This feels like theft. Maybe not technically legally but the people who did the chatting aren’t getting the money. Capitalist hellscape

Pop!_os has been fine for me. I’m not a tinkerer. It’s a machine for a web browser and video games.

Microsoft is probably salivating at the idea of being the only legal OS provider.

If they won’t use signal or similar then they’re kind of shitty, but sometimes with friends and family that’s how it is.

People should stop using Facebook products.

I’ve never paid a subscription for YouTube. It’s been, what, like $10/mo for ten years? Can buy a lot of media drm free for that $1200.

I just saw a play that has a plot point about how someone gets robbed by some racist, well connected shits, and the police won’t do anything to help. The closest he gets to justice is vigilantism, where he hunts down and shoots 3 of his assailants dead. Only then does anyone start to listen to him, but when he agrees to talk peacefully they shoot him dead.

I’m not sure “the only way you’ll get justice is with your own bloody hands” was the author’s intent, but that seems to be the message.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation

Some people are very fragile and have poor emotional regulation. When they see other people doing good, it makes them feel bad, so they lash out.

Environmentalism, biking, veganism, all commonly evoke this behavior.

I switched to Linux a year or two ago. Pretty much every game I’ve played has worked fine. (Elden ring, guild wars 2, nioh2, pillars of eternity…)

Even non-steam stuff was basically click and go with Heroic launcher

Seriously, folks, how hard is it to just walk away?

I read recently that “will power” doesn’t meaningfully exist, but it’s rather the result of many other factors. That said, many people seem to be bankrupt of what one would call willpower. I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s the capitalist hell scape. Maybe it’s the plastic in our bodies. Maybe people are just largely social followers, and with a large enough contingent of idiots many people who would behave better follow down into the slop.

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.

I’ve been using Linux with Nvidia for a few years now without any problems. I don’t play the most cutting edge stuff at high resolution, but like path of exile 2, elden ring, expedition 33 all ran just fine.

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.

Ok clearly it’s not literally about making CDs and people saying “just make your own streaming service” are both missing the point and vastly over estimating the capacity of the average person.

The important part that’s largely missing from today’s music environment is the personal touch and investment. Many people, as the author says, just comfortably coast through an algorithmic smoothie of familiar music. That is inferior to a friend saying “I made you this mix” and then you actually listen to it, attentively, more than once.

It doesn’t have to be a CD. It can be a zip file. But the intention and focus was important.

I’m an outlier in that I never let “the algorithm” choose what plays. Sometimes I still make mixes for friends, though lately they’ve just been a collection of links. That process of choosing is meaningful. My friend still listens to the mix I made for them when their job laid them off, sometimes.

I feel like a lot of companies don’t do things the good way not because the good way is hard, or the bad way is cheaper, but because management is stupid. Stupid or sometimes apathetic.

This is a horrible idea and everyone involved in its conception and implementation should be barred from working in technology ever again.

I’ve been saying that for years. Now I have about 250 albums drm-free on Bandcamp. A good chunk of that money went to the people making the music, too.

I know there are people out there paying a subscription to Spotify who listen to the same dozen albums over and over, too.

How did this get normalized?

The average user doesn’t know or understand technical details, and don’t believe they have any power to change anything

Also capitalism means a small number of assholes make most of the decisions for reasons that benefit them