Might be a joke?

Ah yes, let’s skip the social part and get right to the obligatory consumption.

I don’t really care for Halloween, but I don’t actively hate it either. I like seeing kids and parents in cute costumes walking around. To me, the whole point has always been one of social activity, of walking around the neighbourhood and showing off your cool costume and such. You know, the whole “reinforcing horizontal social ties” deal we’ve done since forever.

‘hunter-gathering was the peak of human society’

I love perpetually balancing on the edge of subsistence, one step below the agrarian societies that drove me out to the marginal lands unfit for more efficient cultivation! I want to be stuck in a loop of raiding other tribes in the attempt to drive them out of their hunting grounds, then having them raid mine in turn in an eternal struggle to get away from the precipice of doom!

I think it’s really hard from a modern perspective to gauge just how unpleasant life was. Nothing about low-tech farming is simple.

What’s on the playlist? Trivium - Insurrection, Bad Omens - Dethrone, what else?

…

wat

I understand that you’re quoting. This is no criticism of your comment. I consider myself fairly adept at imitating the mental gymnastics. But here, I’m at a loss.

I’m only a chapter in, but found the section on conventionalism curious. It may explain why they take such issue with being called “weird”: If they value their perception of being “normal”, “weird” isn’t just an insult used against people you don’t like, it’s an attack on a principal personality trait.

wat

why

How would you even frame that as a favour?

Halsin noises in the distance

Here here, have some Chai. Take a break and everything.should.be.ok

Edit: I’ve been free from web dev too long and it shows. Don’t even know my assertions anymore.

that’s more of a web design distinction

I think that was the point of “someone rescue me from frontend dev” - if they’re doing so much frontend design work that they instinctively get pedantic about padding vs. margin, they need help.

rizz is also used to mean flirt. So “I like you” “Are you flirting with me?”

I see more atheistmemes on All than I do religious stuff.

This is a joke, most likely, given the community and context.

And their runtime uses pressure-vessel to put games into controlled containers

I mean, there may also be plenty of non-citizens there at any given time.

There’s a bunch of staff there too. Wikipedia cites an estimate of 764 people.

only by facing that fact can anybody actually fix it

The first step to improvement is to acknowledge flaws. We can still admit “This is outside our current capacity to fix.”

pretending “linux is easy now”

This might not always be pretense so much as cognitive bias and a bubble effect: If I look at it from my point of view, it has gotten a lot eas_ier_. I underestimate just how advanced even those things I consider basic are for someone not as versed as I am. I’m nowhere near an expert, but I know enough to have lost sight of the floor.

There are plenty of “fire and forget” distros - If I want to, say, install Ubuntu, I create a bootable flash drive with the base image, reboot, follow the installation prompts, easy.

The layperson will ask “What’s Ubuntu? I thought we’re talkink about Linux?” “What does bootable mean? How do I do that?”

Most crucially, from my own experience trying to sell a family member on Linux, “What do these prompts all mean?” They’re scared of selecting something wrong, because they’re not confident that they understand them correctly.

That may be a public image issue: If you’re predisposed to think it’s complex, the brain may lock itself into not trusting its own understanding of semantics. And the elitists certainly aren’t helping with that: If a hundred people reassure you it’s fine and one person says it’s complex, it’s hard to avoid that seed of doubt. Once it is planted, confirmation bias will do the rest.

I don’t know what the solution is

One part of the solution might be a “transition” package, consisting of first a tool to try cross-platform alternatives to tools people already use, second a ready-made VM to try Linux without installing it, using a transition distro, styled to look and feel “like Windows” and built-in links to the host filesystem, and finally a fully automated installer that includes backing up files, settings etc. and putting them in the equivalent Linux soot after installation so you have as little transitory friction as possible.

Which leads us back to the topic of leftist politics and the split between moderates and progressives: Of course I don’t want to compromise on my principles, but we’re not gonna win people over by demanding drastic change with scary words that make it easy to lump in the “Capitalism fucks us over” progressives with the McCarthyist “They want to install a Russian dictatorship!” rhetorics about the radicals and tankies. Radical change is likely to invite radical backlash.

Our best shot at non-violent and lasting change is to make the transition as low-friction as possible, inching people over policy by policy, shifting the Overton Window the way the regressives have been doing for decades, instead of trying to aggressively shunting it over.

Focus less on identity, ideology and terminology, more on individual issues and solutions. Some movements obviously warrant aggressive countering, but we have to pick our battles, or we’ll be spread out on too many fronts. Ideology alone doesn’t win wars; Strategy does.

We should also project unity of vision and determination instead of public infighting and sabotaging what we all want over the things we disagree on.

Presentation matters.

Too many leftists are so concerned with the substance of the message that they forget how important the presentation is.

I find that to be an issue with many well-meaning people.

For example, I see it occasionally in the FOSS-bubble: It’s great if a given software is ideologically “pure”, independent from capitalist incentives, open source and freely available. It’s great that there are volunteers doing work for the benefit of others.

Occasionally, when someone lists specific tools running on Windows only as reason for not switching to Linux, they get told to use FOSS alternatives instead that just can’t match the proprietary in terms of features or usability. When you point that out, there will often be the customary vocal minority of twats chastising you “It’s volunteer work, you don’t get to demand anything, go implement it yourself” etc.

I hate to admit it, but I’m generally more comfortable around MS Excel than LO Calc. I’ve used LO Writer and Impress for personal and university stuff, because I rarely need more advanced features (and if I do, I’ll probably use TeX anyway), but when it comes to more complex work with spreadsheets, I just find Excel to be smoother in usage. I don’t have enough experience in the field of UX to put a finger on why, nor would I likely have the skills or time to contribute fixes to LO Calc. I can settle for less out of ideology, but is that what you expect from people at large?

The same applies with the transition to Linux in general: I’m technically versed enough that I’m confident I can probably fix any error I encounter. But until the public perception and tooling of Linux gets to the point that even non-techies can easily do the switch, it’s not going to see widespread adoption.

I love FOSS. I love Linux. I want to see them replace proprietary monopolies as much as possible.

But the presentation matters.

Actually, the right looks like a Kallax, which are probably the sturdiest item in their catalogue given the walls are like 3cm (1.2 in) thick. I’ve taken them apart and reassembled them before, and unlike every other piece of Ikea furniture I’ve done that to, they’re actually just as stable and reliable as before.

That’s what I do too - if it’s a meeting I care about, I make the effort to suggest a different time. Otherwise, just decline. My calendar is visible and up to date, use the fucking scheduling assistant to tell you when I have time ffs.

So in a weird, roundabout way, he’s saving these people from prison by putting them out of work instead?

And probably making it harder for the court to slap fines on his company and make them stick, but I’d give that a pass in this case.