VeeSilverball

Arch is always “latest and greatest” for every package, including the kernel. It lets you tinker, and it’s always up to date. However, a rolling release introduces more ways to break your system - things start conflicting under the hood in ways that you weren’t aware of, configurations that worked don’t any longer, etc.

This is in contrast to everything built on Debian, which Mint is one example of - Mint adds a bunch of conveniences on top, but the underlying “how it all fits together” is still Debian. What Debian does is to set a target for stable releases and ship a complete set of known-stable packages. This makes it great for set and forget uses, servers that you want to just work and such. And it was very important back in the 90’s when it was hard to get Internet connectivity. But it also means that it stays behind the curve with application software releases, by periods of months to a year+. And the original workaround to that is “just add this other package repository” which, like Arch, can eventually break your system by accident.

But neither disadvantage is as much of a problem now as it used to be. More of the software is relatively stable, and the stuff you need to have the absolute latest for, you can often find as a flatpak, snap, or appimage - formats that are more self-contained and don’t rely on the dependencies that you have installed, just “download and run.”

Most popular distros now are Arch or Debian flavored - same system, different veneer. Debian itself has become a better option for desktop in recent years just because of improvements to the installer.

I’ve been using Solus 4.4 lately, which has its own rolling-release package system. Less software, but the experience is tightly designed for desktop, and doesn’t push me to open terminals to do things like the more classical Unix designs that guide Arch and Debian. The problem both of those face as desktops is that they assume up-front that you may only have a terminal, so the “correct way” of doing everything tends to start and end with the terminal, and the desktop is kind of glued on and works for some things but not others.

To me, a big difference is in the lengthy prelude, which follows the model of TOS, just with an updated production. First the synths layered with strings, which are very 80’s wonder-music(it could be right out of the score for Flight of the Navigator or The Goonies) and then the french horns come in playing a round, which adds a Wagnerian element.

The percussive “march music” elements quoting TMP are subdued in TNG’s arrangement - it’s a less compressed, “punchy” sound, and I believe the mic has been set farther back or they’ve EQ’d out some higher frequencies. Those decisions, plus a few choices of instrumentation like the harp glissandos, tone down the bombastic energy and add a gliding, romantic quality. Again, more like TOS, but updated.

I’ve become comfortable with saying, “it’s not worth it being normal”, and thus am ok with the normie tag, even if I don’t want to turn it into a slur. Normal is a form of social construct that tends to be imposed on us: it’s when the teacher enters the classroom and the class sits down and shuts up, not because they explicitly agreed to, but because it was normalized. There isn’t anything in particular suggesting that normal = good.

And that does have an elitist ring to it, which does upset the goal of equitable outcomes in some ways. There are certain philosophies in which a premise of elitism is assumed, as in, some people just won’t be able to access the necessary understanding to participate, so it’s better to have a gate than to let anyone wander through. This is the view of Leo Strauss and followers - for a really detailed explanation try Arthur Melzer’s book Philosophy Between the Lines.

Even if you don’t read that book(it’s a good book), I would make the case in this way: it’s the difference between online gaming that uses automatic matchmaking, versus a martial arts dojo. Online gaming and toxicity correlate because there is no lower bar on who can play, so all sessions are pushed to the lowest common denominator of cheating, griefing, etc. But someone who participates in martial arts like a gamer gets kicked out of the gym, if the standards are high: an instructor who values students does not let them attempt to eyegouge each other or slam their head on the mat.

Occasionally someone like that will sign up for a tournament, commit an illegal move in the first round, and get themselves disqualified. But they can leave their opponent seriously injured in the process, and maybe end a career. So the standards tend to condition a degree of gatekeeping, respect for others, etc. Not every gym does well at this, and some styles like boxing have a norm of “hard sparring” where full-contact is trained and damage is expected. But predominantly the focus is on getting the techniques and training without destroying yourself or others.

And I do liken the idea of complete access to, essentially, allowing dirty street brawls to be the only kind of sparring, the only way in which you can interact online with strangers.

Martial artists also sometimes use the normie term. They will say it outright: you have to be a weirdo to spend so much time getting beat up and choked out. We can have a gate and still be tough on ourselves to do better.

Eugen is not the person I would trust for good judgment on this because his agenda has always been user growth-centric, so a Fediverse that resembles Facebook would just be a “yay” moment for him - either way he can still end up with a career by leveraging his role with ActivityPub.

That said, I don’t believe EEE works here, because AP evolved in an environment that already had to compete like-for-like with corporate options. You’ll still log in for the rest of the fediverse if it brings you better content than Threads…

…and it has an edge on that, because these spaces are not designed around herding around industrial quantities of users. They have a natural size at which moderators shrug and close the gates if a big instance is too troublesome, because it hurts the quality of the experience for their own users. This peeves instance admins who want the power fantasy of “owning” a lot of low-quality users, but it also basically guarantees defederation with corporate social, because it’s never been able to handle its own moderation problem other than in a “pass-the-buck” way.

When I looked for answers I spent some time exploring “personal organization Youtube” and found a few general principles for myself:

• Make a real place for everything, not a pile. The difference between a simple tray or bin and a pile is that you can reposition a container without moving every single item in it. Repeating this principle at different scales from very small to very large will quickly organize things into a hierarchy, make it less exhausting to “declutter” and reduce the chance of errors like knocking over stuff and having a cascade.

• Have more containers than you need. Then you don’t “end up” with a pile forming. But don’t have more containers than is appropriate for the space you’re working with. That’s just a sign of needing to throw out some things.

• Also consider how you “divide” vs “bind” space together. The two are like ying and yang: we divide up documents into pages, but then we bind them together again with various mechanisms like yarn, binder clips or glue. Sometimes the right answer for making a place is assuming it’s pre-divided, but easing binding.

• Taking this idea to its extreme, you can cram a huge number of small items into a three-ring binder with various accessories(pencil pouches, clear dividers, etc.) This is a wonderful way to deal with those products that ship with, e.g., an extra screw.

• You don’t have to invest in expensive containers. Cardboard and leftover food plastic can work on a budget.

• If throwing things out is triggering your hoarding senses, try making spaces of relatively greater and lower priority: your “favorites” vs the “other stuff”. This sorting helps you now by putting the stuff you like within reach, and it helps later by creating an opportunity to declutter by tossing the whole bin at once.

What are the best containers to invest in for the long run? In my opinion, small zipper bags, desk organizers, pencil bins, and cafeteria trays. If you have a lot of round items, a lazy susan, or variations on that like a makeup organizer.

Meta attempts to federate and every user is immediately swarmed with bots that tell them to stop using Meta, a baby site for babies, forcing Meta to defederate.