Oof okay I guess it's worse than I thought. I swear they had some provision for non-binary people, but i guess they just hate queer people.

I don't agree with dismissing everything as a distraction. I think some conservatives legitimately do care about this stuff. I also don't think people would suddenly turn anti-capitalist from just not having distractions. People are generally dumb as shit, and most the alternatives to capitalism are also shit because again people are dumb. If you are going to replace capitalism you need to come up with something that's both actually better, explainable to the public, and overcome the baggage of all the experiments that failed.

Pretty sure it doesn't ban single occupancy bathrooms. It bans multi-occupancy gender neutral bathrooms - like bathrooms with stalls that share the same set of sinks. Don't get me wrong it's still dumb, but not as bad as you are thinking.

I think this is actually important to point out. Not pedantry at all. You can compare things without becoming envious.

That's exactly what you're doing bro.

Did they actually do anything you are saying? It was the police who claimed it was a deepfake, not necessarily the kid.

COVID lockdowns weren't sustainable and while they reduced pollution to some extent they didn't come close to eliminating it. Like in my country we turned off coal, but only because we don't have much coal to begin with. We were still using plenty of gas power, as that's our second largest energy source. Here in the UK our largest energy source is Wind, and we aren't even doing that well compared to France or Spain on the energy front.

Things also still got manufactured and sold, and that's where a lot of pollution comes from. Food and goods production. Eliminating transport pollution would help for sure, but it's like 14% of the problem. Electricity generation, heating, and agriculture are the things we need to fix the most. Fixing electricity generation would also help with transport emissions as we could use more electric vehicles and trains.

What kind of gummy?

This would be totally normal to do in a European country and aren't part of the local healthcare. I went to the dentist in Spain because finding one in England where I live is a nightmare and kind of expensive. I had a checkup, cleaning, and two x-rays for about €40. You had to book only a few days or maybe 1 week in advance instead of waiting months or having to go private. Didn't even ask for an x-ray either, that's their default standard of care for that price. They were able to confirm that I had a wisdom tooth and where it was located thanks to that x-ray. All for less than a good bottle of single malt.

If you need medical care in America or some services like a dentist in England your best bet is to get a cheap flight and leave the country for somewhere cheaper and with higher standards of care. That's how much better it is. You all need to stop making excuses for your shit healthcare system in places like America and England.

Actually I did. Read the rest of the comments in this chain. I am talking about the UK.

Not all radical leftists are Communists. There are plenty of anarchists. There are even accelerationists, though those are rare.

Yes and no. We don't have school shootings so that's a plus. I guess not having guns is the cost of that, which is pretty fair. Some people are allowed guns, but you need a special license for it.

Edit: also we actually have stronger unions and more strike action even without guns. They don't actually help outside of a revolution. If anything we have less police violence because we don't have guns, so the most of police don't either. As a police officer you have to have special specific training to even handle a taser, nevermind a gun.

Your assuming we all live in America where guns are legal. Good luck getting one in the UK.

Looking at the votes suggests no one else agrees with you or that no one understands you. You started this conversation coming out swinging. It's on you to explain your position, not on me or anyone else to read your mind. Winning an argument means either convincing the person your arguing with, or better yet convincing everyone else. You have done neither.

No one apart from you thinks making kids do an exam on installing web servers and writing shell scripts before being able to use basic technology they will need for the rest of their lives is a good idea. A smartphone is a basic and essential tool in the modern world and there isn't a real workable alternative to the iOS and Android duopoly.

Why would learning how to fix a PC make you hate computing? If anything it makes you more confident in your ability to fix things if and when you break them. Likewise I don't get what's wrong with learning about Virtual Machines and emulators. PowerShell can't be that bad lol.

What it sounds like to me is you teaching your kids to think computing with Linux/FreeBSD is hard, and to hate using it. You're also teaching them to hate you for putting unnecessary barriers in front of them doing normal things like using a smartphone. Having a smartphone is necessary for modern life, as it does everything from communicating with family, finding out information, banking and booking appointments, ordering a taxi or takeout. Gatekeeping that behind arbitrary things like learning shell and setting up a web server is fucking dumb.

A taste of real things I'd want to give to help them connect their inner abstract idea of how the world works with actual material things. They will have that idea, I absolutely trust every person to develop that on their own without help. Without that they might not believe themselves when they should.

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean or how it's related to the things you are asking them to do.

I've said once that I want to give a taste of something. I was more general with things one can't avoid, as in "one can't avoid computers and the Internet". And this was pretty clear from the context, either you are playing dumb or you want to defeat someone in an argument, in the latter case I don't care because I see you are not doing that.

Not it wasn't clear at all, especially given the other nuts things you have said. You're also not winning this argument, look at who's getting downvotes here.

I am not an American. We don't have a DMV. Why the heck would vehicles and elections be organised in the same place? It takes actual time to register here (up to several months).

Unless it's a general election people don't take that much notice, and it's hard to find out about one when people only talk about American elections online and you also aren't always in the country.

The shell used on most Linux is bash, a GNU project. Not a part of Research Unix. ZSH is newer than both Unix and BASH and is also not a part of Unix.

They still can spend a few hours on something useful for life. I know hundreds of little things like this from various areas even less useful specifically for me. While this is useful for everyone, as we can see every day from normies not knowing how anything in computing works and getting scammed.

None of this is going to stop someone getting scammed. You can have plenty of technical knowledge and still get scammed. I got scammed trying to sell a laptop for example. Teaching them how paypal works and to avoid using the friends and family option is much better for this purpose.

This is about upbringing and introducing people to things they can't avoid. Not about making them interested (but I'm almost confident that actually it will make a kid interested).

You very much can avoid using a Unix-like shell. Your average Windows user has never used one, and neither do most macOS people even though it's included with macOS. Likewise most people will never have to setup a web server.

If you want to give people practical skills start with adblockers and how to reinstall Windows, macOS, and Linux Mint if it goes wrong. If you want to teach them command line skills, maybe start with CMD and PowerShell, since they are more likely to see those in real life than Solaris or FreeBSD. Heck your average person probably needs a Virtual Machine or an emulator more than a web server. Being able to pirate and play old Nintendo games or Play Station 1/2 is pretty cool. So is running Windows stuff on mac or Linux. Could save them buying another PC for that one software program. Likewise learning to work on desktop and laptop PCs can save them buying a new one every few years. Especially useful for PC gamers.

If I ever go as far in the relationship area as to have kids, they are not going to have anything Apple\Android until they can think for themselves.

That's actually not unreasonable. Getting kids using Open Source platforms which aren't trying to manipulate or spy on them is good.

That would be 12 years old or so at least, and before that they'd have to pass an exam (with me evaluating) on how to write simple Unix shell scripts, set up a web server, write simple SQL queries and, well, install and set up the system on which they are going to do this first. Non-computer parts would probably involve some media literacy and symbolic logic. And I think control theory would be required.

What does any of that have to do with media literacy or using those devices? You are just being a curmudgeon, not everyone needs to be a systems administrator. Unix isn't even used anymore. Linux and the BSDs are Unix-like, not actual Unix. What if your kids are physicists, chemists, or mathematicians? Are you going to say they aren't good enough to use a fucking smartphone just because they don't know specific things about a certain specific area of tech? How do you know SQL specifically will even be relevant then? NoSQL is already making headway.

This isn't how you get people into Open Source software or interested in technology. You can't do it by forcing them to do things that are esoteric to the majority of people.

Also it's not 30 minutes. It requires registering to vote whenever you move address, and for you to actually be in the country. Then there is setting reminders it's election day, which requires watching the news to know there is an election.

Yeah I've only actually been able to vote once. Missed one (forgot which day) and was out of the country for another. I wouldn't have left for as long if I actually knew there was an election, but that's hard to know when you don't watch the news. Plus moving around a bunch means I am rarely actually on an electoral register to vote.

I have read some theory and I do know those are the main two currents. Doesn't mean I know enough about them or politics in general to choose either them or something else. Most of the books people actually recommend are ancient and hard to understand even if they are relevant. We have actually spoken about politics before somewhere if I remember correctly.