Well that’s a depressing read. The American rot runs deep. It’s frankly disturbing how accurate that article still is.

The writer drops some great lines though.

Thanks.

I am reminded of two quotes from Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson:

How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?

How low? Now, I guess we know. Voting for the lesser evil for 50 years has got you Trump. Twice. How much lower are you going to go?

I have no solutions. Things will probably have to break completely before the mending can begin.

Oh, I like this. Nice.

I can’t say I’ve had those issues myself, so my recommendation may not be valid in your case. I’d say maybe give Fedora with KDE Plasma a try, and try switching between X11 and Wayland sessions if issues persist.

I personally don’t like Ubuntu, but that’s mostly because of Canonical making the occasional sketchy decision.

On the whole, distro choice doesn’t matter quite as much these days, as most distros should work fine out of the box. Whatever issues you have should technically be solvable with a bit of troubleshooting.

Sometimes Linux just doesn’t play well with your setup. Good luck, and I hope you find something that works for you!

Won? They will do it again. The only winning move is not to play their game. Choose Free Software.

Cut contact with family and friends who were bad for my mental health.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson and A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold. Hell, I’ll also throw in Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks by Mick Foley. I should reread that.

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You did the right thing. We in general have to willing to inconvenience ourselves to hang on to what privacy we still have. I’m sorry the situation is so difficult for you, but I applaud your determination. To thine own self be true.

Honestly? If you can, refund it and tell them why.

I basically jumped from XP to 8.1 and I was amazed at how much of an improvement 8.1 was on a technical level. Yes, the UI was horrendous, and any usability expert should have been able to tell you it was a terrible idea, but apparently they weren’t listened to. Luckily there was Classic Shell that restored a proper Start Menu, so I never had to use the horrible touch interface.

8.1 was the last good Windows (with caveats). When support ended I went back to Linux, because 10 and 11 are enshittified to all hell.

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, hands down. Possibly the best movie ever made. Every shot is just beautiful.

Just imagine doing that to another person, a person you care about. There are some true monsters in this world.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Christ.

Stallman outlined our choices and told us this is where we were headed back in the 1980’s. Since then, we have consistently made the wrong decisions. All is not lost, but the situation is dire.

The choices are there, you just have to be willing to inconvenience yourself.

You must understand: It’s not your TV, it’s LG’s, and they will do with it what ever they want, and not to your benefit. This is the future we chose.

As I understand it, just straight up repealing Section 230 would immediately shut down practically any ability to post comments etc. No company or individual could accept unvetted posts from users, because they would be liable for any illegal content therein. So in essence, if you hate a site and want to take it down, just make posts that land them in hot water and they will be forced to shut down eventually. And you know the Internet is full of malicious actors. Sites like Lemmy could not exist in the US. Practically, you would have to run your own server to post things you want to express - and make sure no one else has access.

Repealing Section 230 sounds just stupid and short sighted, at least without a workable alternative. So, US legislators will probably go ahead and repeal it. Brilliant.

Dude, you have a serious problem, man. That’s way too much marijuanas.

A long time ago. I’d guess it was around the time Facebook became popular, because it was inconceivable to me that people were just sharing their private info online, and treating people who didn’t as the odd ones. Later on my I was vindicated, but I’ve been wary of Google and Microsoft’s data hoarding from the beginning I think. It has been frustrating to see tech go this way, and people just accepting it, gleefully.