That’s a very fair point. But it’s still annoying.

Not when every app decides to use a different point version of the same damn platform.

"Hello Mr. Application. I see you’d like to use the Freedesktop-SDK 23.08.27

“Oh…well hello other application. What’s this? You want to use Freedesktop-SDK 24.08.10? Well…I guess so…”

Edited to add: Yes, I know that flatpaks will upgrade to use updated platforms. But it doesn’t automatically remove the old one, forcing you to have to run flatpak remove --unused every week just to keep your drive clean. That’s hardly user friendly for the average person.

I don’t mind flatpaks in a pinch, but having to use them for literally every app on my computer is an unreasonable amount of bloat.

Anti-anxiety meds.

Anxiety isn’t the cause of all people’s short fuse, but it was for me.

And to be clear, I wasn’t really “anger” issues as in “blowing up at other people”. You don’t work retail long before you learn how to put on a happy face. It was more “anger issues” that I would just seethe to myself at all the stupidity around me, completely unable to let even the littlest shit go.

Driving was the worst. I was an asshole as a driver. My entire time travelling to work would often be filled with a constant litany of yelling and swearing to myself, knowing full well that the other person can’t hear me.

So this is half on me, and half on my father. (I inherited my “stupid idea” gene.

When I was 16 my dad was building a greenhouse on our small acreage. Frame was up, everything was ready and it became time to lay down the heavy clear plastic sheeting that would form the surface.

As he was up in the top nailing down each corner, it was my job to hold each corner down as tight as I could from the ground by using a rope attached to the corner of the sheet. (I don’t know if i’m describing this properly).

Any way, my father’s fault in the story is this: The only “rope” we could find was baler twine. It’s thin, coarse, and can easily slice like a saw. We secured a long piece of it to the corner of the sheeting and my job was to basically “tug of war” the corner in order to keep it taut for my father to secure.

Anyone raised in the country already sees exactly where I’m going with this…

MY stupid part in this story is this…

In an attempt to get a better purchase on the baler twine, I wrapped it a few times around my hand, through my fingers, etc…

Did I mention it was a bit windy that day? So a guest of wind took the corner and ripped it out of my hands, with the twine literally zipping through my fingers, slicing them nearly to the bone because friction + baler twine = weirdly effective saw.

Four fingers on my right hand were left with ring scars from where the twine zipped through them and my right hand was out of action for about a week

There’s a kink for everything. It may not be a large base, but I’ll bet it’s there.

That is essentially the vibe I got from that argument. We didn’t last much longer after that.

The moment I knew that I had to break it off with my ex was when a comment about tea-cup saucers turned into an accusation that I “always had to be right”.

We were having cake for dessert:

Her: “Can you grab plates?”

Me: Grabs a couple of small plates.

Her: “No, those aren’t for cake. It’s the really small ones.”

Me: “Okay, but FYI the small ones are actually teacup saucers. You can tell the difference because they have the indent in the middle so the teacup doesn’t slip around.”

Her: “You just always have to be right, don’t you?”

What followed was a truly bonkers argument where I found myself accused of “lording my intelligence” and told that I had to be right in everything.

For the record, I told her I literally didn’t give a shit what she wants to eat cake off of. I’m the guy that would happily use a Tupperware lid as a plate if it was the closest thing to hand. I was just pointing out an “interesting fact” (in my mind at least).

Because humans create their gods in their own image. Not the other way around. Your god becomes a reflection of what you already tend to believe because it exists solely as a justification for believing it.

If you’re part of a society that believes that all outsiders are bad. You’re going to invent your god that proclaims outsiders to be bad. If you’re part of a group that has no sense of monogamy, you’re going to create a god that proclaims “polygamy is good”!

Gods are the invented paragons of whatever society created them.

Soooo…clutz, basically.

Lato, League Spartan, League Gothic are my three most used fonts by a wide margin. Lato and its variety of weights for most things, League when I am doing design work and need a cleaner title or header.

Lately ive been weirdly taken with TT2020 Style G, which is an odd name for a no-name font that replicates an old imperfect typewriter. For whatever reason, switching my writing software to that (Manuscript) suddenly fired up my writing flow.

Glad I could help.

Based on the average age of Lemmy, I’ll go out on a limb and say I’m probably older than you.

What you call “informed positions” is simply giving up on seeing the reality over the propaganda. Your cynicism doesn’t allow you to separate the theory of capitalism from the reality of capitalism. You’re essentially no different than those people who say that anything except the current situation is essentially “socialism”, which by definition must be bad. But just because corporations have taken over capitalism, doesn’t mean there isn’t a fight to be had to try to change that.

I’m very close to 50 years old. I’ve got plenty of my own life experience that I don’t need any of yours thanks. If you want to give up, go right ahead. Some of us believe is a system where capitalism is contained by strong government regulations and social safety nets. Why do we believe this, because there’s plenty of European countries that already do this. Just because North America is completely bought out by corporations doesn’t mean that’s just what capitalism is.

Go be a sad sack defeatist on your own time.

Capitalism is inherently parasitic

I fundamentally disagree with that.

Venture Capitalism is parasitic. But Capitalism itself is not at all. At it’s heart, if we continue with the landlord analogy, let’s say that you are renting a house from the OP’s Aunt. She’s paying the building insurance. She’s paying the maintenance, (or in some good old fashioned cases doing it themselves). She’s dealing with the paperwork involved in owning a home. Hell, in some cases you don’t even have to mow your own lawn. So of course she’s charging you rent. It’s not a charity.

But if she’s a private owner, than your rent stays with her. She uses what she needs to maintain the building and…yes…makes a profit that then gets spent in the local economy.

The only time there’s an issue is when your rent is being sent to a corporation that may not even be in the same country as you, and that money leaves your local economy for good.

To use an anecdotal example, I’ve worked in my time for two different furniture stores in my town. One was a chain, and one was/is a family run operation from the beginning. And yes…that family is wildly successful; I’m not guessing millionaires, but close to it. And I don’t begrudge them at all for that. Because it’s family owned, they aren’t forced to only care about a stock price or about profit. My boss would randomly come up to me, sometimes multiple times a year, clap me on the back and say “You’re doing a good job, I’m going to add a buck an hour to your wage.”

Because they can. Because for all intents and purposes, you’ve got a better chance to be treated like a human being when a corporation isn’t in the way.

The chain furniture store would only give out raises when forced to by government mandated cost of living increases, because anything more would cause the stock price to go down.

The heart of capitalism is my first example. The reality of capitalism is my second unfortunately. But that’s not the fault of capitalism itself, it’s the lack of government oversight protecting us from predatory corporations.

No.

I of course can’t speak for anyone except myself, but for me, what your aunt is doing is what essentially capitalism is all about.

Its when those landlords get replaced by venture capital corporations and reits that it becomes a problem.

In your aunts case, the rent money stays local, contributes back to the local economy, etc…

In the case of venture capital and corporate ownership, the only goal is to increase a stock price for a corporation. None of that money gets returned to the local economy except for possibly hiring a local property management firm to handle things on the ground for them.

When capitalism remains about people, all of good. When corporations take the reins of ownership so their profit becomes the sole motive is when things go bad.

Economic chaos for a little while, and then everyone would just go on with their lives. Economically it would matter of course; America became the richest power after the first world war when all of Europe needed loans to fight their “great war”, causing the greatest transfer of wealth the world had ever seen.

But culturally, I’m betting the number of people who would give a shit if the United States stopped bossing everybody around is far less than they think it is.

The american sense of importance is strongest mostly in their own heads.

This is exactly the right answer.

I think it’s a complicated question. I say yes, but with caveats.

He needs to be prosecuted in order to keep the letter of the law running. You can’t just say “you can’t kill anyone unless the rest of us don’t like him.” Laws should be about absolutism.

However the sentencing does not have to be absolute. Find him guilty (because technically he is). Then give him a suspended sentence because of extenuating circumstances.

I haven’t tried the 60s yet, but I’ve heard good things about Westlake. My entire reading world changed when I discovered the original hard-boiled works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Moved my youtube habits away from doom and gloom news channels and instead to history documentaries and old episodes of Best of the Worst.

Similar to that, spend more time on Pluto TV/Roku/Tubi watching terrible low budget sci-fi and old comfort episodes of Quantum Leap and TNG.