PC building is niche, yes, but do you think “almost no one” builds PCs, like OP said? And that’s not even including the people who’ve had to install Windows on a pre-built system for one reason or another.

My point is that OP sounds like a smug Linux user shitting on people who use Windows. Even 5% of Windows users is too big a group of people to be described as “almost no one” simply because of how big the userbase is. That would be like saying, “Almost no one installs Linux” because Linux only makes up a small portion of the worldwide PC userbase.

That’s what I’m saying. Windows installation is idiot-proof. And I’m sure there’s enough people who maintain their own systems or at the very least have had to install Windows for one reason or another that to say that “almost no one” who runs Windows installed it themselves is just the “Linux Master Race” talking.

You don’t think that many people build their own Windows PCs? Linux gaming isn’t that old in the grand scheme of things, and there’s plenty of people who dual boot for various reasons.

I’d almost be willing to bet that there are more people who’ve installed Windows on their PC than there are people who’ve installed Linux from a pure numbers standpoint.

One thing to remember about Republicans is that logical dissonance comes with the territory. They’re not worried because they’re “one of the good ones.” Or because they’re one issue voters who ignore everything else the Republicans say that they’re going to do. I’ve seen many Republicans who live in Massachusetts and enjoy the benefits provided by the liberal politics of the state while at the same time complaining about those same politics. People complaining about Obama care despite having been on Romney care for years, that sort of thing.

Amazon already has their own pharmacy, btw. They even bought a prescription delivery service a few years back, called PillPack or something. Buying CVS would give them brick and mortar stores for the pharmacy they already run online.

As much as I hate Amazon and their overreach into every sector of the economy, I’d love to see them bring the full might of their lawyers against Musk.

On Barq?

IMO, I think creative people are at the heart of a social media platform. A big part of art is the community aspect of sharing it with others. So they interact with each other as well as create Content ™ for others. This is especially obvious with platforms like YouTube, but even Twitter is like this. If there weren’t people posting photos, drawings, music, game dev posts, and livestreams, Twitter would be a very different place. Creative people are responsible for much of the original content online. Without them, Twitter would basically be news, political rants, and reposted memes.

Twitter was largely considered the best place for artists by process of elimination, and I know plenty of artists were dying for an alternative but didn’t have one. Places like DeviantArt don’t get traffic from the general populace, and Instagram’s algorithm is horrible for discoverability. With Bluesky getting enough people to make it worth the migration, the creative people are moving over, and their followers will join them.

I know the only reason I ever made a Twitter account was because 70% of the people I followed on Tumblr left for Twitter after the porn ban. Hell, Tumblr dropped like 99.7% in value after the porn ban because they drove off almost their entire userbase.

Nor would they care if they knew about it.

I think “leave” is doing some heavy lifting, but I could see plenty of people creating accounts as the site reaches a large enough user base to attract the general public.

I saw a video recently of somebody talking about how they were posting the same thing on Twitter and Bluesky, and despite having a fraction of the followers on Bluesky, the post there had like 6x the engagement compared to Twitter. As they put it, “The creatives have moved to Bluesky.”

Fun fact(s): The COVID strains that were active at the beginning of last year were actually more infectious and deadlier than the original COVID strains. The only reason we didn’t hear much about them is because, despite RFK Jr’s beliefs, the vaccines work. 443 people died from COVID in the US during the first week of November, even with the vaccines. There were about 15 deaths from the flu in that same week.

There are plenty of immunocompromised people who can’t get vaccinated who can no longer be in public without risking death now that COVID is endemic.

There was also another patent for a TV with an eye-tracker camera in it to make sure you were actually watching the ads, another one that would unmute itself if it was muted during ads, and one designed to count the number of people in a room to charge you for piracy if you didn’t buy enough tickets for everybody for pay per view shows.

What games disable the windows key? As a lefty, this is something I’ve desired my entire life to the point where I think I’d pass out from the endorphin rush if a game did this.

I saw somebody saying how these companies are going to start crashing and burning in the next few years because they’ve never been profitable but the low interest rates have allowed them to keep burning new investors money to fake it until they make it. They’ve been following the greed of infinite profits through infinite growth, but that growth suddenly isn’t infinite anymore, and now they’ll be getting to the find out stage after fucking around for so long.

To this day I wish I had been able to take a year off after high school, maybe just taken some classes like life drawing classes or something that didn’t have the pressure of getting good grades attached to them to break out of that fear of failure habit and avoid burnout. I went to college for art&animation in the game industry, and stopped drawing for 10 years because of the burnout I got after 2 years of college.

It sucks because I absolutely love learning new things, but can’t stand a structured learning environment anymore. Give me YouTube videos and online guides and I’ll suck them down all day. I’d love to be able to do a lot of traveling again for the same reason, seeing new things and learning new stuff about different people and places is a joy. But put me in a classroom and I’ll fall right asleep and retain nothing.

He was weak, so I destroyed him.

Bros to hoes, guys to gals. What I’m trying to say is and they were roomates.

It’s about freedom of their speech and their freedom to control yours.

Same as it ever was. “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Maybe, but Christmas (as in the day of, December 25th) is still a Christian holiday. It’s a pretty safe assumption to make that the majority of people celebrate Christmas, especially the commercialized version that’s ingrained into our culture, but it’s still an assumption made with Christianity as the default/majority that doesn’t take into account anybody else. Unconsciously assuming everybody is one thing because the majority of people are that thing can silence/oppress those that aren’t.

This is why the big stink every year over Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays is inherently antisemitic/anti-other religions. Because it refuses to acknowledge that there are other people in this country who practice other religions with other holidays (or don’t practice any religion at all). If you make an exception for one (making Christmas a federal holiday), but not for the other (Passover in this case), then they’re being treated unequally and therefore you don’t have freedom of religion and are biased against the second one. Because the followers of Judaism in that example cannot practice their religion and celebrate their holiday to the same degree as Christians can.

For true equality you either accommodate all religions by making every single religious holiday a federal holiday or you accommodate none of them. Obviously, the first option is impossible, so you limit federal holidays to days of importance outside of religion, and allow enough vacation days to ensure people can celebrate at least most of their holidays. Days like the 4th of July, voting day(s) (a big one that we don’t do), etc should be federal holidays, but not Christmas or Easter. Outside the government, this is how it’s handled. Businesses are free to choose what holidays they close to celebrate or stay open for, and cannot get in trouble for what holidays they decide to give off or not give off for their employees. This is why the Jewish and Chinese communities are historically so close in the US - neither celebrates Christmas, so Jewish people go to Chinese food restaurants and other Chinese businesses that would otherwise not get much business on the holiday. It’s also why retail stores can make their employees work on Christian holidays, regardless of whether or not they’re Christian (speaking of which, you never hear an outrage about people being forced to work on Christmas day, yet there’s a guaranteed frothing of the mouth over the Happy Holidays thing every single year).

That’s the antisemitism inherent in our culture. That people are willing and want to support allowances for Christian religious institutions and values like holidays and prayers in school, but would not be okay with the same allowances for Judaism or other religions. In the same way that the architect I mentioned making the bridges too low so black kids couldn’t go to the beaches near his house was an act of racism.

I used to train kids at their first job and used my experiences in a similar fashion to push them to try new things and go for what they want without fearing failure. I would always tell them, “The biggest difference between you and me is that I’ve been on this floating rock longer than you have, so here’s my experience and the results. Use that info however you want.” Kids should be allowed to make their own choices and mistakes, but be informed on their options as much as they can be so that they can do so safely.

For me it comes down to: knowing what I do now about myself, would I go back and change things?

School sucked. Not only was it often boring and almost killed any enthusiasm I had for learning, but I was one of those kids who never really had to study to at least keep a B average, and it ended up hurting me in the long run. I was able to just coast through school and never developed the skills to study and for being able to fail and get better at something until after I had already given up on college because I had developed a fear of failure and if I couldn’t get things right on the first try, I would give up.

I guess I’d go back to start learning how to learn and not be afraid of failure earlier in my life, but there are other things I’d much rather go back for. I heard the word “transgender” for the first time when I was a college freshman. It wouldn’t be for another 10 years after that until I could start to really do anything with that information. So yes, I would go back, because I would love to have not spent the entirety of my teens and 20s kind of just existing day to day, going from work to home to work again.

Plus there’s so much good music I missed growing up that I would’ve loved to find when I was younger.

No, it’s that thing that was popular in the 90s: