I recently learned that OpenMandriva’s president (warning, lunduke link as evidence) has declared the project “non-woke” and “anti-DEI”, which has resulted in it attracting a hard right community. IMO, a good reason to avoid it.

I genuinely hate that your art was getting stepped on, however I just need to mention that this quote:

But just obliterating my Steamboat Willie is a step too far!

Literally had me giggling 😄

Thanks for creating and hosting all this, my instance has been having a lot of fun with it :)

If it gets to the point where left wing people are genuinely being rounded up, and there are no other options left, then being armed at worst lets us make the round up more costly in a last stand, or hopefully if there has been enough community building beforehand, helps us more effectively prevent a round up from occurring..

It would also help for a French resistance or Irish Troubles style long-term push-back.

I personally witnessed two lenovo legion laptops bought at the same time have pretty severe issues. One had a USB port fail, and the other seemed to have an issue with the SSD controller where it would flake out every 30 minutes causing a complete system crash, even after replacing ram and SSD.

They were both the same model, so maybe there was something specific to that, but considering bow much they cost and yet only lasted a year before encountering issues, desktops seem the safer long-term bet.

Ultimately worker coops by their design limit the amount of excess money that can be siphoned off and concentrated to CEO’s and shareholders, so capital holders would likely refuse to invest in co-ops in fear that were they to become the standard way of organizing businesses, they would get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie globally, as more wealth is distributed to the workers themselves instead.

The system is inherently designed to oppose all forms of more equal distribution of power and wealth.

If co-ops were to become successful in spite of that, the capital owners would likely attempt a military coup to literally fight back against it, just as they attempted during the Business Plot in response to FDR’s economic reforms.

The capital holders hold a tremendous amount of the power to influence the globe to their will due to their concentrated wealth, which is only possible to accumulate due to the accepted exploitation of labor. They will do everything in their power to prevent the loss of that power, even if it means sub-optimal profits.

I didn’t say there would be no conflict, but significantly less.

If everyone is an owner, there is no incentive to withhold labor and strike, as they can simply come to a consensus with the other co-owners instead. The only reason unions exist and strike is because of an imbalance of power between the capital owners and the workers that generate the capital, so the unions must leverage their labor as a bargaining chip to try to get a slightly more fair deal. That dynamic is not present in a worker owned co-operative, since everyone is an owner and has the same incentive to increase profit, since it benefits all instead of the few.

This would make everyone pay attention because people don’t really care about anything but long term growth independent of the company’s operating system.

All traditional companies have an incentive to fight the formation of unions, even if they do generate more profits, as CEO’s and shareholders do not wish to split up those profits to the workers any more than is absolutely necessary to retain those workers to begin with.

CEO’s and Shareholders are virtually all extremely self interested, often times combined with dark triad traits which both encouraged and enabled them to reach those positions to begin with.

They do not act rationally purely in interest of profit, as if that was the case, then they would’ve already adopted lower working hours, work from home, better benefits, and given partial ownership of the company to the workers voluntarily. Instead, history has shown time and time again that they would much rather let an entire company be destroyed rather than give up power to workers.

You will not have any success whatsoever of convincing existing corporations to embrace unions by proving an example.

A co op would be so different from existing systems that I fear people would think hey that’s neat but we can’t replicate it unless we started over.

There are plenty of examples of worker owned cooperatives, even huge successful ones like Mondragon, which is a multi bullion dollar coop that employs 70,000 workers.

Virtually no existing corporation nor its shareholders would want to become a co-op, because it would mean the inability to exploit and profit from their labor force. Just as they do not wish for unions to impede on their ability to exploit their labor force.

A worker owned cooperative would be more ideal than a unionized but otherwise standard corporation, and is less likely to have internal conflict.

I’m pretty sure one of the creators/writer of voyager was really disappointed that it never actually fulfilled the premise at all, so he went and made the Battlestar Galactica reboot in 2003 as essentially what Voyager should’ve been if the premise was taken seriously.

Hey Mickey, I ask this without intending or meaning to offend, but why do you enjoy “haha, hate my wife” boomer humor so much?

There’s a number of ways we can build counter power, and not only does it materially help our situation, it also reduces the feeling of helplessness and despair dramatically, and you’ll likely meet some friends along the way.

Here’s a handy guide on how to get involved in that sort of stuff.

I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist (audiobook version here).

It’s certainly possible to write a punk story in a steampunk setting, but from all the steampunk media I’ve encountered (and I was very much a fan of it years ago, and still enjoy it today), most of the time it’s chosen as an aesthetic choice or as a backdrop for alternate history.

I’d be interested to hear any recommendations you have of steampunk works that focus on the punk angle, though, if you had some in mind.

Cyberpunk generally has a high focus on the punk aspect. I.E, anti-authoritarian, personal freedom, anti-hierarchy.

Steampunk has punk at the end purely because it’s a riff on the word Cyberpunk, not because it retains any inherent anti-authoritarian punk-ness. It’s more so just a label shorthand for an aesthetic and rough technological level. Dieselpunk does the same thing, using punk not to signify actual punk ideals, but instead uses it as shorthand for ‘aesthetic’.

Solarpunk retains the punk aspect of Cyberpunk, but instead of dystopia, imagines a more utopic vision of punks succeeding against the corporations/governments/hierarchies, which is achieved through community building, a DIY ethos, prefiguration, and an appropriate use of technology.

A consultant reported that billionaires, when confronted with the idea that the private security team have no incentive to continue to obey the billionaire once society had collapsed, asked the consultant how they could maintain control of the security team, such as if shock collars or locking up all the food would work.

The consultant suggested they simply treat the security team really well beforehand, like just being a good friend.

The billionaires then became concerned, and I shit you not, asked “but where does that end?”

I’ll try to find the link to add it here.

Edit: Here it is.

They are fairly useless without first building a large community to back you up.

Having or not having an internal monologue has nothing to do with being sociopathic, and it’s extremely rude to suggest it is. You now have a great opportunity to learn about how a large swath of other people experience consciousness.

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow goes into how some Native Americans had slaves, and how/why other tribes refused to have them, though the whole book is an interesting and worthwhile read.

While Corsi boxes do work, I personally find that just using a single thicker 4" filter taped to the back of a fan works better, as it takes up a smaller footprint and allows you to direct the air flow at something other than the ceiling. The thicker filter is much, much less restrictive than a 1" filter due to the increased surface area. The thick ones (20x20x4") cost about $28 on ebay, and will last a very long time before needing to be replaced.

Regarding feeling like you’ll get covid from the AC circulating air: Covid appears to mostly spread in the air by the virus attaching to dust or particles in the air. All of the air in the house will be pulled to a single intake vent, where there should be an HVAC filter to filter all of the air (the AC heat exchanger would eventually get clogged with dust without one). If that filter has a high enough MERV rating (how strong the filter is) it will be capable of removing all of the particles the virus can attach to, MERV 13 can even remove the virus itself from the air. This would mean that the air coming into your bedroom would be filtered and safe.

If you cannot confirm what MERV rating your HVAC filter is, then you could instead attach a MERV-13 filter to the back of a normal box fan (I recommend a 4" thick filter for longevity and reduced strain on the motor, as the thicker filter has a less restrictive airflow compared to a 1" filter) and run it in your bedroom to purify the air.

Regarding it being too cold in your room, AC vents can usually be adjusted to limit the flow into your room, or you could ask your roommates if they would be willing to compromise on a slightly lower overall temp, or if that fails, putting on some warmer clothing that’s easy to take off if you need to go outside may be a good compromise.

I understand that neither of those things solve the issue of your cats or the smell of their litter, though. (A carbon anti-smell HVAC filter on the back of a box fan may help?)

The Gnome store on Debian worked pretty okay for me, though it is a bit slow and always like, reloads the page you’re on after installing something, which is annoying. It uninstalled apps fine, AFAICT.

It had access to the entire Debian repo for me, so I’m not sure why only 3 things were showing up for you.

The Mint store has flathub enabled by default, but you can flip it off in the preferences. If flathub is enabled, it’s show both the flatpak and the native version from the repos, if available, allowing you to choose.