I’ve run Ubuntu on a Macbook Air 2012 and also on a Macbook Pro 2015 for about 5 years. Both have worked really well. I found early on that using Xorg made things seem faster (but that may be subjective). I’ve read that Debian (netinst) is meant to be really good on older macs and it’s something I’ll try at some point.

Check out M. John Harrison. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again was his last novel in 2020. His new one, The End of Everything, is released next month.

Rightly so. I’m probably over-egging it. But there are still many people who should know better willing to give JKR a pass. Look at how excited people are online about a shoddy Amazon remake of the movies. Could you imagine anyone even considering a Gaiman show at this point?

I find it amazing that JKR pretty much gets a free pass when someone like Gaiman is so me-too-ed that people online throw out his books and trash his mostly progressive history. Just imagine the condemnation if someone suggested a Gaiman community. Weird, subjective times we live in.

I’d like to see automatic downvoting as a feature of the Fediverse. Don’t give anyone the option to upvote or NOT to downvote. It’s a race to Hell brothers and sisters.

I’ve used Pinry for years and love it. Unfortunately, it’s no longer maintained. Last update 2+ years ago. I’m looking for a self-hosted alternative.

In terms of saving art you find, take a look at sef-hosting Pinry. I’ve run it for 4+ years. There are plugins for Firefox and other browsers.

What a weird response. Glad you read more into my comment that I did.

This has been a repeated acusatiom on the left for many years: that the Frankfurt School was a means of undermining Marxism and actual revolutionary groups. It probably wasn’t needed as Stalin and his gang were doing pretty well in doing that on their own.

Yes, I was referring to the technical hurdles you have to jump to be able to participate in Gemini. Surely we want stuff like this to be participatory rather than passive read-only?

Mild is an understatement. It’s likely beyond the ability of most people to set up. To the extent it’s exclusionary.

Why is it “sus”? Isn’t it basically a bootloader for isos?

I’m starting to see this. Over on Mastodon I’m starting to get devisive pro-Reform stuff in my feed. Often it’s someone boosting (though not sure why) a video from a pro-Farage account and making a silly comment about it. The local instance I’m in is nice and friendly - and I don’t want the arrival of people who just want to stir up things. We do politics there and seems left-leaning but it’s courteous. Occasionally a tone deaf elephant will thunder through and then move instances when they realise we don’t like the being nasty stuff.

Disappointed as I thought this was something to do with Richard Shaver. Never enough stuff about the Shaver Mysteries these days.

I actually enjoy Mastodon because the “followers” you get or the ones you follow are few and it’s all manageable. I don’t understand the appeal of following so many that you can’t possibly keep up with what they write about or who they are.

Definitely. Most of the time communities are friendly and supportive - but I’ve noticed too that there are users who seem deliberately scratchy and saying things that are looking to provoke and who become fizzy if they’re challenged in any way about something they’ve said. I wondered if it’s much younger users who are coming from other places having picked up the “fight me” attititude there.

That’s probably the best way of dealing with it.

That’s one of the issues, isn’t it? I recently found someone who only responded to comments about Margaret Thatcher, challenging negative comments about her. This person’s history went back years and ALL of the comments (thousands!) only challenged negative ones about her. It could have been a bot, of course, but if real, it was a pretty weird way of engaging online. That goes beyond contrarianism, it’s some sort of “distributed sealioning” maybe?

It’s a hard one, though. I’ve found myself challenging someone who then avoids answering and making other similarly unsupported points… eventually you learn that it’s a waste of time. Equally, you don’t want to leave their comments out there unchallenged.

How can you tell good faith from bad faith?

For instance, can you tell if this question is asked in good faith or not? These things seem very hard know.