I understand the person most likely to get locked out of my data is me.

I can see the use case for laptops, but my security policy is “if you have physical access, you win”.

Andrea Dworkin is spinning in her grave. There’s something extra tragic about adopting the token persona for someone at the intersectionality of two identities that the right hates.

the problem with tokens is that sooner or later they get spent.

Laventiy Beria was the head of Stalin’s NKVD. He may not be the greatest villain, but more people need to know about this motherfucker.

Stalin introduced him as “My Himmler”. Despite all the spying and torture you’d expect from the secret police, Beria found time to be a prolific rapist as a side hustle.

Conspiracy theories are a plot by Big Dumb to make us think less.

One thing I’ve noticed recently was a massive uptick of adolescent sex jokes. It’s really annoying.

then they have rights

Why? I’m not trolling, I just really think it’s interesting where people think “rights” come from. Some people think they come from God. Which is great, because in this scenario we are God. So anything we do is ethical because we did it.

I contend they come from States. Because I notice that rights are different in different States. And I don’t think a god would obey jurisdiction.

Another way of saying this is that the beings themselves have to recognize and demand rights. Because a state is just people deciding things after all.

So where do the rights come from? Are they a legal/socail construct, or inherent in the universe some how? Some third thing I didn’t think of?

You’ve heard of a “bucket list”, but have you tried Apocalypse FOMO?

I don’t know why an atheist would be seen as less likely to be bigoted than general population. That’s certainly not my experience especially with regards to Islam. I’d argue that anti-theism is a kind of bigotry.

Many famous atheists are just public misogynists and Islamophobes riding the Joe Rogan circuit with Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. And let’s not forget how many of them were guests at Epstein Island. Richard Dawkins withered under the spotlight of fame like Smegol under the one ring.

There was a time on the Internet when the atheists were the good guys. It was the same time that Elon Musk was cool.

It’s a funny thing. It’s made me realize that being a pacifist or being anti gun is, in a way, almost a privileged position to take. It’s easy to say “I’m anti violence” when your existence isn’t being threatened, it’s a lot harder to stomach as the threats get more real.

Your existence was being threatened but now that you have a gun you’re safe? Sounds like creative writing to me. What was the threat? How did you counter that threat with a gun? Was their a big confrontation? Did you have to put a motherfucker down?

TLDR: Classic libertarians think the government should have limited power so they can’t hurt people. American libertarians think the government should have limited power so they can’t help people.

I have a small library of music CDs, because I liked music before there was an internet. I recently ripped them to .FLACC.

Average life spans. People in ancient times didn’t drop dead at forty. They regularly lived to be advanced ages we would consider normal. It’s just that infant and young child deaths were so common it really drags down the average.

I can not be created, only confirmed.