Eh, if we’re screwed either way, what’s the harm in a comforting lie?

It already is friend.

I’m not in denial, I’m scared shitless and heartbroken. You’re probably right. That’s probably it for American democracy and any hope trans people have of finding safety and acceptance in American Society in our lifetimes. But it hasn’t happened yet.

We’ve already survived a Trump presidency once, we’ll do it again, life’s just going to suck more than it already has. I can’t tell you how to live your apocalypse, I intend to get back in shape, see what parts of my life can be further downsized, and focus on growing my social support network to include as many other women, people of color, and queer folks as I can befriend.

Maybe. It’s hard to say how much of Trump’s rhetoric and “agenda” is to rile up his supporters and how much are promises he intends to (and is able to) carry out.

There is another election in 2026 which is an opportunity to break up the Republican super majority and some state government control.

We can try to get more involved in the political process, but beyond that there is very little left to do. We are just going to have to wait and see if it’s as bad as we’ve all feared.

It’s more important now than ever that we take care of ourselves and each other. Together we stand, divided we fall.

I set my mom (62) up an old laptop running Ubuntu last year when her laptop was stolen out of my sister’s car. She’s adjusted fairly well to it. She needed a lot of hands on support at first and any time she uses her printer, but she has figured out how to do a lot of things on it on her own.

She makes papercraft activities in inkscape for a weekly storytime she hosts at a bookstore and has gotten very proficient, but still needs some hand holding when printing errors crop up.

Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.

I guess if you wanted, seems unnecessary though.

I don’t get everyone’s obsession with cybernetic implants. If I needed a replacement, sure. But could you imagine today’s enshittified corporate structure making a cyberlimb? 100% a massive up front purchase and a hefty subscription, especially if it’s not a functional replacement.

Personally I want a functional metaverse. Full dive computing.

Sweetie, we’re all being punks right now using pirate reddit. What’s more punk than undermining oligarch control of social platforms?

Aw half the fun of linux is all the weird janky software some nerds felt strongly enough about to release.

Npp can be replaced by several different linux tools. You just have to like using the terminal a bit. Personally I get it. I know awk and sed and all those crunchy tools the olds made exist, but it’s not a crime to have it all in one place in a gui. That said it npp 1000% works under wine. Sublime Text has a linux version and all the plugins you could ever want if you’re willing to learn new ways of doing stuff you’ve already figured out. Vscodium is also a decent npp replacement. It’s fast, has a cli, and a great plugin ecosystem.

Excel is all hype. Unless you’re a data analyst or numbers nerd LibreOffice Calc has all the things. It’s not as performant as excel with large datasets, but it has formulas, pivot tables (though somewhat weird), and macros. It’s just ugly installed from the debian repo. Also if you’re paying for office you can probably still use excel in the browser.

OneDrive sucks, unless you are committed to the Microsoft ecosystem. If you find a suitable replacement for excel, you could always cancel your office subscription and setup a nextcloud instance. You can have it all hosted for you through nextcloud and they have web based office tools using LibreOffice. Their syncing app works on everything so you’ve got options. Or you can try to self-host it. I have a raspberry pi with an external hard drive attached running nextcloud, and a vpn. Reasonably stable, if slow.

I hope that outside of Visual Studio, you can completely free yourself of the windows ecosystem.

That’s not a retrofit either. With a multi tool those can be removed with a few bolts. The ones on that bench are single mold cast iron. You’d need an angle grinder to remove those, not that any law abiding good citizen would.

So dumb. They could have spent the extra money helping the people they don’t want sleeping on benches not sleep on benches. Most people probably agree, just not in their backyard or with their tax dollars. The amount of work they’re willing to put in not to help someone is absolutely astounding.

How is 🙂 an asshole mood though?

There aren’t many ways to organize raising the money required to build a better youtube or reddit. You could kickstart it, but you’d better hope whoever does the dev doesn’t sell. Another option would be a large open source ngo funding the development, but you’re still talking long timelines to completion.

There definitely is room for a more pro-social social media platform that isn’t a clone of something else. Paying for it is another matter.

SocialAI comes across as sort of a joke, or maybe some kind of meta-commentary on the concept of social media and cheap engagement, particularly after creator Michael Sayman helpfully explained: “now we can all know what Elon Musk feels like after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, but without having to spend $44 billion.” He also says it’s “designed to help people feel heard,” though, and is ostensibly a way to help people avoid feeling isolated.

Mike gets it. This is only the next logical step in social media. Why risk losing the ad revenue of users who feel more isolated using social media if they stop using the platform? Solution: ai sycophants that tell you you’re pretty.

That’s why we have police in the first place. After the civil war the South, in order to covertly recapture as many recently freed slaves as possible, created vagrancy laws, sundown towns, and armed police. In Alabama, where the video is set, the state made it illegal for black people to leave a job, once they took it. The police in the south, especially in Alabama and Louisiana, arrested thousands of former slaves and leased them out to local businesses, in some cases victims of that system would be put to work at the same place, for the same people where they were enslaved prior to the emancipation declaration.

It’s one of the most fucked up and evil things America has done. It’s made even worse because the practice has been in use for over 200 years and no one, outside a small percentage of Americans even care.

Private prisons and work-release programs need to be ended now.

Software, 1,000%. I love linux and daily drive it. But when I have videos to edit, photos to rework, or collateral to design I have a windows laptop with professional grade tools to do the job.

I’m sorry, gimp is hot garbage. There isn’t a pro-grade, open source video editing tool or anything close. Inkscape is useable in a pinch. Scribus is useless.

Not everyone is a multimedia creative professional, but most software on linux never quite have the features you need, are no longer maintained, or will be useful in ten years.

That said, I’d still rather break out the laptop when doing client work than daily drive MacOS or Windows 11. Either way the barrier for most users is that linux almost works.

The theoretical benefits of Gentoo or Arch are completely negated by the fussy nature of those systems. You have more control, but to get it you have to do a lot more work. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just that’s the main difference between arch, gentoo, and a more streamlined distro.

Really it depends on what you want out of your distro. If total control is what you’re after, then gentoo is only the beginning of a deep k hole that ends in LFS and a ricing habit. Personally I like using my computer as a tool to do other stuff so anything more hands on than debian stable just gets on my nerves or turns me into a ricing addict. But I had to install gentoo to figure that out.

Gentoo is a filter. You either love it and continue diving or learn you want something else from your OS.

Machoke me daddy.

Lol, not the dark forest the bright asshole. How hilarious would it be if the universe was full of life but everyone thought we were assholes and were trying to avoid us.