Something like a 5 ¼" archival SSD would be really cool. Just a solid storage chonk, that you can forget in a drawer.

Pipedream, I know.

Especially if you’d add up all the inefficiencies already introduced in the name of efficiency. All those grant proposals, superfluous fluff articles to bump impact factors, etc. are all required overhead to game a system designed to seem efficient.

I heard the explanation “conservatives stop thinking if they like the current result”.

If immigrants committed any crime, the obvious solution is to deport all of them. Less immigrants, less crime, sounds great, no further research needed.

But if it’s about something like social security, they go to the ninth layer of indirection to “prove” that it’s bad, because now they found a study that slightly agrees with one of their talking points (p ≈ room temperature).

Problem is, you almost never know if that’s actually true or complete bullshit.

It seems plausible, but killing virgins for rain also seemed plausible back then in the 70s.

And if you remember, that this whole shebang was only started, because Snowden revealed that the NSA spied on all of us, it’s getting much much darker.

Correct.

And especially artists, or people aspiring to be artistic, are suffering from an inferiority complex which they try to hide behind grandiose “higher values” of art.

AI threatens to expose that art is meaningless unless you can use it to distinguish yourself from the plebs, or those you deem plebs.

Exactly. And putting value into things just because they’re made by humans is a stupid idea.

Humans don’t exist on a separate plane, removed from everything natural and artificial. That’s hubris galore.

So you’re out of arguments and resort to ad hominem?

Well, that’s not very poetic of you.

Or, there simply isn’t anything to “get”.

Art is often enough deliberately made in such a way that you can’t know what was meant, without knowing beforehand what the artist meant. Framing that as some form of sophistication is simply delusional gatekeeping. It’s the attempt to set the own class apart, nothing more.

These are memes. Symbols that only make sense, if you know the reference. Treating these as indicators for anything is just an attempt to create an in-group.

Or maybe accept that this idea was crap all along?

You desperately try to create some form of human superiority, just to feel important. That superiority doesn’t exist. There’s no value in anything just because it’s made with “love”, that’s an illusion.

Like, not being able to run it on a perfectly capable machine, just because someone at MS decided it’s not new enough? Yeah, minor annoyance.

Most people don’t “get” poetry.

Did you channel your edgy 15 year old self for that? That’s incredibly arrogant and self absorbed.

If it’s literally indistinguishable from human poetry, about as many people want to read it as there are people wanting to read human poetry. And that’s about 12.

Or, maybe, we have to accept that art and all the grandiose and deep narratives around it are bullshit. It’s an illusion, it’s just a tool so some of us feel more important.

All that crap about not being made by humans is just the fear that the illusion of grandeur of humans might collapse.

Yes, but it’s not Unix. That’s literally part of GNU/Linux’ name.

Mac OS is more Unix than Linux.

And a lot of people would call that incapable.

This is a form of learned, or rather forced to internalize, helplessness. People don’t even want to understand things, even though they absolutely could and ought.

Why, though?

A french press is literally the easiest way to make coffee. There’s hardly anything to fuck up and it’s dirt cheap - like 10€ at Ikea.

No, but it causes alpha particles to be emitted.

I think you don’t distinguish enough between professionals and capables.

All your points are either “sysadmin” or “complete buffoon” and nothing in between. That’s not how reality works.

You absolutely are expected to be able to check your oil and just a few years ago, you were expected to be able to change your tires. That doesn’t make you a car mechanic, but a capable user.

I’m absolutely not a car guy, but I know how to change a tire. Why? Because it’s necessary knowledge. I also know how to file my taxes, even though I’m not an accountant or tax consultant. Again, because it’s necessary.

The sentiment should rather be, that the system maintains itself. And that’s actually something I would get behind.

Tinkering around is cool, but I’m in my 30s and when my girlfriend’s build pipeline finishes, I’ll be a father, I can’t spend 4h every week fixing stuff, I need a reliable platform to work on. Currently that is indeed a mix of Debian and Nix for me.

At least the normal update process should work completely transparently for the user.