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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • That’s an awful lot easier but likely less accurate and what happens whenever establishment Dems lose. “Hillary lost because of Bernie Bros” is the first and loudest instance that springs to mind. But even if that statement were true, In hindsight we know that she and her campaign sorta rigged the primary, which looked more obvious than they probably intended. That disenfranchised some voters and they didn’t vote.

    That’s not the voters fault, the candidate did something that made those voters not vote for them. Just like Kamala/the DNC did with running an ancient dude, not having a primary, running the ancient dudes VP, supporting the genocide of Palestinians, loving fracking, and onwards. I was really optimistic early on with her VP pick but that seemed to be the moderate leftmost edge of her campaign.

    I’m of the opinion that until the DNC stops appealing to disenfranchised Republicans this steady slide right will keep happening. Running as R-lite hasn’t really been paying off as well for them as it did in the 90s.


  • Don’t blame the left for the failings of the moderate right. Just like Biden before her, Harris spent the campaign appealing to theoretical disenfranchised Republicans and confidently ignoring the calls for action from the left. She even abandoned some of Bidens more left leaning campaign promises along the way (her climate policy was a clear back step). On top of that we had no primary, which however flawed, shapes the campaign in the image of the some voters and solidifies support for the candidate.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the two candidates were equivalent, but it is easy to see why people might be feeling disenfranchised and might just not vote, and elect instead to hide from it all.

    Anecdotally, I stopped engaging with election news around the dem primary, when everyone was very excited, so I could vote for Harris without thinking about the baggage that would come later. It was all just overwhelming, and I’d call myself a pretty engaged and resilient voter normally.

    All that to say, remember the humans who voted or didnt are the ones with ethics and empathy. I’m not sure you can say the same about the ones who voted for the fascist.


  • To be clear, the EU developing an operating system for EU use is not a dystopian vision without assuming many things about the theoretical future project. The petition is asking for this for transparency and independence from an actual dystopian vision coming to fruition in a ‘forced’ Windows standard. That doesn’t really lead me to imagine a dystopian nightmare where the EU forces everyone to install their distro (A potentially comical vision on its own).

    I rather like the idea that governments contribute to open source projects, sounds a lot better than the same contribution going to private institutions. The use of open source software may introduce some vulnerabilities, but those are replacing vulnerabilities that are already there. I would also imagine investment in some open source projects would encourage more development in adjacent areas, much like Valve, Proton, and gaming.

    I would be interested to hear what alternative you have to solving the problems that the project in this petition is attempting to solve. It’s easy to shoot down something for not being perfect but it’s pretty challenging to come up with a theoretical proposal that pleases all.


  • So much of our modern political system is poised around vibes, because that’s all the older voters (seem to) really care about. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of having a beer with George W, I’d have more dollars than I do now.

    I think in contrast younger voters care about a vast array of issues very deeply, making engaging in politics a much more complex task that they probably don’t have time for. Given that so much of the coverage consists of no-meaning political lines with no coherent policy right now, engaging in traditional ways is pointless until they stop having vapid “debates” and “interviews” with no content, and start forcing real policy discussion.

    I think Bernie was popular with younger voters because he brought so few vibes and so much policy. I went to a Hillary rally and a Bernie rally during the primary in 2015 and the difference was night and day. Hillary talked about the positive feeling of continuing the Democratic legacy, while Bernie talked about sustainable agriculture and straw polled the attendees about wind power.

    To be clear I bet this held true 50 years ago when our old voters were young too, no hate on the olds here, priorities change, though I hope mine don’t. Also I wonder if this is all still true for the new young voters, most of my interactions are with millennials and gen z. My few interactions with the folks graduating now have been tainted by my old and out of touch self and by their (in my opinion) under-practiced interpersonal skills from covid years at home. Again, no hate intended.


  • I use MXLinux, picked it somewhat at random when I was frustrated with windows 10 privacy settings and haven’t looked back since. I tried mint, mint cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Fedora before MX, and Fedora is the only other one I have stuck with, to use on a Surface Pro (I needed Wayland for the touchscreen).

    MX has been really stable, light on resources, and has worked really well through two complete hardware upgrades. I play games on steam, some brand new some old, and I haven’t found one that I can’t play yet. That is due to steam/proton/proton GE more than the OS I expect but I’m happy nonetheless. I also run my home entertainment box on MX on an old PC (I know there are better choices for os for this, I was just comfortable with it).

    I like it because I haven’t felt any reason to try anything else, perhaps someday I will and I’ll just find a new OS then, but until then it’s my favorite I think.



  • I never played BioShock 2 or Infinite, but I watched full playthroughs of each, and I thought infinite was great! Different to be sure in most ways, but it was a neat expansion of the world and themes hinted at in the first two games.

    I seem to remember a lot of sideline criticism when it came out that boiled down to “NPC sidekick not love interest but hot so I don’t like game”. I thought, and think that is ridiculous, and fortunately I think that criticism has faded with time because Elizabeth is such a positive part of the game, from my view.

    I should play through the BioShock games…



  • Along with potential reasons mentioned in this post, right wing folks also have fewer obvious places to go troll now that twitter is just filled with them and Hershey’s or whatever. Perhaps they are coming here looking for trouble specifically.

    It’s also possible they’ve always been here and have just found more reasons to engage recently. Either way, the amount of bad faith discussion and derisive language is frustrating and upsetting.

    I have just been blocking individuals if I find myself getting frustrated, but I also took a long break from social media because I felt like the discussions about Gaza were bordering toxic, so I’m not sure my approach is sustainable.


  • If I’m reading that right, that could also say that Instagram is suppressing anti-israel content? It’s just saying that in comparison to Instagram tiktok is showing more x, y, z. But Instagram is absolutely not a neutral point to measure from.

    For starters there’s different demographics on each one, but I’m sure you could adjust for that, maybe the study did. But I don’t think you can adjust for the impact the US government has on Meta. I don’t believe for an instant that some US agency isn’t manipulating algorithms or requiring certain tweaks to steer discourse just like they did with US news outlets.




  • I largely agree, a mix of discussions and text discussions would feel nice. I’ve noticed some communities seem to have a lot more of one over the other, and I wonder if that has to do with where people came here from. Reddit is certainly link heavy, but I know other platforms are less so. Or maybe it’s just self selection, people feel more confident posting links in places with links and text in places with text.

    If it’s that second one, a remedy might be to post what you want to see! Maybe that would encourage others to do the same.


  • Second for guild wars 2, the world is huge when you first start playing, and though the initial levelling experience can feel like it takes a while, once you have hit the cap you can go pretty much anywhere. The story is pretty linear, though, so if you want a deep and complex story it might be better to look for a single player game.

    I’d also say the combat system in Guild wars is fantastic, it’s simple enough to pick up and not have to stress about playing the game, but if you want to engage and get better there is so much to learn about and improve.


  • I am not traveling to go see this one, but did for the one that went across the US a few years ago. I thought it was really cool and would go again if it weren’t so far away. The way the hot Tennessee day got so much cooler, the way the evening bugs came out, the birds stopped singing, the shadows looking like they had a bite out of them, all together with being able to see the suns corona for a couple minutes made for a really really cool experience for me. It was also a big party/camping trip with friends so that helped too.

    I could see it not having that impact for everyone, but I figured I’d share.


  • I’d argue that, while reductive, “it’s bad” is probably a pretty safe takeaway from this, given that the article says if you are of a healthy weight and activity level that you can get away with eating a less balanced diet. Most people in the areas interacting with this post aren’t probably doing that exercise and weight thing, so the carefully balanced diet it is for us. Based on North American red meat consumption this is likely much less than the reader currently eats, so they should probably cut back.

    Internet translation of that resoning: “it’s bad don’t eat it”.


  • It’s odd to me that the reasoning given here and in the article for this problem for the Democrats is that they aren’t acting Republican enough and they are too leftist. It is so clear that the Democrats have managed to do very few of the things they say, and what they do accomplish is either just what Republicans would do, or hamstrung by the Republicans and media blitzed. That’s why they lose ground. Becoming Republican will also lose them different ground. It doesn’t feel like the data should need an explanation in the first paragraph like that, it skews the interpretation of what is pitched as objective.

    I think all these economic and business interests are just desperate for the old Republican party back and are trying to sculpt the Democrats into it because they were close enough already. Probably successfully. It’s pretty bleak all around.

    Also I’m sorry I can’t leave it, but are you saying that the BLM “cohort” prefer trump in there? I’m not going to say that anyone is enthusiastic about Biden, but Trump encouraged beat downs across the country and threatened to march the military on these folks. (Would have done it too if it weren’t for the woke liberal adjenda of General Mark Milley).




  • Interestingly the supreme Court has always been super political, dating back to the early 1800s when they were just some dudes riding horses around the country to make appeals decisions and then meeting in some random building in New York.

    Check out the way, especially early on, Congress would pack the courts and cut seats when they didn’t politically align with presidents. They did this because the court was making partisan political decisions and they didn’t want the president to be able to dictate who was making those political decisions.

    Or in the early 1810s when the court mysteriously started supporting business interests in pretty blatant ways.

    The way they differ today is that they have more sway (sometimes people would just ignore rulings) and there’s no legislation being done by Congress to actually shape law, so the supreme Court is doing all the legislating for them.

    Look up the Throughline podcast from NPR if you’re a podcast person, they have done a couple very potable episodes on the supreme court. One on how they came to be this way, and the other on the shadow docket (which is integral to how they came to be this way).