The only thing that I would miss is contactless payments via my phone.

Archive link for anyone who finds this useful https://archive.ph/E7XFt

Edit: Have read the article and daaamn, this is ridiculous. Thanks for sharing this, I hadn’t seen it yet.

For me, it’s actually easier to trust sources like unionriot.ninja — though by “trust”, I don’t mean “take them at their word”. It’s more like a “I understand how to situate this journalism within its wider context”. Which is to say that I find them easier to vibe check.

I find smaller outlets like this are often pretty good with their sourcing. For the example, from these guys, I think I read some really good coverage of some specific issues in the prison system. The article was clearly written to persuade (and as you say, clearly left wing), but the way it was doing that felt transparent. In particular, I think there was a quote they used from a legal expert, but they also included links to that person’s work/full quote, which makes it easier for a keen reader to vibe check the person. I like their transparency.

I agree that it’s hard to place them on a “reliable” spectrum. My instinct would be to place them quite high, because the fact they’re open about their biases (i.e. left wing perspective) and they are good at citing sources makes it easier for me to evaluate their work. However, that doesn’t feel right when we consider what kind of news outlets would typically sit there — many of our heuristics for parsing media are still anchored in a more traditional model of news coverage, which these guys clearly aren’t.

I hadn’t considered this, so thanks for the info

When you get a moment, you could try switching over to the tty again, login to the shell, and then try typing in the command btop (which I think is the Bazzite specific version of the default “top” command, and should be installed by default). Top is basically a task manager, and you can see what programs are running (and taking up resources) right there in the terminal. If your system freezes up, you can often unfreeze it by killing the unresponsive programs. It’s probably useful to familiarise yourself with that interface before you need it.

Whilst automated tools can help on this, there is a heckton of human labour to be done in training those tools, or in reviewing moderation decisions that require a human’s eye. I think that in a world where we can’t eradicate that need, the least we can do is ensure that people are paid well, in non-exploitative conditions, with additional support to cope.

Actually securing these things in a way that’s more than just lipservice is part of that battle— I remember a harrowing article a while back about content moderators in Kenya, working for Sama, which was contracted to work for Facebook. There were so many layers of exploitation in that situation that it made me sick. If the “mental health support” you have access to is an on-site therapist who guilt trips you into going back to work asap, and you’re so hurried and stressed that you don’t have time to even take a breather after seeing something rough — conditions like that are going to cause a disproportionate amount of preventable human harm.

Even if we can’t solve this problem entirely, there’s so much needless harm being done, and that’s part of what this fight is about now.

Echoing Jubilant Jaguar’s sentiment about defaults mattering, I think that sometimes an excess amount of choice can be overwhelming such that a user is less empowered to make choices about things they do care about (Leading to a less steep learning curve). Sensible defaults need not remove anyone’s choice

I was telling a friend about him the other day. She said she found it odd how it seems like he became a martyr for his ideals, in that the way that he is remembered is almost like he’s a mythological figure, more ideal than man. I agreed with her that the loss of humanity due to such a high profile death is tragic, but that it wasn’t the internet who turned him into a martyr, but the FBI (and whoever else was pushing for his prosecution).

They threw the book at Aaron Schwartz because they wanted to set a precedent. They wanted to turn him into a symbol, and that led to his death. I’m proud of how the internet rallied around him and made him into a different kind of symbol, but like you, I feel sad to think about what could have been if he hadn’t been killed (I know that he died by suicide, but saying that he “died” felt too passive). It sucks that he’s just a part of history now.

A huge aspect of this also is that it disproportionately benefits academics and students in parts of the world where there is less institutional access to journal subscriptions. That is to say that SciHub has been a significant force for democratising knowledge and countering historic inequities.

If being a supportive ear is something you’re willing to do, but you’re struggling with the constancy of it, one possible way to frame your need for space might be to open up a little about the uncertainty you feel about how to support her, and how you feel bad for not knowing how to help more. I imagine that often, your delay in replying to texts is because you’re trying to respond but don’t know how. Your sister is at the age where people grapple with the fact that adults are often just as clueless and overwhelmed with the world as teenagers, which is made harder by mental health stuff. Maybe showing a bit of vulnerability here may help her to understand that you do care, and that you’re trying really hard to support her, but you have a lot to learn, and that figuring that out will be a process that involves both of you (i.e. I imagine that your sister is not especially good at understanding and communicating what emotional support she needs — she’s only 13 after all— and learning will take time). I suspect that the unreasonable demands that your sister makes (“when they don’t give her exactly what she wants 24/7”), and her responses afterwards may stem from her feeling unfulfilled when she does get what she wants, because a mentally unwell teenager isn’t necessarily going to want healthy things. Hopefully she’ll be able to work through some of this in therapy.

Sometimes if I am struggling with mental health and I message someone, I end up stewing in anxiety as I refresh my phone, hoping for them to reply. That can be pretty harmful, and lead to unpleasant dynamics in relationships. Maybe it would help to carve out time to reply properly. For example, when she messages, replying with a specific time at which you will more substantially reply. This would need to be discussed with her first, and I’d frame it like the space that you are needing is in order to better support her, because “it’s not fair on you if I’m too distracted to properly process what you’re telling me. I want to be fully present, and listening to you, but that’s not always something I can do on short notice”. The challenge that’ll be hard to communicate to her is that, whilst your love for her is infinite, your energy and ability to help is not. I’m really getting a sense of burnout from your post, and it’s tragic that your sister’s insecurity causes her to misinterpret your wish for space — she doesn’t realise that you having that space is a necessary part of being able to support her.

It might be useful to discuss a sort of “tier” system. For example, when a friend who was emotionally supporting me had to take a step back due to burnout, she emphasised that I had blanket permission to call her if I felt like I was at risk (of self harm and/or suicide). Ofc, it’s hard for someone who is in a mental health crisis to gauge how severe that crisis is, but I would hope that a mental health professional could help her to draw up a crisis plan (which would ideally involve self soothing strategies also).

My last suggestion is that maybe it would be nice and useful to carve out some regular time for you two to do something fun together. I remember when I was a mentally ill teenager, it felt like my entire life and all my relationships were consumed by the depression, and the few instances I got to do something nice and normal stick out as bright spots in my memory. Communicating this would probably link into the vulnerability I mentioned above, and being open about how you deeply love her, but you have been struggling because you feel like you’re not doing very well at supporting her. A lot of mental health treatment focuses on reducing the bad stuff (whether that be anxiety, self-injurious behaviours, compulsions etc.), and it can feel like the bad stuff is all there is. Only suggest this if spending time with your sister in a “fun” context is something you genuinely want, and try not to frame this like it’s a pity thing — the purpose of this endeavour would be to benefit both of you, and to strengthen your relationship. It might take a while to find something you’d both enjoy, and you both might have times where you struggle to engage with it, but I think that it’s a useful way to build towards a hypothetical future where your sister is still unwell, but is coping far better, due to engaging with a range of different support.

This comment has thus far largely focused on your sister’s feelings, so I’ll finish by saying that although you feel out of your depth, you’re doing really well. You’re recognising that you’re not coping with this, and that’s good, because your feelings and struggles are just as valid as your sister’s. It can be easy to dismiss one’s own needs when a loved one’s needs appear far greater, but you can only usefully help if you look after yourself too. That’s what you’ve been trying to do, and if it feels like you haven’t done too well at that, it’s because there is no easy guidebook for this. Sometimes when your sister blows up at you, it will be nothing personal, and it’s as if it’s the ill mental health speaking. Sometimes, when she blows up, it’ll be because you’ve legit messed up and it can be hard to discern whether you owe her an apology if her reaction looks identical to when she’s blowing up “irrationally”. Sometimes she’ll say awful, hurtful things that it’s strategically better to shrug off due to her mental health, and sometimes it’ll be better to hold her accountable, because ill mental health may be a reason for acting a certain way, but it’s not an excuse. It’s messy, and it’s tough, so it’s especially important that you are also supported in looking after your own wellbeing.

Adding the solution to your post is a classy move, and I approve

I dual boot Fedora and Arch. Fedora was just a fluke because it seemed like one of the most mainstream distros, and I was a Linux noob.

I liked Arch though because the Arch wiki is so useful for a beginner to learn from, even if you’re not on Arch. At first, Arch seemed too complex and difficult for me, as a beginner, but when I kept finding myself at the Arch wiki when troubleshooting, I realised how powerful good documentation is. I installed Arch with a “fixer-upper” type mindset, with the goal of using the greater power and customisability that Arch offers to build a config/setup that worked for me (learning all the while). It was a good challenge for someone who is mad, but not quite so mad as to dive into Gentoo or Linux From Scratch

I had a similar experience. The video that helped me had pretty poor video quality compared to some of the other results, so I only turned to it when I was burnt out from basically every other video being useless for my task. Props to all the Indian educational YouTubers

Ah yes, because the rest of the world is so great at responding to online mis/disinformation.

A friend who is (was?) a writer told me that it’s tremendously difficult to find work nowadays as a writer, and so much of what is available is just proof reading and copy editing AI slop. Apparently it’s pretty soul sucking, especially when they’re basically forbidden from doing any significant rewrites or error checking, and they’re expecting to be grateful for the opportunity

I already have it in a virtual machine: the past ✨

I feel like there’s a joke in here about Linux users propensity to distrohop being like a ritual reenactment of switching to Linux for the first time (without having to defile one’s computer with Windows again)

Okay, but consider that the ultra-rich technofascists are a group that has had a disproportionate impact on the continued pillaging of the climate. They aren’t just opportunists wanting to make the most of the fragments of society that will remain after climate disaster, but people who have been working to bring that scenario into fruition because it’s profitable in the short term whilst positioning them to take even more power.

I cannot emphasise enough that they want this, and that this ideology goes further back than the current wave of them. The reality of climate change is unfathomably dire, but I hope you understand why it’s necessary to resist these people as part of whatever climate resilience we can build. I’ll probably be dead before shit really hits the fan, climate-wise, so my goal is to do whatever I can to support the people who come after me. If those techno-assholes are allowed to inherit the fragments of society, the entire planet is even more fucked

I find myself commenting far more often than I did on Reddit. I remember once that I lamented that Lemmy doesn’t have a “super upvote” in the way that Reddit gold used to be (which is a silly thought, given that I have never, and would never pay money to gild a comment). However, I realised that on this more discussion based platform, a short but meaningful comment can readily function as a super upvote. I think the lack of karma accrual for comments/posts also promotes this.

(tangent to your question because someone already answered) I think that courtroom stenographers (people who type up what’s said) use special chording keyboards. I’ve also been to a few events where there has been someone transcribing things in real time for accessibility purposes, and they also use a cool looking chording keyboard. It takes some learning, but the max typing speed is way faster than any conventional keyboard could manage — which is why skilled people use them for transcribing stuff

A brand that I’m aware of that does them is Charachorder.