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Cake day: March 5th, 2024

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  • 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.



  • Nothing, the point I was making is that annoying vegans and linux users would be annoying know-it-alls who never shut up about what they love and feel strongly about regardless of what activity they engage in. Crossfit also has zealots that are famously annoying, so it seemed like an easy way to illustrate my point without getting in the weeds like I have done now. Nothing to do with moral philosophy, annoying people are annoying.





  • 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.







  • I wanted to be a filmmaker but was forced to choose a different path when my grandfather (who had set up a small college fund for me) refused to pay for school unless I chose something more practical. I caved and majored in journalism (my mom was a photojournalist before I was born) but was so heartbroken I dropped out in my first year. I tried a second time to go to school but I couldn’t stay engaged after learning the thing I had been working towards since middle school was no longer an option.

    I ended up going to work in tech instead. In my late 20’s I thought I would figure out making short films on my own wrote a script, bought some gear, but when I looked at how bad I was at social media and how much I wanted someone to see my work, I thought the odds were against it.

    A few years ago some unrelated mental health issues made it impossible for me to work and I am writing a script for an audio drama which is hopefully cheaper to produce and a zine about Utopia while I recover.

    Bailing on my dream wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most of my problems and regrets are related to the undiagnosed and untreated mental illness that destroyed my already struggling career a few years ago. Not making the elder millennial version of Point Break sucks, but maybe if the audio drama works I can parley that success into a streaming series (Archive 81 style).



  • On a technical level, no. You’re right. It would not be possible to capture the protocol entirely. But meta has serious cash to spend on marketing Threads. If they can capture enough of the ActivityPub market and were to collab with Bluesky and use their protocol (I forget the name), or make their own, it’s only a matter of time before the drop activitypub and force users either to join threads or lose access to their users.

    Threads and Bluesky are kind of an existential threat to ActivityPub given Meta and Twitter’s track record with Open Graph, bootstrap, and public api’s.