So much of our modern political system is poised around vibes, because that’s all the older voters (seem to) really care about. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of having a beer with George W, I’d have more dollars than I do now.

I think in contrast younger voters care about a vast array of issues very deeply, making engaging in politics a much more complex task that they probably don’t have time for. Given that so much of the coverage consists of no-meaning political lines with no coherent policy right now, engaging in traditional ways is pointless until they stop having vapid “debates” and “interviews” with no content, and start forcing real policy discussion.

I think Bernie was popular with younger voters because he brought so few vibes and so much policy. I went to a Hillary rally and a Bernie rally during the primary in 2015 and the difference was night and day. Hillary talked about the positive feeling of continuing the Democratic legacy, while Bernie talked about sustainable agriculture and straw polled the attendees about wind power.

To be clear I bet this held true 50 years ago when our old voters were young too, no hate on the olds here, priorities change, though I hope mine don’t. Also I wonder if this is all still true for the new young voters, most of my interactions are with millennials and gen z. My few interactions with the folks graduating now have been tainted by my old and out of touch self and by their (in my opinion) under-practiced interpersonal skills from covid years at home. Again, no hate intended.

I use MXLinux, picked it somewhat at random when I was frustrated with windows 10 privacy settings and haven’t looked back since. I tried mint, mint cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Fedora before MX, and Fedora is the only other one I have stuck with, to use on a Surface Pro (I needed Wayland for the touchscreen).

MX has been really stable, light on resources, and has worked really well through two complete hardware upgrades. I play games on steam, some brand new some old, and I haven’t found one that I can’t play yet. That is due to steam/proton/proton GE more than the OS I expect but I’m happy nonetheless. I also run my home entertainment box on MX on an old PC (I know there are better choices for os for this, I was just comfortable with it).

I like it because I haven’t felt any reason to try anything else, perhaps someday I will and I’ll just find a new OS then, but until then it’s my favorite I think.

Probably? I don’t eat meat at home save for very specific occasions and I would but, you know, there are a lot of different people out there.

Unfortunately people don’t take care of themselves because it’s expensive too. Most people who don’t have a lot of money also don’t have a lot of time to prepare food from whole food sources, so they go for inexpensive pre prepared foods, which are awful for you.

Exercise is possible but again requires a lot of time (and energy) that you likely don’t have if you’re working two 35 hour a week food service jobs (or one, honestly). On top of that the built environment is so hostile to being outside of a car, that the easy free exercise choice of walking places is entirely or effectively impossible in most places.

All that is to say I don’t think the blame is on individuals (not that you really said that) for not choosing the healthy options, it’s on our society for focusing on work, convenience, and efficiency at the expense of health. Just like everything else here, it’s going to be a real challenge to fix because it’s to tied into everything else, but I hope we can tackle it.

By definition, an agenda is “a program of things to be done or considered” which does not equate to wanting to do something. It more closely resembles a daily planner or task list.

So in as much as you and I have an “agenda” when we get out of bed, you are right, the person submitting the PR did likely have an agenda of waking up and going about their day. There isn’t a ‘woke agenda’ at play here, however, as the person I replied to seemed to imply.

Imagine you have been purposefully targeted for harassment or excluded from activities in the past due to your preferred pronouns or perceived gender. Seeing “he” with that context would likely feel excluding, which is a reason someone without an ‘agenda’ would want to see it changed.

I made the leap a few years ago now, and since getting a (slightly) newer AMD GPU I haven’t had a single problem that I didn’t create by messing around with things without knowing what I was doing. I use steam and the Glorious Egroll version of proton and every game I have wanted to play has worked, even ones that are brand new. No tinkering past the initial steam setup. I don’t really play competitive online games with anti cheat so you may encounter problems that I haven’t if you do.

I use the advanced hardware support version of MX Linux, if that really matters. I had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but haven’t tried it with this machine so I don’t know if it was the OS or the hardware.

I’d say give it another shot on its own drive when Microsoft frustrates you again, you can always swap windows back in if you don’t like it.

Agree 100%

I think Cuba is a great example, since it’s less emotional right now for most people. We’ve been starving those people since 1960 for what? For cooperating and allying with a country that we didn’t like? For nationalizing the oil we were harvesting on their island and selling for our profit? (After we started santioning them too) 64 years of collective punishment for being too commie near our precious stolen land.

Our government does deserve blowback for what we’ve done in our relatively short time around. I hope it isn’t taken out on the people, but if it is I guess it makes sense for how we treated everyone else.

I’d diagnose the problem similarly to the person you replied to and I don’t think I’d feel compelled to offer a specific remedy either.

People have been experimenting with economies and societies for thousands of years and we are in a relatively new money/power/control stuck spot right now. I’m sure there’s been a system in history that would work much better than what we’ve got, but I just read recreationally so I dunno what it is and just because something worked 1000 years ago in North America doesn’t mean it’ll work here today. I wouldn’t mind giving something new a shot though, what we have is not working for most people.

I don’t think that is a safe conclusion at all, the colonial Europeans were pretty notorious for removing anything or anyone or anything they didn’t see as civilized in the Americas. They also brought disease that wiped out an astounding number of the native people. From an also uninformed view it would be just as likely the native dogs suffered a similar fate, or simply disbanded and roamed free when their companions died.