I’m an industrial engineer who was hanging out on lemmy and my IT guy was talking about his piracy server, and well I thought that a legitimately aquired media server might be nice, and that home assistant thing sounded cool so he gave me the form to get two used desktops for free from the company. And well now I’m still fucking around with them every once in a while in anticipation for when my space will warrant actually using them full time.

It also helps that my local bdsm community had had self hosters who talked about it for years.

I’m gonna be real here, most of that’s great, but I ain’t learning Japanese to visit Japan, I’m just going to use a translator app and apologize

Yeah but in the suburbs of Buffalo and Albany? Or in the New York portion of the Appalachians or whatever their other mountains are called? New York is a geographically large state by northeast standards

That’s the thing, some conspiracy theories are going to be true, most aren’t, and some will bear a passing resemblance to the truth.

The main tool at our disposal here is skepticism. Are the claims being made plausible? Are the motivations realistic? Is there evidence from reputable sources? Am I approaching this with a critical mindset? Am I focused on the explicit claims, or am I allowing people to “yes and” this? Am I letting my emotions or preconceived biases and prejudices cloud my judgment?

Exactly, also people tend to tolerate what their peers consider normal. We’re basically always checking reality off of how those in our circle react to things. This means that if your circle assumes old men always want to sleep with 18-20 year old women, and they do so regularly, then if suddenly a 17 year old girl shows up in the mix and nobody reacts it can be easily rationalized. And from there you can slip to a lot of 16 year olds. And while new people may not be comfortable with it, they likely have financial incentives not to walk away or cause a scene, because he wasn’t just a pimp, he was also a matchmaker, then in that case the rationalization engine that is the human brain can go to town.

Qanon was correct in the same way your conspiracy theorist uncle was right about MKULTRA. There’s a quick summary that can give a pretty big overlap of them and reality, but that’s not why these people believe this, and the more details, context, or scope you add the less they align.

Qanon is an intellectual descendant of the satanic panic, and the framing it uses is very much in that line of thinking. It’s framing it as political enemies raping young children as part of a dark ritual that involves blood libel.

The Epstein situation in contrast is that the rich, powerful, and influential run in overlapping social circles and within them there are people whose role is to facilitate connections (Peter Thiel actually facilitates a similar role). These people may also facilitate other connections like drugs (there’s so much drugs in the Epstein stories) and pimping. The pimping for the elite, at least by one of these people, also seemed to disproportionately traffic adolescents and many of the rich, powerful, and influential clients, friends, and connections of this man seemed to either partake in his underage victims or knowingly look the other way in order to maintain these beneficial connections.

Both of these are very bad things involving the rich and powerful engaging in pedophilia, but the former is utterly fantastical and originates in a panic with no evidence and itself lacks evidence, while the latter is a realistic situation that has a lot of evidence for it

It comes from my first principle of opposing theocracy and legally enforced misogyny. Same reason I also hope for the fall of the house of Saud (ok they’re a religious absolute monarchy). But it really solidified when I got to know a refugee from Iran.

I want the regime to fall, but not for us to bomb it

It annoys me to no end that they can’t be updated on linux

Except the real issue is that it’s his perceived sovereignty (I actually kinda think the Falklands are rightfully Britain’s, but I also don’t care that much)

“I heard you loud and clear when you chanted ‘No! Blood for oil!’ and have committed to finally trading blood for oil unlike Bush”

Yeah. I don’t care if you like your gas stove, I understand that I’m controversial in preferring electric, but the health data is increasingly clear, you are taking health risks when you use one. You should be free to make that choice, but the gas industry is actively propagandizing this unhealthy choice.

Fine, then he’s too creepy to run Pennsylvania, and I assure you that is not a cool and normal place, despite what the Sheetz would have you believe

Because if my operating system is going to break in stupid ways I want it to be my fault or at the very least something I could fix if I knew shit about fuck. Seeing as I don’t know that the main perk is Linux keeps getting better as windows keeps getting worse.

Yeah. After a period of unemployment and having used windows 10 at my previous job I came home after using 11 and told my wife “damn bitch you live like this?” about it

sigh I’m fucking sick of this stupid ass warmongering

Oh it doesn’t have a political bias? That’s miraculous in a world in which various forms of scientific consensus don’t meet that bar

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Oh shit that first link is exactly something I’ve wanted for years. I’ve been linuxing from gui for a while and would like to know more, especially as I fuck around with my home server

It’s only a smart move if you assume nobody will ever call your bluff. Meanwhile my VPN sees I haven’t renewed yet and it’s about to end and they offer me a deal so good I just do a quick check they’re still good enough then accept it. I’m not loyal loyal, but I’ve been a subscriber since the pandemic and I will be for another 2 years at least.

For comparison, I prioritize internet as local carriers > spectrumcast > seriously consider larping as amish > AT&T. AT&T will just offer new customers limited wifi data at low speeds for more money than spectrum and get shocked you won’t switch. Meanwhile spectrum makes me and my wife have to swap who’s name the account is for every year or two to keep the good deal, except when they just sign a deal with the landlord for a mandatory fixed price as a part of my building/complex’s rent. Local carriers offer reasonable prices where I don’t feel the need to keep chasing introductory deals.