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John_Doe_Fletcher

anarcho-heretic, Quokkit guy

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joined 2022 September 06 03:50:34 UTC 

				
User ID: 806


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
John_Doe_Fletcher


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
anarcho-heretic, Quokkit guy

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 03:50:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 806


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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	 Bump Top Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and only medicalize the minority who have proper "will claw at their growing breasts with their bare nails if not allowed to get rid of them" dysmorphia.




One turn of the screw later, everyone who's been exposed to the trans meme will claw at their growing breasts with their bare nails if not allowed to get rid of them because they're told that that will get them what they want. The measure becomes the target. Then what?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Why Bother?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, there's a thesis in the culture war thread OP that we've had for actual years:




Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.






Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.






We would like to avoid these negative dynamics.




Why bother? Well, you're here, aren'tcha?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And the labor force participation rate is...? Unemployment rate is only part of the picture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You have a nested set of parentheses in your link and that's breaking it. [text](https://example.com/stuff) is the form you want.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Typically there's the belief that he was a philanderer and a cheat, but had a conversion experience.




At the very least, a near-death experience has been known to have that effect before. I wouldn't rule it out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yes that something was a Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage across the entire country under the concept of civil liberties. Of course you stop fighting as hard when the supreme law of the land says that it's legal.




Supreme Court decisions are decidedly not law, they are interpretations of law intended to set precedent. The deliberate conflation of Supreme Court rulings with laws and "constitutional protections" is part of why we're in this king-of-the-hill conflict over control of the SC, because people believe that capturing the court is a pass to end-run Congress and anchor in the policy du jour without going through the actual process of lawmaking, which would involve that ickiest of things, actually having the House of Representatives represent their constituents.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always suggest Arch in the spirit of throwing yourself into the deep end - it was my first distro and the learning curve was formative for me. That said I just set up Bazzite for a friend who's primarily interested in gaming, and have been using Debian and Mint for my project machines. I recently migrated my desktop off a Bazzite dual boot to Debian because Bazzite's frankensteinian package management makes it a terrible workstation for me, and then I had to switch to the unstable channel because my 7800 XT doesn't have usable drivers in stable.


WRT aesthetics, I ran Cinnamon on my laptop with a custom theme that replicated the Windows XP look and feel, which was pretty fun for a while. In the last few weeks though I've been moving my machines away from Cinnamon towards XFCE, mostly because Cinnamon's screensaver is kinda broken on multiple monitors of different dimensions and i3 is a little too minimal for me. For funsies I tried NsCDE on my laptop for a few days, but it's a little too alien for my modern kek sensibilities, though I like the retro Motif feel.




I was always scared that I'd break things irreparably.




Ahh, youth. What you do is you pick up the cheapest computer (laptop, desktop, pick what suits you best) you can find on clearance and pave over it with Arch. Specifically Arch, because they try to avoid making decisions for you. Follow the installation guide to the point where the install is finished, you've got your account made, all that. Switch to a terminal, sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root, and intentionally destroy your setup. Do the installation again from the top - blow out your partitions and make them over again, the whole nine yards. Break out of the mindset of being too scared to break things, practice good data hygiene (like keeping your home directory on a separate partition/drive), and know that even if you literally delete your entire OS, you have done that before and it's not really a big deal when you can just backup your home/data directories and rebuild the whole thing from nothing. Then recognize that most breakages you'll encounter are orders of magnitude less destructive to your system than what you just did.


Then fuck around with the explicit intention of finding out daily drive your new system with the knowledge that if there's something annoying you, you can fix it. My first Arch setup on a laptop, I got distracted by solving issues with the graphics drivers and never got around to doing the whole system blowout. Daily drove that laptop for five years and I learned shitloads from doing so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for May 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In brief, you're probably fine where you're at. Keep the 80/20 rule in mind, you're already getting a lot of value out of the "basic bitch" level. If upgrading your tool doesn't directly solve a specific problem you're having, I wouldn't. There are infinity arguments for why upgrading could potentially allow you to do more things: if you don't have a plan for exactly what those more things are and how an upgraded LLM fits into that process, don't do it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd just like to chip in that Matt Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelization does a good job at fleshing out Anakin's worldview and motives, as well as his dynamic with Obi-Wan - though it's also helped that my copy of ROTS is the three-in-one binding of the Dark Lord trilogy. You get the entirety of Labyrinth of Evil first to set up Revenge, and that's a great story that also shows Palpatine's surrogate-uncle relationship with Anakin and how he's been playing the long game of being Anakin's confidant while subtly cultivating his worst traits - his pride and his fear of loss.


Not to invalidate your critique of the prequel trilogy, I think it's a fair critique. I know saying "they fixed it in the novelization" doesn't fix the problems with the film, but I do think the novelization is worth your time if you want an official version (well, Legends-official...) of the story that's more coherent.


Also, I haven't talked about Rise of Darth Vader as the third part of the Dark Lord trilogy - it's good, but really more of an epilogue. Aftermath of Revenge and some character work on Anakin grappling with his cybernetics and dependency on the suit. I'm not doing it justice, unfortunately.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And he's back.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Israel received modest double-digit votes from the national juries, but after the audience vote, they rocketed up to first place with an astonishing 357 votes, total. In second place was Austria with 258 jury votes, and in the end Austria clinched it. (I honestly cannot say who deserved it more as, as previously mentioned, they turned off the stream during the Israeli performance. I found the Austrian one a little annoying, and if it had been up to me, based on the performances I actually saw, I would have given it to the Germans.)




Australia and Estonia were robbed, man. Estonia should've won (okay, Tommy's live performance didn't live up to the music video, but the music video and the song itself were gold) and Australia should've qualified for the finals over any of the boring shit that got in over them, particularly Armenia and fucking Denmark. Holy shit were those two painfully boring.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for May 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Any particular reason for Meson over a nice build.sh script? I've found that the more I work with build systems the more I want nothing to do with them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Much as I'd love to join you, and I theoretically could, shotgun fishing in Pritzker country sounds a little risky...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm very interested and would enthusiastically read as much as you're willing to write about the subject.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've sorta-kinda heard this, but have you got any examples I could look at?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for April 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A good starting-off reference point would be FUTO's guide to a self-managed home cloud setup here (though their wiki is down at the moment, so here's an archive). It's pretty comprehensive so you can kinda pick and choose the parts you actually want to implement.


Not that this really helps with paring down your options and such, but I figure it's well-structured enough that you'll have a relatively easy time parsing it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for February 25, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Reposting for visibility: Quokkit now supports clicking posts or comments to select them, as well as jumping to the current comment's immediate parent comment or the top-level comment in a given comment's ancestors. Link to manually update the userscript: Quokkit v1.0.2


Next on the docket is making the "More Comments" (expand comment subtrees) and "View More Comments" (fetch more comments under the fold) buttons navigable and actionable with the keyboard. I'd almost include it in this release, but I'm having some timing difficulties with updating state when AJAX stuff happens. I'd call it 95% done, but it needs a little more TLC. The work in progress is in the dev branch.


Comments/concerns/suggestions appreciated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's fair and I think we're on the same page. Thank you for the elaboration. :)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, does our hypothetical manlet want to be a horse jockey? Would he find it fulfilling, compared to his strongly indicated preference of merely playing professional basketball?


I'm getting a takeaway of "if you don't have a realistic chance of being the best, or at least above average in your chosen field, you're doing the wrong thing pursuing it." I don't agree with this, even though I think we'd agree on a close converse of "if you could be the best, or above average at an occupation, it's not wrong to pursue it."


Is "contributing to the overall success [of the NBA]" as you put it expressed solely by players at the peak of natural talent and aptitude, or is there room for people doing "just OK, slightly below average, could've been amazing at something else" to keep the show going on? Like, sure it's not optimal, is it actually wrong in your estimation?


(Not to get totally sidetracked by the analogy, I think my line of questioning still tracks to the original topic at least.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for May 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Heh, glad I could be of service. bear's saved me a lot of premature gray hairs. I'd still push towards not having to deal with Makefile syntax but I'm not gonna knock cutting your build system count in half. :P


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Figures it was California, though I'm surprised that this was in the 90s. I guess I shouldn't be though, just because I wasn't old enough to be aware of it doesn't mean it wasn't there. New York metropolitan area for me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you don't mind me asking, about what time period were you in school? I only got the slavery part and some whispers of "Columbus was evil actually", around 2002-2008ish. I first heard the word decolonization somewhere mid-late in the 2010s. Just trying to pin down an approximate timeline here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
tl;dr simple RES ripoff for The Motte


I made a userscript to add keyboard navigation to The Motte. I've been missing RES keybindings since we ditched reddit and I finally got off my ass and did it myself. I call it Quokka Kit, or Quokkit for short. I pretty much just implemented my most-used RES keybinds and called it a day, so if there's a feature you'd like, poke me about it or have a poke at it yourself. It's got vi-like up/down navigation keybinds for comment threads and the front page (though I'm just noticing it doesn't do anything on page 2+ of the main site, so that's one for the queue), voting keybinds, opening comment threads from the front page, expanding post text on the front page, and returning to the front page. If you're used to RES keybinds they should be the same defaults here.


In the event you don't know how userscripts work, think of it kinda as a slapdash ad-hoc browser extension. But if you don't know how userscripts work, I wouldn't advise installing one in the first place.


Anyway, have a gander at it here, pull requests are welcome. It's very small, so you can vet it yourself (or I guess I should summon a mod that could vet it? @ZorbaTHut ). Obviously you'll need GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey installed to install it, in which case clicking the Raw button (see attachment) on Github should pull up the userscript installer page. It's also GPL if you're into that.


Edit: just added comment reply and edit keybinds.


/images/17214178509207013.webp


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 4, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  • Old Fashioned
    • 

  • A biiiiiiig strawberry margarita
    • 

  • Plum sake
    • 

  • Boulevard Tank 7
    • 

  • Guinness
    • 

  • Peach blackberry cider
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As I noted when I recommended the novelization in the other thread, I'd very much suggest picking up the whole Dark Lord trilogy, not just ROTS. There's more exploration of the political friction between Palpatine and the Jedi Council,  the ground front of the attack on Coruscant gets a proper setpiece, Anakin and Obi-Wan get some quality adventuring time, the cat-and-mouse of the Jedi coming this close to discovering Darth Sidious, I could go on and on and on. And that's just sticking to Labyrinth of Evil! Seriously consider the whole set.