https://web.archive.org/web/20230624214638/https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/05/look-at-the-lights-my-love-annie-ernaux-book-review/674235/

https://web.archive.org/web/20230624214433/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/lynn-paltrow-pregnancy-justice-interview.html

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Every time someone brings up any sort of even half utopian vision (read: a world where people aren't actively trying to kill each other), communism for example, people are sure to bring up "but how will technological/societal/human progress be driven without conflict? Wouldn't humanity stagnate like the fatasses aboard the space ship in WALL-E?"

I've never agreed with this, and though I'm obviously not a sociopolitical theorist, I have some vague justifications of my stance:

First of all, human curiosity and desire to create are intrinsic to our species and does not require conflict. There are enough makers slapping together half baked DIY projects in their garage that do a whole lot of nothing aside from being fun to prove that, with many enjoying the process of making the thing more than the thing itself, but sometimes those pet projects do turn into real products that solve real problems. As are the scientists that research the weirdest things just for the hell of it, and surprise surprise decades later it turns out to actually be useful. Astronomers studying exoplanets and cosmic gas clouds are another example, they're never going to visit those things, certainly won't be colonizing them anytime in their or our lifetime, and it's not like there's an obvious path from that to any sort of weapon. Are they doing it specifically because there might be a war soon? When Galileo fought tooth and nail for his heliocentric theory, he never expected it to physically affect existence on Earth, nor could he have conceived any way of using said theory in battle, but he still advocated it simply because he believed it was the truth about the nature of our universe.

Also, things like radar, nuclear fission, or any of the things commonly associated with war were not initially discovered because of war. The mechanisms of action were discovered by physicists probing and trying to understand the universe, simple as that. The Chinese developed the first forms of gunpowder, and they used it for fireworks at first, guns came much later with the European colonization of East Asia.

Also also, in times of peace, art flourishes. Any period known as the golden age of a given culture or society are almost always in times of relative peace. Can't do much art if you're being raided from the neighbouring empire can you?

Another thing, just because there are no longer external geopolitical conflict doesn't mean there are no conflicts period. Illness, mortality, minor inconvenience, hell even being bored are all conflicts that people have worked very hard to defeat. And there are sci-fi sounding things that can be explored even after all of that is solved. Transhumanism, transphysics, mind uploading, telepathy, faster than light travel, time travel, seeing into or visiting other universes or higher dimensions, do other universes or higher dimensions even exist? We genuinely do not know if these things are possible or what they can do for us, so do they not warrant exploration? Or, instead of exploring outer space, how about exploring inner space? The nature of life and consciousness, emotion, love, and attachment, higher and higher orders of mathematics and logic, do living things truly have spirits or life force within or are we just complicated, mostly self contained chemical reactions? Plenty to chew on in a post conflict world, no?

Finally, one must consider, is no change or advancement really stagnation? Why do we need infinite advancement? Why can't we just focus on being human, living, and enjoying what we have now? This reminds me of the excuses European colonists made for the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples, that, "well they aren't actively trying to build empires or advance themselves, we're doing them a favour by bring them our way of life because they were never going to achieve anything their way" meanwhile many Indigenous people believed that simply living life has intrinsic value, that being human and enjoying all the things that come with that is enough.

IDK, what do you think of all this?

I'm looking to get a straight tablet (not a 360-hinge laptop with a keyboard) that will mostly be used for mobile centric applications like when I'm out and about or when I want to binge shows in bed. Ideally it will be a device that I can exclusive use the touchscreen with for when I'm either too lazy or can't practically prop it up and use it as a proper laptop.

I want to keep at least the software as open source as possible, so my options are either an Android tablet that I can sideload an AOSP de-googled ROM like Lineage OS, or a Windows tablet with an x86 CPU that I'll install a Linux distro on (inb4 "Android is technically Linux").

I currently use KDE Plasma which is my favourite environment when I'm on my desktop, and I quickly found through testing on my touchscreen laptop that it's practically unusable without a mouse and keyboard. Here are some things that I found KDE lacking that I need:

• Integrated onscreen keyboard that automatically pops up when you're in a text field, and/or can easily be brought in and out of frame when needed.

• Smooth swipe-based scrolling. I find that swiping up on many KDE apps just selects text or drags an element, or does nothing, and you have to drag the tiny scroll bar to scroll.

• Pinch to zoom

• A terminal that works well with touch screen, namely one that makes it easy to use special characters and control keys with an onscreen keyboard. Termux on Android is what I consider one of the best implementations of this.

• Active stylus support with palm rejection is a plus, like the Surface when running Windows or the iPad Pro.

I consider myself very knowledgeable with Linux, and I do tinker with my computers a lot, but for this one, I do simply want something that "just works", because I'll either be using it at school/work and can't afford to start diving into conf files and searching up cryptic error messages because something broke, or I'll be in bed just wanting to relax before going to sleep.

Finally, is this futile? If we're considering stock Android as a benchmark for a decent user experience on a tablet, can anything on the non-Android Linux side even compare?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2145640/Mikiwam_Solarpunk_Herbalism/

First of all, consider that most major media content from official sources like TV shows and movies are geolocked to approved countries. This has way more to do with copyright and licensing than censorship, but it's what it is.

Second, consider the fact that every VPN around the world advertise that "if you're in China, you can use us to get past censorship" in their marketing. Now, how many VPNs that Westerns use have an actual endpoint inside Mainland China? Totally legal to do btw, but how many prividers actually do it? Which, fun fact, the simple act of jumping the great firewall isn't illegal. It's only illegal of you commit a crime while bypassing the firewall, like if you were posting on a Western porn site or something, in which case it could be used to increase sentencing in court. Technically you can only use VPNs by Chinese companies (many of which still let you jump the firewall BTW), but as far as I know they don't enforce it that much considering how prevalent Western VPNs are over there, and the fact they if they really cared they would have blocked all the major foreign VPN endpoints. Watching even explicitly state censored stuff isn't illegal, it's only illegal if you make, advertise, duplicate, or distribute it. Actually, additional fun fact, access and possession of porn is generally legal in China, they only criminalize, again, making, distributing, duplicating, or advertising it, that's just their general philosophy when it comes to banned media.

Third, consider piracy. How often do you see Chinese media on western torrent sites or illegal streaming sites? I dunno about you, but pretty much never for me. Meanwhile, plenty of Chinese illegal streaming sites have all the Western shows you could want, and Chinese people torrent stuff all the time. Piracy is technically illegal in China, especially since torrenting counts as distribution, but I've personally never heard it enforced for regular Western movies and TV shows, only for porn and stuff like that. (Source: Am Chinese, lived in China) And there are tons of Chinese streaming sites, hosted in China, which you'd think would be pretty easy for them to shut down if they actually cared about it.

All in all, Chinese people aren't starving for Western "freedom" media. The West is starving for Chinese media.

Text Mirror:

>What does decolonization of Hawaii, and the US look like? From one Native Hawaiian's perspective (me) > >The US military is destroying our islands along with the 12 million tourists under foreign billionaire-owned tourism. Too many Americans are buying up our lands forcing us out by jacking home prices to $1.5 million etc. > >But the solution in places like Hawaii, North America is not as simple as everyone who is white or non-indigenous simply leaving. > >If the people in Hawaii & North America could repair the inequities with the indigenous people there, respect treaties, allow indigenous and ethnic minorities to exist as equal yet different - the way Vietnam, China have 50+ ethnic minorities who co-exist, allow them to speak languages, don't mass-arrest imjpoverish, etc - then everyone would not need to leave. > >If the colonizer-mindset people in Hawaii leave and go to N America, that pushes the problem to Native Americans. If they go to Europe, at least you don't have re-settler colonialism. > >When the French colonizers were defeated and kicked out of Vietnam, they were < 5% of the population, had clearly delineated 'us and them' lines, and so decolonization was more straightforward. Most French chose to leave Vietnam, because they were there to extract resources and labor from their 'coolies' and when they couldn't anymore, they went back to Europe. > >At the same time, all people of French/white heritage were not required to leave Vietnam after the dismantling of colonial yt supremacist rule. > >As an example, my Vietnamese friend Luna Oi has a white American husband in Vietnam, and he is not required to 'go back to America' because he's white. He simply has to follow the rules of Vietnam, its socialist anti-imperialist country, and co-exist peacefully, and it is fine. Vietnam is 98% indigenous. > >Bolivia is ~60% identifying as indigenous, with a unique history, but they have had great successes with their indigenous-led socialist plurinational - meaning many language, many peoples, coexisting within one state - in the Western sense. > >They do not require the 40% white/non-indigenous identifying people to leave Bolivia and go back to Spain, Europe, US, etc. but over time, they will need to learn to co-exist in actual equality with the indigenous. > >The US is 98% identifying non-indigenous, with ~20-30% non-white identifying. > >The US is the worlds' largest European settler colony by far with 330 million people, and the worlds' capitalist superpower that dwarfs and puppeteers its parent Europe itself. > >The process of undoing colonization, and healing the broken people and ways (including indigenous and non-white people who have had our ways and languages severely harmed by colonization) will not look identifical to either Bolivia or Vietnam, and will be unprecedented in human history - but we can learn from each of these struggles. > >Education, listening to the marginalized, indigenous etc. and implementing that education in concrete ways is certainly an important part of the process. Which is why the US is banning CRT, anything that makes white people 'uncomfortable' from schools. Because it would indeed be the undoing of the US over time. > >Long story short - it will be a long story and there is no easy shortcut out of it, lol. > >If you appreciated this thread, consider helping this Native Hawaiian and family keep doing this educational / decolonizational work with ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/silverspook Or consider becoming a Patreon patron! https://www.patreon.com/neofeud

Okay, to be clear, I'm not actually saying you should do drugs. I just found this picture funny and kind of insightful. I intended the title not to be a command, but as an 'if this then that" observation.

In case you had any doubt that the GOPigs aren't disgusting.

In case you had any doubt that the GOPigs aren't disgusting.