I’m really not sure what point you think you’re making. Of course they’re all reading from the same script; that’s obvious! In fact, my point was that right-wing propagandists have the power to write the script and force it to be read, while left-wing people don’t because they don’t own a fuckton of TV stations.

I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse. Stop it.

Meanwhile, I’m married and can’t be bothered to change anything in my Kubuntu UI from the defaults. I wonder if there’s a correlation, LOL

Why did she need money to pay for medical care to begin with? Shouldn’t China, of all countries, have socialized healthcare?

“Reverse engineered open source” isn’t a thing. You can decompile a program and look at the source code all you want, but that’s not the same as having the legal right to modify and redistribute it. Open Source specifically means the latter.

What you’ve linked to there is just some pirated proprietary-licensed source code that, frankly, I’m a little surprised Microsoft hasn’t taken down yet.

(Also, I don’t like the term “open source” for exactly the reason that it leads to this sort of confusion. According to both the OSI and FSF it means the same thing as “Free Software,” so folks should use the term Free Software instead since it emphasizes the four freedoms.)

If you want a pinball game that’s actually Free Software, check out Vector Pinball. I recommend installing it via F-Droid.

In general, get stuff like that from F-Droid. Ads and other enshittification basically isn’t allowed.

due to Billy Joel releasing his hit single My Life in 1979

Seems legit. That’s a pretty inspirational song.

Ah, yep, that was the one! I was thinking it might’ve been Phil Collins/Genesis, but when I looked through their discographies I didn’t recognize the title.

Thanks, not being able to remember was really bothering me.

But that was the boomers.

Good point. Still, it was made in the '80s, by which time the Boomers should’ve known better about their [lack of] willingness to fix shit, so I hope you can understand my confusion.

That first one, anyone can do.

Really? Anyone can order local TV news stations across the country to read scripted propaganda of their choosing? You’re just going to straight-up deny Sinclair Broadcast Group’s unbalanced political power exists?

Theres also invisibility and dagger fighting; holding invis without releasing it makes it trigger after you swing

Meanwhile, in Morrowind you can just enchant a dagger to cast invisibility on strike all by itself. (Not sure if that’s still possible in the newer games or not.)

Of course intimidation is the point – psychological/political intimidation, not physical. Context matters. Don’t try to pretend that the other MPs were scared they were gonna charge at them with taiahas or something, because that’s bullshit and you know it.

Okay but in this thread we’re trying to express solidarity with the Maori; do you mind?!

How does your lifestyle compare to that of a “hobo,” “tramp,” “vagabond,” etc.? Do you consider yourself part of any defined cultural movement of that sort, or are you just sort of doing your own thing?

That’s true; I’m maybe being a little unfair to to the guy. That said, I was thinking more in terms of the song being an anthem for Gen X, and the generation as a whole letting us younger folks down.

Really? Okay then, how do I do this myself? Or how do I do this myself? Or how do I do this myself?

Yeah, that’d be among the duties of the engineering department.

I misread “hum” as “bum.”

people have just accepted cars as the default mode of transportation

That wasn’t an accident and it didn’t just ‘happen;’ it was the very deliberate result of a combination of automobile and oil industry propaganda and US government policy back in the 1930s-1950s, motivated by several factors ranging from utopian modernist city planning to good ol’fashioned racism.

Some random sources to get folks started:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement

• https://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat-1/2015/12/14/americas-suburban-experiment

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World's_Fair)

• https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/the-birth-of-sprawl-how-ending-the-great-depression-meant-inventing-the-suburbs

Does that actually make it easy, or just less hard?

(Je l’envisage sérieusement, d’ailleurs.)

There’s another '80s song on the tip of my tongue about how Gen X is gonna fix everything that makes me feel distinctly let down every time I hear it these days, but I can’t quite remember. It’s less metal and more pop, kinda halfway between “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “The Way It Is” by Bruce Hornsby, but I don’t think that’s it. Any ideas?

😁