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Is it possible to access a library without being a student or having a university subscription?
  • In the US, many public universities allow access to the public, including use of computer terminals that will allow access to paid databases. In many cases, you could bring in a usb stick and save copies of articles downloaded from such databases, or at worst you could pay a small fee to print some stuff out. AFAIK, that kind of access varies state by state though, so you need to call university libraries near you to find out.

  • After upgrading from Ubuntu Jellyfish to Numbat, my desktop seems broken? Super key doesn't open menu, dark theme/settings doesn't work. How can I fix this?
  • You say this machine is headless. Is it at a remote location? If not, is it feasible to connect it to a monitor an keyboard for a few minutes? If so then you could logout, switch DE, and then log back in. That would hopefully set the DE you prefer as user default.

    If that's not possible, then some of the solutions discussed here might be applicable.

  • Any non-tech-background self-hosters?
  • I'm a college professor in the humanities (religious studies, history). Got into linux about 5 years back, partly because it comports better with my lefty politics than the alternatives, but also just because I've long been a closet computer nerd. I currently run a couple of proxmox servers on old optiplexes I grabbed off ebay. Full *arr stack with jellyfin on docker, a Tails VM for TOR stuff, NAS (omv on a vm), some other dockerized stuff: linkding, radicale, alexandrite (a self-hosted lemmy client, which I'm currently writing this on), various backup utilities.

    It's basically just a hobby for me, though the switch to linux has also totally changed my academic workflow, e.g. I do all my writing in nvim + latex now, use syncthing to sync my home desktop, laptops, and office computer, etc. I dig divesting myself from corporate computing to the greatest extent possible, appreciate the privacy benefits, and generally just enjoy the community-driven spirit of the whole thing.

  • How to avoid "things going wrong"? (Immutable distros?)
  • I mostly use debian + docker or alpine + docker for this kind of thing (usually running as VMs on a proxmox server). Both are utterly reliable in my experience, though I've been tending more often toward alpine these days, because it's just so light and simple. I haven't tried any of the immutable systems, in the general spirit of why fix what's not broken. I don't even bother with snapshotting either, though that's mostly because I use some of the proxmox tools for backing up the VMs.

  • linux as business/ company pc?
  • I work for a large state university and run linux on my office machine, despite the fact the IT office dept doesn't officially support it. I told our IT guy once what I'm doing and his response was, "cool." Of course I'm totally on my own if anything goes wrong. It helps that I'm a prof and most of my on-campus work doesn't involve much time on a computer, aside from basic web and documents stuff. tldr, in my case I'm able to just do it without asking anyone's permission, and it's worked out great for several years now, but a lot of jobs aren't like that obviously.

  • Favourite DE
  • I've used herbstluftwm on my main desktop for years. Love it. Manual tiling works well for me. Totally flexible and customizable. Switch between floating and tiling with a keypress, etc.

    And then on various other machines.

    • Xfce on my desktop at work that I don't use that much (work mainly from home) and just needed to set up quick. It's totally fine, like xfce always is.
    • Gnome on my tablet (basically a Surface knock-off). I don't really like gnome, but it's the only thing I've tried that works well OOTB for a touchscreen.
    • PekWM on an old macbook running debian. Great stacking WM. Super flexible, and the tabbed windows for any app are cool.
    • LXQT on an ancient (2009?) dual-core laptop that I mainly just use for writing in nvim. Works well for a simple setup.
  • WaPo: UFO reports demand greater transparency, lawmakers say
    www.washingtonpost.com UFO reports demand greater transparency, lawmakers say

    An hours-long congressional hearing on UFOs captured the intensifying public interest in the unexplained and how authorities investigate such reports.

    WaPo finally responds with this hack piece. N.B. the anonymously sourced paragraph: > Several congressional officials familiar with previous testimony that Grusch provided in classified hearings have said they were unable to substantiate or corroborate his claims that the U.S. government secretly runs a program to recover and reverse engineer crashed alien vessels.

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    FWIW: Anonymous vow to 'uncover' UFO, UAP and ETI information
    www.express.co.uk Anonymous vow to 'uncover' UFO, UAP and ETI information

    Activist and hacktivist collective Anonymous said it is 'troubled' by the 'lack of accountability in government funding' for 'technological advancements made by aerospace companies involved in classified government black projects'.

    Anonymous vow to 'uncover' UFO, UAP and ETI information
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    NYT: Bipartisan Measure Aims to Force Release of U.F.O. Records
    www.nytimes.com Bipartisan Measure Aims to Force Release of U.F.O. Records

    Legislation backed by Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, would create a review board to declassify documents related to unidentified aerial phenomena across the government.

    Bipartisan Measure Aims to Force Release of U.F.O. Records
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    Supernatural, UFO's & Disclosure @lemmy.ml drhoopoe @lemmy.sdf.org
    Ross Coulthart on why the media is ignoring the Grusch story
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    New MA programs in Magic and Occult Science

    A great interview on the Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast about new MA programs at Univ. of South Carolina and Exeter (UK) on the History of Magic and Occult Science. These are weird and exciting times.

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    Supernatural, UFO's & Disclosure @lemmy.ml drhoopoe @lemmy.sdf.org
    thehill.com Congress doubles down on explosive claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

    Bipartisan language adopted unanimously by the Senate Intelligence Committee would immediately halt funding for any secret government or contractor efforts to retrieve and reverse-engineer craft of…

    Congress doubles down on explosive claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

    Rubio makes statements that seemingly support Grusch's revelations, along with other very interesting tidbits.

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)DR
    drhoopoe @lemmy.sdf.org

    I'm a professor of Religious Studies with a research focus on medieval Islam, particularly with regard to Sufism, the occult sciences, and manuscript culture. I also interested in all things linux, occult, scifi, UFO, and anarchist.

    Posts 6
    Comments 44