I read it and regret the time I wasted doing so. It’s the same tiresome “enlightened centrism” propaganda we’ve been bombarded with for decades.

“If you oppose anti-intellectualism then you are the one being anti-intellectual.” It’s classic newspeak rubbish.

Al-Shamahi, 41, who describes her politics as “wokey-progressive — definitely left-wing”, said scientists who do not fit the political mould increasingly keep their heads down for fear of the response. “A lot of them feel that they have to hide their thoughts and their opinions.”

“Where are the deeply, deeply devout religious scientists? Where are the right-wing scientists? If all our biases are not in the room it leads to worse science outcomes.”

The definition of rightism is appeal to authority - but only the chosen in-group authority - above all else and at all costs. It is utterly and fundamentally incompatible with the search for knowledge and truth.

Where are the religious and right-wing scientists? They either deconstructed because they realized fairy tales aren’t real or they are twisting themselves in knots to convince others of their bizarre (and often hateful) foregone conclusions, which is anti-science.

The article goes on to mention the mask debate during COVID while completely missing the fact that the topic itself was literally science (masking to protect yourself and others) versus a murder-suicide cult (rightists).

Leftism is not a monolith the way rightism is. There are many different leftist ideals and theories, but rightism is exclusively about the consolidation of power.

A rightist scientist would be a comic book villain, believing in science and using it to harness power for themselves. The book The Authoritarians by Dr. Bob Altemeyer would call this type of person a “Social Dominator”, and they aren’t scientists because science is not a useful tool for controlling others and amassing power for yourself.

Since I mostly use computers for entertainment these days I keep coming back to Bazzite. It’s fast, stable, kept up to date, reliable, and “just works”. I’ve created custom rpm-ostree layers to faff around, but it’s not actually necessary for anything I need.

I used to keep a second Kubuntu Minimal partition around but I realized I just don’t need it. If I wasn’t so happy with Bazzite, I would probably go with openSUSE or Endeavor.

This is the one gigantic, glaring problem with Wayland. “The most secure software is the software you can’t use” is not a philosophy I support. Accessibility should always be a first class citizen for mission critical components like window managers.

Flatpaks make sense for atomic distros, too. It’s not always a matter of there being one right way to do things.

You answered your own question. Arch and Nix solve the same problem Flatpak solves, but by using better dependency management. Flatpak’s main proposition is built-in sandboxing and convenience, but if you’re on an “expert” oriented distro like Arch (btw), you probably don’t care as much about those “freebies.”

Is Enshitification a real word?

Yes ish

But when you do finally have that experience you get to deal with age discrimination, instead.

Thunderbird is fine as a mail client. It doesn’t provide any email service, though.

For email service, Proton and Fastmail are top choices. Proton requires a “bridge” app in order to use clients like Thunderbird. On mobile, Proton only works via the Proton app.

As for clients, again, Thunderbird is fine. Betterbird is a better choice if you like Thunderbird but wish it weren’t so rough around the edges. If you are on Linux, I actually prefer Evolution to Betterbird/Thunderbird.

…which includes a fee called the “core technology commission” of 5% on all digital purchases made outside the App Store.

FAFO incoming.

Notesnook.

It’s FOSS, it’s loaded with features, it’s cross-platform, and offers a self-hostable FOSS sync server, too.

The whole country next! Vive France! Vive Linux!

But if you don’t have TPM 2.0 how will Microsoft and their friends enable invasive remote software validation and DRM? They need to be absolutely sure you don’t own or control your software, and this is the only way.

In that case you are best off with Kubuntu, since UE for Linux is distributed as a .deb.

If you prefer to compile the engine yourself, then you can use anything you like, but OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is worth a look since it’s a rolling distro and stays up-to-date (especially handy for GPU drivers).

Desktop environment will be the most impactful for you. I recommend picking a distro with KDE Plasma, which will feel like the best version of Windows you’ve never seen before.

If you are almost exclusively gaming and don’t want to fiddle much, Bazzite.

If you like to fiddle: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora. If you want more Ubuntu compatibility, Kubuntu.

There are lots of options and it’s hard to go wrong. Bazzite is special in that the system is immutable, so everything needs to be run as a container.

If you don’t have social media you must be “hiding” something and will be denied entry.

Jesus, being Jewish, would have been pro-choice. Jewish law is clear that a fetus is like a limb of the mother and is not a person until it is born and breathing on its own.

But then Christians don’t actually care about their “own” scripture, since basically everything they say, do, and support conflicts with it’s ethical demands.

Microsoft has very, very good salespeople and they let the sunk cost fallacy do the rest. Their products don’t have to be good. They just have to check certain boxes for sales and be recognizable, especially since so many people/businesses are genuinely unaware that alternatives exist, or think that (due to marketing and sunk cost fallacy) those are alternatives are “too complicated” or “too risky.”

MS has been using aggressive anti-competitive practices for decades to secure and hold market share. Making good things that people genuinely enjoy is not part of their business plan.

The mistake you are making is conflating profitability and quality.

The old fascist playbook.

Use violence against the out group. If the out group protests peaceful, falsely claim it’s violence to increase your own violence. If the out group fights back, use it as an excuse to bring all the violence you have to bear while painting your attack as an act of “defense”.