I’ll assume that I’m just missing a reference or three because the alternative is that I’m having a stroke.

I hate making something like that mandatory, but another benefit would be to reduce the stigma of guns in general.

It always surprises me how frequently I hear from otherwise pretty open minded people some version of, “I don’t own guns and I’ve never needed a gun. Therefore nobody anywhere needs one or should have one for any reason and I’d fully support completely banning them, and if that violates the constitution, so what, it’s what I want.”

Further, gun education would reduce the ideas and legislation to restrict guns based on nonsense. There’s a lot of fear of “scary guns” based on little more than superficial appearance, and I even see a lot of ideas from people claiming to want compromise, but it usually comes down to one of a few things: some arbitrary delineation between guns they’re okay with because they don’t look scary, something that would do little more than make criminals out of otherwise law abiding people, or depriving law abiding citizens of constitutionally guaranteed rights without due process.

Oh now don’t start that again!

I was so, so hyped for Squadrons, even had a HOTAS setup on my list…then the game came out.

Everything I heard, even from people who loved it, totally turned my view of it sour, and I was so glad I didn’t sink any money into it.

Maybe someday we’ll get a SW fighter sim that delivers.

But you’re working in that scenario because you’re being paid.

If you had that job where your employer only had a say in what you deliver (ignoring the obvious pitfalls of that arrangement), and they suddenly stopped paying you, or started only paying you half…would you still be okay with it?

If not, then you’re working because you like being paid, not because you want to work.

On the flip side: if you had some sort of situation where you got paid a comfortable living that allowed you to cover all your expenses, indulge some luxury, and save…and you got this money no matter what, just for waking up…would you still work every day? Or work until your employer was satisfied with your output each day/week/pay period?

Some might…most specifically (I would think) people whose jobs provide some sort of personal fulfillment like teachers, caregivers, etc. but I think the vast majority of people would take the money and live lives that offered personal enjoyment and fulfillment, doing what they wanted to do, not what an employer (who at that point isn’t their source of pay) would like them to do.

But let’s say you could also make that living wage just by existing. In a world where you wake up each day and a day’s worth of your living wage was automatically deposited into your account whether you worked a job you liked or even if you went out for a walk in the park…would you still choose to work every day?

Right?

“Nobody wants to work anymore!”

Like no shit man.

News Flash: nobody has wanted to work ever. They work because the compensation lets them live the lives they want outside of work. If nobody wants to work for you, it’s because you either aren’t willing to compensate them enough to do that, or your job makes them so miserable that it’s not worth it for them to trade away that much happiness for the compensation.

Or both. In lots of cases it’s both.

The more the old lies are proven as lies, the closer we get to the truth:

Just as important as “getting the job done” is the notion among many employers that they truly believe that with their payroll they are buying human lives and happiness. That if they are paying a worker for their time and labor that they are entitled to also dictate how that person feels about it…and if that worker is not sufficiently miserable, then they can be squeezed further.

I used to think that it was purely about money…that the idea was that if a worker ever got “all caught up” and had free time, then they should be generating more wealth for their employer in some other way…but then we had the pandemic.

The pandemic where lots and lots of workers had to suddenly do the whole work from home thing. And in that time, these employers were thrilled to go along with it, since it meant continuing to make money. And in that time, most office workers eventually turned out to be happier and even more productive.

…yet in the wake of the pandemic, many of these employers have chosen less productivity in exchange for bringing their employees back to offices. The only explanation for bringing employees back in who were happier and more productive from home is that these employers value the image of control and the ability to make their workers unhappy more than they value productivity and money.

I went from IE to Firefox back in that same timeframe, then by the time Chrome came out, my Firefox just had too much clutter and Chrome was way faster.

Within the past year, Chrome managed to enshittify itself enough that I’ve gone back to Firefox on PC (still using chrome on mobile) and it’s the same sort of “lighter, faster” feel that I got years ago when I left it for Chrome.

There’s also the whole ad blocker bullshit too, of course. YouTube ads were the last straw for me.

Oh yeah that’s a good one too.

The old “you embarrassed the company, report to the principal’s office”.

I’m only drafting for career not hobby at this point, so it’s all industry standard software.

One of these days, when I have a house, I might get into 3D printing, but not for the foreseeable future.

For 3D stuff, I’m good with Inventor, but it certainly has it’s quirks.

The Autodesk forums are 40% this, 20% “just learn to program, spend a few years getting good at it, then write yourself a custom script to do what you are struggling with”, 20% “you are wrong for wanting that in the first place” or “you are wrong for having this issue”, 15% “this has been brought up once at some point in the past two decades, try searching”, 4% “OMG yes I have this issue too!”…

…and 1% split between actual helpful answers, and confirmation that it’s a known issue.

This

And when I run into issues, I would rather be using the OS that is the most common so that I have more options to get good info for a fix. I don’t want problems that nobody’s ever encountered, or for which the fix is beyond my limited technical ability.

It’s somewhat amusing when I see people on Lemmy proselytizing for Linux and literally while laying out their points to convince someone how easy it is, they’ll talk about doing shit that is already beyond my ability. And I’m not some 90 year old who struggles to turn it on. I’m just a user that doesn’t care to use any OS that I’ll need to take time to learn to figure out how to use it.

When I start a Windows machine I just do what I need to do.

When even a Linux cheerleader is trying to convince someone how easy it is, they’re already indicating more effort than I want to put into it.

“Intuitive” is basically telling you what you want and being right about it.

The opposite of telling you what you want isn’t being intuitive, it’s being flexible and customizable.

Real talk: at this point, you may be my main reason to still be active on Lemmy.

I switch from Google to PA with the first email like this that I got from Google.

I tried maybe 4 alternatives and ended up sticking with PA. I don’t really like it…it’s most used icons are small and hard to reach, navigation is very unintuitive to me…but basically it sucked less than the other options.

I think it’s mostly that it comes across more like religious proselytizing than “good advice”.

Also, that “advice” is mixed in with just as much messaging about how fussy it can be and implications that you’ve got to basically be an enthusiast level user to make it work for you. Not that it necessarily is that way, but overall that’s the messaging I see from this community.

As someone who tried Linux many years ago, disliked it, and went back to Windows, generally my take is that Windows is far from perfect, but it’s the best option for me, and I’m happy to try and ignore the Lemmy buzz around it…but that buzz just gets more and more annoying over time.

I’m not even sure these GOP reps are getting a dime from Russia.

More likely: they’re not getting anything from Russia, but their god-emperor Donny sure is, and he’s also got a vendetta against Ukraine after the whole Biden investigation debacle, so he’s using his inexplicable political clout within the party to pressure them into doing his bidding, with the penalty for falling to do so being that he says bad things about them, costing them an election.

Too many weirdos peeing in your favorite car, harassing other passengers, stinking, and listening to their music full blast on their portable speakers for it to be my favorite car.

Thanks