[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago

Damn. I thought cultish thought-stopping was something we didn't really have very far left of (what the U.S. calls) center. Would you like to see Democrats comparing Biden to Jesus like the MAGA crowd does Trump? The day the Democratic party becomes just as much of a cult as the Republican party is the day we have two literally fascist parties to choose between rather than a fascist party and still-a-major-win-for-the-fascists-but-at-least-not-quite-as-bad party.

Unless something completely unexpected (like a third party candidate actually having a chance of winning) happens between now and November, I'm voting blue no matter who in the general election. I think everyone else in the U.S. should as well, and I'll tell them that. But nobody is served by liberals (and lefties) deluding themselves into thinking our choice is between anything other than two unequal evils.

What's your reasoning here? Are you hoping that if you and I lie and say Biden's going to fix everything, it'll get more people to vote blue than if we tell them to vote for the lesser evil (which, to be clear, is the candidate with the D next to their name)? Because I really think the case could be made that the opposite is true. Or do you really think Biden is a perfect, infallable candidate?

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

I was asking more specifically about the word "quality" itself than the whole sentence. Are you referring to stability? Security? User-friendliness? Integration with whatever? Hardware support? 'Cuz the word "quality" is way too broad a term to just use and not expect to piss off a lot of people. Lol.

That said, I can't disagree with you about, for instance, Plasma. (I haven't used Gnome enough to comment, but my last experience with Plasma back like 10 years ago wasn't great.)

I strongly prefer relatively minimal solutions. Rather than Plasma or Gnome, I use Sway, for instance. And it's solid as a rock. More so than either Plasma or Windows' graphical system in my experience.

Plasma, in my book, is way over-engineered. Windows too. And that's why they suck. And, admittedly, Plasma perhaps more so than Windows.

If I can find any common ground with you here, this is it: Microsoft has leverage on its employees to "fix" bugs in its over-engineered crap while KDE's over-engineered crap doesn't get fixed until volunteers can get to it.

But neither the Microsoft approach nor the KDE approach (nor, I'd guess, the Gnome approach) is a solution. You can't fix fundamental design flaws by heaping fixes on top. Sometimes you have to step back and decide it's best to finally rebuild the foundation. And Windows has a problem with almost never doing that. The Linux ecosystem is much better at that, I'd say. (And the argument could probably be made that that's the result of engineers just wanting to build something new and shiny rather than keep working on the boring old stuff. The result is working, though. Certainly in my estimation.) Look at Wayland, for instance. The only "innovations" I've seen from Windows is how they redesign their start menu and piss everyone off every couple of Windows versions.

And in the Linux ecosystem, I can throw away what I don't want and replace it with something I do want. I can't really replace any pieces of Windows.

I can't measure any of the above in dollars that went into Linux ecosystem vs dollars that went into Windows.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 17 points 7 hours ago

If anything, the person you're responding to is advocating for voting for Biden. (They stated they live in Canada, so I'd imagine they won't be voting for Biden themselves.)

Are you misunderstanding, responding to folks who are planning not to vote for Biden (who aren't even mentioned in the post you're responding to), or arguing it's not ok to voice criticisms of Biden at all (regardless of whether one plans to vote for him or not)?

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

it will never fully replicate its ... quality

What do you mean specifically by "quality?"

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Oh Jesus. It's even trippier now that I see it.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

SCOTUS fucked up super-sized

SCOTUS (or at least 6 of 'em) knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyway. On purpose.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago

To add to what everyone else is saying, the right wing really controls all the narratives. As Zeppo said, communism/socialism have been demonized for years (starting maybe in the 1950s or so?) And if the right wing doesn't like anything, they call it "socialism."

Single-payer healthcare? Nope, that's socialism. UBI? You damned pinko commie. Rainbow flags? You're one of those neo-Marxist postmodernist scumbags!

And, left wing politicians who don't want to appear too socialist shrink away from such things so as to not appear socialist.

In one recent election, the Democrat/Liberal candidate's slogan was "they go low, we go high." The slogan acknowledged that the right wing in the U.S. cheats constantly to keep what power it has. The majority of right-wing presidents lose the popular vote -- that is most right-wing presidents get less than 50% of the total number of votes in the country -- but still get to be president by virtue of gaming the "electoral college" system we have in the U.S.. Trump broke tons of rules during his (first? 😬) term. The Republicans cheated to get a dispurportionate number of right-wingers on the Supreme Court (the highest court in the U.S. government). Just as a few examples.

That's what the "they go low" part means. The "we go high" means that the Democrats intend to be the adult in the room. The Democrats will stick to the rules. They'll follow the proper procedures for doing things. They won't "stoop to the Republicans' level." And that approach didn't start with that slogan. That's been the Democrats' approach for a very long time.

But in practice what "we go high" means is "we'll roll over and ask them to kick us in the ribs again." More apt would be "they go low and we... do nothing at all."

The Republicans "shut down the government" (long story... they basically prevent funding broadly for most of the federal government to grind the government to a halt -- hold the federal government hostage) over random bullshit like building a wall at the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico. And the Democrats let them. Republicans filabuster and the Democrats let them. Republicans overturn long-established legal precedent and the Democrats let them.

And the Democrats have no plan to change this dynamic. And, who knows. Maybe they like it that way. It's not like the Democrats aren't owned by the special interests just like the Republicans are. Really, the big businesses allow the Democrats to exist and continue to make popular noises and very slightly slow our rapid decline toward total dystopian hellscape while not actually letting them do anything that might appreciably threaten the industries' unrealistic profit margins.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Greetings from the past. How's it going, future people?

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I'm on the older end of millenial.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

What's a "create likes" mod?

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yes, this is my head canon.

Edit: Actually, maybe this should be the new "if dogs wore pants..." or "if you put an airplane on a treadmill...".

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 111 points 4 days ago

Do we really think Biden (or any Democrat, really) is going to do anything different than continue to cede more ground to the Republicans as they always have?

13
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/buttcoin@awful.systems

This post really isn't the usual faire of this community. Sorry about that. If there's a better place for me to put this, definitely feel free to point me there.

But, to the point of my post, before Bitcoin became a widespread cult, back when all Bitcoin was was a couple of posts on Slashdot, back when mining it was comparatively extremely easy/quick/"profitable", I mined some Bitcoin. About 1/20 of a Bitcoin. Just by, like, leaving my computer on for a month or so. And I still have access to it.

And Bitcoin ~~is worth~~ can be sold for $62,000 USD per bitcoin right now which makes my little 1/20 of a Bitcoin tradeable for about $3,100 of real money.

Now I know that blockchain is just straight up a scam. But I've still got this Bitcoin in a wallet on a hard drive in my posession. (I know, the wallet doesn't actually "contain" the Bitcoin. Leave me alone.)

The obvious thing to do with it would be to sell it now, but that would leave some poor chap(s) holding a $3,100 bag in a way that I wouldn't feel great about.

I could just sit on it forever. I suppose I could sell it and donate the proceeds to some cause I thought to be worthy or anti-crypto. If there were enough crypto-skeptics had cryptocurrencies and wanted cryptocurrency to die in a fire, they(/we?) could coordinate to use our collective cryptocurrency in a way that most damages the market and hopefully hastens a crash-to-zero. (But the likelihood that there'd be enough cryptocurrency in the hands of crypto-skeptics to pull that off seems low.) Or I could print out my private keys, delete them from my hard drive, and ceremonially burn the papers while chanting "web3 is going great".

And maybe this post is just me asking like-minded folks to give me permission to just sell it and leave someone holding a bag so I can buy myself a new OLED TV. Heh.

Whatever the case, I wanted to hear you folks' takes.

Edit: Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm gonna sell it.

60
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

I linked to MSN because (at least for me) it wasn't paywalled. The original source for the article can be found on the Washington Post's website here but is paywalled.

27

If I had a nickel for every one I've seen, I'd have two nickels, which isn't much, but it's strange it happened twice.

And I have no idea what it means.

A couple of examples:

One and two.

31

This was on the Netflix login page until pretty recently. I can't be the only one who thought it was unintentionally... suggestive, right?

3
Animutations (www.youtube.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/nostalgia@lemmy.ca

Please tell me I'm not the only one still obsessed with these things.

Edit: Woah. I am the only one still obsessed with Animutations, aren't I? They're mine! All mine!

81
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

It bugs me when people say "the thing is is that" (if you listen for it, you'll start hearing it... or maybe that's something that people only do in my area.) ("What the thing is is that..." is fine. But "the thing is is that..." bugs me.)

Also, "just because doesn't mean ." That sentence structure invites one to take "just because " as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn't want to do. Just doesn't seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.

And I'm not saying there's anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It's just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.

Edit: I thought of another one. "As best as I can." "The best I can" is fine, "as well as I can" is good, and "as best I can" is even fine. But "as best as" hurts.

36
submitted 2 months ago by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/helldivers2@lemmy.ca

And if you disagree with any of my answers, you're just wrong.

23

"Vindaloo" is a running joke in the series Red Dwarf to which this song is the theme song.

1
submitted 3 months ago by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world

Apparently I'm banned from !imageai@sh.itjust.works now. That's a community for posting AI-generated images.

My feed is set to "all"/"new". So I see every post that comes into the Lemmy servers that lemmy.world federates with. Or at least those that come in while I'm on and browsing.

I downvote what I don't like. And I don't like AI-generated images. I downvote any that come across my feed. I don't seek out AI-generated images to downvite. (That feels too much like brigading.) So, I wouldn't, say, go to !imageai@sh.itjust.works and downvote every post there. Just the ones that "organically" come across my feed.

Today, I clicked "downvote" on a post from !imageai@sh.itjust.works and the down-arrow wouldn't change color to register my downvote. Lemmy's error messaging is lacking, so I had to go to my developer tools to find out for sure, but the server clearly indicated the reason why it wouldn't accept my downvote was because I was banned from !imageai@sh.itjust.works . (I can downvote posts on other sh.itjust.works communities.)

So, apparently one of the mods of !imageai@sh.itjust.works noticed I downvoted some posts from !imageai@sh.itjust.works and had never upvoted any posts in that community and decided to ban me.

I'm honestly not really sure whether I or they (or both or neither) am/are in the wrong here. But I was interested to see that just downvoting could get me banned from a community.

Anyone else been banned from any communities for similar behavior?

35
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

Over-the-counter diphenhydramine, for instance, at least in my country, says adults can take "1 to 2 tablets every 4 to 6 hours."

If you decide "my symptoms aren't so bad; I'll just take one" and then two hours later your symptoms are still bad (or worse), is it safe to take a second tab then? And if you do, should you wait until "4 to 6 hours" after taking the first tablet or the second to take an additional tablet? Does it depend on the drug? (Maybe it's fine for diphenhydramine but not for ibuprophen?)

I'd imagine blood levels of any particular drug tend to quickly spike and then exponentially decay back to undetectable levels. If you take two tabs, I'd imagine that graph is just twice as tall. If you wait a couple of hours between tabs, it's got two spikes and the second is a little higher than the first (but not as high as the two-tabs-at-the-same-time spike.)

If the concern is total concentration of drug in the bloodstream at any one point, a second tab a couple hours later is less of a concern than two tabs at the same time. If the concern is total area under the curve, then probably there's no difference between two tabs at the same time and a couple of hours between. If the concern is total time spent with a blood concentration of such-and-such, I could see there being more concern with taking a second tab just a couple of hours after the first.

And maybe there are other effects that I'm not aware of. Maybe if the blood concentration kicks up to two-tabs-at-once levels, the liver kicks into high gear, clearing the drug out quicker, but if you go a couple of hours between tabs, the liver neve kicks into high gear or some such.

And maybe this question hasn't even been well studied and maybe there's not really any good answer. But if there is, I'm curious.

78
submitted 4 months ago by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I've got a pretty severe sensitivity to -- of all things -- sugar. (I know, "sugar" isn't very precise, but I'm pretty sure it's either glucose, fructose, or sucrose.) I virtually never eat anything with added sugar or anything with any significant amount of natural sugar. And I've eaten that way for like 20 years now. I'm practically blind to half the produce department (any "sweet" fruits like apples, pears, cherries, grapes, oranges, etc) at the grocery store, let alone the candy isle.

7
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/freesoftware@lemmy.zip

I've been thinking about this for a while now.

Richard Stallman has been practically synonymous with Free Software since its inception. And there are good reasons why. It was his idea, and it was his passion that made the movement what it is today.

I deeply believe in the mission of the Free Software movement. But more and more, it seems that in order to survive, the Free Software movement may need to distance itself from him.

Richard Stallman has said some really disturbingly reprehensible things on multiple occasions (one and two). (He has said he's changed these opinions, but it seems to me the damage is done.)

He's asked that people blame him and not the FSF for these statements, but it seems naive to me to expect that to be enough not to tarnish the FSF's reputation in the eyes of most people.

And Richard Stallman isn't the only problematic figure associated with the Free Software movement.. Eben Moglen (founder, Direct-Council, and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center which is closely associated with the FSF) has been accused of much abusive and anti-LGBTQIA+ behavior over which the Free Software Foundation Europe and Software Freedom Concervancy have cut ties with the SFLC and Moglen (one and two).

Even aside from the public image problems, it seems like the FSF and SFLC have been holding back the Free Software movement strategically. Eben Moglan has long been adamant that the GPL shouldn't be interpreted as a contract -- only as a copyright license. What the SFC is doing now with the Visio lawsuit is only possible because the SFC had the courage to abandon that theory.

I sense there's a rift in the Free Software movement. Especially given that the SFC and FSF Europe explicitly cutting ties with the SFLC and Moglen. And individual supporters of Free Software are going to have to decide which parties in this split are going to speak for and champion the cause of the community as a whole.

I imagine it's pretty clear by this point that I favor the SFC in this split. I like what I've seen from the SFC in general. Not just the Visio lawsuit. But also the things I've heard said by SFC folks.

If the Free Software movement needs a single personality to be its face moving forward, I'd love for that face to be Bradley M. Kuhn, executive director of the SFC. He seems to have all of Stallman's and Moglen's assets (passion, dedication, an unwillingness to bend, and experience and knowledge of the legal aspects of Free Software enforcement) perhaps even more so than Stallman and Moglen do. And Kuhn excels in all the areas where Stallman and Moglen perhaps don't so much (social consciousness, likeability, strategy.) I can't say enough good things about Kuhn, really. (And his Wikipedia page doesn't even have a "controversies" section.) (Also, please tell me there aren't any skeletons in his closet.)

Even if the community does come to a consensus that the movement should distance itself from Stallman and Moglen, it'll be difficult to achieve such a change in public perception and if it's achieved, it may come at a cost. After all, Stallman is the first person everybody pictures when the FSF is mentioned. And acknowledging the problems with the Free Software movement's "old brass" may damage the reputation of Free Software as a whole among those who might not differentiate between the parties in this split. But I feel it may be necessary for the future of the Free Software movement.

That's my take, anyway. I'll hop down off of my soap box, now. But I wanted to bring this up, hopefully let some folks whose ideals align with those of the Free Software movement about all this if they weren't already aware, and maybe see what folks in general think about the future of the Free Software movement.

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TootSweet

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