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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • This way we can vote for a neo-liberal dystopia instead of having a fascist one.

    They say people tend to move on the right as they get older but as a middle aged man, I’m growing more cynical.

    I’m not American but every government my country had in my lifetime has been working for corporations and big money instead of for the citizens. At every level.

    I always voted progressive for the last 23 years but never once a progressive party won or had any significant influence on social politics. Vote for the major conservative party and we have the police violently displacing native protesters on their own land, or vote for the major alternative, a neo-liberal party that will also send the police to violently squash protests of natives against a pipeline going on their own land.

    Whatever the party I vote for, oil is going to flow. The police will continue to happily apply the “necessary” violence to squash protests of people demanding better conditions or less corruption. The politicians will still collude with big corporations.

    Everyone tells me to vote but my actual MP was a Greenpeace militant and is now bought and paid for, as the Environment minister, pushing for the oil industry to continue its operations for the good of the economy.

    In the US you have the choice between a far right party and a party slightly less to the right, but still heavily on the right.

    How the hell is voting for the lesser of two evil but still clearly evil party is going to help us out of this?

    How would the Democrats fix this, if they have full control of the government? Will they give Americans free health care, or stop financing genocides? Have Obama brought the change he was supposed to? Guantanamo was closed? Was it because he/the democrats did not control enough of the government? Maybe if people vote more next time the Democrats will tackle social issues.

    Just like every other government in every country. If we just all vote hard enough, the centibillionaires and their corporations will have no chance at buying our politicians?


  • I do that too but only because it’s much easier to help my relatives with Linux than those with Windows.

    I even “convert” some people because Llinux is easier for them if I just manage it. I had a neighbor that was using Window on a very old computer, it was slow and choking under the weight of simple updates. Plus, she was always asking me why her computer kept rebooting by itself while it was obviously Windows update. So I installed Mint and all the problems went away.

    Anyway I don’t want to have to deal with Microsoft accounts, licenses, office365, the general bloat, the ads, the new versions of Windows… I have enough at work, so if I am going to help on my free time, it has to be on the OS I find easier to deal with.




  • pedz@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.mlXFCE Vs MATE
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    29 days ago

    I’ve been using MATE since Gnome 3. I really liked the simplicity of Gnome 2 and was unable to adapt to their “new” way so I switched to MATE and it just clicked. I tried Gnome 3 a few times again but I just can’t.

    As for why MATE instead of XFCE or others? Because I already used and tried XFCE in the past and prefered Gnome 2’s look and feel. In fact, I have been going out of my way for years to keep every app using GTK2 and my favourite theme because I like how it looks and feel, and Gnome 3 and GTK3 broke this. So MATE it was. They switched to GTK3 too eventually but it gave my time to adjust.

    My only “complaints” about it are the file manager Caja, and the way you can list windows, which both feel very basic. I would like those two to get better.

    I try and use different DE from time to time, from Fluxbox to E17, but I just go back to MATE. My favorite DE of all time was E16 but it took waaay too long for E17 to be functional and I ended up keeping MATE.


  • pedz@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlLOOK AT WHAT THEY HAVE TAKEN FROM US
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    29 days ago

    This reminds me of the efforts made against tobacco and for cleaner air in certain areas, but it also reminds me how we do this for other things too.

    Radium toothpaste, lead paint and asbestos curtains.

    So, as someone that sees cars as a significant source of pollution, from exhausts, brake pads and tires, I find it ironic that some places are banning outdoor smoking in public areas while it’s perfectly acceptable to drive a gas guzzler around and among those places.

    Like, I’m so grateful nobody can smoke around me on that restaurant’s terrace, this way I can fully enjoy breathing the pollution from the thousand of cars around.


  • I can’t tell for BlueSky because I have not joined yet, but I did create a Mastodon account months ago and I’m not sure what to do with it or how to interact with others. I find it confusing.

    On Twitter I was mostly following a bunch of like minded people, liking their stuff, and I could see what they liked too. But on Mastodon there’s uuh, boosts and favorites?! I’m not sure of how it works or what I’m doing. I can’t just “like” posts? I have to boost them?! I found the people I liked that were on Twitter, but on Mastodon I feel like there’s nothing I can do aside from seeing posts and it’s just not attractive.





  • Why do you see it as targeting Trump voters? I’m in Canada and we also have people driving giant SUVs in McMansions whining about gas and energy prices. It’s fair and legitimate to bitch about the price of food, however it’s also easy to see that the average North American car is now more like a tank, and that people whining about gas prices don’t seem to be able to look into a mirror.

    Yes, most of the people owning monster trucks will also vote Conservative here, or for a conservative party, I guess it’s a political statement on its own. But it’s also very easy to find liberals (as in neo-liberals, not “the left”) with gas guzzlers bitch about gas prices.


  • Hey, that’s me. More or less.

    I have been living paycheck to paycheck for about two decades but things changed during the pandemic. I got a substantial raise, stopped smoking, and kept the same micro apartment in a high rise for years. I also live alone, refuse to pay for a car, and don’t have any children.

    So I was able to put some money aside in the last years and now, I take extended vacations (I took 8 weeks this year), I travel, and treat myself with what I want.

    My sister wonders how I can afford to take that much time off work to go to different countries and think that I just recently found interest in traveling but really, it’s just because I can afford it now.


  • Yeah, having more than half the US population vote for fascism is the Democrats’ fault, obviously. They should have changed their strategy so that people that like fascism vote for them instead of a fascist. Damn Democrats forcing Americans to vote for fascism by making the other half apathetic.

    If at least the Democrats would have done enough to get the votes of non-fascists Americans, they could have won and spend another 4 years of status quo.

    Go ahead and blame the Democrats because half of the US population has voted for fascism. It’s partly right. But it also ignores the fact that whatever the Democrats would do, a very significant chunk of the US population is convinced fascist policies is the way to go.




  • Wait, you are saying that not having a car and a garage makes people need plastic bags?

    I lived in small, and now in a large North American city, and never owned a car. The city banned plastic bags a few years ago and I already owned some reusable bags bought a decade before, so I just continued to use them.

    But mostly I use my backpack because I don’t have a car and live in a city where I can walk to grocery stores. Otherwise I use my bike panniers. And if I really don’t have a bag, instead of buying a new one, I only buy what I can carry with my hands. Crazy like that.

    Or did the sarcasm go over my head?



  • pedz@lemmy.catoMemes@sopuli.xyzInternational Woof
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    3 months ago

    I don’t know for dogs but I read that other species have different “accents” depending on their group and where they live.

    Apparently, animals like dolphins, orcas and whales have different “accents”. And birds apparently also sign differently depending on their group and location.

    Like, some ducks quack differently, from one region to another. I don’t think this can hamper simple communication, but there is apparently variation in their calls.


  • I face the same specific issue. I started with the French (Canada) layout years ago but now Windows sets the default to Multilingual/CSA because it has been made the official one by the government a number of years ago.

    So now everyone that got used the “old” one has to fiddle with keyboard settings every time they use a new Windows session/computer.

    And it’s not exactly a breeze to switch, as Windows often keeps the multilingual one and switches back to it when you use a different application. Gotta make sure to delete the multilingual and leave only one layout. It’s a real annoyance.