Cool! I always love keeping up with GIMP, thanks for working on it!

Apparently it was added in GIMP in 1999 to sample that bitmaps could be used as brushes, and nobody bothered to remove it. At this point I guess there would be an outrage if they did.

By allowing users to choose their instance we are giving them that choice though. I chose piefed.social in part because I agree with the moderation policy, and I don’t want to waste my time doing it myself. I want to have reasonable admins who filter away stuff I don’t want to see before it ever gets to me. That is a choice I have as a user, just like the choice you (and users of your instance) have to do this job yourself.

The important thing is transparency, in my opinion.

The official story is amazing.

1. Plan crime perfectly, engraved bullets and all with a perfect escape in the middle of New York
2. Bring murder weapon and all relevant evidence to McDonalds days later, be snitched on by employee who recognizes you from a grainy half-foto

If he wanted to be caught he wouldn’t have to be snitched on by some random McDonalds employee. If he didn’t want to be caught there’s just no way the official story holds.

At least if you make a mural of him it’ll vaguely resemble someone who made things better for a little while.

I just remembered this amazing book:
Why Not Socialism by Gerald A. Cohen.

Super nice and easy read, fantastic introduction. It has been years and years since I read it but I highly recommend it as an introduction.

I’m a bit sceptical of people who are too into “socialism as a government type” - they tend to develop fundamentalist ideas about what the perfect society should look like, and which means are justified in order to get there. Usually all means will be. To me socialism is at its best as a critique, allowing us to understand what’s going on in the world and how to fight it piece by piece instead of trying to construct some ideal society based on a feeble understanding of reality.

I guess what is considered easy is very subjective. I seriously think Marx’ Manifesto of the Communist Party is not a bad place to start. It’s everything Capital is not: short, easy to read, somewhat superficial.

I’d say the historical analysis is at the core of marxism as much as the economic one, and it’s summarized perfectly right from the start:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

Make sure to take a second to reflect on this and the Soviet Union and the failure of Marxist-Leninism. It was not the end of history, but another common ruin. Which brings me to the biggest problem of studying socialist theory: The line between theory and propaganda is often blurred. The Manifesto of the Communist Party itself, thought-provoking as it is, is a pamphlet made for wide circulation, and more propaganda than academic work. Marx’ understanding of history revolves around how proletarian revolts such as the Soviet Union go wrong and end up reproducing existing power structures. Yet many of today’s self-proclaimed Marxists are somehow blind to this and end up tricking themselves with all sorts of mind games.

That’s why I think it’s important to start with Marx himself. Understand his view of history and his criticism of the economy, and reflect on what it means for what you see in history since it was written. It still holds, though the theory itself has become weaponized in the very historical and economical dynamics he is describing. If you understand this independently you’re less likely to become a sucker who falls for propaganda.

And of course, Marx wasn’t a god, and he didn’t get it all right. I personally think the main problem is his understanding of history as having an “end” (a teleological account) - Marx believed every class revolt would lead us slightly closer to a classless society, and that eventually we would get there. This builds on Hegel, who had a similar understanding of history rooted in religion rather than communism. I think this is plain wrong - things very well might just get worse, and there is no end of history. But that’s me.

Of course one shouldn’t focus only on Marx, but I feel like he’s important enough that it’s worth taking him seriously. And with all the stupid takes people have on his work, I think it’s a good idea to go straight to the source.

I was talking about users, not developers.

I’m under the crazy opinion that developers are free to develop whatever they want, and users are free to use whatever they want. If they are unhappy they can use something else or become developers.

If I develop something you do not want to use I do not restrict your freedom. GNOME developers are not restricting your freedom by creating a product that’s according to my preferences. They are giving us both freedom to choose what we prefer. The fact that GNOME is so different from KDE increases freedom of choice.

I don’t get what is so hard to understand here.

I don’t know of a package manager with a GTK filter.

This I could agree with, but the problem here is a lacking feature in package managers, not the fact that apps that you don’t personally enjoy using exist.

I don’t particularly enjoy using KDE apps, but thankfully the K-centric naming convention make them really easy to avoid.

So apps look the way they are made?

When I use KDE apps in GNOME they also look like KDE apps. Obviously - that’s the way they are made. If I want something else than what someone else created I will use something else, not complain about how they didn’t create it the way I personally prefer.

Oh yes, I forgot about that time they tracked down and kidnapped KDE contributors never to be heard of again, depriving the poor FOSS community from their freedom of choice.

I’m happy I’m not the only one to experience KDE like that. I’ve had far better experiences with XFCE than with KDE, but I keep going back to GNOME because of the user experience. I’m happy people enjoy KDE though, so I don’t generally feel a strong need to trash it online. But my god can the user base be insufferable at times.

As a GNOME user since forever, I find it fascinating how much time KDE users spend thinking about GNOME. They seem so obsessed with customization, yet seem incapable of understanding that people could have preferences different from their own.

You’re being distracted from actually doing something.

A constant stream of awful bullshit, right to your screen. The feeling of doing something by shouting into the abyss.

Trump doesn’t care if you see pictures of him raping children or learn about all his corruption unless it is transformed into actual political action. Taking to the street, organizing, running for office, supporting those who do.

Everything is a distraction from action.

For real. Whenever I eat (Italian) pizza normally around a bunch of freaks using knife and fork I just silently rejoice about my superior cultural capital.

And if OP is American, chances are those people don’t even know how to use a knife and fork properly.

Puppet jealousy.

(Worth noting that the title of the post has since been corrected, and it is no longer false/misleading, just a bit random)

Strong candidate - it’s almost worth moving outside on freezing days for the sound alone. Also just the muffled sound of surroundings on snowy days, though I’m not sure if that counts as sound as much as the absense of it.

Yeah, “from a guy with a dead worm in his brain” would make for a better question.