ContrarianTrail

I'm a life-long Windows user who nowdays has a MacBook as a daily driver and a gaming PC running Linux. I consider myself somewhat tech savvy but holy fuck Linux just makes me want to tear my head off. I just spent 45 minutes trying to install Standard Notes "the right way" and in the end I just gave up and downloaded it from the Ubuntu store instead. Error, you need to add this repository. Error, you need to enable this feature. Error, you need to install this tool first which you can use to install another tool and that tool helps you fix the issue preventing you to solve the first issue etc. I honestly can't even imagine how you could make this any more difficult.

I guess Linux is like welding; it's great when someone sets the welder up for you and you just press the trigger and start welding but you're up for some absolute misery trying to figure that out on your own.

Also, a huge credit to chatGPT. I can just take picture of my terminal window and it gives me step-by-step instructions on how to troubleshoot most issues I've had. I'd be at complete loss without it.

In hindsight, it was the most predictable thing in the world, yet it still somehow caught me by surprise.

No, I don’t support the guy. I don’t even live in the U.S., and I wouldn’t have voted for him if I did. But I do think the average person who identifies as "on the left," particularly here on Lemmy, doesn’t realize how incredibly toxic the atmosphere becomes for true independents. We’re stuck enduring a firehose of insanity and hatred from both sides.

In my view, one of the main reasons we got Trump in the first place was the identity politics and wokeism on the left. For a while, I thought the pendulum was swinging back toward reason and balance, but now it feels like we’re back where we started. Honestly, I can’t even blame people for voting for him - it’s just a shame that the silent majority has to suffer because of the vocal minority.

Why is it that political discussions seem incapable of being conducted dispassionately? I can’t shake the feeling that this polarization is driving more people to the right, only worsening the issue. Hell, I’m probably going to be labeled a right-winger just for making this post. And then people wonder why the right is gaining popularity. Where else can centrists even go anymore when the left eats its own?

Every day, I see absolutely moronic comments getting upvoted while perfectly reasonable takes are downvoted. This would be a great opportunity to curate your feed by blocking these users en masse. Active curation like this is the only way to make social media even half-tolerable.

Whether you use it to filter out toxic users or to build an echo chamber, I think everyone should be free to do so. No one should be forced to share space with people they feel bring no value to the discussion - or, worse, make it more toxic.

This is especially true with luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada. People are either trying to impress others with fakes, or they’ve actually paid full price to become walking billboards.

Similar thing with iPhone cases that have a cutout for the Apple logo. That's just hilarious.

To be honest, the case is still the original one, but almost every other part has since been replaced. Now, I’ve taken it back to the shop where I bought it 20 years ago and asked them to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and memory - the last of the original parts.

So, is it still the same computer?

I also like that I can just keep replacing parts on an existing product rather than buying an entirely new device each time. That's exceedingly rare feature these days.

I often get the sense that I'm in the only one here doing manual labor but I'm sure there are others.

Identify yourselves.

For reference, the price for fixed-cost plans is around 10c/kWh.

As someone who’s been constantly running an electric heater in the garage while painting my car, I was quite lucky with the timing.

It’s not literally free, though. Transfer prices are fixed, and there are taxes and some other minor costs associated with it, so where I live, it still adds up to around 6c/kWh even when the price drops to zero. The cheap prices are due to an excess of wind power, but once the wind dies down, prices usually spike hard.

Because I don’t, and pretending to feels dishonest. I’ll listen if they want to talk about it, but I’m not going to act interested, and I certainly won’t ask about it on my own. What I’m trying to figure out is whether people actually care, or if they’re just playing a social game that I’m simply not interested in.

I’m probably on the autistic spectrum, which likely explains this to some extent. But that’s not an excuse - being an asshole is perfectly compatible with autism, so before dunking on me, please realise I probably agree with your criticism.