• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I think at least for me, you really nailed it when you said that politicians are like celebrities to a lot of people. I personally have just never had any interest in celebrities. Music is a big thing for me, but if I had the opportunity to go meet one of my favorite artists, I wouldn’t. What am I going to do, say “hey, I really like your music,” and that’s the end of it? There’s no point. I enjoy the art that they make, but meeting them briefly in-person isn’t going to change anything for them or for me. It’d be a better use of my time to stay home and do just about anything else, maybe even stay home and listen to one of their albums.

    Politicians are the same. I’m not buying their album, I’m voting for them. They don’t produce an entertainment product, but they produce a change in my country (be it good or bad) that directly affects me. It still doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to me or to them if I meet them in-person or not. I can respect what they they do professionally without having a desire to shake hands.





  • The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that while Reddit may have a lot of large active communities, I would rarely get a quality response if I posted a question or a discussion topic.

    Here, I can post to a community that hasn’t had a new post in a few days, and within an hour I have several people offering help or discussion.

    Reddit is far more active, but Lemmy users are far more helpful.




  • 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.