Nonviolence is a lofty, and unattainable ideal. Unless you can create something that prevents violence in an absolute, physical sense or can successfully breed out the sadistic elements of humanity it will forever be subject to the whims of charismatic violent people. World history, at least from the perspective of governing authority, is nothing but physical and psychological violence.

The Buddhists would tell you that life is duhkah (suffering). Trying to force any order onto only increases suffering. The french existentialists would tell them that the only thing you can do about it is to laugh in the face of the absurdity of existence. Then they’d go to a bar and the buddhists would watch the existentialists drink themselves to oblivion respectfully and with a detached interest.

Anarchism, nonviolence, and philosophy in general, rarely align with your subjective lived experience. The best way to deal with Nazis is not to punch them, but to live your life the best you can and try to have as much fun with other humans as is possible. If you engage with them on their terms, those of violence and hate, they’ve already won. Hug a nazi, especially if you’re part of a demographic they hate. Treat them like you would a slow child. Education, empathy, and kindness beat the nazi next door. Unfortunately though once they establish their fourth Reich like it seems they are close to, you have to wield collective hard power (tanks, predator drones, and boots on the ground).

You, the human reading this, will accomplish nothing by punching a nazi, hug them or ignore them until it’s time to fight them collectively.

What would you have us do? Paxton isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and Texans do not have the power to recall officials. We can’t protest because in 2023 they passed a law making basically all protests illegal.

Even if Texas goes blue Abbott and Paxton are still in office because they’re not up for reelection this year. Plus the state is so gerrymandered, even if it did go blue nationally, locally the dems probably couldn’t retake the state government.

Hate to say it but even if Kamala wins any women or queer person in Texas who can leave, should.

I grew up in East Texas (and moved back two years ago). I promise you, most rural Texans will tell you the side Texas was on.

So the system successfully identified the kid as a threat, but was not able to prevent the shooting because the father bought the guy on behalf of the shooter.

How would you even prevent that? No way the 2a nuts would go for a temporary ban on firearm ownership (or at least new purchases) by family members. Besides something like that could be used maliciously very easily. You can’t take all the kids who post edgy shit online into custody, we just don’t have the budget and it’s probably not the right move anyway.

You could mandate therapy or some other mental health intervention, like a biweekly visit with the school’s counselor. But those nerds don’t need any qualifications so they might not be able to identify a credible threat or help talk a shooter out of their (likely unknown to the counsellor) plans.

There are a gajillion things we could try, if not for the blind ignorance of the 2a nuts.

Those of us ignorant enough to vote for Trump also vote for the Greg Abbott’s and Ron DeSantis’ of the country. It’s not a popular position these days but we, the little people, includes the poo-brained asshats voting for Trump and the fascist takeover of the American South. But they’re too stupid (or more accurately, willfully ignorant) to understand the scope of what voting for maga and maga-adjacent Republicans really means.

I guess through a kinder lens our maga neighbors don’t have the perspective required to understand the truth of the world they live in. Some might be wholly incapable, but most just don’t care enough to try. But the societal bubble the average maga voter lives it makes the ethos look pretty appealing. The rhetorical techniques used by maga media and personalities are like psyops level effective.

It would be irresponsible and incorrect to lay it all at the feet of voters or politicians of any political party. Every American is responsible for what’s going on in the country right now.

Software, 1,000%. I love linux and daily drive it. But when I have videos to edit, photos to rework, or collateral to design I have a windows laptop with professional grade tools to do the job.

I’m sorry, gimp is hot garbage. There isn’t a pro-grade, open source video editing tool or anything close. Inkscape is useable in a pinch. Scribus is useless.

Not everyone is a multimedia creative professional, but most software on linux never quite have the features you need, are no longer maintained, or will be useful in ten years.

That said, I’d still rather break out the laptop when doing client work than daily drive MacOS or Windows 11. Either way the barrier for most users is that linux almost works.

The theoretical benefits of Gentoo or Arch are completely negated by the fussy nature of those systems. You have more control, but to get it you have to do a lot more work. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just that’s the main difference between arch, gentoo, and a more streamlined distro.

Really it depends on what you want out of your distro. If total control is what you’re after, then gentoo is only the beginning of a deep k hole that ends in LFS and a ricing habit. Personally I like using my computer as a tool to do other stuff so anything more hands on than debian stable just gets on my nerves or turns me into a ricing addict. But I had to install gentoo to figure that out.

Gentoo is a filter. You either love it and continue diving or learn you want something else from your OS.

Legible notes, especially those intended to be personal. I absolutely love buying used books and finding notes in them (either between the pages or written on them). Crumpled notes, shopping lists, discarded notebooks.

If I wasn’t poor, I would prefer those to the banality of money.

Trump made the remarks Thursday during a campaign stop at the New York Economic Club. “At the suggestion of Elon Musk, who has given me his complete and total endorsement…I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” Trump said. “Elon has agreed to head the task force,” Trump added while noting that the task force would be responsible for “making recommendations for drastic reforms” to the government.

Not sure I love the sound of “drastic reforms to the government”. But if we’re stupid enough to give gim the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania again, it’s what we deserve.

Machoke me daddy.

Lol, not the dark forest the bright asshole. How hilarious would it be if the universe was full of life but everyone thought we were assholes and were trying to avoid us.

I wanted to be a filmmaker but was forced to choose a different path when my grandfather (who had set up a small college fund for me) refused to pay for school unless I chose something more practical. I caved and majored in journalism (my mom was a photojournalist before I was born) but was so heartbroken I dropped out in my first year. I tried a second time to go to school but I couldn’t stay engaged after learning the thing I had been working towards since middle school was no longer an option.

I ended up going to work in tech instead. In my late 20’s I thought I would figure out making short films on my own wrote a script, bought some gear, but when I looked at how bad I was at social media and how much I wanted someone to see my work, I thought the odds were against it.

A few years ago some unrelated mental health issues made it impossible for me to work and I am writing a script for an audio drama which is hopefully cheaper to produce and a zine about Utopia while I recover.

Bailing on my dream wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most of my problems and regrets are related to the undiagnosed and untreated mental illness that destroyed my already struggling career a few years ago. Not making the elder millennial version of Point Break sucks, but maybe if the audio drama works I can parley that success into a streaming series (Archive 81 style).

I mean if you have monies you could get into spec miata racing. You’re in it for like $10k with car and track fees and stuff, but you don’t have to be a professional to compete and driving a gutted miata around a track is a lot of fun. Or go karts, though if you wanted to compete, the miata is cheaper.

It’s all part of the extant stuff.

As a kid, I sucked at who’s that pokemon. You’re right of course, but in my defense I’m not worried about the specific lore of any of them.

I mean you’re not wrong (I live in Texas), but there is nothing Ohio state law can do about him is what I mean.

The fuckery Abbott and his cronies get up to in Austin basically ensures we’re stuck with him.

Well to be fair Pudding Fingers Cruz isn’t Ohio’s problem.

Edit: As a commenter observed, Pudding Fingers is actually Ron Desantis. Cancun Cruz would be more accurate

Stuff exists, the rest is sh!t we’ve made up.