So doge is doing that work. Why get rid of it if it does what they want?

DOGE is not just a Musk thing. Privatizing government has been a long term goal of the republicans and capitalists for a very long time

Well if he does anything to stop it, the board of directors will remove him.

that statement would be kind of nonsensical – humans are inseparably part of nature. Saying “humans suck but nature is great” is (at worst) an ecofascist idea or (at best) internalizing the lie that “humans are evil by nature” when it’s really just living under various hierarchies that emphasizes the worst parts of us.

Linux is super configurable! You’ll just need to try out a bunch of different window managers, taskbars, etc to see which one you like best, but maybe look for some videos to preview a couple first.

The unixporn Lemmy community also has examples

Don’t pick a whole distro based on the UI. The distro choice is about stability vs bleeding edge packages, package manager, minimal/maximal installs, security hardening vs convenience, use or avoidance of particular systems (e.g. systemd), and things like that.

The UI will come from your choice of desktop environment, window manager, compositor, etc. Those can be installed on most distros. You can also look at dotfiles for more theming. Ofc it’s silly to install a different UI on a particular flavor/version/spin of a distro built for a given desktop environment (like Kubuntu), though it’s still possible.

I’m enjoying Niri rn. It’s a scrolling & tiling window manager. I have it running on opensuse.

Dual boot

Try searxng

Check for new terms about ai use of your data

Mailbox.org is great

Conspiracy theories like this don’t help. Organize your neighbors

If you buy “digital signage” or “commercial display” monitors, they won’t have built-in ad-tracking; some models have a recent version of Android built-in that makes it easy to load Jellyfin, Kodi, and other such apps; and they’ll be built to commercial specifications, meaning they’ll last longer. They can also have better screencasting features.

On the downside: they are more expensive, you’ll need to check their specs for things like bluetooth, wifi, HDMI, and other things you need; the built-in speakers are not good. The TV of course doesn’t stop any particular app from serving you ads on its own, unless you load in another app to block them.

I have a setup like this, connected to a seedbox with transcoding, and it works great.

Use a seedbox and the arrr suite instead of streaming services

This is amazing and should be in a tabletop rpg session

Copper futures, I’m telling you bro

Telekinesis

Socialism would certainly work better than capitalism does. Under capitalism, because every company is driven to increase profits and the rate of profits, we have tons and tons of:

• Production of shit we don’t need (which people buy because of desire manufactured by marketing and a sense of having little control or meaning in their lives)
• Overproduction of shit we do need (e.g. fast fashion)
• The replacement of diversity with monoculture everywhere, making ecosystems less resilient and outright destroying them
• War for resources among competing empires and companies

In a socialist society (and, I would argue, a [libertarian socialist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism society) society in which there were systems in place to prevent the accumulation of power), the base incentives of the system should be to fulfill human needs and promote human flourishing, as part of a web of ecosystems on Earth, and not to make a profit.

Here are a few examples of how that would make society much more efficient in its use of resources:

• We wouldn’t need to produce useless things for profit like superyachts or fast fashion. Instead, we could produce high-quality, long-lasting clothing and come up with interesting ways to wear, share, and repair it.
• Instead of growing mostly crops to feed livestock, produce corn syrup and other flavorings/additives, and ethanol (as we do in the US); we could grow a greater diversity of human-edible, nutritious food.
• We wouldn’t need to manufacture desire for consumption through marketing
• We wouldn’t have to fight or exploit each other to gain market access
• Programs like universal free healthcare would make for a healthier population that would need less emergency medical care
• People would have more agency in their own lives and more say over the decisions that affect their community, which would provide a level of satisfaction that would reduce “retail therapy”

I would also argue that there is no true socialism if it is not anti-hierarchical, which includes liberation and full bodily autonomy for everyone having childbearing anatomy. Among other things, that means the right to choose when and when not to have a child.

If we could achieve a libertarian socialist commune-of-communes in which we could guarantee ourselves and each other a dignified and abundant standard of living, in which we could provide for the varying needs of different kinds of people instead of demanding that we fit one or two pre-approved molds, and which has mechanisms to prevent the accumulation of power, then I think we can turn to questions about the number of humans who can exist on Earth, how we might travel the stars to find/create additional homes, and so on.

The hard part about writing untraceably on typewriters is that they’re relatively rare these days. When everyone used them, it didn’t matter too much if people could tell you used a Remington Quiet-Riter because tons of people had a common model like that. Nowadays, just being able to use a typewriter effectively either (a) means you’re old enough to have used one or (b) typewriters/vintage stuff is an interest of yours – or now, maybe just someone interested in anonymity enough to learn. If someone could tell what model of machine you typed it on, that would narrow it down further, and (depending on what the inquiry is about) that may be good enough info for their purposes, given the rarity of using typewriters today.

• IBM Selectrics are by far the most common type ball machines and the balls were not interchangeable among brands, so someone would be able to tell pretty easily. Some fonts are rarer than others.
• Daisywheel machines had a few more manufacturers in addition to IBM. I think there are still aftermarket daisywheels that can complicate identifying exactly what model/brand of machine typed a letter.
• Typebar machines were made by tons and tons of manufacturers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each manufacturer had a book of typefaces it offered, though they changed from year to year, and the differences among similar typefaces between manufacturers were sometimes very minimal.

Since these machines are electromechanical, rather than digital, it would be quite difficult to encode identifying information into the type. Other considerations: tracing the purchase of the typewriter, ribbons, and possibly repair/cleaning services to get it working.

I’ve been using it and it’s been a good experience. It runs smooth, has less flashy stuff (at least by default), and an easy to use config file.

Tea is an extremely social drink. For one thing, it’s a gentler caffeine ride than coffee, so it’s less likely to make you jittery and you can have more cups of it before you get too close to your comfort threshold. But it’s not just the caffeine: there is a social ritual in most tea cultures that focuses on pouring for guests. Finally, there are so many styles, regions, vintages, and flavors to explore – at least as many as, if not more than, coffee or wine – that it can be a fun thing to explore together. See if your local area has a tea house, a tea club, or something along those lines.