Not that specialization is inherently bad; especially now that a lot of the "easy" parts of a lot of fields are done, the amount of information you need to get through to be a "master" in a field is higher now than it was, we just know more from building on generations of previous work - so, to some extent, the bar is much higher to achieve a similarly broad understanding of the world.
But, learning to think well, reason, argue, draw logical conclusions, follow ideas to their end, is critical.

I think Einstein studied music pretty seriously too? less sure on that -
but, they, and honestly a lot of the Big Name Intellectuals/Academics did not have the sort of focused, hyperspecialized education most people tend to get now - they had a broad academic base, which included a lot of philosophy, a lot of 'how to think well', and specialized more on top of that base into fields like math and physics.

I've heard people comment on how we haven't had another Einstein or Newton (which is arguable), they're known mostly as physicists, but neither was educated as *just* a physicist. Almost no one is educated in the way either Einstein or Newton were - both had a strong background in philosophy, newton with classical philosophers like Aristotle, through to the recent (to him) Descartes, and astronomers, astrologers, alchemists, etc. Einstein is said to have been reading Kant in his teens!

Philosophy should be part of compulsory education.
It's utility is often brushed off or ignored, because sometimes philosophy lands in weird places, but, the important part of learning philosophy is not the conclusions reached; the important part is learning how to think well, how to form, analyze, and interrogate, ideas, how to follow an idea to logical conclusions, how to form an argument, how to spot flaws and weaknesses in an argument or claim, how to examine the world and yourself.

Hopelessness is the point.
Hopelessness is demotivating, it undermines resistance, it makes it easy to convince people that the only hope they have is at the expense of whatever scapegoat group they're after this week, and makes those who would try to resist hide or stop fighting it.

All the nazi bullshit depends on hopelessness. So, it's important to remember that things can be better, and none of it is inevitable.

Kinda hate that we've hit the point in the surveillance state where my privacy depends on everyone around me learning how to do digital privacy -_-;
(and also caring and having time/energy to do the work for it, etc.)

If you use a modified GPL-like license, which leaves the main software freedom things in tact, but adds a X% of revenue type of royalty requirement for any use in commercial software, or redistribution as part of a commercial product (eg. an operating system), is it still free sofware?
Like - you can still run, modify, read, redistribute, etc., all the freedoms are there, it just has a fee attached in the license to any commercialized use that has to go back to the original creator.

@xgranade ... Is there a repo for arcalibre public, I checked your website and pinned and didn't see a link to one (or to a source forge or similar it might be at); was thinking of trying my luck getting it to actually run since I need to re-install an ebook reader on my laptop after the hard drive replacement anyway.
(Is it in a state where that would be plausible? I figure it's probably still Unstable™, but, not sure if it's even in a 'builds on systems that aren't yours' state currently)

Rain is surprisingly wet. Like, yeah it makes everything kinda wet and fills in puddles, but also...
1mm of rain is like a Lieter per square meter. 1 million lieters per square kilometer (about 684,202 gallons per mile I think; an inch of rain is ~25.4mm so, 25.4x that for an inch of rain.)
Rivers make a lot more sense when you run some of the numbers to get a sense for the *volume* of water involved.
Where I live, we average around 40" in a year.

I've written vampire the masquerade chronicles that are more subtle about the problems of stagnant leadership than the US (and a lot of EU etc. countries...) have been in real-life.

... so, hdd on my main laptop is definitely not in great shape.
but while running tests on it to see how badly it's failing, the distressed clicking has not happened again?
Very strange that it would just stop clicking... starting to wonder if the clicking was a fan problem rather than hdd?

Fuck assimilating - separate. Secede. We are around 12% of the population here in the US - around 26.5 million, just counting adults. That's more queers than 48 of the 50 states have people. More than most entire countries! Just in the US!

We do not need them, and they can not stop us.

I do not understand why any queers want to assimilate with the cishet hegemonic culture.
Like, we already have better ... everything, basically fucking everything... among ourselves, from music to cultural norms to bars to fashion to sex. Basically everything. Obviously not without our own internal problems, but, unholy fuck why would you ever take cishets over queer community?
We do not have to be like them - we can be like us.

(For those outside the US that want to help - boycott US businesses, don't work for US companies, or sabotage them, pressure your politicians to sanction the US & the Epstein class, etc.
Again - until the fascists are gone, not just for a week or a day. But this was mostly directed at other americans, y'all should probably deal with your own fascists and collaborators too though.)

Which means no working in their companies, no buying from their stores, no building their fucking datacenters, no wiping their asses and cleaning their hotel rooms, no building their cars, no serving their coffee.
Not for a day, or a week - they'll just wait it out. Until they are gone.

Honestly, we should have already been *in* a general strike, and every day this country is allowed to keep operating normally, more people suffer and die from the inaction.
But if the midterms fail to stop it - either from dem compliance with the fascist agenda, or them just losing again - then the "proper" channels are exhausted, and there is no path out that doesn't require all of us (in the US) to do something. Or better - refuse to do anything for their benefit.

Curious where people would fall on this;
Suppose legislation is being written to deal with the surveillance and data harvesting. There are two competing proposals.

A: Outlaw data harvesting, collection, and transfer/sale, outside certain conditions where it's reasonable, neccesary, and generally harmless.

B: Extend IP law so that you own - and must grant rights to collect or use - your personal/private data, in something like a licensing agreement.

also, the ones who didn't get away are a skewed popualtion, as you might expect - old, young, disabled, enslaved, people too stubborn to leave their posessions/properties behind - a lot of the healthy able-bodied free adults & their families got away.

For the eruption that killed Pompeii in particular - the city had an estimated population of over 10,000 - the estimated dead from the eruption is somewhere around 2,000. So, about 80% managed to get away in time. That's not great, but, it's not nearly as catastrophic as it could have been.

of good farmland, you run away for a while when the mountain is in a bad mood, and you come back to good farmland for a few more generations until the mountain gets a bit cranky again.
The risk of the mountain getting very mad and not giving you time to flee exists, but, starvation is also a major concern, and much more immediate most of the time.
So, you build near the mountain, and hope you have time to leave before your village gets buried in ash and fire.