MACA - Make America Cancer Again

Valid for democracy, but not valid for the problems we’re facing (i.e. most importantly climate-change)

Yes it’s absolutely depressing. Also just thinking about the idiocratic/authoritarian/right-wing movement that doesn’t want to do against or even wants to accelerate climate-change.

But apart from good things that are happening right now (as I just watched it https://youtu.be/vUA1kFSJnYQ)

Think about it, there are what > 8 billion people in a highly developed /technological advanced world, how realistic is it really that everyone of them will die for good? Evolution took all kinds of measures to avoid it. There will likely be humans (unfortunately likely those that mostly caused climate-change) that will survive. We can already create artifical climate, there’s vertical farming that can be isolated from the outside. Even if we’re approaching a hell like planet with > 10 C warming, it’s not that we don’t have very cold places that may be suitable for living then. Yes it will be a lot less people but I don’t believe in a total collapse. We have all kinds of redundancy with data storage etc. know-how won’t just be lost.

Also while all of this is happening rapidly on a geological timescale it’s still slow for humanity and it’s ability to adapt. We’re still talking about centuries, for the hellish kind of development. It’s getting uncomfortable the next decades, but likely so that humanity will finally grasp the fuck up, and takes effective counter-measures. Also the probability that we advance quick enough to sequester carbon so fast (and find safe geoengineering), to reverse at least some of the tipping points is still on the table.

I honestly hate this rhetoric (nothing personal). Thing is, it gets worse and worse, the less we do, it’s not binary, and while the planet will not be able to support close as many people as of now, humanity will survive. But it’s very dependent on the actions we do now, how many will…

It is a reactionary response to Capitalism’s decay

Interesting theory, need to think about that. Though I don’t think Fascism and Capitalism are necessarily exclusive. (As example China, which is I’d say fascist and against the usual theory of “communism” quite state-capitalistic)

If you understand that the rate of profit trends towards zero, why would you think Capitalism is stable?

Because the trend is clearly not to zero currently, there’s a lot of rich people (and the number is growing), profit is still growing, it’s just that the gap between poor and rich is also growing. But Capitalism doesn’t care about a lot of poor people. How that will be long-term is another story (as said ecosystems are the limiting factor).

I mean we’re seeing it in the USA already don’t we (as one of the more capitalistic examples)? Capitalism is still pretty stable, a lot of are mentally ill (otherwise I can’t explain why someone like Trump is so popular). (And physically too). Opiate crisis. Richest country, yet the poorest are living in similar conditions as those in the poorer countries in Africa. I can name more examples of society falling apart, but yet capitalism still being strong (even in the democratic party). I mean I agree with your points (which are undermined by mine), yet that doesn’t mean that capitalism is falling apart - and that means IMO that a major part of the people agree (and especially those with power, be it financial/political or military), that the system is is inherently flawed, and needs to be changed. But exactly that is something I’m not seeing anytime soon.

Yep, Internet addiction is real, and so widely socially accepted…

Does it really? How do you come to that conclusion?

I mean climate change is certainly faster than most of the stubborn people, not grasping how much damage has already been done (as all of this comes in delayed and with feedback effects, which are already in motion).

It is, but I fear it will break apart much later than we hope it is. And likely violently, as worse ecosystems also mean less base on which capitalism can grow which in the past lead to conflicts. I mean the whole stuff gets already unstable when it isn’t growing (and I don’t mean capitalism as whole, more like everything connected to it)

Believe me I’m doing all parts of things towards this, but I’m being realistic, I’m just 1 of 8 billion people… And Capitalism as much as I would like it to be different seems to be a rather stable system (destabilising all sorts of other things, don’t get me wrong). I expect other things to collapse first (and foremost ecological systems).

Yeah I don’t know. Just see how the modern world is shaping society to the negative. Generation Instagram/TikTok all want to be influencers, there’s growing mental illnesses. Fertility rapidly declining (and it isn’t unfortunately all because of education). Capitalism is almost perfected abusing the dopamine system in an unhealthy way. I don’t want to be a doomer. I just don’t see where we are close to utopia. Which for me would be more sociali(sm) more community, less narcissism/egoism and more solarpunk. But right now we are on a different path. I’m happy to be proven wrong though…

Would be interesting to know how much of that the steam deck is

And even the criminal case needs to be really criminal it seems.

Not sure what you want to tell me exactly, as the above also applies to Gentoo ^^…

But I guess as a Gentoo user you have a lot of discipline then?

You cannot reinstall Windows, if you’ve never installed it ¯\(ツ)/¯

Yep tinkering with the system is probably the main issue (for that NixOS is awesome btw.). But even when you’re not constantly tinkering. System-State accumulates over time, bugs are also apparent in (upgrading of) distros, and the maintainers of a distro cannot realistically handle every upgrade time-point x -> y, so stuff will likely break after some time.

But even when I have fixed all the issues in my previous at some time broken distros, at some point it just feels good to have a freshly installed system without all that dirty accumulated state (NixOS + impermanence and you’ll have that every reboot :P, see also this)

You probably don’t have much on that system and/or you have a lot of discipline…

I did reinstall it after max 1 1/2 years (Arch btw.), either because of breakage, or weird behavior, or it was a chaotic dumpster fire.

At some point I discovered NixOS and was sold (and am still sold after 3 1/2 years using it). But it has a steep learning curve, though it certainly got better over that time.

Wow first Linux distro, not bad, it’s not particularly beginner friendly (you’ll have to know how linux works and learn all the Nix related stuff), for me it’s the last distro though^^

ChatGPT is not yet really good for Nix, probably because the training set consists of not that much nix yet. So yeah browsing in nixpkgs and either the options or package search is the way to go IMO.

It’s not for everyone. I think it’s almost a requirement to be a programmer, and to be familiar with functional programming. It also has quite a few (necessary?) quirks/magic (module system, overlays, typing, config overrides etc.).

Actually one of my colleagues just switched from Pop OS! since System76 put all focus into their new desktop environment (while the current distro is barely maintained), which will be available on NixOS too, when it’s ready (which is his plan to use, and mine too).