I know a guy that heats his house with those tubular heaters for greenhouses. One for each room and the place is always comfortably warm without being too expensive.

X: It’s like Twitter, but it’s shitter.

I don’t think the platform will last long enough to care. In a year or two it’ll be “X, formely known an Twitter, currently remembered as Elon’s clusterfuck.”

Is it Wonder Man?

It works for the Klingons.

It’s an interesting take on it for sure, but I think .io will remain. While geopolitics can be a huge factor, there’s too many top level domains tied up in it. In the end, money talks and bullshit walks.

I don’t get it either. I think that’s exactly what will happen in the end and that this is a story about nothing that the media has latched onto (I’ve seen this reported elsewhere). I guess they’ve got to try and find as much content as they can to try and detract from reporting on the genocide in Gaza.

I’ve been thinking about doing just that for my next phone.

AI this and AI that. Yawn! All of it is a crock of over-hyped shit.

Correct. I’ve disabled and replaced every Google app on my phone with a free open souce version. Now what I need to do is figure out how to shutdown and replace Google Play Services which screams at me every time it’s disabled. Bloody thing updates weekly without the slightest change log. Fuck knows what it’s doing.

And welcome to the wonderful world of Linux, where the most difficult thing about it is often trying to get rid of Windows which will cling on to your system for dear life. When I was dual booting and didn’t boot into Windows for a couple of months, the first time I did so I was greeted with a friendly message thanking me for being a loyal Windows user. The bastards clearly know even when you’re getting ready to jump ship. Regarding your reboot issue, just do what I did and keep monkeying about until it does what you want, or take the hard drive out and scrub it completely.

I found Linux Mint familiar but also setup by default the way I always liked/wanted my Windows system to look. With Windows I was constantly wrestling with the machine, changing things to make it look and function better for me, only for Microsoft to screw it all up again after an update. Whatever distro you choose I’m confident you’ll be fine. Only issue I had with my girlfriend’s Lenovo laptop was getting into the Bios to change the boot order to boot to USB. Make sure you shut off fast boot on your Windows system (it’s under Power Management settings) otherwise it might lock you out of the Bios.

I was in the same boat as you about 9 months ago. I switched a failing laptop over to Linux Mint Cinnamon and was blown away by how it revived that laptop. Then I dual booted my desktop to a Windows/Mint system and found myself rarely booting into Windows because I was enjoying Linux so much. About 3 months ago I wiped Windows off the machine altogether because I just found the experience toxic in comparison to Linux. The Windows automatic updates were taking about 20 minutes to install simply because I wasn’t using the OS that often. Next on the cards was an ancient desktop that had been sitting in my cupboard for over 5 years. I threw a bit of memory at it and stuck Lxle on it. It now lives in my shed for playing music and browsing the web which it does rather well. It must be at least 15 years old, perhaps even 20. Yesterday I installed Linux Mint on my partner’s Lenovo laptop because I was sick of her complaining about how slow Windows 10 had become. That laptop runs faster than anything in the house. She’s delighted with it. There are many distros to choose from, but I can only give you my own experience. With Mint the transition away from Windows was easy and at first I didn’t even use the terminal. Now I use the terminal all the time as it really gives you the power to do some extraordinary things that you could never do on Windows. As for that one piece of software I couldn’t get a Linux version of? I put Windows 7 on VirtualBox and installed it on that. Not only have I learned a tonne of stuff using Linux, it’s made computers interesting to me again. Next project is an ADS-B flight receiver running from a Raspberry Pi. The good thing about Mint is it boots to a live system from USB before you install it, so you can check to see if everything is running smoothly before you take the plunge. Good luck and welcome to the dark side.

What? Israel’s using Microsoft “technology” in its military? Hah! They are definately fucked then.

Then we’ll have to agree to disagree. Religious belief has been dominant throughout human history, so has killing each other. It’s more to do with human behaviour and religion is simply a reflection of human behaviour. Class systems are also a reflection of human behaviour and religion was/is invented by ruling classes as a form of control. The stories in religious texts are merely a mythology to administer that control.

Without Judaism there would be no Zionism. If I look at the Old Testament and see it as a genocidal and elitist mythology, what chance to believers have when they adopt it as an ideology? I guess it’s fortunate that some don’t take the Torah literally. I’m only approaching it from a non-materialist perspective because I am a non-materialst.

What Adam Smith has to do with iPhones and Ancient Eygpt is a mystery to me. But we could argue here indefinately and get nowhere. Perhaps Xitter would be a more appropriate place for you to practice your contrarianism?

I think it’s possibly more of a feedback loop. Beliefs through interpretation can empower people to behave appallingly. The more they act on their beliefs the more they adjust their interpretation to justify their behaviour. Whilst I agree that not all Jews support the attrocities of Israel, I think it’d be interesting to get a percentage breakdown of just how many globally do. If the percentage is high, then you can safely assume that there’s a fundamental flaw in the belief system. Let me be clear, I am no racist. I consider every human being equal. I just object to the term antisemitic being used when Judaism is not a race but a belief system. I think there is a reluctance to criticise Judaism out of fear of being labelled antisemitic. This is a term that gets brandished about too often and fuels Israel’s abhorrent behaviour. You don’t get the same reaction if you criticise other religious ideologies, however Judaism seems to be off the cards, mainly due to the Holocaust but mostly because it’s been weaponised by Zionists to counteract criticism. People are complex and beliefs are dangerous since they stifle critical thinking. Just to be clear, I’m no atheist either as that is also a faith based ideology. The correct stance, in my own opinion, is to be honest and humble enough to admit we know very little about the nature of reality and existence and reject absolutism wherever it rears it’s ugly head.

And I would suggest that there’s plenty of evidence in the religious belief itself for followers to justify cruelty. The so-called “chosen people” think they’re entitled to the land since it’s promised to them in the Torah. Even taking into account Zionist misinterpretation, this highlights the problem with belief systems in general. People interpret it the way that suits their agenda. I have no time for any of it.

I would say that a culture’s prominent belief system has everything to do with the way that a culture behaves. The Torah and Old Testament in general is full of cruelty, genocide and elitist ideology. Even their god is described as a jealous sadist.

Correct. The whole settler state of Israel is like a spoilt brat that throws the toys out the pram and cries “antisemitism!” every time anyone criticises their evil, sick and twisted behaviour. They can only ride on the back of WWII Holocaust guilt for so long before it gets old. Call me an antisemite all you want, I no longer give a fuck. It makes no sense anyway. “Semitic people” is an obsolete term for people who originate from that part of the world which includes Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians. Most Jews in Israel today are either of American or European descent. Personally, I hate all religions, but Judaism has got to be the most fucked up and genocidal out of all the monotheistic belief systems. I loved how after Oct 7th 2023 Israel started with the rhetoric “we want our Holocaust survivors back”. Holy smokes! There can’t be many of those left, the Holocaust happened 80 years ago and I doubt many of the survivors would be attending a drug fuelled rave (I mean “music festival”). I don’t like cruelty of any kind, the Holocaust was an appalling event in human history, but it’s not Holocaust surviving Jews that are acting like Nazis. So fuck Israel, fuck Zionism and quite frankly fuck Judaism in general along with all the other monotheistic brainwashing religions that separate us rather than unite us. “We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns” as we say in Scotland.