Beats me, I’m not a communist.

I don’t have a substantial opinion about ReactOS. I’m aware of it, but that’s as far as I’ve ever gone.

However, I wanted to compliment you because that was a great opener to this discussion. 🙂

My recollection is that what you describe became pervasive roughly concurrently with the rise of the original Xbox. I’m not pinning it to that device specifically, but it was during the time of the original xbox where I felt that voice chat in games transitioned from helpful collaboration to 99% toxic crap.

I rarely used it from that point forward, so maybe there was a later golden age I’m unaware of.

I promise that I’m leaving this here in good humor, although it is also true.

I thought they meant “Not if you are still on Plasma 5” but maybe I misinterpreted it.

they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations

I disagree that defederation is censorship, but no worries, we don’t have to agree! However:

i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody

https://lemmy.ml/instances

If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.

One of my primary criteria when I needed to make a new lemmy account (due to problems with my original instance) was to be sure I picked an instance that had pre-emptively defederated from Threads. (as .ml does, but there are a lot more in that list)

And he also is overwhelmed by needing to do things in life but not knowing where to start.

You’re a human and you need someone to validate you. I can’t do that from a keyboard, but I can offer an internet hug.

There’s a lot of good advice here. I have a son not too different in age than you. Your post made me want to give you a long hug. I’m sure you have many things about you that are assets and you haven’t had anyone in your life to help you find them.

As others have said, you sound smarter than you think you are, and your writing is good!

Small steps, and celebrate the small victories. Make one little thing better about yourself or your life every day. No matter how small. And be proud of yourself when you’ve done so.

Go take the good advice from others, but here’s a Dad Hug™.

Hey you got what you wanted, and you got to post a lengthy manifesto about it. I don’t feel obligated to give you more of my time than I already have.

It’s OK, your explanation is not required.

And half of it is either not true for me personally, based on some hefty assumptions even if applied generally, etc…

You’re getting very different sorts of Democrat mailers than I am then

Yeah but (IME) the Democrat version is essentially: No one will know if you vote Kamala, even your likely abusive maga spouse. (Edit- https://www.salon.com/2024/10/31/it-is-so-disastrous-maga-men-are-freaking-out-that-wives-may-be-secretly-voting-for-kamala-harris/)

The R version is apparently: Those of you who didn’t vote will be up against the wall if Kamala gets in because it will be your fault. Busybody neighbors are important to ensure Trump gets in again, we’re watching you.

Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

I’m just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that’s okay.

• Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn’t use it.)
• The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
  • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it’s a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I’m wrong, you aren’t going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it’s going to bear no fruit.
  • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn’t true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that’s good enough for me. 🙂
• I’m unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don’t remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

You’ll note I don’t claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren’t bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I’m sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven’t even looked at any alternatives. If there’s ever a time that I don’t find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team’s approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I’ll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.

I’m going with serious societal issue.

Legit visiting a McD’s and working with actual customers for awhile? Sure. An entirely staged photo op where nothing of the sort is done? Nah.

Having said that, I don’t view McD’s any more negatively than I already did for this. It is reasonable IMO for any presidential candidate to put in a stop to wherever. I am pretty doubtful that this particular franchise owner isn’t a Trump supporter, but I bet most of them are.

The first rule of usenet.

Yes. The thing to remember is in many cases you aren’t explaining for the person you are debating with or answering a question for. You are doing it for others who may read the conversation.

I’ve had things brought to light in online discussion change my mind or educate me many times. When I see someone claim these conversations are useless or a waste of time, I just think they are really setting weird criteria for what constitutes a waste of time.

Sure, sometimes I ain’t got no time for that, but other times I do, and I figure the same is true for many others as well.

That was a joy to read.

I’m sorry to tell you I am one of those people, as is my family. Every so often I have a moment of clarity about it, but it doesn’t last long.