This is also my understanding of “chav” from English and Scottish friends and relatives.

I’ll have some fever-dream solving a problem that has had me stumped

That’s happened to me enough to almost turn me to the woo side. :D “Answers Come In Dreams.”

I’ve had this run in both directions. Going through the repos a day later: “Holy hell, this solution is [utter shit || truly inspired || elegant AF || written by someone who should probably be fired]. Who wrote this? Me?! I don’t remember any of this.”

The compartmentalization/fugue state is real.

Gwenview is a new one on me. Thanks for the tip! Downloading it now.

Raster as background and marking up as vector graphics on an overlay.

There are lots of use cases for exactly that, like certain graphics tasks my partner does for her employer (flyers, t-shirt designs). with an existing raster image as background in Inkscape. For what I do, that workflow would be serious overkill.

Inkscape is for vectors and handles rasters poorly. I love Inkscape, but it boots slowly. Paint.NET is fast and light. Perfect for marking up screenshots for technical documentation. Pinta does okay in this role, but it’s no Paint.NET.

• Audio configuration: I just install DRS in Win10 and it works, as does all of the GPU integration*. My DAW also just works, no fiddling with the buffer to get rid of the crackling or to get it recognized.
• FL Studio: It’s not really FLS that I’m missing but rather I have a couple VSTs that absolutely won’t work in Linux, plus a huge amount of patches I built in those instruments. However, Bitwig kicks so much ass that it’s been worthwhile to try to rebuild those sounds inside Bitwig’s Grid.
• Inventor and AutoCAD: I hate Autodesk with the fury of a 1000 suns, but I know these apps cold and have a huge library of parts and assemblies. FreeCAD just ain’t there yet, and the new workbench menu has been an annoying learning curve. Inventor can handle enormous assemblies on my (previously running Win 10) laptop; FreeCAD still crashes when the object tree gets over a certain depth even on my burliest workstation. Assemblies in FreeCAD are a total mess too. I want to love FreeCAD and have great hopes for future versions.
• Suspend: one of my laptops won’t suspend correctly. Sometimes it reboots, sometimes it suspends, sometimes it goes into a weird middle state running at full throttle but the screen is dark and the keyboard is unresponsive even to REIUSB. I just always shut it down now, no BFD.

And despite all that, I don’t miss Windows at all.

*DRS was actually painless on Aurora Linux with my big workstation that only has a dGPU. All my computers with both iGPU and dGPU were more fiddly. I mostly blame Nvidia on this issue. I’m pretty sure the suspend problem is also an iGPU/dGPU thing and also blaming Nvidia for that.

How do you like the MPK Mini? How long have you had it and how has it held up to your usage?

Look y’all … “Crazy Cat Person” fails to be sensitive to my condition. I would prefer “Batshit Bonkers,” please and thank you.

This is me too. All the same t-shirts, pants, shoes (four pairs go to the cobbler for repair while one remains in use), socks, underwear. Getting dressed in the morning is zero-thought and always comfortable. My daily kit always fits on my person and I never have to fumble for anything. Pants repairs are consistent since they all wear out exactly the same way. The cobbler loves my repairs because it’s the same patterns for four left and four right shoes (just one pattern flipped).

Holy hell, I feel this viscerally. I recently inherited an enterprise codebase with a new job and that pic is exactly how I imagine the consulting company reacted after hand-off. The code is actually quite clean and mostly makes sense, but it’s completely undocumented (including a lack of specs and XML comments for endpoints). By and large, it’s mostly SOLID, but there are abstractions on abstractions, handlers for handlers for handlers. Configuring to run locally or against the dev environment is a huge rigamarole that I’m trying to simplify before trying to bring on any more SWEs. The bright spot here is that I’ve been given a long runway to come up to speed.

I love reading how people use their Steam Deck for things other than gaming.

I recently had to travel for family obligations and had to work during the 3-week trip. Rather than carry both my work and personal laptops, I used the Steam Deck + slim Bluetooth keyboard + a travel mouse as my personal laptop. I travel with a second 4K portable monitor for work anyway, so the increase in bulk was minimal. I also always carry my Deck for flights and other travel more than 1 hour. The Deck has been such an additive bit of gear, and not just for portable gaming. I’d go so far as to say it’s more than additive; it’s transformative.

Government will always be abused and turned against the people so its power should be limited

Fully agreed. This is the nature of power. It is a problem as old as humanity, and there have been loads of attempted solutions to that end. Probably the oldest known is the Insulting the Meat Ritual in hunter-gatherer tribes to prevent hunters from becoming egotistical. Given the rarity of remaining hunter-gatherers, we can guess how that worked out.

Decentralization (why we’re here in the Fediverse, right?), social ownership of the economy, revocation of corporate privileges… all excellent goals to which we can aspire. It’s a bit hackneyed but the truism applies: think globally, act locally. On social ownership of the economy, may I suggest looking into timebanks? Join your local timebank if it exists; start one if it doesn’t. A lot of what timebanks (can) accomplish represents most of these ideals. Disclosure: I’m a founding board member and the treasurer of my local timebank, so I have a lot of bias for timebanks as one potential arrow in the quiver of effecting social change.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, thank you for the elaboration! I agree with your points regarding the police state. May I suggest Behind the Bastards’ 3-part on the history of policing (~2020 Jun 16)?The US has been a police state for more of its history than not. And the series underscores the Socialist tenets in your explanation: unions absolutely work. The police union in the US is ridiculously effective at protecting those “workers.” Too bad that union is protecting workers who stomp on the citizenry.

I will add that direct democracy prima facie sounds great, and I used to also hold this belief. We absolutely have the technology for a full direct democracy. The problems with direct democracy are legion, some of which we are seeing right now in the US with low-information voters. Now scale that up. The enormous volume of legislation and policy research on any single issue would stop most citizens dead in their tracks. Take international trade policy for example. My employer paid for me to study international trade compliance for five years. Ain’t nobody got time for that, and international trade policy hits all of us in the wallet, waistline, daily interactions, and health/wellness measures. We hoi-polloi still need to work, get dinner on the table, and do laundry. Voters should understand all of relevant issues at least at a cursory level, but wish in one hand, shit in the other… Hell, how many voters actually read the voter guides and research their local candidates? How many attend city council meetings?

If you want as direct a democracy as possible, focus your efforts at your local and state level. Small changes in your community have ripple effects. Get your neighbors and local social circle to educate themselves and attend. Connect with your local council and governing boards.

As @zxqwas@lemmy.world pointed out: don’t sweat the labels; choose the policies that appeal to your sensibilities. The labels and affiliations will shake out from there.

You keep repeating this, without going into any detail on what any of this means to you. How do you square economic equality with limited government? The former requires extremely strong and well-considered regulation with well-funded government agencies to stick it to corps and billionaires. Edit to add: also requires a strong, stiff-spined Legislative Branch, divorced from lobbying, divested from capital markets, with strict campaign finance reform. More regulation and agencies.

When someone says “I’m Libertarian,” the implicit translation is:

• I want to do any and all drugs I want (great, go for it; this is probably their only respectable plank, but enacted in isolation the consequences are dire)
• I want to fuck minors (eww)
• I don’t want to pay any taxes, but I still want all the trappings of a mutually beneficial society (“what do you mean my local roads are in disrepair, there’s no garbage pickup, and my neighbor poisoned my well with his unpermitted auto repair business?!”)
• AnCap FTW! (eww, again)

Libertarianism is an extremely naive political platform. Most people who subscribe to its ideals fail to investigate the history of Libertarian ideals in action. Speaking as a former, briefly Libertarian-voting individual, after diving into the planks of the platform, it quickly became clear that Libertarianism is antithetical to a functioning society.

The tuxedo kitteh is channeling Ron Swanson.

If they were, “are”, “of” and “and” likely wouldn’t be capitalized.

Yep, you’re right. I missed those.

There are lots of different style guides

I was reluctant to say anything about Chicago, APA, etc.

Totally weird possibility: the author is following the actual grammar rules trying poorly to follow a style guide for capitalization of titles.

Edit: as @hikaru755@lemmy.world pointed out, I totally missed that words were capitalized for which no style guide advises capitalization.

Serious question: what are y’all’s methods to prevent/deal with spicy pillows?

The toxicity is in the dose. If you’re actually allergic to your cat, it could be a seasonal change in his grooming regimen resulting in more saliva on his fur, which means more allergen proteins in the dander.

Another possibility: seasonal change has resulted in something blooming to which you’re mildly allergic. The combination of things might have tipped you over the edge of allergic response.

There are a ton of factors that could be in play, and only an allergist can tell you for sure what’s going on.