(and I hope to never go on a cruise ship again for the rest of my life)

Story time? Did you get Legionnaire’s disease or something?

Yep. Finding gloves that fit is also a struggle.

That one is at least considered sexy, though. Nobody’s like OMG man feet. (Unless they think it’s indicative of my penis size, I guess)

I’m only slightly tall and have feet so big I have like one possible choice at any given shoe store.

Thanks for playing, I guess. Sorry.

Man, they really had some faith in the quality of that totally black-market product.

Dope. Is that always an option somehow, or was it specified?

Hmm, so they were aiming for something else, but got here instead because they had crank theories about the shape of the universe? (Columbus thought Earth was egg-shaped instead of a sphere, like everyone had correctly thought since the time of ancient Greece)

They call us something translating to “the Andromidans”.

I wonder how long it would take.

There’s a definite bent, but I actually don’t feel starved for diversity. Looking at the posts in my feed sorted by new, it’s about half America bad but there’s also miscellaneous news stories and programming memes. No ancient Roman memes or goofy maps today, but I also spend a lot of time on that.

I suspect the next people in line to sign up are also interested in OSS and unhappy with Trump, but less likely to actually post about it, so basically content will regress to the mean fast enough to keep up. We’ve already seen a lot of movement away from Marxist-Leninist politics, which is what the devs started with.

Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I see how I did that now.

To give another example illustrating the quote, Tolkien called himself an anarcho-monarchist and meant it. His explanation did not make it clearer what that means.

Yeah, but like, I gave some actual reasons why that probably won’t happen.

I mean, OG fascism was a mainstream-ish and cool until it actually got to start doing things, too.

I don’t expect every nation to close ranks, but I expect some to. Hopefully enough to form a viable block.

How? Something else would have to pull community members away from the fediverse. I don’t know what that would be right now.

Meanwhile, non-federated platforms will enshittify, be bought out by a crazy billionare who wants to ruin everything, or (like has happened with other, older monopolies) be broken up during a dynastic feud. I see some strong parallels to how Linux has outgrown proprietary alternatives over the decades, and arguably it’s even harder for an OS.

Yes. Go up to someone on the street and ask what Lemmy is.

That’s fine, though, we’re not going anywhere, and we can only grow.

Is someone doing that? If it’s FOSS it’s from the internet.

Aristocrats throwing peasants at each other.

Maybe you’re thinking of WW2.

Given his political leanings, very appropriate.

TBH his writing style was a bit adjective-y too, although the world he built is fascinating. (I know less about his many letters and journals)

I’ve gravitated more towards “desire is suffering”, but the general place avoiding desire has taken me is not great. That one was probably bullshit.

I have people in my life who think my level of patience is superhuman or some shit, but it’s just this. Don’t think about what you’re working towards, just what you should be doing today.

It seems simple to me, but I guess it’s not to them.

I mean, he’s autistic in addition to being a bad person, so probably a large collection of people throughout his life who may or may not have even comprehended his side of the interaction. Comorbidity of autism with severe mental health problems is stupid high.

That being said, the cycle would have died out long ago if some people weren’t dicks for no reason as well.

Sadly, pretty much all struggles against a common oppressor take on heavy identity characteristics and have the accompanying problems. It’s the main reason they don’t work immediately.

Anyway, probably “What I cannot build, I don’t understand”, by Richard Feynman (although the exact wording varies by source). If I write a book that’s probably going to take up the first page.