Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.

IF the thinker is looking for a good overall policy and not just trying to stick more money in their pockets in the short term.

You expect them to cry about the working class affording food when they only have a house for three out of the four seasons of the year?

I appreciate the reply. Thanks for the discussion!

Oh yeah I get that. The disbelief and disappointment are off the charts for me.

But to continue my train of thought, what’s worked well for my mental state is to give myself permission to focus on the small scale and those close to me rather than (justifiably) dwelling on the fucked up state of society at large.

So instead of worrying about whether society is worth saving, I worry about whether my own sanity is worth saving, and by extension whether it is worth trying to have a happy and fulfilling life. And that’s not just being selfish. It’s equivalent to putting on your own oxygen mask on an airplane before you help others. With my head on straight, I can help improve the lives of those around me, and that is not only worth it but feeds back into making my own life and mental state better.

And from time to time I also like to remind myself about how insane it is that we even exist, that clouds of matter formed billions of years ago in supernovae were able to coalesce and form self-aware brains. It just makes me more interested in learning about existence and the universe.

And when I point that attitude towards the fucked up things in society and the world, it certainly doesn’t make those things better. I think about how I am watching significant history being written, and I can at least be an engaged witness even if I can’t change the course of that history. Though I do try where I can, and of course vote accordingly.

When I have gone through this thought process lately, I’ve concluded that even if I plan my life in the most cold robotic way possible, my mental health and general well-being are at their best when I am compassionate towards those around me.

So first you must ask yourself what your true goal is. Do you want to “win” some shallow materialistic version of life? Or do you want to help others, or just be happy regardless of what it takes? Then that helps inform later decisions.

My automatic assumption has always been that saving everything, retiring early, and being a recluse was my path to a happy existence. It’s just what I felt I wanted to do. I bet I’m not alone there.

But then I had the great luck to have COVID come around and fuck up my career and finances in a few different ways. Now I’m stable again at work and my finances are a disaster, but I’ve waded through so much shit mentally that even though big retirement account balances feel great, that’s not what creates real joy, contentment, and even optimism.

…In my brain anyway. It’s like we all have slightly different owners manuals but we don’t get a copy of it and have to reverse-engineer it. In my case I had some things I cared about a lot get torn away, but I still had my family, and I realized that without that stuff that got taken away I was still the same person and was just fine. That definitely flipped a switch or two. Well, that and a grueling couple years dialing in medications, lol. Anything that helps!

Oh man, a friend and I were the AV crew for a while in high school in the late 90s. Basically we’d deliver these TV & VCR wheeled stands to the teachers needing them in the morning. If there wasn’t any need, we got to hang out in the equipment room instead of home room.

We got to use the elevators and even wield “the key ring” from time to time.

Are they going to cut Social Security? No, too many older voters that depend on that income. Medicare? Nope, same thing.

Republicans: “unless we can just not need their votes any more… 🧐 “

This is the second time in two days that Lemmy has reminded me about Constantine.

So yeah I think I’ll be rewatching it too!

It does feel about on-brand for this timeline that Trump of all leaders might get the credit for fixing* the Middle East problem.

• where the problem is the existence of the conflict, and the solution of a glassy wasteland littered with charred skeletons will successfully not have regional conflicts for a thousand years.

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug

Yep, I’ll typically use vim or nano for editing existing files, but when in just want to make a quick temporary note or fiddle with some plain text it’s the graphical one that came with the DE.

Is nothing sacred?

At least that’s one use case that Linux will always be awesome for - editing plain text without added bullshit (excepting any keyboard shortcuts you need to learn to save or exit, depending on your editor, lol).

And you can obviously do that on windows with any number of third party apps. But not having the basic clean text editor included in the base OS install just seems wrong.

Does it count if they are minors and have their parents supporting it? Or do you only count if the government officially organizes it?

Trump still got 72 million votes and counting this time. That’s with another four years of Trump scandals, revelations, criminal charges, insurrections, mental declines, and on-video insane statements.

The people who stayed home, or the politicians who failed to motivate them, sure they carry some blame. They could have helped. But they are not the base. The ones who followed Trump from being the outsider who is fun because he’s an asshole/racist like them, to the corrupt traitorous dictator-to-be who they’d like to watch hurt people. Blame them much more.

The steady level of Trump support unfortunately supports the fear that our culture is just garbage. We’re surrounded by it. There are plenty of proud assholes, sure. But so many people will legitimately be pleasant to everybody they meet and seem to function in society, but either believe horrible things or have a thick shell of indoctrination and ignorance around their brain.

Do you guys seriously believe everything would be fine if he didn’t win?

Of course not, and nobody is saying that. But it would be better. Harm reduction is good even though we can’t actually ever fix the world.

Does it matter if the civilization ends a week earlier?

Um, yes? It’s safe to say that both you and I will die some day. I’d rather that be in 100 years versus tomorrow.

Oh trust me, the watching with a mixture of fascination and horror is coming from inside the states too.

I wish you good luck as well. I hear the US is known to fuck around with other countries occasionally. (And that’s not supposed to sound threatening - it’s just a recognition that we fuck with other countries even during “good” administrations, never mind when we have a dictator-loving wannabe in the office)

Sounds like a you issue if you had trouble with Mint. Right click the desktop -> display settings and oh look, 4 monitors to easily configure. Sounds kind of silly without more information doesn’t it?

My hardware at work is all Dell stuff so good chance it’s their fault. But it still doesn’t affect the Linux side.

In windows I can only use 3 monitors. If I open up the laptop to introduce a 4th screen in windows, a pair of my monitors will Be duplicating the dang image.

In Mint I tried the same and it just worked, 4 individual monitors without issue.

My work laptop was your standard Dell with windows and M365. I am now able to dual boot Linux, which is what my computer boots into by default now.

I can honestly say that in the current day, Linux Mint gives a much smoother experience on the same hardware. It even supports multiple monitors better.

I will grant that I’m a computer nerd like plenty of others here, so there may be some speed bumps that didn’t even register for me. But everything from installation, to daily use, to updates, is SO much smoother and faster.

I’m just hoping this comment ages like milk as his convictions pile up with his other trials.

It seems to me that the conservatives here in the US had to make so much noise about these pet wedge issues like abortion, since they didn’t have real policies to improve the country, that they built a feedback loop with the conservative voters who have thought of abortion as the #1 issue for decades.

So it has decades of building momentum plus the all-important “I care about hurting the people I don’t like more than I care about helping anybody” factor. Couple that with the modern Republican mindset that expects to take everything and give nothing, and you get some dumb decisions.