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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 16th, 2023

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  • So the way it looks now, Trump has won the presidency, and his allies will have the senate and house of representatives, and they already had the supreme court. The three branches of government will not be working as checks on each other’s power, unless we get very lucky and the various factions that make up the GOP split. This is obviously very, very bad, but there are still some checks on presidential power.

    1. Trump’s last term was a clusterfuck. Things may just be so disorganized that he struggles to actually get what he wants done.

    2. The states have limited power to defy the feds. While case law does state that federal law supercedes state law, that doesn’t mean all States will immediately cooperate wholeheartedly. Obviously a court battle will eventually get to the supreme court, but that takes time and requires a single panel of judges to beat multiple states into line on each new policy.

    3. Governments do have a small amount of caution when it comes to their people. One thing the crazy conservatives had right this whole time was that fundamentally, nobody was ever going to come for their guns because nobody wants to force a confrontation with a bunch of armed lunatics. In the same way, they’ll probably try to avoid massive riots and general strikes simply because it isn’t worth the fight to whoever is responsible.

    4. Citizens can resist. Go to protests, donate to political advocacy organizations (the ACLU will have its work cut out for it), and for Christ’s sake, go vote! Show up every year, just not every 4 years. Without the cooperation of congress, his power would be significantly curtailed.

    5. If nothing else, terms are limited. In 2 years we can swing congress. He isn’t going to be able to pass a constitutional amendment to do what he likes before that. If we swing congress in two years, it will slow him down significantly, and then we can replace him in 2028. Hopefully people will actually keep showing up long enough after that to reverse all the damage he’s likely to do in the next 4 years.




  • A couple of ideas:

    • Home Ownership. I know condos exist, but it seems to me that we need a solution for home ownership that is accessible and ecologically viable. Traditional houses (and even duplex’s/townhomes) are massively inefficient from a climate perspective, not to mention the space requirements and cost.

    • Child rearing. In college, I learned that children were typically raised by multiple neighbors, in order to lessen the strain on parents. I think it is unrealistic and unhealthy to expect people to nearly kill themselves attempting to raise a child for the first couple of years.

    • Recreation space. I realize this is mostly an American thing, but lawns are a colossal waste of space. To be of any use at all, they have to be at least half an acre, and realistically, there’s no reason every single family needs their own outdoor recreation space. Plus, a tiny minority of people even use them these days.





  • “I don’t really get why people get so up in arms about discussing it, but Sex is fun. Be careful though, those swimmers are persistent little fuckers.”

    “Drugs feel good and you think everything is fine until one day you look up and realize it all went wrong years ago. I can’t stop you, but I really hope you’ll choose not to try them.”

    I think both worked out well. I’m sex positive and I generally avoid drugs because it just isn’t worth the risk of finding that one substance that totally ruins my life.




  • What is your budget and needs? Used thinkpads from a certain time period are very hardy, but they’re getting old enough now for performance to be an issue for anything beyond basic web browsing and word processing.

    Framework also makes laptops with the explicit goal of being more repairable. Even if you decide not to work on it yourself, it would be trivial for a repair shop to fix most things that could go wrong.








  • I use a lenovo flip. I love the reversible hinge, but the flip functionality is quite buggy and the build quality is kind of crap.

    I’ve been eyeing a framework 13 for years now, but I don’t want to be wasteful by buying a laptop I do not need yet. They look really well supported and easy to work on.

    System76 has been a classic for a long time, but I’ve never had the money for one go their units.