See, this is why I lean left. I’m not far left or alt left, I have some right leaning tendencies too, and I’m not gonna get into that because that’s neither here nor there, but all told I do lean left. And the reason is, generally speaking people on the left have their morals too (and it’s odd that the right says we don’t) and if someone on our side, even if we think he’s a saint (how people see Keanu Reeves, because he doesn’t play villains and they never played Cyberpunk, I guess) or maybe the best chance of beating an alt-right candidate in a high stakes election… we will bring him down, with facts. We hold ours accountable. The right? They say it’s fine for them to do bad things but for poor people? Stiff penalties because they gotta appear tough on crime… as long as it’s poor, dark skinned, or LGBTQ+ people doing the crime. If it’s them and theirs it’s fine. Never forget, they nominated and elected a convicted felon, an insurrectionist, a rioter, a traitor… and oh yes, a pedophile. They had plenty of cleaner guys they could have ran but they didn’t.

Now, there’s a rule in law, or a rule of thumb, I’m not sure if it has a name. It basically says if you destroy or hide evidence, that evidence is whatever we say it is. I don’t think it’s an actual law, it’s more of a philosophy of sorts. So everyone opposed to releasing the Epstein files, we can assume that either they are in them, or someone they owe favors to is, and it’s worse than we think. Like, I’m inclined to think maybe Trump fooled around with some 15-16 year old girls who could pass for 18-20. Lot of rich people probably do. Grass green, water wet, news at six, etc. He knows his base doesn’t judge him for the stuff we know he’s done. So what’s he afraid of?

Here’s my theory: we all know Trump is in the Epstein files. It’s a sure bet. I think that Trump doesn’t care about his name being smeared. How much worse could his reputation get now? Nah, I think the GOP has a short list of younger men (guys in their 40s and 50s, say) who could carry the torch for the next 8 years. I don’t doubt Trump would try for a third term if he had the health and youth for it. He has neither. I honestly think we need to stop worrying about his third term and start worrying about the two terms his successor is going for. Anyway, I think one or more of these successors are in the files, and they probably messed with some obviously underage and very young looking girls. Like 13 but can pass for 10, young. Underdeveloped, partly malnourished, that kind of thing. And these guys, after another 4 years of Trump, are going to come up and say they’re going to fix things. They’re going to fight hard for the middle and some of the left, but they’re going to be just as bad. And I think Trump is trying to protect these guys more so than himself.

For me it’s chaotic good vs lawful good.

D&D divides character alignment along two moral axes, good vs evil, and lawful vs chaotic. Both can be neutral, and if you’re neutral in both you’re True Neutral. Heroes are good, but most are lawful good, like Superman in American comics and All Might (My Hero Academia) in Japanese ones. For chaotic good, that’s someone like Batman. I think that’s an anti hero.

Whereas villains can be lawful evil or chaotic evil, that doesn’t seem to matter as much. Darth Vader is lawful evil — he is evil, but he follows a set of laws. The Sith code or whatever. Trump is more chaotic evil, he makes his own rules and just wants to see the world burn.

I think most of us are close to true neutral. We might lean towards good but I don’t think most are pure good like a hero would be. Some of us lean toward lawful but aren’t pushing it like lawyers, judges, good cops I suppose… and some lean toward chaos (like say movie pirates) but they’re not trying to make the world burn, they just wanna watch stuff for free. The four extreme alignments are really reserved for heroes, villains — the movers and shakers.

When the kid can stand on their own. Some never learn. Sometimes it’s the parents’ fault, sometimes the kid is missing something (some mental or physical or maybe psychological deficit).

When I was a kid, there came a time when I wanted as little to do with my folks as possible. I’d be out until just past dark (“when the streetlights come on” was the time we’d start heading home) and from a pretty young age. Like 9-10. We’d go for a mile or two, explore the world around us. Ride bikes to another neighborhood or (later) get on a county bus and go to another town. We didn’t have cell phones, let alone pocket computers like kids have now.

I see kids as old as 8-10 still needing to cling to mommy’s skirt or daddy’s jeans. That could never have been us. And when they’re not clinging to their parents, they’re playing Minecraft or Fortnite or Roblox on a hand-me-down phone that doesn’t call (and probably has its serial blocked for non-payment so it just works on WiFi) or a tablet. And I’m not generalizing. I know kids like this. Kids in my family are like this. I have no control over it. I’ve tried to tell them they should be out playing. They won’t hear it. Family doesn’t care. I’m the old man shouting at clouds. I imagine those kids will be living at home at 30 being told when to take a shower and when to go to bed. It’s not just this generation, either. I have a couple aunts and an uncle (young Boomers/elder GenX) who were the same way. Minus the electronics, naturally.

Parents: Raise your kids to be independent, or they’ll be your babies forever.

Thanks I guess? Surely Mac and Linux users can be friends or at least allies against Windows. Linux comes from UNIX which macOS is based on so they’re very similar, only one is FOSS — which I suppose is the point — and the other is not. But another commonality — Macs and PCs can both run Linux.

If you like chicken, go to the corner of 53rd and 6th and find the halal cart with the longest line. Ask for the chicken and rice. Go around back and squirt half a gallon of white sauce and maybe a little red on it. Cover it up, walk about half an hour to work up an appetite, find somewhere comfortable to sit, and thank me later.

They have a chain now but nothing beats the OG cart. Even the pizza. Rose’s Pizza in Penn Station has my vote. May not be the best but it’s good! First pizza I had in NYC and while others were good, I haven’t found one I liked much more.

I’m sure some are, but I stand by my assertion that I’ve met flat-earthers who were simply sceptical and pushing that particular point of view.

This was also when they were new. I’m not sure if those people represent the whole or if I just met an outlier (and online, at that, where anyone can say/claim anything). I certainly don’t mean to speak about all of them.

Insofar as humidity exists everywhere… I suppose it is.

Speaking as somebody who’s lived where humidity is stupidly annoying… no, it’s not. And those of us who have experienced real humidity love it for that reason. We love getting out of really bad humidity.

I mean, I suppose it could get humid. I’ve only visited. I also suppose any coastal area could get humid, due to proximity to the ocean. But the South ain’t playing when it comes to humidity, and that’s what I meant.

I switched to Mac after my old Asus laptop went out. I figure why bother with a PC laptop, it’s not gonna game and let’s see what the fuss is about. Love my MacBook Air. So then our desktop dies and I give my wife 3 options. A Mac, a cheaper PC, and a more expensive PC. She’s Android, figured she’d want to stick with Windows, but she picked the Mac! So happy. I mostly game on Switch and Xbox these days so that’s fine.

I keep feeling like I left Windows at the right time.

Never lived there but I’ve visited CT. Went to a movie with my wife. The first Narnia film, so it was like 3 hours long? It was nice when we went in. It was nice when we left. However, during the film there was a blizzard, seemed like it dropped snow a foot deep! That being said, the city had cleared all the roads. They know how to deal with the snow. Of course when you get to side streets it’s a bit dicey, but the main roads? Like to our hotel? Clear as you like. The roads are twisty and windy up there, and people drive crazy — well, they drive appropriate to the state of the roads, to be fair — and I never felt unsafe despite being unaccustomed to driving in snow.

Beautiful area. Summers get hot, winters get cold. You gotta plan for each. But it’s nice and not too humid.

Yeah, I don’t know why this is a debate. LGBTQ+ ally my whole life, though I’m cis/straight myself.

I almost get it. Like the fear that you hook up with a girl and she has boy parts. It’s not really reasonable but it’s a common male fear, I guess. Like she’s gonna be so convincingly female, so perfectly female presenting but she hasn’t had the bottom surgery. I think that’s kind of a fantasy, because pass as the sex a trans person feels isn’t as easy as cisgendered people think it is. I have trans (MTF) friends, and they do not pass well. Oh, I fully accept that they are women; what I don’t do is assume I’m entitled to every female body, or for the female bodies I have access to, to fit into my potentially narrow view (it’s not narrow, but if it were) of what makes a woman attractive. At the end of the day, she’s a person and her body is what it is, take her — as a complete person — or don’t, but don’t waste her time and definitely don’t think you can shame her for it. And it absolutely don’t mean she’s any less a woman. That, I do feel strongly about.

Also, I’ve known a couple tomboys, girls I grew up around who weren’t conventionally pretty, who liked to play and fight with the boys (and they’d kick your ass, too), and the older adults said “oh yeah that’s a baby butch right there” and later, when trans people became more visible to us (I’d say late 90s early 00s), the assumption that she’s gonna transition. Going on like 30 years later, they’re still girls and they’re still straight (and the one I’m thinking of, definitely wears the pants in the relationship, her guys tend to be kinda meek) but that doesn’t mean she’s gay or trans. Oh, plenty of LGBTQ+ in the family, but you can’t say because a girl doesn’t like pink and doesn’t like dresses that she’s lesbian or trans. It doesn’t work that way. But as her peer, as her playmate, and often as one whose ass she’d kick, I didn’t care. I love her for the person she is, not for the box society puts her in, or checks for her. And if she did bring home a girlfriend, or if she did tell me she never felt like a girl and was going to transition… my sister (not really but like a sister to me) would be my brother or whatever and that would be okay with me, whatever the case, and I’d have their back regardless.

Yeah but look at flat-earthers, how do you justify that?

I remember when the flat-earther movement was new, there were some people in it who claimed to be smart. They said they don’t really believe it, they just like to be sceptical… and contrarian. Basically they like to argue, for the sake of making people question what they’ve been taught and what they don’t know from their own personal observations. Like “are you really any better than us because you trust people who are more trustworthy?” I can almost see the point. But yes, that’s kind of how it works… I don’t need to be smart about some broad or niche category if people certified and well read on that thing who are accredited by reputable institutions tell me what it is and around the world, they agree, in different languages, it’s not a conspiracy. But I guess some healthy scepticism is good.

Now, these alt-right guys? Yeah, I don’t get it. They aren’t fulfilling promises on anything but making things harder for minorities. They are doing what they said there. You knew he was going to go after brown-skinned people and the gays, so no surprise there. Tearing down institutions, this hyper militant shit, yeah maybe he didn’t campaign on that but I feel like, if you didn’t go out and vote against him last November, you kinda did cosign on all this.

Facts

Thanks! I’m new to this so still finding my way. I appreciate the clarification.

Maybe it’s the original? I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter. The Fediverse means all these Lemmy instances are networked, meaning if one kicks you off it you decide you don’t like it, you can join another, as opposed to Reddit, where if you say something one group doesn’t like, they can kick you off the whole platform.

Not a truck driver, but an American who has seen this question answered, and it applies to lorries, too (we call them box trucks, like moving trucks, here — I don’t know if you call a full tractor-trailer a lorry).

It’s absolutely to reduce drag, and when they travel in a convoy, they typically do it with all members knowing full well what they’re doing, and they take turns leading (as that one gets the wind resistance the others avoid). So yes, they’re saving money on petrol (gas), they’re saving the environment, they’re saving time… it’s just annoying if you want to get over past them. They should let you through but it’s annoying you have to ask (with your signal). Typically our big trucks tend to do their thing and stay out of peoples’ way, but sometimes they wanna act like they own the road (and they’re unfairly maligned in thriller films).

I just replaced my dying Windows machines (a laptop and later, a desktop) with Macs. Still closed source, but they’re UNIX certified. I know FOSS folks love to hate on macOS, but even being smart enough to use Linux, and having used it off and on for 20-25 years, I just didn’t want to. I did get away from Microsoft stuff, at least at home, except for Xbox. That was my wife’s choice and we have a bunch of games for it. I’m more of a PlayStation guy, but I kinda got outvoted on that one. These days I mostly just game on the Switch anyway. And the cool thing about new Macs? They can basically run Switch games, with a bit of help (but same-ish architecture). And a lot of games going to Switch(/2) can also go to Mac (e.g. Cyberpunk).

It’s a great time to get away from Microsoft. Their browser hasn’t been good enough in decades. Their office suite is probably their biggest strength, followed by Xbox. Their cloud would be third, I’d say — OneDrive is underrated. I use iWork on my Macs and it’s fine. And it can read/write the docx formats. For cloud I guess iCloud is fine on the Mac side, I just wish the pricing were more competitive. Don’t really have a good answer for cloud. And for gaming… if you were starting from zero, I’d say look at the Steam Deck, Steam sales are unbeatable, the thing runs Linux, it emulates PC games pretty well (there’s a whole certification thing), and you can do GeForce Now as well if you’re near their CDN. Microsoft is arguably the easiest of the big three (vs Apple and Google) to drop.

I don’t even need to know why people are going against Microsoft all of a sudden. I have my reasons. I don’t hate them, and I would have stuck with Office + OneDrive (MS 365) if they didn’t double the price to add AI to Office with no way to stick with the old product. They were getting $60 a year from me, now they’re not getting anything.

Here’s why it’s okay to block ads in pretty simple terms:

Ads can contain ransomware; that is to say, a seemingly innocent ad can deliver a payload which will run on your computer, lock your files, and demand you pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars anonymously.

Now if you go to the website that served the ad and tell them, “I allowed ads on your site because I support your right to monetise your content, and now I have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars, will you help me pay that” or “will you pay that for me since your site served the ransomware,” you know what they will tell you, every single time, without fail? Whether they actually answer you, or more likely, just delete your email. They’re telling you that it’s your problem. That you should have secured your computer better.

So secure your computer better now. Block all the ads.

Getting a little more technical, use Firefox or a fork of it. Use Linux if you can. Use a Mac if you can’t. If you really must use Windows, know how to secure it. I use Windows 11 at work, I’d never use it at home, but I had a talk with the IT guy, and he let me do a few things to it. I know more than he does, but he’s the one with the job, so I told him what I’d do before I did it, I did exactly what I said I was going to do, nothing more nothing less, and I still think my home computer is more secure, but I’m a lot less worried about using the work machine. I think it’s wild that so many companies just use Windows. I’m not trying to hate on Windows. It’s good for gaming and it’s accessible. I’d love to see more companies roll their own *nix or just use Macs (which run macOS which is UNIX certified).

I feel like more people should know what’s going on. Facebook has done some scummy stuff in the past. Now Zuck is openly defending his AI grooming children. In and of itself it doesn’t make a lot of sense — what’s the upshot for Meta here? But outside the bubble of logic, it sets kids up to be groomed by real predators. It’s unacceptable.

People say the problem is that all the people they know are on Facebook. Two issues: most of those people would forget you exist if you leave Facebook. Also, you’re the reason they’re there. The second reason is that you are literally the product. You being on Facebook is part of the reason those people are, too, so be the change you want to see in the world.