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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • If I’m reading that right, that could also say that Instagram is suppressing anti-israel content? It’s just saying that in comparison to Instagram tiktok is showing more x, y, z. But Instagram is absolutely not a neutral point to measure from.

    For starters there’s different demographics on each one, but I’m sure you could adjust for that, maybe the study did. But I don’t think you can adjust for the impact the US government has on Meta. I don’t believe for an instant that some US agency isn’t manipulating algorithms or requiring certain tweaks to steer discourse just like they did with US news outlets.



  • Second for guild wars 2, the world is huge when you first start playing, and though the initial levelling experience can feel like it takes a while, once you have hit the cap you can go pretty much anywhere. The story is pretty linear, though, so if you want a deep and complex story it might be better to look for a single player game.

    I’d also say the combat system in Guild wars is fantastic, it’s simple enough to pick up and not have to stress about playing the game, but if you want to engage and get better there is so much to learn about and improve.


  • I don’t think that the last part is true. Community justice (even) in our broken society doesn’t really favor the powerful. The gut reaction I see is to help the underdog in a situation, not the oppressor. Sometimes an individual read of a situation can be complicated, leading to mistaken outcomes, but the intent is to end the negative situation.

    Tangentially that makes me think about the difference in intent. A group of people expelling a bigot from a train is that group trying to fix a bad situation, let the oppressed person know they are not alone, and to let the oppressor know that are not welcome there with that behavior. The police may also kick someone off the train but their actions are punative, they exist to enforce a heiarchy and punish, they aren’t there to help the oppressed feel like they aren’t alone, and they are only letting the oppressor know that they aren’t welcome there, but as long as the cops aren’t nearby it’s ok.

    As for structuring a more just society, we could imagine one without the implicit power imbalances, one without an arbitrary heiarchy of authority figures dictating right vs wrong. I know it sounds like I’m describing anarchy (I am) but also kinda a democracy? Like everyone gets a say to make decisions, and a group of equals decide together how to live their lives. Breaking down our current heiarchies to get there is the hard part, obviously, and I think it’s a generations long societal struggle. Hopefully we all live more justly than our parents until we arrive somewhere better than where we left.

    Sorry this was very stream of conciousness, I hope my thoughts came across somewhat effectively.



  • The Americas are, as a continent, the site of mass genocide at the hands of Europeans. The intent was to eliminate the native peoples and their cultures, and this intent is both clear and the genocide is ongoing.

    This is the big stick philosophy you say you support, it commits atrocities on other human beings in the name of expansion, extraction, and recognition, and unfortunately the philosophy dominates many of our ways of life.

    That doesn’t mean it’s good, or right, or that it is the only way. We should hold ourselves to the standard we want to live by so we can break the cycles of abuse, and we should talk to each other and educate one another so we can deliver the best version of ourselves.

    Consider that not all people have always lived with modern ideas of property, nations, and hierarchy. These are, in the grand scheme of human history, pretty insignificant when faced with the vast array of societies and beliefs shared by people over thousands of years. All that is to say domination is not inevitable or necessary, we can choose to do otherwise and all be better off for it.



  • But it is often additionally used as a software package distribution platform, so it would be helpful for some developers to reach their users by having a clearer path to the most current release.

    I can personally do without a special button, and the op is obviously making a joke, but why not improve the UX for some users? It’s certainly possible to do this without impacting the smelly nerds who wouldn’t use the button.



  • Caususes are a way some state political parties choose to pick out their favorite party candidate for the November election.

    In most states they have a primary which is just a normal election by US standards. In a few, including Iowa, they gather in a physical room and move from location to location to physically show who they support.

    That means if I’m “caucusing for Bernie” I’d go stand next to the Bernie crowd. This ends when a certain candidate has a majority (I don’t remember the exact amount). So people move from candidate to candidate as they see theirs isn’t winning or as they are persuaded by others there.

    Every state has their primary or caucus on a specific day, so yesterday was Iowa’s day, and it’s often very cold this time of year in Iowa. This year it’s pretty brutal, high of 3°F and low of -3°F today (-16C and -19.5C), and it was colder a few days ago.


  • Their coffee tastes the way it does because of how they roast it, it’s a purposeful style thing (that tastes terrible and is horribly overpriced imo).

    Their roasts are also darker than they say. Everything they have is dark roast, with their ‘blond’ coming in closer to a medium.

    People go nuts over the sugar, caffeine and perceived status, it has nothing to do with the taste of the coffee. As a fellow black coffee drinker, my recommendation is to avoid Starbucks unless you happen to be near a union store where the coffee is guaranteed to taste more like freedom, but still like ashes soaked in oil.

    In case you want more details: The way coffee roasting works is you move beans around in a real hot container, and you try to keep them to a specific point on a temperature graph at each moment as they roast. A different roaster would roast them a bit slower, but Starbucks just blasts those beans with everything they have, then they don’t stop until the beans are burnt. This gives them their “signature taste”. This is largely because of Howard Shultz, the guy who drove the company to be a cafe, and until recently the CEO. That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.


  • I just installed Fedora with KDE plasma and Wayland last weekend using the surface kernel. Was pretty painless, after abandoning a couple other distros that did not play nice.

    The instructions on the GitHub are also very good, though obviously every years surface has its challenges I’m sure.


  • Our ebike takes about the same amount of time as driving for most of our trips and nearly halves public transit time to some places we go. It was about 2k, and for that price it has been an actual steal. I think we put about 1.5k miles on it in the first year, and cost wise I think it’ll break even at about double that.

    It doesn’t sound like ebikes are overpriced, it sounds like you don’t find value in what an ebike does. And that’s totally ok, especially if you’re advocating for making your community more healthy and doing your best to live that way too.

    It is a real shame that ebikes weren’t subsidized like electric cars are, that would have changed the equation a lot for folks who are more on the fence and could have started a shift where more people want safer places to use their new bikes.

    Edit: just read your reply to the other folks, you get it. I gotta wake up more before I start commenting


  • You might have fixtures that overheat the bulbs. LEDs run cool compared to other bulbs but they are very sensitive to heat (that’s why the old ones had fins on them). If your fixture is enclosed, LEDs in there will have a much shorter life span.

    One common fixture in these parts are those silly domes with the screw in the middle, they regularly killed bulbs at my old place. I even had one come out that had discoloration from the heat.

    CFLs and incandescents didn’t like those fixtures or heat either, but I don’t know as much about how their life span was impacted.




  • As the others have said, a tester can be really helpful, especially when trying to figure out what all the different terms mean that people throw around online.

    I currently have Novel Keys Cream (linear/smooth) switches on my main keyboard, cherry browns (tactile) on another for work, and jade box switches (clicky) on a little project board I made for when I want to feel the click in my bones.

    I’d recommend trying any of them, though personally I find the most variation in linear and clicky switches and I never found a tactile switch that felt different enough to me to justify the price.

    Enjoy the new keyboard!