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Cake day: January 4th, 2024

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  • I’m counting game installations. Then there’s the fact that NoScript seems to reset every time I swap operating systems, so now I have to figure out what I’ve allowed and blocked before…

    Then there’s the pruning of random shit that was auto installed. Some of that shit can take days to find.

    But most of the pain is when I try to do X, and need to find a program that will do it. This happens in Windows and Linux, and either will have programs that work, but then I have to find the program and learn it, and then let enough time pass where I have to do it all over again.

    The most recent example was a map making program for my Table Top RPG obsession. One program that’s a go-to under Windows (with possible Linux capability?) is called AutoRealm. Which hasn’t updated since 2013… But it’s still one of the most powerful fractal mapping programs I’ve ever lightly used.





  • Fun fact, the Vatican did use Cardinal voting (Approval) for a few centuries, until some rich assholes took over.

    But aside from that, your comment is useless.

    The reason why the media can control the narrative is because of the voting system. See, it’s super easy to control two sides. Two teams.

    But if you have a dozen teams, it’s much harder to control the narrative. And with a dozen teams, some of them will be on our side and will break up the media monopoly. Hell, we had Trust busters under or current system, we can have them again.

    But I guess defeatism is comfortable for certain people. But it doesn’t get anything done, so fuck that shit.


  • All due to Ordinal voting. First Past the Post is the simplest Ordinal system, and completely broken if you have more than two candidates.

    The only solution is a Cardinal voting system. Cardinal systems can handle two or twenty candidates without issues. Approval or STAR are the best options.

    The sad part is, in 1780, First Past the Post was the only system available. It had to be adopted before mathematicians could look at it and say, hey shits broken.

    The first was Condorcet. A French Mathematician who noticed the first problem with Plurality in the 1780s. But if you know your history, you’ll know that being a French Nobleman in the 1780s was not the healthiest thing to be, regardless of how fucking based you were.

    As an aside here, Condorcet was fucking based. He was antislavery, and argued for full suffrage for both women and the slaves that he wanted to free. He argued for universal education for all, and thought it would solve so many problems.

    Anyway the next guy who saw the problem with Plurality was another French Mathematician and political scientist named Durverger. He proved that First Past the Post voting will always result in two party dominance. And he proved this in the 1950s. So not much to be done about it.

    The next guy to put his name to voting science was Kenneth Arrow, an American who in the 1970s, showed that all Ordinal voting systems were flawed.

    But again, the data came in far too late to easily fix things.

    So here we are. The saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 year ago, the next best time is now. So call your local representative and ask them to sponsor a switch of voting system to Approval or STAR.




  • chaogomu@lemmy.worldtoProgrammer Humor@programming.devLanguages
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    7 months ago

    Lenin betrayed the revolution. You mention the banning of the political parties. While it’s true that they “took up arms against Sovnarkom”, you’re leaving out the part where Lenin used Sovnarkom to coup the newly elected government because his party didn’t win.

    Again, Lenin was flat out wrong. But I don’t think he ever actually cared about Russia ever reaching the true Marxist communist utopia. Lenin cared about power first and foremost.

    He built up that dictatorship, and then handed it over to a monster.


  • chaogomu@lemmy.worldtoProgrammer Humor@programming.devLanguages
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    7 months ago

    Tried a bunch, but tried wrong.

    The Lenin model of communism is inherently flawed for one simple reason. An Authoritarian Communism is an Impossibility. It cannot exist by pure definition.

    The true ideal communism is a stateless utopia.

    So yeah, the Lenin model is flawed to the point of uselessness. Or worse because any authoritarian government is going to kill its own citizens, while also being a low grade threat to neighboring countries.

    No. The only path to true communism is via democracy. And there are countries that are moving in that direction.


  • That’s some blatant Russian propaganda there. Blame NATO twice for Russian imperialism.

    The “Russia had to invade a sovereign nation because they were talking about joining NATO to prevent Russia from invading them” logic has some holes to it.

    The fact that Russia has invaded their neighbors 14 times since the end of the cold war tells you why one of their neighbors would want to join NATO.

    Also, remember that time that Russia shot down a commercial airliner? The Ukrainians sure as hell do. That was the true beginning of the invasion, which is why Ukraine was in talks to join NATO.


    And yes, people have the right to defend themselves. But the Israeli government has locked down the anti-terror propaganda, because Hamas is pretty vile as far as organizations go. It’s why Israel let Hamas grow and become powerful, and why the Israelis paid to keep Hamas in power for the last decade or so.

    As long as Israel can point at Hamas, they have just enough of an excuse to claim their ethnic cleansing is actually just an anti-terror campaign.

    Hamas is a full on terrorist organization, not that all terrorist organizations are bad. Or rather, there are some causes where a terrorist organization is the appropriate response. John Brown tried it. So did Nelson Mandela. But Hamas is a religious extremist terrorist organization. One that has distasteful views, and was sort of put in place by Israel for those views.

    You see what I’m getting at here? Hamas is fucking evil, and Israel has mostly succeeded in making Hamas the face of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

    I doubt many of the original leaders of Hamas are still alive, but that doesn’t matter either when Israel can just lie and say that whoever they kill is Hamas. It’s a bit maddening, and I doubt there’s an answer to it all except for the other Palestinian resistance groups to step up their social media game.



  • Everyone knows Putin invaded Ukraine because he’s a dumbass dictator who started to believe his own propaganda. It’s the dictator trap. Putin surrounded himself with backstabbing yes men by literally killing anyone who wasn’t.

    As to Palestinian resistance. I don’t think Hamas is a good resistance movement. For a whole host of reasons. Which is why the Israeli government has been propping them up since the 80s.

    An unsympathetic resistance movement can do more to damage a cause than not having a movement at all.

    From now until the ethnic cleansing is complete, Israel will call any resistance movement Hamas, regardless of their actual name or beliefs. I’m not sure how to fight that… I don’t think anyone really knows beyond screaming the truth everywhere we can.

    It didn’t work in the 1920s in Europe. But maybe with the Internet… Likely not though.


  • It’s already happened once.

    The Big Mike banana was super popular until the 1950s, when a fungal infection basically wiped them out. (they’re still grown in a few places, but are super susceptible to infection)

    So, the banana growers switched over to the Cavendish banana. It was resistant to the fungus.

    But the days of the Cavendish were always numbered because of how they’re grown. A seedless banana can only grow via cuttings. Which is how they’ve been grown since the beginning. Every single banana on the shelf at your local supermarket is genetically identical. They’ve been identical since the 50s, and the fungus has adapted to them. Worse still, the particular fungus that’s now attacking the Cavendish cultivar is extremely resistant to fungicides.

    So yeah, without some sort of massive shift in genetic diversity, the Banana will no longer be a thing in Central America. Do note, that the banana is not a native plant in the Americas, and is cultivated widely in Southeast Asia. So yeah, the Banana will not go extinct, but it will vanish from American and European stores.