beliquititious

Nonviolence is a lofty, and unattainable ideal. Unless you can create something that prevents violence in an absolute, physical sense or can successfully breed out the sadistic elements of humanity it will forever be subject to the whims of charismatic violent people. World history, at least from the perspective of governing authority, is nothing but physical and psychological violence.

The Buddhists would tell you that life is duhkah (suffering). Trying to force any order onto only increases suffering. The french existentialists would tell them that the only thing you can do about it is to laugh in the face of the absurdity of existence. Then they'd go to a bar and the buddhists would watch the existentialists drink themselves to oblivion respectfully and with a detached interest.

Anarchism, nonviolence, and philosophy in general, rarely align with your subjective lived experience. The best way to deal with Nazis is not to punch them, but to live your life the best you can and try to have as much fun with other humans as is possible. If you engage with them on their terms, those of violence and hate, they've already won. Hug a nazi, especially if you're part of a demographic they hate. Treat them like you would a slow child. Education, empathy, and kindness beat the nazi next door. Unfortunately though once they establish their fourth Reich like it seems they are close to, you have to wield collective hard power (tanks, predator drones, and boots on the ground).

You, the human reading this, will accomplish nothing by punching a nazi, hug them or ignore them until it's time to fight them collectively.

I streamed it while I was working on other things but I thought it was pretty hilarious. Kamala seemed to be intentionally pushing Trumps buttons to derail him and he just could not accept that he is not universally loved.

Honestly though, given how Trump lies and Kamala was putting on a show the whole thing seemed so cynical and pointless. I've watched every presidential and vice presidential debate since Bush Jr.'s second term even in the "good ol' days" when it wasn't just a sound bite circus very rarely was a president even able to achieve the lofty goals they pitched the American people on.

The whole thing is farcical in 2024. The lack of shared reality the Trump era has ushered in makes it next to impossible to trust anything a politician says. Kamala had spunk and moxy and was very down to earth and likeable, but policy wise she made a lot of statements the presidency doesn't have the power to deliver on. Even with the insane power the supreme court gave the executive branch a few months ago.

Trump was Trump. It's pretty clear how much his brain has rotted when you compare this debate with the one he had with Clinton. But otherwise you can't trust a single word he says. His position on any matter is irrelevant because he'll retcon it later if it's inconvenient. Meanwhile Kamala vowed to continue helping our frenemies do some ethnic cleansing and spent most of the debate posturing for the idiots to stupid to already have an opinion.

News headlines won't change national culture or policy. The pro-policing subset of America is large and has a lot of dark money supporting. Private prisons and the handful of companies that support them, weapons companies who have seen record profits because we militarized our police after 9/11, and fascist sympathizers and supports all want things like that to happen.

Unless you, me, and everyone else who cares about the issue called our representatives daily to demand action, nothing will change. Even if every single person who wanted police reform in the US called their federal and local representatives demanding change, there is still a good chance the pro-police-brutality club would still have more influence.

Oh, so that's where the creator of ReiserFS got the idea.

What would you have us do? Paxton isn't going anywhere anytime soon and Texans do not have the power to recall officials. We can't protest because in 2023 they passed a law making basically all protests illegal.

Even if Texas goes blue Abbott and Paxton are still in office because they're not up for reelection this year. Plus the state is so gerrymandered, even if it did go blue nationally, locally the dems probably couldn't retake the state government.

Hate to say it but even if Kamala wins any women or queer person in Texas who can leave, should.

I grew up in East Texas (and moved back two years ago). I promise you, most rural Texans will tell you the side Texas was on.

So the system successfully identified the kid as a threat, but was not able to prevent the shooting because the father bought the guy on behalf of the shooter.

How would you even prevent that? No way the 2a nuts would go for a temporary ban on firearm ownership (or at least new purchases) by family members. Besides something like that could be used maliciously very easily. You can't take all the kids who post edgy shit online into custody, we just don't have the budget and it's probably not the right move anyway.

You could mandate therapy or some other mental health intervention, like a biweekly visit with the school's counselor. But those nerds don't need any qualifications so they might not be able to identify a credible threat or help talk a shooter out of their (likely unknown to the counsellor) plans.

There are a gajillion things we could try, if not for the blind ignorance of the 2a nuts.

Those of us ignorant enough to vote for Trump also vote for the Greg Abbott's and Ron DeSantis' of the country. It's not a popular position these days but we, the little people, includes the poo-brained asshats voting for Trump and the fascist takeover of the American South. But they're too stupid (or more accurately, willfully ignorant) to understand the scope of what voting for maga and maga-adjacent Republicans really means.

I guess through a kinder lens our maga neighbors don't have the perspective required to understand the truth of the world they live in. Some might be wholly incapable, but most just don't care enough to try. But the societal bubble the average maga voter lives it makes the ethos look pretty appealing. The rhetorical techniques used by maga media and personalities are like psyops level effective.

It would be irresponsible and incorrect to lay it all at the feet of voters or politicians of any political party. Every American is responsible for what's going on in the country right 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.

How can vegans even justify having pets? It's not okay to milk a cow but it is to keep a cat? Indoor cats are deprived of basically all of their normal cat activities. They can't range or roam, they can't socialize with other cats, they are denied their natural predator instincts. As much as I love my kitties, like keeping a predator as a pet is basically kind of a dick move. I don't care how good you treat your slaves, they're still slaves.

If vegans can keep cats, they can eat cheese if the cow is well cared for or eggs if the farmer isn't a dick to the chickens.

Legible notes, especially those intended to be personal. I absolutely love buying used books and finding notes in them (either between the pages or written on them). Crumpled notes, shopping lists, discarded notebooks.

If I wasn't poor, I would prefer those to the banality of money.