Right?

With hindsight, now being more or less the target audience (a 30+ year old disillusioned with life) – A lot of the books they pushed on us (I’m in Brazil, so of course they pushed the Brazilian canon of Literature) were objectively super good?

But y’know

When you’re 15 years old, and have to read a book that is not only very old (thus has a vocabulary you are already struggling with, just because OLD), but is written by grown-ups for grown-ups (ergo, a lot of the fun leans on heightened versions of life experiences adults have all either lived or seen someone live through) – AND you have to do it in a hurry (because you’ve got like 4 other assignments for that week, and the deadline looms) – AND you are expected to not only get into the nitty-gritty of its themes and such, but to do so in a way that your teacher approves of?

Like how can you not hate reading after that? I was lucky I’d been exposed to literature I liked prior to that, so instead of thinking “I hate books”, I just thought “wow all these books suck”.

They didn’t suck. But they just… Were very much not for me?

Like. Senhora, by José de Alencar, is a deeply enjoyable book if you’re a grown up. Two rich people who married for money and hate each other’s guts, playing the perfect husband and wife to society while shooting subtle barbs at each other whenever they get the chance? AND then they end up fond of each other after years of this? Inject that into my 30-year-old historical-romance junkie EYEBALLS please. But at age 15? I hated it.

Humans being gluttonous motherfuckers who will consume stuff until we’re wrecked is indeed older than dirt. Some of the oldest records we HAVE of humanity involve people committing excesses of the sort.

– Having a bunch of organisations driven by profit independently come to the conclusion they can exploit this flaw in human persons to maximise their profits, leading to a systemic vicious circle where we consume more, so they create more artificial needs for us to consume, so we consume more, so (…) – Is, in fact, a product of capitalism.

That’s just capitalism

You’re describing capitalism

And pretty much everyone knows that’s how it works, the disagreement is that some (very odd) people think this is a good thing.

The way literature is taught in school is designed deliberately to make people hate reading + studying the subtext and paratext.

By forcing kids to read books that aren’t just old, but were written by 40 year olds for other 40 year olds, and then mandating them write reports about the symbolism of a book they didn’t even want to read in the first place, you ensure that like 80% of people will inherently associate reading and interpreting media with every negative emotion at once.

Meanwhile you look at fandom dorks on every site and you see how invested on themes and subtext they are, and you realise people kinda naturally want to overthink media… Provided they like that media.

But people who can read subtext and understand it are less susceptible to propaganda. So.

Unfinished art of my fursona by my artist friend

I’m going to 1450 and giving the natives guns before the Spaniards and the Portuguese arrive.

Without them, anglos probably won’t bother either.

And I am glad it works for all of you

My eyes just glaze over really fast.

Grand Theft Auto

The whole concept is profoundly uninteresting to me

And I feel there is a fundamental tension between the enjoyable part of the games (Over-the-top city chaos with lots of explosions, often aided by cheats) and what the games WANT to be (serious crime dramas I think?)

We have a term here in Brazil, for appointed “job” positions that seem to have no responsibilities and are basically a way for rich people to place their relatives and such in places close to power:

Aspone. Assessor de Porra Nenhuma. Translates to like “Advisor of Fucking Nothing”

Linus is the best kind of jerk.

You’re the one lying. Gnome 46. That’s when it was added.

“Location entry on click” and “Detailed timestamps for files” listed proudly as “features” as if they aren’t default on every file manager that doesn’t treat its users like babies too dumb to use their computers.

Thanks, I was going to post a very similar rant.

The “just works” argument IS a valid one and they would have a point – IF Gnome’s defaults were in any way sensible. They aren’t. The entire workflow is a nightmare. (I made the apple comparison – Well, uhh… MacOS is also a walled garden that doesn’t let you change shit, but at least it’s got very decent defaults)

Gnome’s file manager didn’t let you type in FOLDER ADDRESSES until a few months ago, ffs. And sure you could, even then, use an alternative file manager.

… But at that point you are fucking with the premise of “just works”, because you will need to use non-default stuff.

How the turntables

Nintendo called the 2d graphics chips on the NES and SNES the “PPU” (picture processing unit)

points at op

That’s bait.

Gnome in general is undeniably made competently by competent and talented people. If it wasn’t, it would break a lot more.

Those competent and talented people also managed to make extremely bad choices at every turn, and seem ideologically opposed to the idea of customization, resulting in an environment that is fundamentally painful to use unless you very specifically fit the box of what they expect users to be like.

It sort of feels like an Apple product, in that sense. Very well-made, but god forbid you don’t want to do things exactly as they say you should

My knees and back are fine

My wrists and fingers are war veterans

Now I hate Gnome

But:

1. Harrassing the creators is cringe, even if they make (undeniably-very-competently-made-but-by-virtue-of-dumb-choices-rendered-into) bad computer programmes
2. Wayland is good actually, Gnome or otherwise.

Yeah. I looked down at my wang and there was just a black bar.

I’m old enough to remember when these were called ‘Accelerator Cards’.

Imagine a fictional creature that has wings like a bat and foot-beans like a cat