• 15 Posts
  • 147 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 21st, 2023

help-circle
  • I am American, and I have always loved my country. Until now, I’ve never been ashamed to call myself patriotic. My thought has always been than there will always be uninformed, uneducated assholes that vote against their own self-interests and the interests of their own country.

    This election is different, though. We knew exactly what we were getting if we re-elected Trump. We responded by not only electing him in a landslide election, but handing the House and the Senate over to the Republicans, too. It was a clear message. America is not a nation of mostly good people with a few vocal “bad apples.” We are a nation of hateful, scared bigots, and we proved it in a big way.

    This was a turning point in American history, and the majority of us sent a clear message to their fellow citizens and to the world. America is not a nation of mostly good people being overshadowed by a media that covers the loudest assholes in the room. America is a nation of people who by a majority support exactly what the “crazy” Republicans are saying. I would feel better if Trump lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, but that’s not what happened.

    This isn’t an election where I’ve lost only lost faith in the democratic process or my fellow citizens, although both are true. This is an election where I’ve lost faith in my country as a whole. I have never been proudly Republican or proudly Democrat, but I’ve always been proudly American. Now I’m just… sad. I don’t expect I’ll see a day any time soon where I can honestly say I’m proud of my country. The best I can do is retreat into my own personal bubble, live my life, and watch the world burn around me until the flames consume everything I care about.






  • At least for me, the whole “made by devs for devs” isn’t really the major downfall. It’s the fact that it can’t be trusted to remain functional in a dynamic environment. I like using the command line, but sometimes that’s just not enough.

    If I need a specific software package, I can download the source, compile it, along with the 100 of libraries that they chose not to include in the .tar.gz file, and eventually get it running.

    However, when I do an “apt update” and it changes enough, then the binary I compiled earlier is going to stop working. Then I spend hours trying to recompile it along with it’s dependencies, only to find that it doesn’t support some obscure sub-version of a package that got installed along with the latest security updates.

    In a static environment, where I will never change settings or install software (like my NAS), it’s perfect. On my desktop PC, I just want it to work well enough so I can tinker with other things. I don’t want to have to troubleshoot why Gnome or KDE isn’t working with my video drivers when all I want to do is launch remote desktop so I can tinker with stuff on a server that I actually want to tinker with.




  • I was born in the 1980s. I remember growing up, I always had the impression that by this time in the 21st century, we’d have figured out some way to break the established laws of physics. Maybe it was because of watching so much sci-fi, but I feel like I’m not alone in this. The media seemed to reflect the same line of thinking. “Back to the Future 2” with its hoverboards and flying cars is now set several years in the past.

    Be it anti-gravity, interstellar travel, teleportation, whatever, I always kind of assumed that by now, we’d at least have a working theory of how we might implement it in the next few decades. I think a lot of that has to do with the start of the “information age.” Computers and the way they could connect us were so revolutionary, it seemed like “magic” to the layperson. More “magic” would only be a few years away, right? If we could fit all this power into a box that sits on your desk, then it wasn’t beyond the scope of reason to think that anything was possible; it’d just take a few more years for us to figure it out, then we’d be planning the first NASA mission to another solar system.

    What I never would have predicted is just how rapidly computer technology would advance. We now have supercomputers in our pockets, powered by CPUs that are well into the realm of nanotechnology and are now starting to run into limitations imposed by quantum physics. As a technological society, we’ve probably progressed farther than I would have ever imagined, just not in the way I expected.






  • I don’t know the statutes offhand; I’m basing this on what I was taught in my CCW class years ago.

    The general idea is that the state sets limited laws on where you can’t carry concealed. Government buildings, etc. These restrictions hold the force of law. For a private property owner, they can certainly say “no guns,” but it has the same legal weight as if they said “no hats.” They can set rules for their property, but those rules don’t magically become law. That’s where trespassing laws come in; if you’re asked to leave, they have the right to ask you to do so.

    Some states do have laws in place stating that “no guns” signs are legally binding, but the signs must meet certain legal criteria as far as wording. Surprisingly, I think Texas is one of these states, but I could be wrong.

    My state is solidly blue, so it does seem strange to me that the laws are written as they are.



  • In some states, these signs don’t even mean that a person can’t carry a concealed weapon into the shopping center. In my state, for instance, assuming you are otherwise able to legally carry a gun (meaning you took a class and aren’t a felon), the list of areas where you can’t legally carry a gun is very limited: Federal buildings, courthouses, etc. If a business has a sign posted stating “no guns allowed,” you can still legally carry your weapon in that business. If an employee sees that you’re armed, they can ask you to leave, and you’re trespassing if you refuse, but nothing legally stops you from carrying a gun into the establishment in the first place.

    As a disclaimer, I’m not arguing this one way or another. I have a license to carry a concealed handgun, in fact. Just sharing information.





  • One day, you’re going to die. Unless you are fortunate enough to die suddenly, you’re going to experience the terror and the pain the comes along with dying. Anyone who cares about you is going to be saddened by your passing.

    None of that would be true if you had never been born. Your parents, every parent, has condemned their children to death and has ensured sadness for anyone who comes to care about them.

    The worst thing my parents did? Not using protection or having an abortion. Conceiving a child is the most selfish act any person can do.