The kind that rails on “anti authoritarianism”? Or do you have a charitable interpretation of “authoritarianism” that is somehow compatible with democracy?

I also fail to see what any of that has to do with capitalism, which I have neither defended nor mentioned yet you brought up.

Goddam arguing with tankies and their endless litany of non-sequiturs is such a pointless exercise.

Please, go ahead and develop. What part of my comment leads you to believe that?

Typical Stalinism/Maoism: Anyone who opposes my implementation of Marxism is an enemy of the proletariat and can be persecuted to any extent. These people agree with the mainstream idea that communism can’t be implemented democratically, but come to the conclusion that democracy must be abolished.

This meme is an open dogwhistle to tankies and thankfully meaningless to anyone who hasn’t fallen into or interacted with this small subsection of the far-left.

Well someone’s done it at least once this century. It looks equal parts awesome and terrifying.

I’ve read the exact same comment a year ago, and the year before, and probably the year before that tbh.

So I’ll say what I always say; I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m honestly unsure. What is the alternative?

Given that there are plenty of developed countries where credit scores don’t exist (and plenty more where they do but only for businesses), I think alternatives are imaginable. I would know, I live in one such country.

If you want a mortgage here, the bank will:

• Ask you about your current loans and potential past defaults
• Ask you about your current and past income, marital status, employment status, etc.
• Use those variables to pretty straightforwardly determine your loan capacity
• I think do a background check in national databases for defaults/“bad payer” status
• Contractually obligate you to receive your salary on the same account from which they will automatically pull the mortgage. I don’t think this helps reduce actual defaults much, but it probably greatly reduces the financial and administrative overhead of late/missed payments. Also this ties you into the creditor bank which is good for business, IDK how standard that practice is abroad.

The US consumer economy is very highly dependent on short-term/credit debt, and that is absolutely crazy to me. Some Americans say they “need” a credit card to defer payment on some purchases, and as someone raised in culture where debit is king this sounds absolutely insane. Y’all have been propagandized, here it is perfectly normal to not have a single credit line open before shopping for a mortgage and if anything your banker will commend you for it.

“Color terminal” isn’t a thing. Applications can choose to output ANSI escape codes which most terminal emulators will render as color changes. Whether and which colors get used depends on the value of $TERM, which informs the application of the capabilities of the terminal emulator.

So if your remote servers don’t have color, either $TERM isn’t being set or its value is unknown to the server. Most modern terminal emulators support at least the same escape codes as xterm-256color though so you can always try to export that.

I’m just surprised the purists aren’t all up in arms that this isn’t KISS and that it doesn’t fit in their 80x24 teletype.

… sorry, guess I’m not over that whole systemd “debate”.

Now you’re just reaching at straws to comfort your worldview. I could explain to you that I never was a huge gamer (and only started spending significant time gaming around 12 y/o), and that I am hugely uncreative (in the traditional sense at least) despite having played with dolls as a child. But I get the feeling that you’ll just come up with more explanations why I somehow unconsciously “trained” the things I’m naturally good at.

Anything to avoid facing the fact that brains, like bodies, aren’t all created equal and identical. To pretend they are is completely ridiculous. Yet we do so because admitting that not everyone is born with equal potential breaks through the veil of The Meritocracy™, Karma™ and all the other little lies we tell ourselves to avoid facing the fact that the world is fundamentally unjust.

Nah, I hate maths and never studied at home. Still did way better than kids with difficulties that were studying way more.
Not studying didn’t pay off in higher education (focus issues, possibly undiagnosed ADHD or related), because talent ALONE is not enough anymore, but before then I had an objectively easier time than most and that was with little time or interest devoted to it.

We ALL use the concept of “left” and “right” daily. I’ve been doing that instinctively without a problem since I was, like, 8. Some adults still need to use a mnemonic every single time. Is that because they don’t have enough interest or didn’t spend as much time on it as 8 yo me did? Of course not.

I have put hundreds of hours into one of my hobbies, digital photography. I really like it. I have watched and read plenty of theory and know most of what there is to know about what makes a good picture. My photographs are only halfway decent and nowhere near what they should be given my time investment. And that’s OK, because I know it’s not because of anything I did and I like the hobby anyway.

Your argument does not have a leg to stand on. Someone with music agnosia cannot learn to play the guitar like you do. Dyslexics cannot “just study like I did” their way into being good at mental arithmetic. Pretending that skill is ONLY a function of time and drive is extremely pretentious and factually incorrect. It’s the “you’re depressed? Just do like me, think happy thoughts” of education.

nuh-UH. Nope.

Talent ≠ practice ; talent + practice = greatness

Thankfully it’s usually quite easy to dispel this myth by saying “then why are you bad at maths”. We all had the same number of hours in maths class as kids, but some had to practice WAY MORE to achieve a passable grade.

Most people can’t be Mozart. Some dedicate their lives to music, and do not get a fraction of the way there.

“Talent doesn’t exist” is a lie we tell ourselves as a society because our individualist culture sells us a pipe dream of personal greatness that many/most people literally aren’t equipped to achieve no matter how hard they try (and we should try regardless).

Anyone can fork at any time. The US gov could theoretically hold Wikipedia’s brand and servers hostage, but the actually valuable stuff is already mirrored in a decentralized fashion that is completely unrestricted under US and international law.

EDIT: Maybe you meant that the US could covertly vandalize Wikipedia? Maybe, if they keep it very low-key. Editors are used to this kind of stuff though, it happens all the time from all governments since they can just, y’know, edit it. Anything actually impactful will be noticed by the editors which will just cause a fork.

Wikipedia also releases all content for free download under a permissive license, so I don’t think it’s fair to say that the US government is a meaningful threat to its quality of information, especially over non-English languages that are managed by an independent set of volunteers who could pack up their bags and move everything over wherever they want at any point.

Still a cool project and technological diversity is good though.

I haven’t seen anyone here “support Israel”. Almost everyone agrees that the Israeli State is not free of guilt, far from it.

What people really disagree over is whether that alone makes Palestine right (nuanced) and whether it justifies Hamas’ actions (unhinged but unfortunately semi-common take on here).

And Soviet communism was… better how? Just as (if not more) destructive to the environment, and their “billionaires” were called “party members” instead. What an improvement! Now they can jail/deport political dissenters without even having to pretend to hold a fair trial.

Now of course this is where communists usually go No True Scotsman, but consider for just ONE MOMENT that the concept of wealth inequality is not, in fact, unique to capitalism. Any economic system is vulnerable to greed. And that the countries with arguably the strongest social welfare, highest human development, etc. are… the Nordics. Hardly capitalist, hardly hellholes.

This is why people say communists are angsty teenagers. Capitalism is a deeply flawed system, but all of what you just pointed to is, in fact, not unique to capitalism. That’s just Americana. Pointing to the U.S. as a reason why “capitalism bad” is just as silly as pointing to N.K. as a reason why “communism bad”.
Typical American with a viewpoint so narrow you can’t see further than your nose. I’ve had lots of interesting discussions with French communists, and I agree with some of their viewpoints, but to start with you have to realize that capitalism is not the root of ALL evil, only of some specific systemic issues, which are only a small part of what’s wrong with the US.