Yup. I had no problem with snaps or Ubuntu until I saw that underhanded bullshit.

I want to do the same, but I’m on the fence between Nobara and Bazzite.

The act of transmitting a digital file does not directly cause harm to anyone, but by creating a demand for it, you are in turn driving an industry that violates the rights of people in order to keep supplying it.

We already know that people are killed in order to feed the black market for transplantable organs, so why would we allow an industry with all of the same risks to exist purely for the sake of art?

I think you may be making a logical error here. Wanting or needing a transplant, or buying sneakers, or any other consumer product for which there is a legitimate and legal supply chain, does not make you responsible for any parallel illegal/unethical/immoral supply chain. There are black market supply chains for everything from food and basic necessities to luxury goods. There is no fool-proof way to ensure that ANY product you purchase didn’t derive at least partially from an immoral supply chain. It is impossible to track all products that closely. The fault is not with the consumer but rather with the immoral supply chain participants. Don’t take away the agency of those who participate in such things.

I will never understand why these corporations spend big bucks on this cringe. I’ve been to one such event and I was shocked. What’s worse is that long-serving people said you had to act as if you were enjoying it or else you’d hear from your manager afterwards. Imagine a bunch of middle-aged men at a sales conference shaking their hips and pretending to enjoy a cheesy rap battle. What an utterly soul crushing, suicidal-thought-inducing experience. I can’t tell if senior management actually believes that this sort of corporate cringe is inspiring, or if they do it purposely to crush your soul and make you into a servile automaton. Are they out of touch or is it an Orwellian power move?

Exactly. And if your ISP or cellular provider wants, or is forced, to gather information about your internet activities, they can almost certainly find a way. The cheap consumer-grade VPN services most of us use just prevent casual or automated observers from easily detecting your device’s IP address. For most people that just want to torrent casually or use public wifi, it’s enough.

Best response. Almost everyone alive has a net negative impact on the environment. Maybe that one Indian guy who planted a whole forest by himself gets a pass. We can try to be less negatively impactful depending on our inclinations, resources, and other interests and priorities. Some people may choose vegetarianism, some might buy an electric car or install some solar panels, some might organize politically for a new policy. Some might spend their altruism improving social conditions rather than focusing on the environment. But being ever so slightly less of a negative impact on the environment than your neighbour who has a slightly different set of priorities is hardly a reason to feel morally superior.

It partly depends on whether you want to understand pre-9/11 “reasonable” conservatism or the more recent Tea Party and Trump conservative populism.

Ayn Rand expresses the fairy tale version of romantic, rugged individualism, which is pretty important to understanding modern right-wing politics, especially in North America. I think the main idea conservatives take from her work, directly or indirectly, is that progress is driven by individual work and achievement, and that any kind of forced wealth re-distribution (through social programs, for example) is effectively theft, and therefore immoral.

The modern populist right-wing movement was originally driven and disseminated by right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. So, listening to right-wing talk radio or podcasts is also a good window into the modern movement. It puts on full display the resentment felt by modern right-wingers.

If you would rather not experience right-wing media directly, but would rather read rational analysis about it, then one good choice is David Frumm. He is an old school Reagan/Bush conservative, and has lived through the transition of the Repubs to populism. He is very critical of Trumpism, like most people, but he comes from the perspective of a reasonable and well-informed conservative insider.

Fareed Zakaria has a new book called Age of Revolutions, which views modern conservative populism as a very significant political re-alignment with similarities to various revolutions of the past, both successful and unsuccessful. Fareed talks about the conditions that lead to populism. In that sense, he treats Trump’s popularity as a symptom and outcome of specific underlying societal problems.

I’ve never seen that diagram before. I like it.

I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are “far left”. Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”. Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them “far right”. Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!

alias shortname ‘flatpak run longname’

The US has spent decades developing and deploying smart munitions in an effort to be the good guys and minimize civilian casualties. It’s all very laudable but, in return, terrorists like the Houthis and Hamas have learned to hide more effectively in the civilian population, effectively creating human shields, which is a war crime.

It is probably true that a few retaliatory strikes won’t stop the Houthis from firing their Iranian missiles at civilian shipping. Something more drastic may be necessary. For example, I can’t imagine that Egypt is particularly happy about the reduction in traffic through Suez, nor should any bordering country be happy with missiles flying around over a shipping lane. It’s also an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

China is imitating the US Munro Doctrine, in which the US largely succeeded in excluding the European Great Powers from the Western Hemisphere by the end of the 1800s. China is trying to do the same in their neighbourhood. In this analogy, the South China Sea is China’s Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

However, it will be exponentially more difficult for China to achieve local hegemony given that they are surrounded by other industrialized nations on home soil who clearly see the threat and don’t want to become subjects of an authoritarian state.

The lesson that the US learned from WW1 and WW2 is that authoritarian states are very dangerous and the US cannot isolate itself from world events.

The lesson the US is learning from “winning” the Cold War is that global hegemony is corrupting and dangerous in terms of domestic politics.

Matthew Waxman, an expert on the laws of war from Columbia Law School, said in an interview (link below) that Hamas clearly is using the population of Gaza as human shields, and that is a war crime. It is also a war crime to deliberately target civilians. But it is not a war crime to kill civilians who are co-located with military forces. That is the fault of the force who co-locates with civilians.

We can debate all day long about the long, complicated history and broader context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and there is a lot of fault on both sides, but in this post-Oct 7 phase of the conflict, Hamas is mostly to blame for the civilian casualties.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4zO63JRg6VQ7LVnKrwI8cm?si=BoIW2OPdQrCIY_uhZ6P0lA

Androminion is awesome!

I don’t think international law has done much to protect Israel over the years. Israel has been attacked 4 times by neighboring countries since their inception. Maybe that’s why they are the way they are when it comes to questions of security.

What? An actual thoughtful and nuanced response that addresses the issues? That’s a rarity among these kinds of posts. Just let me upvote the first person to scream racist.

What a reductionist view of the world you have. Everything is about race for you, I guess. Brown people good. Jews and white people bad.

Edit: you should consider some help for your anger issues: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-67770178

That’s interesting, thanks. I had no idea they managed to get a huge Chinese firm to stop doing business with Israel.

That’s kind of broad since some people consider the whole conflict a slow-rolling genocide, not just the latest post-October 7 phase of the conflict. Are their demands specific to the current phase of the conflict? Like, if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, will the Houthis stop firing missiles?

I suppose I kind of get their stated motivation. I mean, Western countries are sanctioning Russia for invading Ukraine. The strange part is that the Houthis aren’t targeting Israeli vessels specifically. This is more like if Malta was shooting missiles at non-Russian ships in order to convince China to put pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine. It’s weird.

That’s not what I said, and your derogatory misrepresentation of my comment speaks to the weakness of your “argument”, whatever it is. There are many people who want a ceasefire in Gaza, but they aren’t firing missiles at cargo ships. I also didn’t say they were fighting for no reason. It seems hard to believe that the situation in Gaza is their sole motivation for attacking international cargo vessels. The Houthis seem to be acting more like a proxy for a country that has larger geopolitical goals that benefit from chaos, like Iran or Russia. Based on your hostile “response”, I’m guessing you don’t know any more than I do.