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Cake day: August 30th, 2023

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  • There is a lot of people still buying official merchandising from bands and anime etc, and subscribing to patreon and similar Mecenazgo channels (translate the spanish wiki article, because weirdly the english one does not have a version of this basic topic), even if they can just pirate the music and buy cheaper knockoffs (or just buy normal waterbottles instead). I think art will still get make through that, and because artistic vocation will still exist. Stuff where material scarcity still exists will continue to get sold of course, since making infinite anime furry porn movies in chat gpt will not feed your belly.



  • That’s the US social reality, there is some little place called ‘rest of the world’, where stuff can be different. I assure you that India and Pakistan and Africa still sell loooads of bootleg DVDs (that will be impossible to give precise numbers), and also that Japan has both still strong rental and collector cultures of boxes of physical media of anime and other audiovisuals (both blu-rays and dvds in that case). Not to mention bureacracy, like archiving stuff for official purposes (police cases, etc) still overwhelmingly done on DVDs. DVDs are still the most predominant physical media by far.





  • I never experienced any of those problems with Linux Mint (except hardware incompatibility with Mint debian, which they explicit state it’s experimental and for enthusiasts). The user experience was sweet from the start, lots of preinstalled useful stuff, an AppStore that already is miles better than Microsoft Store, and my printer was recognized by the pc and printer program better than on my smartphone. Everything has a useful GUI knob to push or click, and i never use the terminal unless i want.

    Agree with Manjaro being unstable, that’s why no one recommends it as beginner distro, and Pop OS is the distro of System 76 computers, so they also mainly aim for hard and soft wares integration inside they ecosystem (the apple of linux) and people should stop recommending it to beginners.

    Linux Mint is the Magnum Opus of desktop linux for me, and we should recommend ONLY it for the time being, as default choice.


  • They are very niche for the moment, and yes, they do advertise on Linux related youtube channels, like constantly appearing on The Linux Experiment, which itself is trying to be a more accessible linux and foss news channel avoiding the technobabble and too much details on things, but is accessed mainly by converts (with a bigger sized portion of new and potential converts than the norm for linux channels) so the preaching to the choir also applies. But their marketing is of the form we criticised, dry technical explanations. Let’s hope they increase in size and inspire others to up the stakes (or expand themselves), i think a full desktop SteamOS that companies can make a gaming PC around is also on the horizon, seriously challenging the home consoles.


  • Judges in the STF (supreme court) are not directly elected by the people (because that would be disastrous in real life, people would vote for fun or ‘against the system’ in absurd candidates like reality show and football stars, or people would just not know what makes a good STF judge candidate). BUT they ARE indirectly elected by the people, by the process of: 1. Elected president chooses a list of candidates, three in order of preference. 2. Elected parliament approves the chosen candidate (or vetoes them all, and step 1 is repeated until approval). The institution is democratic, just not direct democracy. If people want 11 fachos in the STF, they can just consistently vote for a majority in parliament and win the presidency, over time they will nominate all the judges they wanted. (and no, that is not comparable to elected politicians because STF judges actually need to have very specialized knowledge intrinsically tied to their function, i.e. uphold the legal order from the constitution and interpret law in general).

    It’s also good to remind people that separation of powers in Brazil has THREE powers, not 2 or 1. STF Judges, like the congress and the president, can and should weight in all the political topics if it is inside their sphere of functions (keep the integrity of the constitutional laws and regulations). Like interfering in fraudulent cases, ordering the police around if the police are doing something absurd and the congress and presidency are being neglectful until they stop contradicting the constitution and fundamental rights, ordering prisons to receive maintenance works if the police and congress and administration are neglecting their constitutional duties, etc and etc.


  • There are some hardware sellers specialized in Linux, no ? the european Tuxedo Computers, and specially the north american System 76 (who is also the developer of PopOS, therefore the closest Linux equivalent of Apple in having both hard and soft wares). They could be the ones to do it by having an incentive (selling hardware in more scale, and merchandising too, also accepting donations). Honestly, a company that focused on just assembling good enough computers that run a very hands-off but functional linux distro (pretty much Ubuntu KDE with flatpaks and lots of pre-installed programs a la Linux Mint), while having a good enough price and most importantly focusing on the marketing in the forms mentioned, could change the status-quo. I agree Fedora, Red Hat, will be catering to companies on the foreseeable future. Ads on Youtube are far reaching and not expensive, and possible to scale with time.


  • GNU Linux users are stuck in the early 20th century in marketing strategies, including you. Rational marketing explaining objectively how product P will help its consumers in XYZ is not the mainstream strategy of marketing anymore. It was surpassed by Irrational marketing, where a company will try to associate specific ideas and emotions with its brand and products, like an ad with big cars riding in rough natural landscapes that will show to everyone who is the real man in the block, who has high income, who is the most sexy, most adventurous, who the hot girl will want to date, etc (and NOT an ad that explains how the SUV has 6x6 wheels, can travel 555,8 miles, carry 1,8 metric tons of cargo, with air conditioning, etc, even if those informations are true).

    Apple did not really explain what their various models of computers are to its clients, they just made several marketing pieces of content (including public performances by steve jobs) that transmitted the ‘‘vibes’’ of what using them ‘‘feels like’’ (i.e. what image apple wanted to associate itself). Being ‘‘futuristic’’, ‘‘smart’’, ‘‘successful’’, ‘‘luxurious’’, ‘‘easy’’, etc.

    They need some actual marketing firm that will do a full psy-ops that manages to associate using linux distros with irrational but desirable traits (ideas, emotions, etc), that common people will identify and start trying to ‘‘Keep up with the Joneses’’ (the joneses being the linux users now). Show using Arch Linux as the knack of genius people that will hack anything they want and earn millions, show using Fedora as the thing of smart successful beautiful rich people, show handsome entrepreneurs doing high middle class work in Mint or Ubuntu, show high score Gamers using RGB PCs with Garuda Linux, etc. That kind of marketing is however generally rejected by Linux proponents.


  • The 2nd part is plain wrong. GAFAM and a handful of others basically control the media now, both journalistic and entertainment media, it’s not a true ecosystem anymore, not to mention control of the economy. Who controls the algorithms and decide what will be shown, what will get viral, and what will not get shown, what will be shown but remain marginal, who earns money through their channel is the one who controls the media and public square. USA’s Government is still a one-party pro-corporation pro-imperialism dual institution, that is smart enough to allow a handful of not too dissonant outsiders to show around but vetoing them when actually necessary. Dissonant voices and opposition already existed before, it’s not because they still exist or maybe are more known that control has diminished.

    And the first part is historically wrong and dangerous for the future. The start of the industrial revolution did not lead to an increase in quality of life, people were mass emigrating away FROM europe (where most of the industry was) TO get to USA, Canada, Australia, Latin America (less or little or no industry, but where they could obtain a piece of LAND, and live off agriculture, in a largely pre industrial way until the early 20th century). Life expectancy was lower in cities than in rural areas until the advent of modern medicine in the 20th century inverted the paradigm. Likewise, there is no ‘natural rule’ that innovation will lead to increase in quality of life for everyone everywhere, and a lot of that increase in quality came not from companies and bosses, but from worker movements that through blood and disruption managed to bargain and establish welfare laws, in a time where the bourgeoisie actually needed those workers to make the large sums of money. That is not really the case today, see automation and offshoring eroding those levers of power.





  • This is de facto extremely distorted, if not nullified, by the fact the collective sports (football, volley, etc) get 1 medal to each country, and solitary sports have multiple variants of the same competition that gives multiple medals to the same small teams or the same individuals (gymnastics, swimming, racing, etc). A nation that made 22 gold medalist athletes in football gets behind one that has made 2 gold medalists in swimming, gymnastics or racing. One of many such sport distortions in the Olympics.


  • His public presentation skills could get better, but I agree and support the essence of the idea. An art piece has an idea, a form, an ethos, and a character has a personality and is driven by specific world visions. To take an art piece, and just sh*t on the original spirit and forms to produce a derivative piece that fits someone else’s vision while also using the familiarity to market it better is just cynical. Corporate media is just too cynical and hypocritical to not do exactly that: twist a art piece again and again to get better market outcomes.

    He is right. God of War was created as a violent dynamical hack and slash with a Greek tragedy as background . It is not shallow, revenge stories after tragical events are a common trope. Kratos was a Greek tragic revengeful character that had a purpose and a vision , and he fulfilled his destiny. End of story. Call it pro revenge or whatever, its the spirit of the work.

    The absurd was the newer artists not caring at all about fidelity or having the courage to create something new. Want to continue god of war ? Don’t disrespect the original character and spirit and mechanic of the game, build upon it. Maybe a hack and slash about a Japanese kratos battling against shinto gods. Want to create a story with the opposite message, a completely different character and completely different gameplay ? Create a new game, new characters, and be happy.

    I already find it hard to swallow when the original artist itself radically shifts the art piece, like what happened with Dragon Ball (compare the first episodes or chapters with Dragon Ball Z, and tell me its the same thing, its not). To see corporations being cynical about art, and being praised for it is even worse.



  • Armchair general here, but if i were to guess israel’s plan:

    The northern part of Gaza is where the majority of rockets get launched, since they have geographical proximity to several israeli cities from there. IF israel annexes north gaza, that would already be very changing to the military situation. Hamas can obviously launch stuff from south gaza, but the geographical distance to israeli hotspots dramatically increases (by itself an obstacle), AND norh gaza can be transformed into an extended Iron Dome with several military facilities in place to act, not to mention that now Israel only has to watch half the terrain.

    The heretofore events point to this possibiliy, since Israel gave the ultimatum to evacuate northern gaza, and south gaza for now seems to be spared from this. Of course, if Israel then eventually proceeds to colonize north gaza with new settlements (aka West Bank 2.0 electric bogaloo) , hamas has a new ‘easy’ target to hurl stuff into, but the military infrastructure in place will be much more impenetrable, and the local jews would be staunch sionists that accepted the risks and have high morale and preparations to deal with this, and not the mainstream israeli society.