communism

@communism@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Linux Version of Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Windows isn’t the only problem. The amount of bloated proprietary spyware the average user uses is also a problem, aside from just the bloated proprietary spyware OS. Most people switching over to Linux will also replace any proprietary software they were using before, with FOSS, which is a good thing. For most people, switching out the OS itself is the biggest step, not replacing user software.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Linux Version of Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  RAM matters for a VM, to give the VM enough memory to run the OS. Wine is not a VM though, so you only need a “normal” amount of RAM to run a Windows program through Wine, ie whatever the recommended amount of memory is for Office. Not all programs work well through wine though; Office might not. I don’t know why you’d need to run MS Office specifically though when LibreOffice exists. Do you have a specific use case?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Linux Version of Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean… “Linux”, the kernel, has a different API to “Windows”, so by definition, no, those are two different APIs a program would have to call. I suppose it’s probably hypothetically possible to fork the Linux kernel to add support for Windows APIs, but I don’t know why anyone would want to do that when Wine and, failing that, VMs exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do women actually enjoy sex?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Your problem is defining “sex” as “being penetrated”. I am a woman, and do not enjoy being penetrated, and still enjoy sex. I’ve only put menstrual cups and a speculum up there before but I found it painful and difficult, like trying to push the cup up against a brick wall. I know women who have this problem and want to receive penetrative sex do vaginal dilation, but I’m not interested in that, so I don’t bother.

  If you like the idea of being penetrated, you might want to try seeing a gynaecologist about vaginismus. But this isn’t inherently a problem if you don’t actually want to use your vagina during sex. You might prefer giving over receiving, or you might only want clitoral stimulation.

  Gay people (including us lesbians) have the concept of being a top (wanting to give penetrative sex) or a bottom (wanting to receive penetrative sex). I think it would improve straight people’s sex lives to have the same thing tbh. I think some straight women probably are tops and some straight men probably are bottoms even though they’re interested in the opposite sex. If you like the idea of fucking a man with a strap-on over getting penetrated yourself, give it a go :) And if you just don’t like the idea of sex at all, you’re under no obligation to have it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They have a near on monopoly, and even if end consumers start switching to Linux, businesses are going to be much harder to sway. They simply don’t need to care about software quality when they have massive guaranteed business customers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What does "Woke" mean to you?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Initially used by Black USAmericans to mean “aware of the racist reality we live in”. Then racists started mocking Black people for saying it and using it as a slur against social movements. Now people mostly treat it as a meme word meaning vaguely left-wing, but in a funny way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you need a portable reader, is there any reason to choose an e-reader over your phone?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Lack of distraction, easier on the eyes, larger screen, much easier to read if it’s sunny out.

  I like to use it as an extra screen for when I’m taking notes on a pdf/ebook on my laptop, so I don’t need to dedicate half my laptop screen to the book. And like I said, it’s a bigger screen than my smartphone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Non-stick pans?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As the other commenter said, only Teflon permanently loses its non-stickiness. After seasoning your cast iron or carbon steel pan (carbon steel addresses your wife’s problem of heaviness, and it’s basically the same substance as cast iron), make sure the pan is hot before adding your food. I’ve cooked eggs, fish, veg, all sorts of commonly sticky foods in well seasoned hot cast iron and not had problems. I only get sticking problems when the pan is not hot enough. For seasoning, I wash, dry by heating on the stove, add a little bit of oil, spread it thinly with a paper towel, put it upside down in the oven with a tray beneath to catch any drippings, and let my oven run on max temperature for about an hour. I’ve only had to do that I think twice over the several years I’ve had my cast iron pan though; the seasoning should maintain and heal itself just by cooking with it. The same applies to carbon steel if that’s what you get, btw.

  My only exception is tofu, which I have literally never managed to fry without sticking except on Teflon. I think it’s because of the moisture of tofu. I don’t press my tofu tbf, out of laziness, but perhaps I’ll have to once my Teflon pan gives out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I figure out where flies are entering my house?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to have lots of flies and noticed one summer when I put tin foil in the windows to cool my house down, I stopped finding flies inside completely. Maybe because it made my house dark, they didn’t want to come in anymore? Idk, but I’ve been gloriously fly-free ever since. You’ve mentioned you have a basement—do you find fewer flies there? I suspect they might avoid dark places.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I use HeliBoard. It’s fine, but I don’t have any special use-cases/needs; I just wanted a normal keyboard, which HeliBoard is fine at. If you have anything specific you need, I’m not sure if HB does it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the one I was referring to! It was (still is, I think, by skimming the website) hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. I went to it a while ago and found it useful, so can recommend. It’s quite highly regarded by the trade unionists I know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you read any books or done any trainings on workplace organising? Most unions provide free training for members who want to organise. I’d leave a book rec too but the main books I’ve read on the matter are by IRL comrades and I don’t really want to dox myself on here.

  It’s about having the right strategy and knowing how to have these conversations with coworkers. Most people trying to organise a workplace come up against the same barriers. The biggest piece of advice I’d give is focus on active listening—what problems does this person have and care about in their workplace? Don’t impose your own problems/the issues you care about most onto them—what’s important to them may be different to what’s important to you. Find out what they care about, and get them thinking about what might happen if we used our collective power to do something about it. But organising strategy can’t be summed up in a Lemmy comment. I do suggest you look into doing a course/workshop/reading a book. You mentioned being in Europe; I think the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung ran online organising workshops for Europeans iirc, not sure if they still do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are some Linux community so toxic?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think it’s Linux-specific. There’s a lot of dickheads in society. If you create a community around a particular topic or hobby, then most likely you’ll get people there feeling arrogant/superior about their skills in that hobby/topic/etc and wanting to gatekeep it. It happens for a lot of things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many more mtf trans vs ftm trans people??⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s definitely a you thing of where you go on the internet. e.g. on Tumblr or ao3 the bias in the trans population is in the opposite direction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many more mtf trans vs ftm trans people??⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not the case… There used to be more trans women visiting gender clinics than trans men, which we got old stats from, but nowadays all the stats you can see show it pretty much 50/50.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you keep your shit organized?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  (assuming you rent) you can use command strips to stick organisers to your walls and use vertical space. You can use some of those stationery organisers and stick it to the wall. In general see if you can use more vertical space.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I get the damn cat to understand I can feed myself?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If they don’t think animals should be kept in captivity, they shouldn’t keep a pet. Pets are, by definition, captive animals. If I befriended a pigeon by feeding it, it wouldn’t become my pet; it only would if I captured it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do black people actually want to be called Black with capital B?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of lit from the Black liberation movement uses “Black”. I’d say that the majority of people I’ve seen capitalise Black have been Black themselves. That isn’t to say it represents a majority of Black people, but also I don’t think “what do the majority of this group think” is the best metric for determining what’s right—e.g. a significant amount of women are figureheads of the anti-abortion movement, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right or not misogynistic.

  I wasn’t sure if I should use “themself” or “themselves”

  Different people who use they/them will have different preferences. If you don’t know the person’s preference, I doubt they’d care about which you go with, and if they did, they can reach out to you after the fact and ask you to change it or to use a different option going forward in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do black people actually want to be called Black with capital B?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a political choice that some folks in the Black liberation movement choose in order to emphasise Blackness. Not all Black people do it. I don’t think anyone would tell you off for choosing to capitalise it or not. Both are quite common.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't I apply SPF50 sunscreen twice to get SPF100 protection?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  …How do you smear butter on your skin then?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I donate sperm?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  People do pick based on career (not sure about UK specifically but generally sperm recipients can see that kind of biographical info), but it’s not like nutting in a cup is difficult, and someone might want sperm and not care what career the donor has. Why not just donate in case if someone wants it?

  I’m not sure how long sperm lasts, but when I was doing egg retrieval I was told that frozen eggs can last at least 10 years, probably a lot longer but they only store them for 10 years as they have limited space. If sperm is similar then there’s a decent enough chance someone will want to use it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Possibility of translating the messages of dogs, cats, and other pets⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Most animals don’t use verbal communication. As an analogy, most humans don’t use sign language. Imagine if someone wanted to create a human translator that recorded what humans do with their hands and translate them into meaning. There would be a lot of noise there because most humans don’t talk with their hands, so most of it would be ascribing meaning that isn’t there. Sometimes the person is just itching their back, or just doing the dishes, etc, not trying to say something. Similarly, most other animals vocalise for other reasons, not because they want to make a specific sound to communicate something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the US so into Israel?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s their attack dog in the SWANA region. As Biden said, if Israel did not exist the US would have to create an Israel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did old-money people of color maintain their wealth through racist times?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You know that there are countries where the majority of people are Black (ie all of Africa…), or majority of people are Asian (ie all of Asia…), or majority of people are Hispanic (ie LatAm… not to mention that “Hispanic” is not a racial category in LatAm—there are white settlers, indigenous people, Black people, etc in LatAm too), right? You know that non-white countries also colonise and plunder, and may have colonial wealth from that (eg Japan)? You know that inequality and class exist in these countries and some families will be wealthy for the same reason that families are wealthy in majority-white countries? And you know that white supremacy is not the only racist system in the world—in a place where Hindu nationalism is the order of the day, for example, being a brown Hindu is not going to cause you disadvantages in society.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I drink more water?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe eating foods that have high water content like cucumbers, watermelons, etc? Or if you find a non-water beverage more enjoyable than water, drink that—all beverages contain water.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a platform like github that isn't for code?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Plenty of people use git hosting to host non-code, like documentation, books written in markdown/LaTeX, etc. I personally use git to maintain a few personal wikis.

  Different git forges will have different rules about what content they allow. GitHub definitely allows non-code. I’ve seen Codeberg repos be used for non-code too. Codeberg’s only requirement is that you only host free (as in freedom) content, so I suppose for non-code that means using an appropriate CC licence for example. I can’t imagine any of the popular git hosting sites taking issue with someone hosting their book, unless you’re hosting, like, the whole of Wikipedia or something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I actually find a job that isn't retail?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Statistically it’s rare for an adult to be 120cm tall, therefore there exist no adults who are 120cm tall. Statistically it’s rare for someone to be in government, therefore there are no politicians in the world. Statistically it’s rare to be an astronaut, therefore astronauts don’t exist.

  And all the examples I mentioned are far more rare than simply self-taught people working in the field they taught themselves. Majority of the friends I have in programming jobs are self-taught with no formal education beyond high school (if that). It’s of course highly dependent on field, and the market is saturated enough with CS graduates now that getting a programming job without a degree is going to be pretty hard, but my point is that it depends on the labour market. Some labour markets don’t care about a piece of paper declaring you went to school. There’s other ways to fill your CV and prove you have a skill.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How should a news article website financially sustain itself?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Donations.

  I don’t find subscriptions too offensive, however any kind of restriction of the flow of information (e.g. by paywalling it) implies its enforcement. What are you going to do about people bypassing the paywall? Even if you only responded by patching whatever allowed them to bypass the paywall, you’re either going to have to let up eventually, or get into a protracted cat-and-mouse game with paywall bypassers. And you don’t want to end up on the side of the people who want to gatekeep information.

  So that leaves us with the possibility of having a subscription that’s not stringently enforced—in which case it is just a recurring donation anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When is the last time you had actual conversations with friends?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Over the weekend.

  I don’t see small talk or whatever as a sign of a lack of interest in someone. Sometimes there’s nothing that deep going on to talk about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some people (i.e. white conservatives) think all Spanish speakers (especially native Spanish speakers) are Mexican?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Where did I say or imply that Mexico and Spain were the only countries?

  Spain has a distinct accent if you are a Spanish speaker. If you don’t speak Spanish, it’s likely you wouldn’t know the difference between different Spanish language accents.