first birds, now acorns? fvck, man...

troubleshooting sucks, and also, the default security model of desktop linux terrifies me. i legitimately don't understand how i can be running all this random code off the internet without being pwned. i figure i probably can't, and that it's really just a matter of time until something real bad happens.

i went down the "sandbox everything" rabbit hole, and 6 months later random stuff still pops up like "trying to connect to an IPv6 link-local address at this LAN party... wait why don't i have an IPv6 link-local address? i know IPv6 connectivity works fine when i'm at home." turns out those NetworkManager hardening patches i've been meaning to upstream forever break SLAAC, and now i'm too worried what other edge-cases they break to try pushing them upstream, and now i understand why distros all run these things as root with access to way more resources than they probably need 🫤

so, i try to build a CMake project, i know i'm going to be tearing my hair out for a day. i'll need the reference open just to know whether pkg_check_modules(A B) is searching for library A and assigning that to variable B or vice versa. and i know that once i do get it compiling, it'll be another day before i can get it cross compiling from my desktop to my arm chromebook or mobile phone.

so i find a similar project written in meson, where a = find_dependency(b) is immediately obvious to me, and i can make sense of the thing or even tweak it a bit without a manual, just by following the patterns. i build it first try; 80% chance it cross compiles already -- 20% chance it doesn't and i can fix that and send the fix upstream (and now 81% of meson projects cross compile).

the CMake camp: "but we all already know CMake, this new meson thing doesn't make anything easier for us. cross compiling? that's called QEMU." and they're totally right about both of those things. but that's useless for me.

sure, it'd be nice if the GTK/KDE split (for example) didn't lead to so much duplication of the non-GUI parts. but if you just say "no splitting" that's the same as saying "you half go find some other hobby". it's really not an easy thing to sort through all the little differences and steer things such that everyone can feel at home in the same project. that's work, and unless you're BDFL it means a whole lot of drawn-out discussions trying to convince everyone to change their ways for someone else's sake.

okay so the furries are all in on frontend while the Linux graybeards do the low level C shit. the femboys can't get enough Rust and are somewhere in the middle doing web backends and services, the transfems like Rust too, but also weirder things like Nix or functional programming and lean more towards OS and systems type of stuff right?

i like this because it explains why the furries seem to have more visibility than the other groups, it lets each group have a little bit of space while still all being part of the same team, and honestly it matches the people i've worked with like 80-90%.

breaking the fourth wall IRL? i think it's brilliant. my generation got halfway there with "meta": "chat" is just the next step past that.

honestly i never would have noticed it had i not been primed by the question.

as for marketing, there's a lot of inconsistency. you've got the Gerbers and Tony the Tigers of the world, completely blind to how things might be misinterpreted, and you've got the Wendy's of the world, who 100% know what they're doing. Venom? dunno enough to place them in one camp or the other.

Crowder says stupid words specifically designed to provoke a reaction from people.

196ers react to it.

we had a phrase for how to respond to this type of person/provocation, back in the day. something about food and trolls... but it's long forgotten 😐️

the pills in the photo are too oval shaped though. honestly just looks like Aleve to me

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we're experts at claiming to be expertised. how do you know? because of how confidently i just claimed to be an expert.

will 2024 finally be the year of Linux on the car?