ExtremeDullard

Hey no sweat 🙂 I just happen to be old enough to have known / read about / heard about RMS for decades. Given enough time, if you’re at all interested in the free software movement, his less-than-savory traits naturally end up coming to your attention.

Thanks. Sorry I should have linked to it. I kind of assumed it was common knowledge.

Could we perhaps not drag RMS out of whatever dark place we’re blessed not to hear about him from now?

We have enough pedo shit going on with the POTUS at the moment.

Also, LibreOffice saves in .docx format, if you want to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic.

I only use GitHub as a dumb git repo for my GPL- and MIT-licensed projects - and as a place for others to report issues on my projects - and I never see any AI.

If you don’t use GitHub’s proprietary features for projects that you give away anyway, you end up mooching off of Microsoft’s resources and they don’t get any of the benefits of locking you in, stealing your code (since it’s public to begin with), putting you under heavy corporate surveillance and ramming their AI shit down your throat in return.

That’s kind of why I host my projects on GitHub, despite my everlasting hatred of everything Microsoft: I get to waste their resources and they don’t have a leg up on me.

Consider this if you’re in the same situation.

You know, all Google has to do to avoid losing “money that would otherwise go to American investments and jobs” is to stop doing busines in Europe. Nobody forces them to stay there.

That means they must make more money than they lose in court in Europe.

Therefore Trump’s “logic” falls flat on its face. But of course, you have to think about it for the whole of 5 seconds to realize it - something Trump’s MAGA numbskulls aren’t mentally equipped to do

I know it’s not right for him, since he was breathing before the fake Hawaiian shithead even popped out of his mommy’s tummy, but he could do what Patrick Hitler or Vivian Musk did: change his name.

It’s not right because they shouldn’t have to change their name, but sometimes, needs must.

I will say this though: Mark S. Zuckerberg (not the fake Hawaiian shithead) is a lawyer. So while I am sympathetic to his plight, I also suspect he’s suing the shithead and going all public about it for money. In other words, he’s decided to cash in on his unfortunate name. Because there’s no such thing as a disinterested lawyer…

“The bar was so low it was practically a tripping hazard in Hell, yet here’s Trump, limbo dancing with the devil.”

I don’t know where I read that one but I liked it.

Well yeah, but if your argument is that the DoD needed a name that better describes its role, Trump should have renamed it the Department of Pork.

Because that’s mostly what it does: feed the military-industrial complex.

I don’t much like Trump, but for once he’s right: the US Department of Defense is mostly doing war in the world, and very little defense. When was the last time the US armed forces defended the country?

Trump is such an unfunny bore… What a missed opportunity to rename it the Hexagon and troll the hell out of everybody.

This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.

Did I claim otherwise?

Of course we gen-Xers had it easier. And our boomer parents before us even more so. This is totally unrelated to what I said, which is that older folks tend to remember the world as better in the past than it truly was.

Also, America sucks and always will.

That is what I said. There is no better America in the past.

Yes, and Bernie Sanders is old as dirt yet a decent politician in touch with young people.

But they’re exceptions. We need AOCs and Mamdanis and Sanders as the norm in politics.

That’s not a bad idea. But then you have to outlaw money in politics, because as soon as money is in the picture, it invariably favors rich old dudes, or people with connections that can only be formed over time.

In other words, nothing like this will happen in America in my grandchildren’s lifetime, let alone my children’s or mine.

That’s an illusion.

America 7 millenia ago might have been empty enough of people to be peaceful (though I highly doubt that) but people died young of easily treatable diseases because they didn’t have vacc…

Nevermind…

That’s the tragedy of government: rulers and lawmakers need to be old enough to be wise, but age also disconnects them from the needs of the world of today.

As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the clouds and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.

Now I’m the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:

• When you’re a kid, the world belongs to the grown-ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.

• When you reach teenage years, the world starts being yours: you’ve developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.

• When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You’re not a powerless kid and you’re not weaker old guy/gall yet. You’re fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it’s yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed, and a pure product of their time.

• And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shifts beneath your feet, but it’s happening very slowly, year after year, until…

• You reach an age at which you’re very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.

And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledge that it’s not your world anymore, but it’s younger people’s now. People who are now the age you once were: it’s their turn to have a go at owning the world. You’re just in it for the ride.

Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you’ve liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It’s not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It’s easier to reject the world around you than admit it’s just not how you like it anymore, but it’s poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.

I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past, from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they’re not from my world: they’re from today’s youth’s world, and I have no say in it.

If you’re old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.

The corollary of all this is: there is no better America in the past: the past simply seems rosier to older eyes. America has always been as great or as shit as you find it to be today.

Are you somehow implying that somebody in the Trump regime may have a conflict of interest?

Surely not…

What a terrible, terrible country…

And that’s news?

I’m old enough to remember spotting Michael Jackson’s first album in an obscure record store in SF and wondering if this guy was any good, and I’ve always knows rich people pay less taxes than working stiffs. In fact, I’m almost certain that’s where the idiom to get stiffed comes from.

I also don’t remember a time when I haven’t thought the next time I come across a rich prick, if he’s enough of a prick, I might just slit his throat for the sheer satisfaction of doing it.