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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • What’s better? KDE? Or GNOME?

    Cinnamon.

    Nah just kidding. What happens is that you use enough different OSes and DEs for enough time and you start to see through the matrix. You realize they’re all just visual wrappers for the underlying systems that do the real work, and the DEs don’t really matter. All the major ones are good enough. And when they don’t work, that’s when you use command line. Then eventually, after doing that enough times, you say “fuck it all, get this GUI out of my way” and just start using CLI for everything.






  • Well if you can see condensed water vapor in open air, it’s most likely nucleating around something. And that something is probably the combustion products from the jet fuel. I don’t know exactly what each of those thousands of molecular structures are, but burning fuels in general can produce a whole host of compounds including Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) that can be rather carcinogenic. And that pollution most likely settles somewhere on the planet surface eventually.

    As takeda said in another comment, it might not be worse than more local sources like cars or trains or power plants, but it’s very unlikely to just be water, and probably not healthy.

    I’m not saying it’s a deliberate spread of chemicals and it’s certainly not the mind control nonsense that conspiracy lunatics think. No, most combustion products are just waste with no real use. But calling it “just water” or “harmless clouds” can’t be entirely right unless you believe carbon atoms can just disappear.




  • Number 1 by far is knowing how to separate your opinions from your identity.

    I’ve been thinking about this for years and I can’t shake the thought that identity politics is the root of most major problems in western society (esp. US). It means people interpret criticism of their opinions as personal attacks instead. This overblown defensive reaction leads to turning around and conflating the opinions of others with their worth as human beings.

    Yes, there some truth to that. If you hold hateful & bigoted opinions, I would say that makes you a shit person. But you’re not necessarily condemned to that forever, because opinions can potentially change. This is tied in with Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance”, i.e. ideas should be tolerated unless they themselves are so intolerant as to undermine the wider marketplace of ideas.

    When we equate (potentially temporary) opinions of others with immutable value, that’s what leads to dehumanizing them and taking away their fundamental rights. And as has always been the case throughout history, the burden falls primarily on vulnerable groups (immigrants, ethnic or social minorities, children and the elderly, etc).

    People need to understand that YOU ARE NOT YOUR OPINION. Others can and should criticize your opinions, but that doesn’t mean they are attacking you personally. Defend the opinions, but don’t turn around and go ad-hominem in response. And for fuck’s sake, unless an opinion is so abhorrent or intolerant that it threatens someone else’s existence (e.g. Nazis), you don’t get to take away the holder’s rights to citizenship, food, shelter, healthcare, etc.

    EDIT: And yes I do consider this a skill that people have to learn. I think most should be capable by maybe… age 7.