I view India as a rising power that has the potential to rival China and the USA. I think the culture is backwards in many ways and advanced in others. I don’t like your current administration, but I do think India overall has interesting politics. I mean, you guys have an active Maoist insurgency. Pretty wild for the 21st century.

I tend to get along well with Indians I meet in the states. I appreciate India long history and cultural impact (Buddha came from India for example). There were democracies in India before Athens was a thing.

All in all India’s a rising power with a lot of potential. Unfortunately I don’t think they will reach China-status anytime soon because they don’t exercise as much central control as China does.

In some ways this is good, Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a great experience for a lot of people. But in other ways it means the Indian government doesn’t have the power to reshape India in a way where it can successfully rival the European powers.

Fiction is more important than nonfiction in my opinion. Good fiction teaches you about the human condition. Studies have shown people who read more fiction are more empathetic for example. The ability to put yourself in the mind of another person is not only good for society as a whole, it’s good for the individual because navigating relationships is something you will be dealing with until you die.

That of course isn’t to say nonfiction isn’t important, but that’s what all your textbooks are for. That is nonfiction.

Tldr; I don’t think it’s a problem at all, no

I’m a foreigner. Most aren’t. I work from home. Most don’t. I drink kava everyday. I doubt anybody else does.

If you know who you are and what you believe in then you should have no fear like others are saying. Go wherever you want and talk to whoever you want. I used to regularly post on /r/debatefascism before it got banned on reddit. I was disappointed when it got banned.

When you argue with someone online, you’ll never change their opinion… but you may sway some random lurker just browsing through.

I understand that a lot of the far right use “free speech” as essentially a dog whistle- but freedom of expression in my opinion is a vital part of a free society. That doesn’t mean private places like Lemmy instances have any obligation to follow free speech. But I do support and respect places that do.

I prefer Linux not for freedom, not for money, not for privacy.

I do it because I’ll be fucking damned if hardware I own is going to generate value for some large faceless corporation. It’s my computer. I paid for it. I’m not going to install Windows so it can send telemetry and show me ads in order to benefit Microsoft’s bottom line.

It’s like owning a car and letting Uber use it for free every once in a while. No thanks, not me.

yeah kava doesn’t really taste good but i think it’s much a cleaner buzz than alcohol. both work on the GABA receptors. i wanna try GHB one day because apparently it’s also like alcohol but cleaner - but I have no idea where I’d go about getting it and I wouldn’t wanna go searching for it

Dostoevsky. Kava. My girlfriend refuses to watch Yu Yu Hakusho with me

I don’t know about “evil” because I don’t really subscribe to the Christian good vs evil. Yeah there are people out there who do terrible awful things, but generally speaking the most “evil” things come as a consequence of our amoral decisions.

We decided in the US that cars should be the primary method of transportation back in the 50s in order to stimulate the growing car manufacturing industry. That decision now results in nearly 50,000 people a year dying in car accidents.

We are not much different from the Mayans sacrificing victims in order to bring rain. We do the same thing, but for a different ideological purpose.

This is, in my opinion, much more dangerous and harmful than “evil”. Sadists come and go but institutions and ideology remains.

Having said all that, I’ve been robbed & beaten. I’ve been through heroin addiction. I grew up as an illegal immigrant.

All of those ultimately shaped who I am today, but there were definitely difficult moments. Life is complex though and I think “evil” had nothing to do with the most traumatic and painful events in my life.

i think a lot of it depended on your cd burner. i’ve had differing amounts of success with different burners.

still though, the price was not 3-5x higher if i remember correctly

there’s all sorts of options there too if you have an old car

for example there are those CD -> aux or CD -> bluetooth convertors so you can play music off your phone

but i guess if you do have an old car sometimes it can be nostalgic to put in some CDs. i remember having a belt of CDs on my sun visor. so i get it

CD-RW is superior. It’s more expensive but you could use it as many times as you need. So if you were for example a 13 year old who loved to distro hop Linux distributions… it’s very useful to be able to rewrite whatever you were doing.

The price difference is quickly made up for with the re-usability factor.

Although I don’t understand why anyone would burn a CD anymore. You can buy flash drives with a ton of storage for really cheap these days. You have all sorts of cloud options. You can even rent your own VPS for less than $5 a month.

He stated that the idea that China denies it is false. They have successfully integrated the event into their national narrative. Party members openly speak about Tianenem Square and use it as a lesson for how to better govern going forward

Was it a brutal crackdown on protests? Somewhat, yes. But soldiers also defected and sided with the protesters, and the protestors also killed some soldiers.

It’s a complicated event and an important part of modern Chinese history. Yet most people only learn a tiny part of it and assume the rest.

The book series “three body problem” by a Chinese author started the process of opening by mind about this stuff. In this book, he openly criticizes the cultural revolution and anti-intellectualism in the Chinese government during that time period.

I thought all forms of dissent were banned. But it turns out the party today doesn’t see itself as the same as before. So while you can’t criticize the current one, the one from 30 years ago is fair game.

There’s a lot to say here about the US perception of China versus China in actuality. Propagqnda is powerful and fills in the cracks for what people don’t know and seems unusual to them.

What sort of things do you use BTT for? I use it too on my MacBook with Apple silicon. Although I view it as a consolation prize. Most everything I use it for I can do with a bash script + hotkey in Linux on my desktop.

Then again, maybe I’m just not creative enough. I understand BTT has a wide range of options to allow for complex shortcuts. But practically speaking, I don’t know if I can use 95% of those options.

photoshoot at the border. because he’s expanding construction on the border wall that TRUMP campaigned on. the same wall he said he would halt construction on.

if him and trump are the same, what difference does it make who i vote for? i only got the right to vote last year. i voted once in my state election for governor against desantis

what’s that idiom though… “fear not the enemy that attacks you, but the fake friend that hugs you”

you will never know the plight of these people. growing up in fear as the government becomes increasingly hostile to you while you are raised in school being taught about the “american dream” and “bring me your hungry your tired your weary” and “melting pot”

then someone like biden comes to give a little hope only to crush you and remind you that this country is a cruel and uncaring machine

What’s better? The guy you know will try and fuck you or the one that promises he will help and then fucks you anyway?

The photo shoot at the border made me irrationally angry. You try and put yourself in the shoes and see how it feels to be one of the 12 million illegals or 600,000 DACA being promised something for decades by the Dems

Living in fear as states like Texas and Florida ramp up the use of illegals as scapegoats. Just to see the president you thought was on your side spit in your face

I think it is possible under the right circumstance. For example let’s say internet disappeared tomorrow. I think what would likely happen is local areas would start to connect.

It would start would smaller groups and slowly integrate more and more until you had the internet back.

I remember watching some sort of video, maybe it was a Vice bit, I don’t remember. They were in Cuba at this massive apartment building complex. Let’s say like 1,000 people lived there.

They didn’t have regular access to internet - they need to purchase credits from state store to use the internet. But many people have computers and want to play multi-player games even though they couldn’t afford the internet credits.

So what they do? Create a localized network between the entire complex so every person could connect, share files, share games, play games, etc. You have a mini-internet between all members of a community.

That’s all the internet is - networks connected to networks and done at the global scale. So is it possible to create another? Absolutely. Although you need some sort of incentive to do it, otherwise nobody will bother. The Cubans had an incentive, but I’m hard pressed to find a reason one would want to in the US these days. You never know, though.

Fuck Biden

The economy is not doing well, I don’t care what statistics they use to try and lie about it. People are suffering.

If the economy was doing good, the feds wouldn’t keep increasing rates.

And to put cherry on cake, Biden did a photo shoot at the border wall last week and is expanding construction on something he promised to halt.

I’m getting closer to just voting for Trump at this point. Biden makes me so angry. Most important issue for me is immigration reform and foreign policy. Seems like Biden and Trump are identical in these two areas except for a disagreement on whether to turn off the money tap to Ukraine.

Does everyone really need hand-holding to find their own interests? I’m not going to like the same things that you like.

It’s up to you to figure out what you like. There are an infinite number of things to do and combinations of interests.

I guess I have one piece of advice. Stop endlessly scrolling social media. It’s ok for brief interludes like browsing on the toilet or waiting in line for something… but it’s empty. Works on similar mechanisms as slot machines.

Only boring people get bored. Find some hobbies. Learn something. Life is full of interesting things to do

I would much rather some government on the other side of the planet know my intimate details rather than the government at home who can actually act on that information

They know everything about you.