There’s a store in my town that either had a bad receipt printer, or had their number wrong on it (my number differs from theirs by one digit). Either way, I get a call for them every few months. I don’t really mind.

I don’t get that many spam calls anymore, and the ones I do get, I just have fun with them (practice my very rough French, try out a new accent, or just wait about 10 seconds and burst into song). Unfortunately most of the junk calls these days are bots :(

I’ve used Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and Manjaro. All viable options. I’m currently using Mint on my daily driver, Ubuntu on my HTPCs, and Debian on my servers.

I liked the rolling release aspect of Manjaro, but I missed having a system that works with DEB files. I’m not a fan of flatpak/snap/appimage due to the size (I’ve often had to use slower internet connections). I settled on Mint for my daily driver because it has great and easy compatibility for my hardware (specifically an Nvidia GPU). It worked okay on Manjaro as well, but I’ve found it easier to select and switch between GPU drivers on Mint. And Cinnamon is my favorite DE, and that’s sort of “native” to Mint.

I’m using vanilla Ubuntu on my HTPCs because I have Proton VPN on them, and it’s the only setup I’ve found that doesn’t have issues with the stupid keyring thing. And Proton VPN’s app only really natively supports Ubuntu. The computers only ever use a web browser, so the distro otherwise doesn’t matter that much.

I’m using Debian on my servers because it’s the distro I’m most familiar with, especially without a GUI. Plus it’ll run until the hardware fails, maybe a little longer.

I shamelessly crossposted this to c/dadjokes

It’s also “heat” and “duck” combined.

To be fair, anything that follows Gold/Silver is going to feel lackluster. Because Gold and Silver are awesome (personal favorites).

It’d have to be $1 million plus arrangements to move to the EU. If it weren’t for family here, I’d probably take that.

Without reading, I’m gonna guess… because people use cameras to take pictures of documents now (and they didn’t before).

Coding is totally obselete, bro. AI can totally write all the code, trust me bro. You just gotta know how to tell it what code to write, like learn some keywords and stuff, bro. Like, as long as you check how it produces looping mechanisms and tell it when it should use polymorphism and stuff, it’ll totally do all the work bro. You don’t need to know how to code, just the right sequence of keywords and commands so the AI can write all the code.

This will surely solve the fentanyl crysis!

/s

If they don’t call back to some of the '89 cartoon, I’m not interested.

We joke a lot because what is happening in the US is really scary.

Ubuntu minus snaps plus a better DE? Mint.

Uhh, it’s because you can “see”/“C” light. Shorthand, duhh.

Even more apparent is when you draw the parallel to birth defects, diseases, or literally any reason we affect our bodies.

Pretty much all bigots don’t realize it. There are almost no Bond villains in real life–humans can’t really exist in a state where they truly believe they’re the “bad guy.” Some people know they’re wrong, but they see themselves as a victim, not a villain.

Not only do they not recognize their bigotry, they believe themselves to be the “good guys” in this situation, with opinions on other people ranging from condescending pity to complete disregard.

If you’re genuinely curious, I can give you a glimpse into their rationality (though I strongly disagree with it).

Say, for just a brief moment, that you consider trans people to be mentally ill. Calling them by their preferred pronouns would be like giving a drink to an alcoholic–you’d be encouraging it, which would be to their detriment. And worse, you’d be liable to whatever diety might be displeased with your actions that caused someone else to continue in their sin.

Of course, that only works if you have a very poor understanding of both gender and theology. The real reason the bigots don’t like trans people is because it challenges their worldview, which is uncomfortable. And instead of facing that head on, they’d rather try to justify their current view.

The Oatmeal wrote a great info comic on this.

Then sell it to a demolition derby show.

Relevant self-promotion: I created a custom launcher, Mere Launcher, in part to help someone with tremors. This launcher uses no swipe gestures on the home page and the favorites are fairly large by default. Hope it’s useful!

Someone who asks for help with their laptop, then opens it to reveal what appears to be several years worth of snacks smashed into the keyboard and on the screen. No, Doug, I don’t want to drive.

To be fair, I’ll use the more convenient shortcuts (cut/copy/paste, select all, save) that are genuinely easier to do with one hand. But Alt+F4? It either requires two hands or else your hand needs to qualify for Cirque de Soleil to hit it properly. Some of the “standard” keybinds are often more trouble than moving the pointer.