Garuda for me. The reasons are similar; just replace some optimization with some convenience. It’s a bit garish by default but pleasant to use.

Flatpak has its benefits, but there are tradeoffs as well. I think it makes a lot of sense for proprietary software.

For everything else I do prefer native packages since they have fewer issues with interop. The space efficiency isn’t even that important to me; even if space issues should arise, those are relatively easy to work around. But if your password manager can’t talk to your browser because the security model has no solution for safe arbitrary IPC, you’re SOL.

There’s less than thirty of these in the wild so seeing one end up as bycatch is a sobering reminder of the consequences of overfishing. If we don’t start taking ocean preservation seriously we might at some point find that not just the Virginia-class but all nuclear-powered cruise missile fast attack submarines have gone extinct.

And you can’t even safely eat them; they’re full of heavy metals like uranium.

Or Garuda. Sure, the theme it applies to KDE by default is pretty garish but nothing keeps you from just going to System Settings and seeing a different theme. Other than that it’s basically just Arch with a bunch of stuff preinstalled and some convenience scripts.

Das ist ein Vertreter der Krankenkassen. Aus seiner Perspektive ist die richtige Behandlung, dass man seine Beträge zahlt und nie zum Arzt geht.

I run Garuda on my 16 and my desktop PC.

It’s basically a KDE-centric Arch build but with some quality of life tools and XTREME GAMER default theming, plus you’re not legally required to say you’re using Arch all the time.

No complaints so far. Sure, you’re expected to update all packages on your computer about once per day but I find that process to be fairly smooth. You can always configure your desktop to stop looking like a bordello for dragons and I rather like how garuda-update automates some of the housekeeping involved with the package manager.

If I had to pick a different distro I’d probably try out something immutable but so far I have no intention to switch.

I’d argue that simple chores can be used to help inmates get used to structured work as part of a reintegration effort. Of course that only makes sense if reintegration is the main goal of the prison system, which isn’t the case in the United States.

In any way, if inmates were to do labor, they’d have to be subject to labor law including worker protections and minimum wage provisions. That would probably require the United States to abolish slavery first, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

I wish I was in that position. I never want to hear “good code is its own documentation” ever again.

Good point. It’s more of an “allowing them to build nukes” thing than a “teach them to build nukes” one – although the existing nuclear-armed nations could certainly accelerate the heck out of a Ukrainian nuclear program if they wanted.

Neutrality could work if we give Ukraine nuclear weapons and the ability to make more. That’s the only thing other than a military alliance that’ll reliably keep Russia out of the country.

I get the feeling that nuclear proliferation would not be seen as a desirable solution, though.

Pool toy transformation is a whole thing. I don’t quite see the appeal either, although I can see it as a hybrid between latex kink (via the shiny and smooth “skin”) and doll kink (which in turn is related to D/s). It seems to be mostly a furry thing.

Also, D&D has a lot of baggage these days.

A friend has been talking about starting a D&D group ever since BG3 dropped and I already have a matching character concept complete with partial backstory. However, between the OGL fiasco and the dubious plans WotC have for D&D 6e I really don’t feel like buying the required book or pushing my friend to get his campaign worked out.

Yeah, I agree. You generally want things to be easy to understand, more so if there are significant consequences for getting it wrong. Making sure that allergens are properly listed lowers the risk of someone accidentally buying something they shouldn’t.

Also, while this case is pretty obvious, is important to always insist that all major allergens are listed. Otherwise companies will slack off or make bad calls about when an allergen is obvious. It’s like with guns: You should always treat them as ready to fire even when you think you know they’re not because a mistake might get someone killed.

To be fair, it had its moments. Windows 95 was a pretty big step forwards and the alternative was OS/2 Warp, which has some nice features but was from IBM, who were still dreaming of replacing the PC with a vertically-integrated home computer again.

Windows 2000 (or XP starting with SP2) was also solid. 7 was alright. None of those had too much bullshit bundled with them.

Everything since Windows 8 has been some flavor of shitty, though.

Civilization is never more than two missed meals away from collapse. In a more general sense, existential threats (or the perception thereof) erode civility and make people susceptible to tribal thinking.

We (Germany) have a number of such threats:

• Several immigration and refugee waves.
• A flagging economy due to the impeding loss of several once-reliable markets. (China lost its appetite for German cars and the States have been increasingly volatile in recent years.) The German economy is very export-oriented.
• Rising food costs due to the Ukraine war.
• COVID-19.
• The housing crisis.
• Climate change.
• The whole woke/anti-woke thing.
• An increasing perception of all established political parties as useless or even actively detrimental.
• The botched reunification. The Eastern federal countries have been disappointed by the mainstream parties so severely and continually that populists like the AfD can easily find an audience.
• A (now defunct) government coalition where one of the parties had no interest in actually cooperating with the others, the second one has a recent-ish reputation for having no idea what they’re doing, and the third one is the target of a sustained attack meme campaign. Oh, and the chancellor had a corruption scandal.

Add to that the massive online presence of the hard right and you get a lot of people who stop caring about civility and start caring about simple solutions to complex problems.

They are, and they get about as much respect from the rest of us.

Milky oolong. It has just the right amount of sweetness and just evokes feelings of coziness for me. Sometimes I add a little bit of jasmine as well.

I agree that going for wages in the traditional sense doesn’t catch many of the most relevant income streams. However, I think that a “maximum wage” makes sense as a theoretical construct used to create a sensible income tax scheme.

Essentially, tax brackets and rates could be defined in relation to the median income. Go too far above that (hitting the “maximum wage”) and your tax rate rapidly increases, maybe even going as high as 90%. Of course this would have to cover all sorts of income, not just plain money.

This scheme would effectively box people into a certain band of acceptable wealth and would create an incentive to raise wages – after all, if the average worker makes more, so can the most wealthy.

(Also, full agreement on needing to talk about better labor protections. American labor law is really lax.)

Mind you, people probably don’t think of your standard high earner they they think of an income cap. They think of people who make four (or even five) digits an hour, a rate that maybe high end lawyers can match. Maybe.

CEOs of large companies can easily make that much, often not even tied to performance but contractually guaranteed. The super-rich make that much simply by existing.

Basically, if your labor (or mere existence) isn’t even worth 1000 bucks an hour to your clients you’re a peasant like the rest of us and an income cap is probably never going to be relevant to you.

Especially if you didn’t have a lot of spare time. With an active community you can just dip into discussions when you have the time. With a community you’re trying to establish yourself you absolutely have to provide a steady stream of content until it (hopefully) takes off.