The Gnome overview is simple enough to use that people think there’s nothing to it.

I’ve never had a better tool for interacting with apps, and I’ve worked with a lot of tools / DEs. There are some that are arguably more fun, or that clearly give better customization options.

…but just being a clean tool that works, provides what you need, looks good doing so, and gets out of your way? Gnome, hands down.

Solar is, on a consumer level, possibly more cheap than gas for a car now, in many areas. But more is actually done with oil->gasoline framework, including plastics and chemicals which would all need to be developed into new processes. I don’t disagree that we need to replace these, but oil is literally free energy, and it’s a substance with a lot of uses.

And that fact is one of the big reasons that oil is so hard to compete with - it is literally energy we do not have to generate. All other forms of energy we must actually capture the natural energy flow. In oil, it has already been captured - we’re burning biomatter from years long gone. That’s what makes it hard to compete with. Although, the competition is getting better, and that’s good.

as far as the costs for a vehicle go - I actually live on solar, with a very cost effective system at $25k, 14kw.

If I had an electric car and drove 15k miles per year, I’d need up that system by 11kw at least. That’s adding about $20k to that system.

Where I am, gas is cheaper tha than $3/gallon, but let’s say it’s $3/gallon.

at 30mpg gasoline, that’s about $1500. At 30mpge, with my lower-than-average system costs, that’s $2000. …and that’s not including maintenance and repair to that system.

Sure, there are a ton of other factors to take into account, both for and against. But electric is no clear winner from a personal-benefit perspective - particularly when you take cold weather into account for lithium batteries, and the inability to resolve an out-of-fuel situation easily. Sure, there are services. …maybe. depending where you are. But, it’s far from ideal for a lot of people.

anyways - no, nuclear is definitely not as cheap, but it provides base load power, which is critical. only alternatives there are fossil fuels, geothermal, and hydro. But the main draw for 3rd and 4th gen nuclear is how low-impact and environmentally friendly it can be, while still providing base load power.

now, if Sodium ion batteries live up to their promise of cycle longevity, then providing base load could be done by lots and lots of storage. maybe not cost effectively, yet, but it could, maybe.

thanks! You’ve satisfied my curiosity, and piqued my interest in MX Linux.

I wasn’t asking for “proof”, I was asking for curiosity.

Agreed all around, with one caveat.

On chemistry - Sodium Ion is a pretty solid bet for many reasons - material availability, energy density by weight, longevity (for some chemistries - others are only comparable to lithium), low-temperature operation for charge and discharge, cost, power (charge and discharge speed), very high round-trip efficiency… Also, it’s ecologically sound, in comparison with any other battery tech out there currently, and it’s at the beginning of it’s innovation arc. Also, it’s a tech heavily invested in by China, which has already spurred competition in other countries.

I’ll be attaching myself to that chemistry here in the next couple years to the tune of what I expect to be about ~$8k for about 50kwh of battery, as I’ll need a bank of them for my place soon that can handle quite a few days without sunlight while running a modest workshop and basic home needs. I might need to go larger than that, but… …energy storage isn’t cheap, and I can add to at at any time, unlike with lead acid storage.

I think that both putting your pet down and not doing so must be an honest consideration.

As their caretaker, you can empathize with them the most. Imagine what you would want in their situation, and do it. You have the ability to cognize this - they do not.

There are humane services that will come to your home so they don’t even have to leave a familiar environment. But sometimes, your buddy still has joy in life, even though he’s all wobbly.

…in the end, the truth is that it’s a judgment call, and you do the best you can - and make your choices in a way that, if they were there in your head with you, and could understand your choices, they would love you for it, and that you can love yourself for.

age 8+ 💀

I mean, I might just prefer:

[warning: rape, gore]

or whatever awfulness is present.

Because we don’t need to generate the energy, therefore it’s got a cost advantage, even though the true cost of it is that it contributes massively to climate problems.

That is: batteries must be charged, the plants to make biofuels must absorb solar energy for at least half a year to have energy present, the solar panels to power the grid must sit and soak up that energy, generators must be physically turned for hydro.

the only things that have pre-existing energy that we just “tap for free” are oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear.

the best track for us to go on is to go for 3rd or 4th gen nuclear, and sodium ion batteries, imo. Solar is a close second. Hydro would be up there, but it’s too disruptive ecologically.

distro?

if you have an extra drive around, you could try a fresh installation on that drive, then do the things on that that cause crackle.

Trolley Man, you’re a problem.

And what might those preparations look like?

All preparations for disaster look like a cost-benefit analysis and reasonable actions taken to mitigate those disasters. Sometimes, that means relying on collective tools - laws, incentives, etc., which can be easier sometimes, if it works. Other times, it’s internal planning, or physical training, or avoidance of problematic situations.

Another big aspect of preparation that people can do is genuinely coming to terms with the existence of whatever particular problem they’re facing. “Radical acceptance”, so to speak, though one needs to know the difference between accepting and submitting. When you can’t accept something, you end up blindsided by it, shocked and appalled that it can happen to you, or that humans can’t just talk it through, or whatever. When you can, you generally see it coming a ways away, and can address it before it becomes an issue for you, instead of thinking “I shouldn’t have to deal with this,” or “but humanity is better than that, and we can just talk it through.”

But, that kind of preparation takes a lot of world-view shifting, and skill-building in processing fears, and for people who don’t really have evidence of the benefit, it’s hard to pay the cost in time and effort on personal growth in that area. C’est la vie.

A vaccine is never 100% effective. […]

Indeed. However, there must be a line for what a collective can or cannot reasonably impose on an individual. And, whether you like it or not, the physical body is a real boundary, and granting a collective governing body power over what you put into or take out of your own body is a larger issue than vaccination, and people will utilize that power against you, not just for you.

This is true enough that as soon as the Democrats started pushing for mandatory vaccinations during covid, I knew and stated that the cost would be abortion. …and that’s exactly what was lost, in many states.

Any power you give the government, will be used all of the ways it can be used, depending on the party in power and the moral fads that the culture goes through - and as you can see with trump and the underlying expressions going on there, these fads aren’t always going to be in your favor.

Although there are some areas that are morally more stable, any area that doesn’t have fairly universal support will go through this dynamic of flipping what side gets to utilize that power, and in what way it is used.

Case in point:

The Republicans centralized power in the presidency with the USA Patriot act. The Democrats, in power when it expired, renewed it, rather than letting it drop, or (even better) making an act to prevent that centralization of power. Obama utilized that power to great effect, including to fulfill the reason for it’s temporary existence. …and then he renewed it, when it was no longer needed, and after it had expired, because of lack of ability to consider that maybe power isn’t always a good thing, and sometimes you need to let go for things to work right.

…and the dems can’t keep hold of that power. …and now that power is Trump’s and the reps in general, until their fire burns out.

As a side note: The irony is that maybe Trump, if he thinks the dems will win, might nerf presidential powers out of spite - which would be great, if it sticks.

yep. tha’s them.

Support GOG. what they’re doing is great.

Support Steam. what they’re doing is great.

Maybe, try to keep it roughly even. Or buy based on your whim. They’re both great.

No problem. It’s fake. No need to look deeper.

I appreciate this response, and agree with much of it.

There’s some grey-area stuff:

Evolution is messy, and the evolution of the immune system is messier still. Even if we only look at it from a simplified Darwinian evolution perspective, having genetic diversity might be more important than any shedding of ‘weaker’ alleles from people dying off because their natural immunity couldn’t handle a particular infection.

True, but in theory, a good chunk of people would be taking vaccines - and so while there’s a selective pressure (mostly on those willing to undergo it), overall diversity would be maintained.

and, as an aside – alas, simplified is the domain and utility of science. It’s how we grasp anything natural at all.

…there are some tidbits I do disagree with, though. mainly:

Someone’s HLA alleles can be a poor match for a current disease, but very helpful for a future disease. Having them die off now would be a bad thing.

While that would be a bad thing, it’s not like there’s selective pressure against having the HLA alleles that would be good for a future disease - more, just that there’s selective pressure against not having one for the current disease. Let’s say that the theoretical future-disease-preventing HLA alleles are randomly distributed, and that the incidence of death from a current disease roughly matches the incidence of death from car accidents, then the car accidents have just as much of a deleterious affect on the future as the current disease does. That’s like the Christian argument “The baby you’re about to abort could be the one that comes up with the cure for cancer.” …sure, but it could by Hitler 3.0, too.

The very multifaceted complexity that goes into the entire process of how animals (including us) handle disease has a couple knowable facets:

• It works, generally speaking, over the long term, and often enough in the short term

• we have added new means of gaining immunity, but with that we also reduce selective pressures on the species, not just for disease-specific immune responses, but any other traits (including but not limited to rapidity of immune response) that impact the capacity to handle and survive a disease

• it is clearly selection pressure that has led to effective immune systems in the first place

but even aside from that, the following are my opinions, and though I’m open to the possibility, I doubt they’ll change today:

• taking away the body sovereignty of an individual is an abominable act which reduces diversity, and harms the species as a whole, in many different ways, some subtle, some less so
• the benefits of body sovereignty far outweigh the detriments of it, particularly since we, by and large, have a medical answer for those who wish to be protected from a disease but don’t want to rely on the natural biological process to do so, but would rather use a method that involves a technological support framework.
• evolution works, and although it always costs lives, it’s a prerequisite for life. We don’t evolve out of evolution.

edit: btw, thanks for the genuine civil discourse, I enjoy it.

Then don’t stab anyone, and prepare for what situations you run into where you know it’s possible to be stabbed, but won’t stab in return.

Yes. You can get measles from someone, and can give it to them. The fundamental bad actor is the disease itself, and we address that by getting immunity to it, one way or the other.

Get a vaccine. Nobody should every be able to take that right from you.

The circumstance of dying from a disease due to biological weakness has a suppressive affect on phenotypes which don’t provide an immune system capable of fighting the disease. This is basic.

I am not making the argument that we are destroying species immunity to any particular disease by getting vaccines, which is clearly false. When you get vaccines or get a disease, the result is some degree of immunity to that specific disease (or some degree of immunity or maiming or death, in the case of getting disease).

Rather, bolstering the immune system with vaccines is a crutch that, while it may be the best option for an individual to choose, does still permit phenotypes which cannot handle the disease to be passed to offspring.

Obviously, this is a slow process. But also, just as obviously, someone who chooses not to vaccinate and thereby dies from a disease would have, otherwise, potentially passed that weakness on to their children.

this isn’t bullshit or a niche theory. It’s basic evolution, but in an area that is hard for some people to accept because they don’t like it, and want to distance themselves from death, and feel like they are outside of the realm of natural necessity, or because they just can’t conceive of biological robustness being that important, or being truly subject to any kind of degradation. But that is a failing to see the scope of the necessity to sustain our genetic robustness - not enforced by some creepy nazi idea is what’s “perfect”, through eugenics, but through sovereign choice.

And yes, making vaccines available does benefit the species as a whole, because we increase the ways we can fight disease. But those who fight a disease naturally, and actual actually accept the consequences of that, are exercising their individual rights in a way that is also beneficial to the species, by reducing the instances of problematic phenotypes, and (hopefully) breeding if they survive.

No. You can reasonably take an action against someone that is the same degree of involvement they attempt to do to you. By someone stabbing you, or attempting to, they consent to the same degree of violence against them, by having taken direct action against you.

This is not the same as, for example, someone fleeing from attackers, and knocking on your door, thus potentially drawing the attention of the attackers to you. Of course, you’re free to deny the attackers or the victim entry.