Every few years I get the customization bug and trick out my desktop. Then things start breaking down slowly. Then I get frustrated and reinstall vanilla gnome, swear off customization forever, and feel better.

For gaming its Plasma.

Knowing the default DE’s idiosyncrasies also helps with work – I’m never surprised when I reinstall/install a new machine. Same goes for aliases. No for me, knowing the commands themselves, however cumbersome or verbose, helps me better deal with freshly installed machines.

So I’m not expert, but did PPL for a while and had good results. I wasn’t super strict, but essentially did 3 days on one day off. As long as I did my compound lift and a couple of my iso lifts, I felt satisfied.

Can I ask why you do Push+biceps and pull+triceps, instead of doing push (including triceps isos) and pull (including biceps isos)? For me, my triceps workouts occured after bench press, which helped me focus on squeezing the muscle after it had already been hit with heavy weights. And on my pull days, my biceps isometric would follow barbell rows in the same fashion.

The other thing I was thinking is are you eating enough? Feel like that’s really the most important for muscle growth

Great book. Debt is also a good one by Graeber

Do you like my hat

I hear what you’re saying, but an upper-class leftist is really just a right-wing neoliberal (perhaps socially left, but still pro capital/ pro worker exploitation). Leftism doesn’t exist in the US outside of Bernie Sanders and maybe AOC.

I’m not sure we know enough about Luigi’s politics to call him leftist. Didn’t he praise silicon valley execs? Sure, he may have united leftists (anti capitalists) and the working class. But the working class, itself, is right wing in the US. They don’t have class consciousness. There are hints that it remains, like how many Trumpies also voted for AOC, or how many like Bernie. But if they’re voting along party lines, they often do so against their own interests.

An upper class rightist might claim they’re on the side of workers, but they do so while reaching into their pockets and stealing a chunk of the value that they create. Then they reassure those same workers that wealth will somehow trickle down to them.

Edit: There is only really truth to this meme if you treat “left vs right” in the American sense of the words, or just replace them with “democrats vs republicans” or “liberals vs conservatives,” none of which are actually leftists in the classical sense.

Democrats vs Republicans would be more accurate imo. OP, it sounds like you’re not using left and right in the classical politcal sense, but in the way these terms are thrown around nowadays, especially in the US – leftism being neoliberalism, and the right being…whatever it is now. Neo-conservativism? Both are right wing ideologies.

quick wikipedia snippet

In modern politics, the term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism, supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere. Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism,[9] including the labour movement, socialism, anarchism, communism, Marxism, and syndicalism, each of which rose to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

I hear you, I don’t think it was very standard for him and wasn’t really rigorous in terms of research. Personally, I do buy what he’s saying for the most part, but yeah like he said, I dont think there are any concrete studies on this. But, to me, research (or, I guess I should call it knowledge acquisition) is a little like training a muscle – the longer you avoid it, the harder it is to get started. And if you never do it, the first time is painful. I mean, that first time, you have to find out how to find out, rather than just finding out (lol)

It reminds me of this book I read called The Internet of Us by Michael P Lynch. He talks about how dependent we are on the Internet to know things, and it’s made us, ironically, less connected. We’ve forgotten how to find out information by other means. He sets up a couple little exercises for himself: to find out, without the Internet – What is the capital of Bulgaria? Is a four-stroke engine more efficient than a two-stroke? What’s the phone number of my representative? What is the best reviewed restaurant in Austin, TX? – and it turns out pretty difficult for him. All throughout the book he talks about the philosophical implication of having knowledge at our fingertips, at the cost of, perhaps, losing the ability to acquire knowledge through other means.

You should check it out! https://archive.org/details/internetofusknow0000lync_w8o8

I found out about it from this philosotuber on YT, he kinda gives a better run down of the book than me around 20 seconds in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uctUh0Z2YTc

Idk, I mean the mass amount of options we have now are different from the TV days. It’s easier than ever nowadays the find the online community that believes in lizard people. At least back then, there was some sense of shared reality through TV, even if it was subservient to corporate or government powers. Now, we don’t live in the same reality as our neighbors.

And I kinda think you’re misconstruing what he’s saying about allowing your thoughts to be guided by the algorithm vs being active in choosing what media you consume. The radio is just an example of how you could find a lot of valuable information by guiding your own consumption. Algorithm wouldnt allow you to find info about that radio. It rewards you for being passive. I mean its meant to be addictive and capture your attention. I think his point is that the more people conflate their social media algorithms with the internet, the less able they become to do some basic research.

It’s weird she’s talking to you as if she were your mom.

Listening to the second book of a series called “The Book of New Sun” by Gene Wolfe called “The Claw of the Conciliator”

The series is set in an unknown time and centers around an apprentice in the Torturers Guild who commits one of the gravest sins he could – showing mercy to an inmate.

It’s pretty dense and heady and does not hold your hand whatsoever, but it really isn’t so bad to get through, especially with audio. Wolfe is a master. This series stands alongside LoTR for me as greatest scifi/fantasy ever.

Directly targeting schools that allow protests

Sounds like a constitutional crisis to me, no?

There’s a perspective that some technologically literate people have (not all of them, certainly) that enables them a clearer view of what is going on re: tech oligarchs. That is how much we rely on other people’s computers. Most people don’t think about what is going on when they browse a website or post something on social media, set up their own shop on squarespace, sell a product on Amazon, stream music or TV or movies or games.

Giant tech companies own it all. They own the computer you use to do all these things. They own the computers other smaller businesses use to run their companies. You invented a product and want to drive your cart to the market square? Pay a tax to King Bezos, the market square is Amazon. Did you make a game? Pay Gaben and you can sell it at his marketplace. Don’t wanna use these marketplaces? Wanna set up your own shop? You still have to use Amazon’s, or Microsoft’s, or Google’s computers.

These tech oligarchs are more like feudal lords – enclosing lands (computers) and charging the peasants and merchants access to them.

I help people do science and math with their computers. I make around 100k, double the median income in my area. My commute is an hour and a half each way, at least, and sometimes I only have around 3 hours to myself after I get back from work before I need to go to bed. Still, I have it better than most (although, with the current attack on science in the US, uncertainty about clients is rising…)

No actually you are totally right and I’ve made a big mistake. I thought I remembered him going to the island, but he just met with him a couple times. His reaction was pretty poor, but I don’t think there’s evidence he went to his island. I’ll edit my comment. Thanks for pointing that out.

I consider Understanding Power an essential read, but really soured on Chomsky as a person when he defended his going to Epstein’s island meetings with Epstein. I still think people should read him but not glorify him.

Edit: there is no evidence, as far as I’m aware, Chomsky went to Epstein’s Island. I misremembered.

I’m having some issues with the cross posting from mastodon to lemmy. You can see some of the other photos here https://mastodon.world/@jwiggler/114076153723742305

I saw this and took pictures and a video today 2/27/2025

video: https://peertube.wtf/w/agKxrNY1SzBx4WZVQ5sTn3

Drive? No one’s out here saying rural folks need to stop driving or else. The anti car stance is about reducing driving – recognizing our over reliance on cars is big problem, more cars is not a solution, and that electric cars placate people into thinking theyre doing something good for the environment ie greenwashing, like what you’re doing now.

They’re better. They’re not good.

FYI the notion that hierarchical oppression is natural to humans is misinformed. There’s plenty of archaeological and anthropological evidence of a wide variety of social systems, ranging from rigid hierarchy to flat social structures with no hierarchy whatsoever. So no, it hasn’t been like that since humans were in caves, and justifying the current order as natural is way more cringe than pointing out that most of recorded history is defined by struggle between the owners and the owned.