OpenStars

Linux: I love the logic, the precision, the customizability... but I also like it when things werk, which it often has major issues with. Then again, I use Linux at my job on a daily basis, and even on my Unix Mac OSX I use things like the CLI and gVim, so I enjoy having that stability at home. Especially when I need to use a laptop - I need to be able to do things like connect to someone else's wifi without having to install package dependencies first.

I bought an Apple phone once, expecting to eventually jailbreak it. But they took that capability away, so when it died I switched back to Android and will never even consider going back. Now, I too have a Samsung S22+ - and it is the only phone I have ever had that I outright despise. Tbf, I consider that my own fault for not selling my soul to them - yes it is on them for asking such, but I knew who they were, and decided to roll the dice on them anyway. I really miss the days when flagship killers existed, like the most famous one of all time OnePlus 7 (before the co-founder left the company when they announced their new direction to use the ColorOS used on all those cheap Huawei phones), and before that the Nexus line. I might try a Fairphone next, maybe? Or just a cheap dumbphone even - "smart" ones are more like "smartass" these days:-(. Pixels would be great - especially if you want to replace the OS - but I hardly use my camera as it is, and the specs otherwise are not great unless you spend much more, and there seems no longer to be a way to turn that around and get a "high-end phone with a cheap-ass camera".

I thought - though I couldn't readily point to any and I could be wrong - that studies have shown that children seem to have some kind of innate sense of "right vs. wrong"? Like if you walk up and take their candy away from them, they scream "hey, that's not fair!", like that would have a chance of working (and why wouldn't it? but if the scene changed and these were gorillas instead of humans, then wouldn't that have a possibility of getting yourself literally killed, for daring to challenge the larger apes, as an object lesson of power and "know your place"?). So, at least at the early stages, Might vs. Right may be in opposition to that kind of preschool/kindergarten level of morality? And then everything after that is modified by societal pressures - like spoiled children are "spoiled" by teaching them that their wants & needs matter more to their parents than the wants & needs of others. Like maybe they go out to eat and the kid of wealthy parents sees the servants jump at every whim of the master, and by implication the child as well - not understanding yet that they are being paid+tipped to do so - and internalize that sense of "I am a higher being than those sort are".

So if morality changes in the future - as it 100% definitely will - it seems doubtful that the Nature side of it would be altered much, in a short period of time (in the evolutionary/geological timescale sense), and rather that the Nurture side would teach them differently. At which point I hope that they will be taught what works rather than what does not. In that sense, I like how the Bible - the collected wisdom of the ages - and basically every other revered tome like it from all religions across the globe acts to preserve what has been learned. e.g. adultery is bad (hurt feelings leading to all manner of problems), and unless under highly constrained circumstances, murder due to hot-headed feelings in the moment is bad, and stealing from someone is bad (it gets dicey when a rich fuck decides "this is mine now" - is it really stealing to simply take back what is yours? so having mentioned it, I will now promptly ignore it henceforth:-D), and so on. To the extent that these laws may capture something innate inside of us all, then it is good for us to have learned them. Perhaps in the future - or even now already - we can separate out the "religion" parts from what is truly good. As Jesus Himself offered: "be thou not dicks to one another, and instead be most excellent to one another, my dudes".

And this is why I am turning more to religious thoughts lately, though it could be any alternative to politics - non- or not-for-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or extremely rarely even inside of those, like the Mr. Rogers character was a MOST EXCELLENT human being, both on- and off-camera (and too Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek). Anyway the goal is: how can we help people, even when the major trend of that river of society is trying to bend away from that goal (taking away people's livelihoods, making them work for literally DECADES to pay back student loans that are corruptly administered - i.e. a form of literal, actual, irl "slavery" if you will)? Occasionally I see a story that gives me hope (e.g. this one where he tries to fight against the trend), but they do seem to be coming much more rarely than in the past.:-| In any case, I need to create my own to attach meaning to in the more local sense of my own cares & wants & needs:-).

One problem with trying to define "perfection" is the age-old adage of what does the word "good" even mean? In the engineering sense, it means "good for something", like a spoon is good for eating one type of, more liquidy, foodstuffs, whereas a knife is good for an entirely different and while not totally at least partially nonoverlapping set of foodstuffs, and then a knife is quite a bit different still from either (and as that movie Wall-E perfectly illustrates: sporks have their own whole thing going on!:-P). If you wanted to eat a soup, either a fork or a knife - or chopsticks, etc. - would not be "good". And framed in that manner, we already immediately see that this is a whole non-starter, b/c paper > rock > scissors > ..., which invalidates the logical chain of transitory thinking that if A leads to B and B leads to C, then surely A must lead to C as well, right? (nope! b/c otherwise, paper would beat scissors too) So the best we could ever hope for is to say that item A is good for some particular purpose, not good in any kind of objective, overall sense. At which point... how would "perfection" have a chance there of being tied to something in the objective world, if even "good" does not? Hence it remains subjective, unless we switch the meaning to some kind of objective standard - as in "lacking nothing" i.e. has all components of set X as defined by...

Humans, really all mammals, then have this whole wonderful thing where we are not perfect, and that adaptability to change is what has gotten us this far, even when dinosaurs and cockroaches and fishes and such - as measured by length of evolutionary time - were much more of a "success". They were much more "attuned" to their specific circumstances, i.e. a highly defined set of parameters, whereas we are not, and therefore we are the only species that has even a ghost of a chance of possibly outlasting even our planet Earth instead (that we could create ourselves I mean - ofc whatever animals and such we took with us could go as well).

"Assigned Religion At Birth" -> I love that phrase, Imma have to steal it now!:-P I have already changed mine several times, and I absolutely see no reason to stick with things merely b/c they are old. Tbf, it does have some demonstrated value, but for those of us who can do better, we don't need that - e.g. whenever we see the hypocrisy (e.g. priest "on the take"... or much worse), we can simply nope out and move on to greener pastures.

I would argue that sheeple - precisely like zombies - are not all that dangerous, at least individually, though en mass they constitute a real force to be reconed with. Even there, the necromancer behind them (if present) controlling that force is the REAL danger, b/c even if they lose every single one of those sheeple-tools, they can still come at you with new ones (money gives them power). George Romero's Night of the Living Dead had several perfect examples, where like there were zero zombies present inside of a locked room, but then one of the living people died, and after that there was one zombie present. So it is not "the zombies" that were the chief danger, it was that space radiation or whatever in that case, that could continue to make more zombies. And in other genres like Resident Evil, the zombies were at the extreme low end of the spectrum of danger, which the company hid behind and continued to make MANY more, even more highly dangerous thingies and stuff and junk. And irl, Putin himself is no sheeple. Even if he were stripped of Fox News, and the entire nation of Russia, he still is iirc the literal top number 1 wealthiest person alive on the planet, plus his store of secrets that he could use to blackmail all the most powerful people, would make him (or whoever inherits all of that) quite a dangerous adversary indeed - entirely independent of unthinking Americans voting for conservative politicians. Especially if he also controls the liberal politicians too:-(.

I hope I am not straining your brain too awfully much - I trust you to say no though and slow down your responses, i.e. to take care of yourself first!

Those two are not as related as they at first seem.

For one, the plumbing required is different, as in literally offices don't tend to have bathrooms with toilets and showers inside every office space. Also the lighting would be cut off for all the inside units. Communal bathrooms and no windows works for work but not as good for home.

For another, a lot of the varying housing crises (there are multiple types) relate to affordability bc of being bought up by corporate interests. Another type relates to weird zoning laws of what types of homes are allowed to be built in certain areas - and for these at least, there's nothing stopping good homes from being made except again profits.

So it's not impossible, but there are challenges. Mainly, how can already rich people find a way to make even moar monay? Oh yeah and something something the poors get whatever too.

So that's why we live in this perpetual capitalist hellscape, sheesh just let ~~Prometheus~~ Jesus get it over with already!? :-P

Also... ouch! That sounds vaguely painful, methinks, maybe? :-D

Yes, but what have you done for me lately?

Linux users: I too might be one at heart:-). Maybe? Though I do so love my Mac... it has such a pwetty candy shell - and it is even more POSIX compliant than Linux! :-P

Thoughts v. Actions: Our rights are steadily being taken away, though more often we simply given them away. I mentioned Mac vs. Linux so perhaps that is a good example: iOS is horrible, having everything locked down and not able to connect to your own device to do anything with it. Then again, Android is becoming increasingly like that as well, ever since Google got its hooks in. And yet, it is possible to administer your own device, even if it gets harder & harder over time. Mac OSX isn't so bad, for a computer that you control, but iOS is, therefore that is where I draw the line.

For cars, what if like a police-person demanded access to your vehicle, and if their company override did not work, they could confiscate the car? Do you "own" your own vehicle? Worst of all, you have to pay the full price as if you did, so you do not even get the benefits of leasing - like if a hurricane destroyed it, who loses out - you or the company that leased it to you? (I don't even know, does leasing work that way!?:-P) - and yet you depend on "leasing" the software, in perpetuity. So one day, if someone gets the bright idea that "going green" means not doing anything at all to actually work towards saving the planet, but instead everyone has to buy Musk-brand EVs (others have not been pre-approved so do not qualify), then at that point yeah I'd consider jailbreaking a car. Though the risk could be that you could lose the whole vehicle - Might may not Make Right, but it sure can be a powerful jackboot to come down upon your neck, if it so chooses. So like everything else, it would be a cost-benefit tradeoff.:-|

I don't know if good & evil are human conventions - I mean obviously to some extent, definitely the part about what we "accept" is - but also, most people innately seem to feel certain things, so by virtue of being "natural", are those things that are in-grained and inherent in us (and also other animals as well) the Truth, that we need to discover and obey b/c that is what will generate maximal Happiness for us?

To clarify, I am not "pushing" for the death of democracy. I am worried sick that it is coming, regardless of my wishes either way. I do not control the Maga-hat-Repubs, nor the corporate-stooge-Democrats either, and it looks like both sides are in agreement that e.g. the bottom HALF of all of Americans "should" only have 2% of the entire wealth of this country. I did not make that figure up btw... (article 1, from 5 years ago, and updated article 2). Why that is relevant is that no matter who wins the next election, the "American Dream" (white picket fence, ability to afford a child, 2.3 dogs or whatever) has already died, at least for the simple majority of citizenry.

Perfection & mistakes: setting aside a God or even a rung further down to a mere Creator, if we had a perfect "Father" or "President" or some such, or even "boss" at work, then would they not allow us to make our own mistakes, as part of thier being perfect? How else could we possibly learn? How else could we possibly be happy, if we were all robots will no free will, or more precisely not even the illusion of thus? On the other hand, sheeple gonna sheep, and that's all there is to it: for many, what religion (or politics, or anything at all) "means" is that some book said it, hence it MUST be true - they don't bother to figure it out, or even to search for proper interpretations. B/c they are stupid... and we have to come to terms with that - they just do not have capacity to evaluate such things, therefore they do not. Especially a parent/couple spending all of their time raising kids. I find that irl I have much more in common with people of all religions who are thinkers, than I do with people who may just so happen to believe similar word-sounds as myself, but who don't have the faintest idea what those concepts even mean. Hehe, Jesus Himself agrees: "be ye either hot or cold, but for fucks sake, at least care about it one way or the other you f-ing plebes!?" (hehe, I may have modified that slightly:-D)

You are an awesome person and I love hearing how you think:-).

Simple: when someone decides to put them in charge. Before then, they are simply "folk", and since intelligence is to a large degree domain-specific (in contrast to attitudes such as wisdom, the willingness to learn from mistakes, either made by oneself or others), someone could be perfectly happy, willing, and capable of e.g. oh let's say running a farm, or doing a minimum wage job such as working at a fast-food restaurant. But that does not necessarily translate well into "citizenship" i.e. voting (+ other things too, but that is the main, minimum-entry one), which requires a level of education in the complex matters of economic policy, foreign affairs, or hrm... I dunno, maybe starting with the ability to simply name the 3 main branches of government?

It is dangerous for them to vote yes, but they do not know that. Would you ask your dog to fly? Or your car to "do more with less" as in go a greater distance with less gasoline?

i.e., don't hate the playa, especially instead of working to change the game.

There is a fascinating video series on YouTube by Innuendo Studios called The Alt-Right Playbook that explains far better than I what I am attempting to convey.

Basically, it is not nearly as simple as that - yes there are elements of the conservative movement that use violent propaganda, but often it "hides" its true intentions well, and instead merely talks about the love, peace, and saving little babies aspects. Once you get drawn into those, the layers of the onion begin to peel back, and you get drawn in deeper, and deeper still, but at first, it is important to note that they have candy-coated "nice" versions as well. This makes it far more dangerous than it would be otherwise, if it were instead just straight-up Nazi propaganda visible to everyone from the start.

And yes, "collaborators" hurt people, arguably more so than full-on true believers, if only b/c there are so very many more of the former compared to the latter. Please note that I did put the word "good" in double-quotes, thereby calling into question whether it could fully apply - and yes I realize I am being inconsistent in that, b/c I also put the word "collaborators" that way too, that time more for the different reason of emphasis, but hopefully this deeper explanation helps to clarify. i.e. intentions matter, for some things. e.g. these self-described "good" people may not deserve to be killed for their involvement in their crimes, though neither should they be allowed to retain a leadership position, especially over & above those of us who... you know, actually read books & know stuff. This is why I did not put the word kind-hearted in double-quotes, in the sentence overall of "many conservatives are... kind-hearted people", b/c that one I truly do believe in. i.e., kind-hearted, not necessarily clear-thinking, as those are entirely disjunct concepts.

As is often the case, Truth is somewhere in-between the extremes. They can be "good" as in kind-hearted people, yet "bad" at fulfilling a leadership role, at the same time. And they can also be gullible, as too can liberals - we should all strive to not fall into those, or any, traps imho.

I think many conservatives are "good" (to the extent that any of us are, really), kind-hearted people. The movement itself is not, but the people who believe in it tend to fall for certain types of errors, e.g. being gullible.

Though many are not that way, and liberals also tend to fall for different types of errors, ironically also being gullible if we think our leaders give a damn.

The important thing is that our overlords want to keep us at each other's throats, as if it is two parts of the common man that are fighting against one another, when really it is the wealthy who regardless of which side wins the election, swoopes in to buy the political players and get their own interests, at the expense of the common man.:-(

What ladder?

Actually... yes, it literally is. They focus on what is effective, and if the pushy behavior works for them to get what they want, they do it. And it does. So they do.