I guess it makes more sense than slamming your testicals against the wall.

In a way relating to human anatomy that has caused me to remove this phrase from my usage in recent years (because I worried how others would take it) the balls=testicles actually always made sense to me, but I’m not going to explain it.

However, now that I know what the most literal interpretation of the phrase actually is, I can feel safe using it again!

Welcome to the community! 😀

You’ve taken your first step into a larger world. /ObiWan

Welcome aboard!! 😁

Beats me, I’m not a communist.

I don’t have a substantial opinion about ReactOS. I’m aware of it, but that’s as far as I’ve ever gone.

However, I wanted to compliment you because that was a great opener to this discussion. 🙂

Also… why are ‘hackers’ always using a shell in some gui program?

An actual CLI would frighten the windows users watching the show.

Not only do I agree, but also it has been my feeling that the Starbucks footage and visit was a performance of some kind, and the water and phone they found were a distraction. Dude seems to have otherwise thought this through pretty well.

I admit that’s nothing more than a hunch though, and I can’t really defend it against anyone who disagrees.

2 or so years ago I’d have agreed with you.

But it’s become clear that the wealthy and powerful are beyond the reach of our justice system. coughdementedfeloninthewhitehousecough

So fuck 'em.

I understand why they will prosecute him if they catch him, but I wish for him to never get caught, and I feel really confident (given the other signs of planning) that the phone, water bottle, and very public appearance at Starbucks in recognizable clothing are nothing but a red herring.

My recollection is that what you describe became pervasive roughly concurrently with the rise of the original Xbox. I’m not pinning it to that device specifically, but it was during the time of the original xbox where I felt that voice chat in games transitioned from helpful collaboration to 99% toxic crap.

I rarely used it from that point forward, so maybe there was a later golden age I’m unaware of.

I promise that I’m leaving this here in good humor, although it is also true.

I can see how that makes sense. I’m not anti-psychedelics in general (if presented with a binary choice of being anti or not), but I’m also not of the experience level nor comfort level to be offering them to my son. If they would become something available to him clinically I’d support it if recommended by his doctor of course. (not that he needs our permission at his age)

Nonetheless I appreciate that you took the time to make that detailed write up. Thanks!

1.) I grew up in this line of thinking (but also deeply religious, so it’s a little different) and it dissipated due to two main things: psychedelics and losing weight/becoming more confident and in-shape. In my case, I hated myself because I was unattractive and very overweight. I saw other people getting girls and resented how easy it seemed, while I felt invisible.

My GenZ son is in his early twenties and lockdown and covid impacts on his health and school have really thrown him for a loop. He has not been overcome by fascist ideologies, but we seem unable to inspire him with any motivation. He’s the same sweet person he’s always been, but I think he is content to just play video games in his room and do D&D with his friends a couple times a week forever. (I understand that, but we won’t always be here to put a roof over his head, and we are not wealthy people. He’s going to need to support himself when we go.)

He is also very overweight (the entire family is, but he’s really accelerating it) and although he doesn’t seem very very bothered by it, I know he’s aware of it.

I understand the need for exercise and I understand calories. Those things don’t need explaining. But I’d love to know how you got over that hurdle to start doing something about your body. I feel like some successes there could easily translate to greater confidence and motivation in other areas.

We spend lots of time together, we enjoy him just like we always have, he just seems rudderless and we’re trying to help him without controlling him, but with limited success.

Anything you might be able to share about your turnaround could be helpful. Though I’m not offering him psychadelics. 🙂

I thought they meant “Not if you are still on Plasma 5” but maybe I misinterpreted it.

they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations

I disagree that defederation is censorship, but no worries, we don’t have to agree! However:

i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody

https://lemmy.ml/instances

If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.

One of my primary criteria when I needed to make a new lemmy account (due to problems with my original instance) was to be sure I picked an instance that had pre-emptively defederated from Threads. (as .ml does, but there are a lot more in that list)

And he also is overwhelmed by needing to do things in life but not knowing where to start.

You’re a human and you need someone to validate you. I can’t do that from a keyboard, but I can offer an internet hug.

There’s a lot of good advice here. I have a son not too different in age than you. Your post made me want to give you a long hug. I’m sure you have many things about you that are assets and you haven’t had anyone in your life to help you find them.

As others have said, you sound smarter than you think you are, and your writing is good!

Small steps, and celebrate the small victories. Make one little thing better about yourself or your life every day. No matter how small. And be proud of yourself when you’ve done so.

Go take the good advice from others, but here’s a Dad Hug™.

Only in a two-party system.

So you mean - like the system this election took place within?

For the love of all that is holy, do not assume that they will figure out everything you just typed above from the fact that you didn’t vote for them.

I don’t actually agree with your choice, but I do agree with this:

The Dems can be better, but they choose not to.

So please, if you have convinced yourself that withholding one vote out of tens of millions will somehow send them the message you are trying to send, please also convince yourself that it would be even more effective to drop them a line and let them know how you feel in explicit detail.

https://democrats.org/contact-us/

Same message for everyone else who chose a protest vote on Tuesday. It’s all great to feel like you did the right thing, but maybe now question whether your message will actually be received, and be sure that it does. Otherwise you put Trump in for literally nothing.

Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

I’m just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that’s okay.

• Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn’t use it.)
• The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
  • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it’s a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I’m wrong, you aren’t going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it’s going to bear no fruit.
  • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn’t true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that’s good enough for me. 🙂
• I’m unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don’t remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

You’ll note I don’t claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren’t bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I’m sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven’t even looked at any alternatives. If there’s ever a time that I don’t find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team’s approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I’ll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.