Here’s my advice: On Windows, hardware either works or it needs a driver or it’s broken.

On Mac, it either works or it doesn’t.

On Linux, it either works or it doesn’t, but maybe if you find tge right obscure repo or project, you could get it to work with some heloful tutorials, or some other helpful tutorials from this other site because the first one was out of date. …but you might have to compile bimaries, because the binaries that exist for download might not work for your system because they’re from a previous version…

…so, skip all that and just treat Linux like Mac. The hardware works or it doesn’t.

In all likelihood, it’ll work. But, specially since you’re starting out, if you use NVidia, use a distro that explicitly supports that. I hear bazzite is good.

Survival and reproduction aren’t the purpose, they are simply structural. Perhaps, simply as experiences, they could be of the purpose.

To grow, experience, and create.

This life, that means exploring the manifold between spiritual and physical reality, and making cool shit happen, as well as reconciling ‘paradoxes’. To play with the rules. To explore the connection of love and power. To face fears.

Earlier: similar, but with more fears to face.

yep. tha’s them.

I love this.

Asserting that peoples behaviors are intrinsically violent can also be a violent means of communication. Not that are shouldn’t respond to problematic behaviors - and there are circumstances that are as you describe.

No, you didn’t say it was always violent, but for a pattern of thinking and feeling that is so common, so useful, and so beneficial in so many ways, I don’t think there wholesale focus on how bad it is is warranted.

Obviously, as with most mentalities, there are benefits and detriments to it. But there are a lot of people that perform model synchronization by verifying the predictive capacity of the model they hold (whether or not they think of that progress consciously). It’s a means of getting on the same page. Sometimes it’s lovey-dovey. Sometimes it’s practical. Sometimes it’s controlling and problematic. But, by no means is it always, or even generally, violent.

Any empath who has familiarity enough with it will acknowledge that, like any other thing you see externally, mistakes can be made. With empathy, those can go pretty deep, too.

That said, I’d no more discard empathy than I would vision, and I’m not fool enough to discard a sense just because I’m not always right about how I interpret it.

Support GOG. what they’re doing is great.

Support Steam. what they’re doing is great.

Maybe, try to keep it roughly even. Or buy based on your whim. They’re both great.

No problem. It’s fake. No need to look deeper.

I don’t know… don’t all people with extreme sexual fetishes that aren’t culturally acceptable end up, by fear of cultural reprisal, attempting to control the circumstances by which they fulfill their desires?

Like, a necrophiliac (not that that’s really that common) might work in a circumstance where they could get away with that. If someone were to find out, they would try to control the outflow of that knowledge (probably unsuccessfully). By, firing a person, or engineering some other way they could discredit the person.

…and if someone only got off on animal shit, they would try to get an animal to shit on them. …and if that animal was like “I suddenly can talk”, the person would be compelled by fear of cultural reprisal to gain a position is power over the animal to silence the animal, if the animal also couldn’t be trusted to keep their secrets.

I’m not saying that to mitigate pedophilia, but I just don’t think the underlying drives are dissimilar to other fetishes. I do, however, think the circumstances are dissimilar. That is to say, I think the underlying drives are similar to other fetishes, but the stakes are massively higher for all parties involved, and the odds of your secret coming out are massively higher.

I don’t think pedophilia is uniquely “evil”. like, I consider extreme NPD, Sexual Sadism Disorder, and coercive paraphilia to be far more “evil”. …and people with those disorders coins potentially choose children just because of their vulnerability, and not even due to any intrinsic attraction to children. but that’s not pedophilia.

But, I do think that pedophilia is uniquely high-stakes for all parties involved, and that the cultural demonization of it simply raises those stakes. Of course, we still need to stop it as a culture. It can’t be culturally accepted. But, I, for one, on the receiving end of that, would have talked to people had the societal reaction not been so extreme. As a child, I knew how grave it was societally - and couldn’t talk to anyone because I knew the resultant social explosion would only further erode my own sense of personal autonomy.

I mean, I didn’t think of it in those terms, but my heart correctly felt the social situation. …and I navigated it alone, except for one random person in my neighborhood that I was able to talk to, once, who just listened, and talked to me about it, and prioritized my feelings, and my understanding. Their consideration of me would not have been societally condoned at the time, and now verges on being illegal, but I will be forever grateful to them for standing up for my autonomy, and helping me understand, without getting otherwise involved (though, they would have, had I needed that).

yeah… …there’s something so fundamentally fucked about conceptual suppression, and I don’t think it makes the real issue - actions that harm others - better.

Like, I keep thinking of how deeply Christianity and Catholicism want to get in your pants and tell you what and when you should and shouldn’t be thinking this or that. …and it ends up making a system that helps to obfuscate and provides cover for that very thing.

Now, in tits following example, I absolutely am not suggesting that being gay is bad. But, in religions (Christianity being the prime example) where it is considered bad, it’s always the loudest, most virtuos signallers that end up being found to be involved in closeted gay relationships.

I guess, in some ways, there’s just no better cover than to signal that you’re a good thought haver, and that bad thought havers should be executed.

this was my thought, too.

Thanks for this, it’s nice to see a correct answer. I’m tired of people who claim to love Star Trek but don’t even know the lore.

solid

Sort through the emotional issues. I know this is probably typical advice, but seriously. Even though it takes a while, and looks impossible, process those feelings. It’s not impossible, because it’s a learned skill. . When you start off, making progress is dreadfully slow. but as you learn how, doing it becomes easier.

You don’t have to sacrifice who you were to become someone you’d want to be. Who you were will always be a part of you, anyways. But as you grow, it ceases to be the dominant voice - just, something to consider.

sorry, I just don’t relate.

The universality or lack thereof don’t really matter to me as much as the accuracy and viability of an opinion.

…but to the point…

The OS has access to everything on the OS, and that means whoever made the OS does (technically) as well. That is true. But it does not make it pointless to use encryption. It means that you have a vulnerability, and anyone who is in the position to exercise that vulnerability can do so. …but:

• anyone who is not in the position to exercise that vulnerability obviously can’t, but they could read plaintext by sniffing your connection - unless you use e2ee.
• The ones who are in a position to exercise that vulnerability must either know you are a target of interest or create a massive monitoring program, monitor everyone, and find you via that method. Both of those circumstances have constraints, and while you are in a safe space due to those constraints, it’s still worthwhile to use e2ee, as that may keep you out of the areas where a bad actor’s affect on you is not constrained.

Security is cat and mouse. If you’re actually caught up in that you the point where you are a real target or task potential target, get Graphene, and be mindful how you use it, or avoid smart phones altogether.

If not - assume that you’re not on their radar until there’s a realistic indicator that you are. …and use best practices, like e2ee, wherever you can.

KDE connect and/or Synching/Syncthing-fork.

I don’t think you’re ready for self-hosting, but getting these installed and sorted out will help you move along that path, plus it will meet your needs in the mean time.

Bit, as others have suggested, get familiar with networking a bit.

You might want to get a raspberry pi or cheap SBC with a good amount of memory and disk space, and fuck around for a bit, trying some things.

Benevolent dictators are great, but like pet goldfish, they eventually die, and the next fish might be an asshole you have to flush down the toilet.

This is intentionally word salad.

This is just bad advice.