I noted this morning at gym that the superstitious poltroons in the Yankee government council of thieves has voted to reduce the rights of female citizens. Sadly, they feel no shame for their evil.
Tag Archives: tyranny
Failure
Greater Metropolitan Arab Electron Uncooperative
Trashed this box.
Faith Enquired
Mundane day again, week in and back to gym. Schule has been desessioned long enough for some of the educationalists, most administrative weight bouncers, to have returned. Happily they are not loud, only threatening.
Along which azimuth I noted an article [Link] last week entitled “Testing the Faith of the Linux Masses” that asks whether Linux users will ever abandon the OS. Several people are interviewed, mostly revealing that there is no OS that is absent warts and complaints except for the slime moldest of bogs.
This did however, lead me to reflect on the nature of the question. I started by being a bit put off by the faith casting, as if this is all about irrational emotionalism. No mention is made in the article of loyalty and the distinction is telling of the ferdishness of the author, or at least her editors, for while the piece claims to be blog, it is entirely too journalistic and commercial,
I quickly honed in on the fact that no OS, no distribution, is without aspects that I dislike. Not too long ago I spent a couple of blots lamenting my search for a distribution that actually worked with Broadcom wireless. I ended up finding two, mostly because of the disappointment of finding Fuduntu just days before it went toes up. The distro I found in its stead, Manjaro, is almost good enough in that it works with the wireless, and has a good package manager. It does however lack a software (as opposed to package) management system but it is a rolling release that means I don’t have to have the fight with Canonical’s alternating quality. It is based on Arch which meant I had to learn a lot of new stuff – a mixed bag and it did start off unable to get a lock on repositories and thereby no updates. This latter does not bode well for a smooth road.
I think the question has to be divided into tow parts. Will a user ever dump Linux for Apple OS or Winders? and will a user ever change distributions? The answer to the latter is a resounding yes that is fundamental to the culture that is linux. The answer to the former, neglecting the dictates of work and family organizations, is rarely and then only because the user is temperamentally unsuited to be a Linux person from the get go. In effect, that person may want to be a Linux user but lacks the calling. There is no shame in this. The human species satisfies Sturgeon’s rule. Nine of ten must be bogs, and even those who are not do not always have the constitution to be Linux users.
What this gets to is the evil that Canonical is practicing, trying to attract users to Linux who have no business trying. I do not fault these people for trying. If anything I respect and sympathize them. It is a horrible thing to be unhappy with Winders or Apple OS and lack the capability to use another OS. It is also horrible for Canonical to sell these people the idea that they can when they cannot and will fail miserably. Such behavior is criminal.
Fundamentally, Linux is about being free. We cannot avoid using computers, but we can, if able, assure that we use them as free humans and not serfs or slaves. And Linux should not be used as a coffle.
Text Blocker
Finally! After all this grrr brrr about the Yankee government being too nosy. Which will result in the whistle blower either being ‘eliminated with prejudice’ or hidden at Guantanamo until the dinosaurs come back. Now they are talking about finding “a technological solution, some sort of innovation” in which the device or the car would recognize when the driver is using a mobile device and deactivate it.[Link]
Ayeh. The Yankee government transportation safety apparat has finally wised up. The device already exists but its a Canadian technology and hence totally unacceptable for an Amerikan program.
At least this makes more sense than their previous one, rumored to be a cop in every back seat with a large handgun and a box of dumdum rounds. Of course I’m not sure even the new cops would be unsmart enough to execute a driver while the motorcar in under way? Of course that would solve a lot of the highway congestion problem.
Isn’t it amazing how long it takes for ideas to percolate (diffuse?) into the minds of political appointees?
The Linux Reich?
As I was wandering about Nawth Alibam’s Shining City on the Hill last day, the question occurred to me “has Canonical become the new MegaHard?”
There seems to be a certain strength to this idea. Their management has clearly failed. They have staked the corporate future on abandoning old customers for potential new customers. They have introduced major products that have been rejected in disgust by old and new customers.
The parallels are a bit disturbing.
MegaHard has always been a totalitarian organization masquerading as egalitarian. That is not surprising. It is, after all, the model of the modern information organization. But Canonical is supposed to be part of FOSS. And it isn’t.
Greatest disillusionment since Hitler proved to not be progressive?
I have to admit to being rather disturbed.I have been reading linux critique article and a great ideological war seems to be brewing. On the one hand are the patriots of FOSS who advocate, among other things, that Ubuntu needs to be forked to save it. The model of course is Libre Offfice, the fork that saved Open Office by destroying it. Although I have to admit that Libre Office is better than OO could have been.
On the other hand are those who are Linux conquistadors and no amount of tyranny is too much if one user can be tempted away from the abomination that is Winders. I am unsure whether to call these people fascists or evangelists but for now we can label them as professional journalists working for semi-covert advertisers. Generallu untrustworthy as well as more than marginally incompetent.
And meanwhile Canonical is making noises that Ubuntu transcends Linux, which is one more indication of a totalitarian ideology.
I keep reflecting on the old saw “The Tree of Liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots.” I fear that there are many patriots who are willing.
Insanity Apathy
Shule is desessioned. That was blatant this morning. No educationalists. And it was nice. Good, even. That’s one of the few boons of summer. The heat more than negates it. And we are already much hotter than I would like.
I listened to quite a lengthy podcast this morning on the new psychiatric rule book, the DSM I believe it is acronymed. This gave me rise to contemplate the nature of mental illness. I began to ask myself why is it that we have this supposed problem with mental illness?
I started by examining the two primary drivers of human behavior: insecurity; and denial. Both seem to apply here. From what I can observe about the treatment of mental illness, none are rapid and all seem to reduce the patient to the state of mental slime mold. So in effect, treatment for mental illness is slow and negates the individual. Both are ample reasons for denial. Perhaps even justified. Almost no ne, except the most inept of bogs wants to voluntarily be reduced to that level.
And because the treatment is slow and involves medicalist attention, it is expensive, which is another reason for denial.
So I have to accept the hypothesis that this hullabaloo will have no end result. For the same reason we don’t have a meteor patrol.
Religion as Disease
Mundane day again and shule is clearly desessioned. the gym was pleasantly devoid of educationalists this morning – well, almost. But definitely below the critical mass of annoyance.
The podcast this morning was an episode in the CBC’s “Best of Ideas” series on secularism. This one was about secularism-is-dead-but-religion-needs-to-come-back-because-no-one-has-any-morals-any-more. As if religion ever was successful at morality beyond the confines of its own interests?
On which azimuth, I note an article [Link] (from HuffinPuff) about a British (English?) research publicist who stated at a literary do that
“One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,”
in the sense of medical treatment, that is.
This, of course, raises the question of when does religion become mentally pathological? And who decides this? It strikes that this becomes rather dicey in a country where religious freedom is supposed to be a tenet but basically has degenerated to the freedom to evangelize without being prosecuted for harassment, bullying, or assault.
The obvious metric in a modern so-called democracy as we pathetically call our nanny-slavery state, is whether the person is injuring self or others by their beliefs. Is flagellation or fasting sufficiently self-damaging to warrant legal intervention? Is Jihad psychotic? Is evangelism damaging?
I fear this is rather too charged for any government to take it up except one with an official religion. In such cases the distinction is obvious and biblical (“He who is not for you….”) So anyone who is not adequately well behaved and adherent to the state ideology is crackers and can be mind bashed into slime mold. All in the name of mental health.
But for countries that at least seem to embrace religious determination, I suspect any interference is beyond question except when it is whipping boys or dismal, avocal, marginalized minorities that are already persecuted. This smells entirely like a perpetuation of the status quo in new robes of medicalist correctness.
Act of Ground
We were just visited by the tyranny of Greater Metropolitan Arab Electron Uncooperative exercising their usual sundae morning reign of disruption, aka, power outage just long enough to make us restart computers and reset asentient clocks.
This is one of the joys of living in Greater Metropolitan Arab/Alibam/the old Confederacy. It rather reminds me of that old Asperger’s saying:
One of the bad things about Asperger’s is being hated by neuronorms because their silly behavior isn’t overlooked and understood; one of the good things is not caring.
Forgetful Day
Today is Memorial Day, the Yankee government’s hostile take over of Decoration Day that we observed in Alibam in my youth.[Link] This gives rise to several questions.
First, while I have no problem with reflection on the deeds and service of the nation’s military, why do we have two days for such? We also have Armistice or Remembrance Day, now rebranded as Veterans’ Day (and misspelled, but that is a matter of the ignorance of bogs which is a necessary part of the YG getting way with this travesty but rather something else.)
Second, given we have two holy days for the military, why is it that we cannot/will not/do not make mention of those who were originally memorialized? Today will go by with no meaningful discussion of the Second American Revolution; this fall Veterans’ Day will do by with no meaningful discussion of the Great War. Why?
Have we become a society incapable of having a history? If this also part of the pln of government, or an artifact of the information age. Does only the now, the War de Jour, matter?
And why do we have holy days anyway? This one will be little more than an inconvenient Monday off day for most. The ceremonies that we conduct to honor our military will be sparsely attended and pay scant attention to anything but spun sugar platitudes. No mention will be made of the losses, on both sides, of the war this day was set aside for. Is this so we will not see the now, of tornado and bomber raids, as the less than pin pricks they really are?
And no one, save the straggling few Daughters of the Union or Confederacy, and the Sons of similar orders, now few and almost forgotten, will do what is supposed to be done, the decoration of graves in demonstration of the real theme of the day.
And so all we have is another emptiness, an abused, mistreated, excuse for a day off from work. And we are so asentient that we cannot even perceive this and ask why we do such. And what we should do.
Oppression Walking
It’s ice cream day and quite warmer tha yesterday. I had to drag out a late fall jacket and hat for my constitutional yesterday. I only recently restarted these walks. I don’t try to do them in winter. Too many days with morning temperatures at 40 degF or lower. So I have to limit myself to sprint through fall when the mornings are warm enough but also cool enough. And, of course, I have to time them for after the road barricades are opened but before the park fills with bogs.
I find myself wondering how Darwin did so much walking. I have never been to his garden so I don’t really know how long the path is but I have to think it is longer than the path in our rather kitschy park – more on that some other time. And he would walk enough rounds to have to have a lap counter. I find myself aching after the second lap although I kid myself that is a winter’s inactivity rather than modern weakness.
On the subject of modern weakness, I noted something rather amazing this week. [Link] The subject was the new Yankee government minister of state talking about the International Religious Freedom Act. I was quite impressed:
“With this measure, the U.S. government made a bold statement on behalf of those who were oppressed, those who were persecuted, and those who were unable to live their lives at the most basic level, for the simple exercise of their faith. Whether it be a single deity, or multiple deities, or no deities at all, freedom to believe — including the freedom not to believe — is a universal human right.”
I was unaware of the existence of this act, indeed, I suspect everyone in the old Confederacy either doesn’t know or denies out of fear. On reflection, I have to wonder if the harassment, excused as evangelism, of the local religionist organizations is persecution? It seems amazing to someone living in Alibam that the Yankee congress passed such a law. And I am of the strong hypothesis that the Alibam delegation voted nay.
That’s part of living in Alibam. Religious freedom, ala Lester Sprague DeCamp, is license to prosecute all those who are not members of your particular religionist organization. And all such organizations seems mostly local. But we somehow transcend the stupidity much of the time so I suppose I should be happy in the triumph of human cooperation. And greed.
On which note, I reflected this morning on a discussion we had on Wednesday about the latest Tolkien cinema. As I walked about the path I reflected on its kitschy nature and from there considered what would happen in Greater Metropolitan Arab is someone went off on a quest ala Tolkien. No one would be about to mow grass so after a month or so the city government would start fining the absent for overlong lawn. And if the quest stretched past property tax day then that would be fined and the questee would return to find his/her property sold off at auction.
This seems to epitomize modern society. Government and organization seem to have destroyed adventure. All we have now is waiting for the heatdeath.
