Genuine question, have you read any of Capital? Not trying to be an ass, but Marx explains in the first chapter, and the book I linked is a good supplementary text too. You don’t have to read all of Capital; like I said, the commodity fetish gets explained in the first chapter. (Though I highly recommend taking the time to read all of Capital; it’s a great text and provides the basis of a scientific critique of capitalism and class society.)

“Fetish”, in “commodity fetish” refers to the commodity appearing to have mystical properties, when in actuality it’s an inanimate object. But it appears animate; it appears to be capable of magical things; and it also makes social relations between people appear as relations between things, e.g. the relation of domination between capitalist and worker appears as an exchange of commodities, a wage in exchange for labour-power. The wording of “fetish” comes from an old racist conception where Europeans said that Africans had a “fetish” of particular religious objects, i.e. they ascribed magical properties to these objects that they didn’t have. Whilst that old conception is racist and wrong, I think the concept of the commodity fetish still holds true.

The commodity fetish isn’t particularly related to what OP is talking about. Clout-chasing is just clout-chasing. The desire to make money is because, well, we live in a capitalist society, and more money means you can get more stuff. The commodity fetish describes properties of commodities, not behaviour of people. It describes the way commodities actually appear; there’s no mental process or actions you can take to undo the commodity fetish, because it is a description of the actual way commodities function under capitalism.

The commodity fetish isn’t about “everyone trying to make money all the time”… The commodity fetish explains the obfuscation of social relations. Not people trying to make money. People try to make money because it can be exchanged for goods and services, believe it or not.

And what observable effect does that have on the world that isn’t exactly what OP is describing?

One could say:

• The failure of workers to identify that they are members of an entire working class, rather than employees of different workplaces
• The appearance of political/social relations as natural and transhistorical parts of the world
• Arguably, the course of pretty much every attempted socialist project.

The commodity fetish is central to Marx’s project. This book is a good argument on the significance of the commodity fetish for Marx.

I don’t understand this ridiculous anti-intellectualism. Why reference Marx if you seem to refuse to actually learn what he said?

I’m baffled by how many people are saying they experience this. This has never been a problem for me. I thought conventional wisdom was that food tastes better when it’s your own cooking, and I’ve definitely found that to be true for me personally. Not that I’m an amazing cook but I think the cooking process helps me appreciate what has gone into the food and makes it appear better.

No, that is not what the commodity fetish is. This is literally first chapter of Capital. The commodity fetish refers to the appearance of relations between people as relations between things, and the way that things (commodities) appear to have person-like qualities. This is not something that happens in the mind but a real abstraction that actually occurs under the capitalist mode of production.

Not what that means

OP said they’re not that tech-savvy. gopass is likely overpowered for their use-case.

I do things mostly digitally except for things like math and diagrams where it’s easier to draw it by hand.

If you’re stuck on your phone, you could use Anki for flash cards.

If OP were smart (and they seem like an intelligent enough person) they would’ve thrown in some false red herrings to make it not seem like them. Maybe they quit a while ago, or maybe they haven’t handed in their notice yet. etc. Hopefully that’s the case. And hopefully they reach out to a journo to get this reported on.

On the other hand hopefully their red herrings don’t get some other person falsely implicated.

Why the fuck are you suicidal if you’re in the US? You’re not the ones being invaded. Talk about making things about yourself. You should be sabotaging your country’s war efforts.

I do have a profile picture, but I don’t think it’s crucial. Other link aggregators often don’t have profile pictures so if you’re used to those, you may not think to set one. In any case I’ve never thought anyone’s profile picture on here was particularly consequential to me.

I would just keep it as is. But yeah, sounds like your board wasn’t oiled properly. Rub some mineral oil into it and leave to dry.

Semi-private as well. I try to have completely separate identities on different websites that aren’t easily linked to each other, and each different identity has different “boundaries” on what I will share about myself. e.g. on some websites I share what country I live in, some I don’t. On some websites I specify my gender, on some I don’t. Tbh I don’t think I specify my age anywhere because I started using the internet as a kid and got used to never stating my age—still feels wrong today as an adult.

That all being said, I do still have varying things I’m open about in different contexts to enable me to have conversations about topics I want to have conversations about. I don’t state anything my government doesn’t know though (unless it’s completely irrelevant/useless for them to know).

In the US, they use “liberal” to mean “left-wing” (and their left wing is also most countries’ right-wing or centre).

Liberalism actually refers to, essentially, the ideology of the bourgeoisie: of individual freedoms, markets, inalienable property rights, etc. In most countries with a political party that calls itself “liberal”, these parties will be centre to right wing and generally support a “freer” market as well as some social freedoms.

I have no money atm but my last round of FOSS donations was just picking based on a function of how much I use a piece of software; how much I like it; and how much money I think it already gets. e.g. I didn’t donate to the Linux kernel because that’s already well-funded, even though I use it every day and like it well enough.

I think my last donations included River (the Wayland compositor I use). For the life of me I can’t remember what else there was but I tend to do rounds of donations when I have money to spare and just pick software based on the above criteria.

RSS/Atom feeds are exactly what you describe. And there are plenty of local-only RSS readers. I use newsboat personally. There are also GUI programs, and mobile apps, if that’s your preference.

Why can’t I have a file in two folders? Why does one have to be a “reference”?

You can do this… Hard links. Neither file is more “canonical” than the other.

Depends on the country. Also “can” is different to “will”. In most countries it is unlikely anything will happen if you use a good VPN.

chezmoi does everything I need. It’s really nice; would recommend.

I wash my body towels (for stepping out of the shower) weekly. I wash hand towels, for drying hands after washing hands, whenever I feel like it, quite infrequently but they get washed.

I’d only replace a towel if it fell apart or something like that. If it’s unusable.

You’ve rather boldly made that unsubstantiated claim. Who do you think these scammers are? They’re from poor countries suffering from the aftereffects of colonialism and the ongoing effects of neocolonialism, all of which cause many social problems including the kind that drive people, either through direct violent coercion or more indirect economic coercion, to do things like scam westerners.