Christer Enfors

I’m commenting on the headline, not the article. I’m allowed to do that.

It’s not alarmist: A second Trump term really is an extinction-level threat to democracy

No, it is not an extinction-level threat to democracy. We have plenty of democracy in the rest of the western world, thank you very much. A second Trump term would be a huge threat to US democracy though. But that’s not what this headline implies. Extinct means gone forever, from everywhere. That’s simply not the case. I’m tired of Americans forgetting that there’s a world outside their borders.

What’s so strange about that? It’s not like the government - any government - is just one person. Of course some people in government can mess with other people in government. Even people in the same office mess with each other. Intra-office politics, and so on.

So if we can’t completely 100% deal with a problem, we shouldn’t even try? I mean, you’re correct, but we can’t solve all problems at once. If we deal with at least one, then we’ve made progress. Then we can try to deal with the next one.

The US is fucked.

Yes, I agree, and it makes me very sad. The US has been very good for me personally, I get movies, music, technology, relative stability in the world, and so on from the US. I just feel sad for the poor saps who have to live there.

But now, we can’t count on the US being the top political power in the world anymore. So now the EU really has to step up, because we don’t want China or Russia to become the new #1.

Lol, of course not.

… my cutting hammers are in the bathroom.

Yes. I’ve experimented with this too. This is the perfect use case for LLMs - there are no wrong answers, the LLM should just make something up, which is what it does.

he never had sex with a couch to completion

Uhmmm… what? Why would he say that? Was there actually some truth to the claim that he had sex with a couch, or what?

I’m out of the loop on that one. Can you explain it to those of us who missed it, please?

No, he doesn’t. He thinks he can do anything. The people around him, who do understand that he can’t, has given him other reasons not to participate that he can accept. Something like “it’s not fair,” “it’s a setup,” “people will think you’re brave for saying no,” etc.

My one thing I feel like I can brag about in tech circles is that I switched to Linux in 1995 (Linux kernel version 1.2.1), and I haven’t looked back since. This was even before Windows 95 was released.

Yes. However, if you had skipped the -f, it would have been valid. Without the filename argument, it assumes it should extract from the tape drive (TAR = Tape ARchive). The tape device is probably something like /dev/rmt0, but you don’t need to specify that. Using the -f is technically an exception which means “instead of extracting from the tape like you’d normally do, pretend that this file is the tape device instead.”

Oh and their CEO is a rich frat boy and also probably the one with the crayons.

I’m not so sure, I’m pretty sure that guy ate all his crayons before he could do any kind of drawing.

Yes. Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law is a fundamental principle for good reason. For example, we don’t actually know if anything of what we’ve read about him is actually true.

Who the fuck do these Vatican people think they are, to lecture others on morality? The previous pope instructed all of Catholosism that they were not to report pedophile priests to the police on pain of excommunication. And this is apparently fine by the current pope.

They are a bunch of idiots with no coherent concept of morality. All morality is based on personal responsibility, but most Christians seem to think they can ask their imaginary friend - rather than the one they have wronged - for forgiveness, and be granted it! It is absolutely absurd. I’m not saying that Christians in general are bad people, I’m just saying we shouldn’t be looking towards Christianity or any of its leaders for moral guidance.

Incidentally - do you know which World War 2 nazis were excommunicated for their crimes by the Catholic church? You’d probably be surprised to know that it was only one. One! And who was it? It was Joseph Goebbels. Among all the heinous crimes commited by the nazis, what was it that Goebbels specifically did that caused the Catholic church to say “enough is enough”? I’ll tell you what he did: He married a divorced protestant. “That’s it,” the Catholic church said, “you no longer get to go to heaven with your fellow nazi war criminals. Killing 13 million people in the Holocaust alone we can live with, but marrying a divorced protestant? No, we can’t have that, that would be, like, totally immoral dude.”

But surely, I hear you say, the Catholic church was against the nazis? No. No, they were not. Hitler’s birthday was celebrated in German Catholic churces all throughout the war. Only in 1960’s did the Catholic church apologize for its silence during the Holocaust, and revert the hitherto established doctrine that all currently living Jews - including children - are personally responsible for killing Jesus. That’s why they didn’t oppose the Holocaust - because the Jews (never mind that they weren’t the only victims) had it coming, since they were all (some-fucking-how) personally responsible for “killing Jesus”.

So, yeah. I’m not going to let these morons lecture me or anyone else on morality.

Exactly. People need to remember that this is the Internet, not their home country. We don’t know where you’re from.

I get your point, but he didn’t create Tesla, he bought it (as far as I know). So it could be argued that these things would be happening with or without him. But with him, he’s giving electric cars (at least, that brand) a bad name.

Yes. My company wanted me to get a corporate credit card with Bank of America. I said absolutely not, they have a terrible reputation and I want nothing to do with them. In response, I was told in an email (which was Cc-ed to some VP of Finance) that this wasn’t true, and that Bank of America has a great reputation.

Now, if you’re gonna claim I’m wrong and start cc-ing people, you better be able to back it up. This pissed me off, so I googled for lists of the worst banks in America. Of the three first surveys on the topic that I found, two of them had Bank of America as the “top spot” as worst bank, and the third one had it in third place. I emailed this back to the person. I never heard back. I happily continued not using their corporate credit card ever after.

That’s not how that works. In Linux, that command would simply create girlfriend out of thin air.

… no wonder we like Linux.

I’ve found that Mastodon (for those who don’t know what it is, think of it as sort of distributed open source Twitter) has been great for me. There are lots and lots of instances, and you’ll probably be able to find one that suits your interests. I’m very much into tabletop roleplaying games, and there were already several instances for that kind of thing, but I still started my own. It’s been a lot of fun.