Every conservative accusation is a confession

I use nano for quick edits. I don’t know more than the basics of vim, and don’t do a lot of editing on the terminal so I haven’t needed to.

Still on Linux. Updated to the new pop!_os LTS. It’s been pretty good. The new desktop environment has had a few quirks where I had to fuss with hitting alt+enter to get some games appropriately full screen, but generally it’s been good.

Worth it to be free of microslop

Many people take the idea that “everyone is entitled to their opinion” too far, and it turns into “everyone is entitled to their facts”

Humans are feelings driven, so they’re more likely to go with what their friend says than some mean scientist who makes them feel bad. The inability of people to put aside their feelings is part of why we’re in this mess.

Instead of a grid of apps on your home screen that you tap to open, and then tap and swipe and tap some more, you’d simply tell an AI agent to do something, and then it’d do it for you.

I don’t understand why you would want an “Agent” to do stuff for you. This whole thing is just built on the assumption that people are helpless idiots. Which, maybe has some truth to it, but I’d rather spend billions on education than this slop.

The “all authority is illegitimate” might generate some friction with some people who might overwise be an ally. They might stop listening and lose any nuance.

Ars is weirdly pro-windows sometimes , in the comments. I don’t read them as much as I used to.

Honestly that’s much more respectable. Someone who says “Yeah, I had a hamburger at the bbq. I know eating meat is bad for lots of reasons, but it was already there, and I can’t always live my ideals” is so, so, so much better than “No fuck you meat is good for the environment actually I’m a good person shut up”

So, to clarify, veganism was a separate example of things that cause a strong emotional reaction.

Second of all, I don’t really believe you but I don’t especially care.

Many people have as an immutable axiom “I am a good person”

When you suggest they are doing something bad, like contributing to climate change, this clashes with that axiom.

That clash causes discomfort. Most people are, frankly, lazy cowards. They could accept that they are not being a good person all the time, and update their axiom. But that’s scary and feels bad. They could also try to do something about climate change (or whatever the topic is. see also: veganism), but that’s also hard. It’s far easier to just lash out at the source of discomfort.

The oatmeal did a comic on basically this topic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

There was someone a while ago who was trying to get a web ring going for like nerd stuff. They said so many of their friends and people they talked to loved the idea, but no one made a site of their own.

I posted it in a local community group, and everyone said the same thing.

I want job postings and a way to reach people I worked with.

I absolutely do not want the click bait and slop.

Good. Windows is all of bad, expensive, and untrustworthy

See also: capitalism more generally

i am too old to understand “hardcore” as a verb in that sentence. what?

Most of the people don’t want to be convinced. They come adamant that they won’t change their opinion

I link this comic a lot but I think it’s often relevant: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

Basically, people don’t believe things or accept facts that conflict with their emotions.

I don’t know. A coworker years ago said to me “you have to make what you want people to do the easy thing”, and I think he was right. But someone still has to do work. Back then, it was me changing the deploy script to automatically run tests and open the report so people had to go out of their way to skip all that.

I’m not sure what that looks like for the fediverse. Linking them directly? Some sort of “sign up with Google” SSO mechanism? Just make the account for your friend and give it to them?

Ideally we’d go up one level and address why people are so mentally depleted they can’t handle a sign up form.

Yeah, that could be some of it. We can’t all be perfect all the time. It’s impossible.

I’d appreciate more honest appraisals, though. “I know Twitter is garbage run by a Nazi, but I got linked to it and scrolled a bit” is far better than “well other people are worse so who cares”. There’s this childish whataboutism that a lot of people bring out to justify their poor behavior.

People don’t really care about anything other than convenience. Twitter could be grinding up puppies live on camera and most people would just shrug and be like “well the good memes are here”.

Personally I think that’s downstream from how we’re all too polite about shit like this. We just smile and change the topic instead of doing the intensely uncomfortable “You really shouldn’t use twitter” conversation. But also we’re all too… childish, I guess, because most people if someone says that will not respond with “You make a good point and I will change in accordance,” but rather with “Fuck you for saying things that make me feel bad. You suck. I’m not listening to anything you say.”

So I guess we’re fucked because people are immature, fragile, little shits.

People assume it’s all terminal all the time. I haven’t needed to open the terminal for months. It starts up. With the GUI I open the browser. Maybe steam, too. Do stuff. Shut down.