People downvoting you didn’t get the joke.

Yes, good point.

Sure, but there was a very long debate about the implications of Brexit with both sides getting a comprehensive airing. I’m not defending Boris. Boris is an asshole and a corrupt, clownish demagogue, but the Conservative Party is more than just Boris. The people of the UK voted for Brexit in a refendum and kept the Conservatives in power for 14 years, including twice AFTER the Brexit referendum. Heck, the 2019 election was practically a second referendum on Brexit and the Conservatives got their largest landslide victory since Thatcher was PM. Boris may be an asshole, but the people of the UK have to own Brexit.

Is Tusk similar to Boris? I mean, obviously Boris presided over Brexit which was a real fuck-up. Then again, was Brexit really Boris’s fault? What with the referendum, democracy and all that good stuff. It seems to me that the people of the UK made their own bed in that regard.

That dude has a good sense of humor. He seems like a good leader.

Definitely. The first couple seasons of BSG are almost as good as Babylon 5. Though neither of those is quite as good as Firefly.

I’ve got a 2015 T540p with integrated graphics. It’s fine for low-spec gaming. I only run Linux-native games and haven’t managed to get any Windows games running in compatibility mode yet. Here are the games that have “just worked” for me so far.

Dwarf Fortress

Cataclysm: Dark Day Ahead

Darkest Dungeon

Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2

Caves of Qud

Unity of Command

Stardew Valley

Planescape: Torment

Shovel Knight

If that’s the kind of retro gaming that floats your boat, an old Thinkpad is just fine.

I’ve had this game on my wishlist for years. Maybe time to take another look.

Hold up there, cowboy. Hawaiian pizza is Canadian cuisine, not American.

Two things:

1. I have an old refurbished Thinkpad that I originally bought as a backup navigation computer for a month-long sailboat voyage. It had Windows originally and was “fine”, by which I mean slow but acceptable for navigation purposes. When I was forced to update to Windows 10, the performance was no longer tolerable, so I hardly used it for about four years. I also had a Windows gaming PC, so no big deal.
2. About a year ago, I got a shiny new Windows gaming PC. I was trying to decide what to do with my old gaming PC, which had the same problem as my laptop: it could barely crawl under the weight of years of Windows OS “upgrades”. I got it into my head that I should build a media PC with it since Netflix kind of sucks now. That lead me down the self-hosting and Linux rabbit hole.

Before I knew it, I had my old gaming PC running Proxmox and attached to my main television, I bought an old Dell Poweredge server (also running Proxmox), an old Compellant storage shelf with 20 SAS drives, a Tripp-Lite UPS, and a 24-port network switch. I also discovered Docker. So, now I fucking love Linux and I’m a fiend for self-hosting and media streaming. And how do I centrally control all of this infrastructure? That’s right, my old Thinkpad got a new lease on life running Arch and I can run all of my server infrastructure using the terminal, emacs, and web interfaces. Fuck yeah.

And what happened to my beautiful, expensive new Alienware Windows gaming PC? After playing a couple hundred hours of Cyberpunk, it just sits there. Now I’m addicted to Dwarf Fortress on my old Arch Thinkpad and I don’t think about high-spec AAA games much.

I had no idea this would happen when I started this Linux journey. Life is strange.

I also enjoyed watching Mr. Bercow’s antics. It is also interesting to note that he was found guilty in 2022 of quite serious bullying charges against House of Commons staff. It is unfortunate that he did not reserve his acid, if entertaining, tongue for deserving politicians alone, but rather used his sharp wit to belittle staff as well. Not cool.

You are totally right. We are living in a golden age of not only video games, but entertainment in general, thanks to ridiculously powerful computers and the internet. People with video game nostalgia remember how those old games made them feel, because the games were new and exciting and they were young. But video games (and board games) have done nothing but improve over the years as developers figure what works and what doesn’t.

Nowadays there is just of ton of…everything. We are spoiled for choice. There are so many excellent games at every price point, and also tons of crap, and yes, too much shovelware and too many rehashed franchise games. But here’s the thing: these things aren’t mutually exclusive. We have all of it, all at once, and reviews and advice are everywhere. If someone is tired of rehashed AAA franchise games, they can spend the rest of their lives playing clever indie games and they’ll still barely scratch the surface of what’s available.

This seems like a natural evolution of the market: a period of expansion followed by saturation and contraction. And there can be no doubt that we have hit a saturation point. There has been an absolute explosion in the number of games available, largely because platforms like Steam have simplified the logistics of distribution tremendously.

On the positive side for small developers, if you look at which games are rated “overwhelmingly positive” on Steam, the vast majority are not high-end graphic-intensive AAA games. There is a huge market for lighter, innovative games that can run on a cheap laptop. For every massive Cyberpunk type games in my collection, I have three Stardew Valley, Caves of Qud, and Undertale type games.

I still have a Windows 10 or 11 PC that I only use for gaming so I don’t really “use” Windows anymore. I basically use that computer like a really kick-ass game console. Which is why I neither know nor care what version of Windows is on that PC. All my other computers run Linux now.

I had played around with Linux back in the day, but it never stuck. It was the “upgrade” from Windows 7 to 10 that pushed me to commit to Linux permanently. Now my daily driver is EndeavourOS on the laptop and Proxmox on my servers.

What was so bad going from Win7 to Win10? Win10 is painfully slow and shockingly bloated on older hardware, and doesn’t provide any new benefits that I care about. I would have had to replace my laptop for no good reason to stay with Win10. Anyway, once I installed Linux and KDE, I saw how awesome the Linux desktop experience has become and that was that. I will never go back to Windows now, even when I get a new laptop. Windows just isn’t a good operating system anymore while Linux has improved tremendously in terms of user experience.

To be fair, one person’s “politics” is another person’s life. When you say “politics” in the sense and context we have here, what does it really mean? It probably means something like “controversial topics related to gender, race, or sexual preference”. When you think of it that way, it is easy to see that excluding discussion of these topics could be seen as excluding or devaluing people with non-mainstream characteristics. An example of that would be the “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida, or the US military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy whereby they would allow homosexuals in the military as long as they kept quiet about it.

However, those conversations can be delicate and fraught, so I can see why many people want to keep them to a minimum in certain communities. I have a lot of sympathy for mods that have to moderate such conversations. In general, though, I don’t think it makes sense to remove comments or people unless they are clearly malicious. There are plenty of people for whom topics related to identity are alien or controversial or too painful and personal. Simply calling people “sealions” or “concern trolls” or “transphobic” or whatever and removing them from the conversation is not only wrong, but counter-productive, in my humble opinion. I think the vast majority of people come to conversations with good intentions, but different levels of knowledge, conflict tolerance, and interest in perceived off-topic digressions.

That’s a thought-provoking article you linked. Thanks. Unfortunately, ideological purity testing is a major problem across all sectors and spans the political spectrum. I was particularly struck by the part of the article that discussed whether “marginalized” status should be considered permanent or temporary.

I’ve worked in social services for a long time. Social activism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, marginalized groups need activists to push their agenda. On the other, activists often adopt that social activism as their primary identity and sometimes even their career. This sets up an incentive structure whereby they don’t actually want to solve the problem of marginalization. Instead, they focus on ideological purity rather than pragmatically solving whatever problems they face.

Sexual orientation, indigenous rights, trans rights, disability rights, race, gender, even recreational drug use, are all marginalization issues that have all received a reasonable degree of social acknowledgement and formal protection.

In all the years I’ve worked in social services, the one issue that never goes away and is never solved or even seriously tackled is the intersection of poverty and mental illness. We are getting better as a society with treatable mental illness like depression and anxiety. However, major mental illness or untreatable/undiagnosed conditions like lack of impulse control that make it hard or impossible to work lead almost inexorably to poverty, addiction, and involvement with the criminal justice system. The activism on that front is itself marginalized because the “fix” isn’t a matter of changing language or mind set, but rather a massive investment of resources. It is easier to sit behind a keyboard and advocate online for nebulous issues like representation than to get out there and make people care about issues that cost real money.

As someone who works with seriously impoverished and mentally ill people, I find the sometimes extreme drama associated with identity politics, representation, pronouns, etc. rather ridiculous. A lot of it is just people trying to externalize their personal issues and force others to acknowledge them, which is unfortunate when it poisons a project or community. It is a form of narcissism, essentially. People who do that should go down to the tent cities, homeless shelters, and jails to get some perspective on just how “marginalized” they actually are and whether publicly exorcising their personal demons is worth destroying the enjoyment of others in a project or community. Their energy could almost certainly be better spent in less narcissistic pursuits.

Uh-oh, you’ve triggered one of my favourite topics: cost-conscious cruising. Get ready, because I do enjoy dispelling myths about sailing. :)

People think sailing is expensive, but it is absolutely within reach for the middle class, as long as you are willing to put in the work to do your own maintenance and repair. Look at your average small-city marina and you’ll see that most of the sailboats are 30 to 40 year old fiberglass production boats. They basically last forever if you take care of them and at that age their cost depreciation curve has plateaued. So, the cost of entry is reasonable and relatively risk-free.

If you have any interest in sailing, I recommend checking out your local marina to see if they have a weekly keelboat race. Many sailors love to race and they always need crew. This is the best way to learn to sail for free. If you don’t like the pressure of racing, you can sign up for a learn-to-sail course for a couple hundred dollars.

If you enjoy that experience and want to cruise, I suggest reading a few practical books about cost-conscious cruising. Don’t watch the hot young video bloggers sailing million-dollar catamarans for YouTube and Instagram. Much like Linux vs Windows or open-source vs closed-source, sailing is as much about philosophy as it is about execution. You can spend big bucks on the latest and greatest, or you can buy old hardware and revive it with some learning and elbow grease.

The most common question in cruising is, how much does it cost? And the answer is, strangely, it costs as much or as little as you want to spend. You can spend millions or thousands of dollars, depending on your skills, your willingness to learn, and what you are willing to live with. I know a couple that lived for a year sailing the US East Coast in a 22-foot sailboat that they got for free. That’s an extremely small cruising boat, by the way, with just a bucket for a head.

Think of sailboat cruising like living in an RV: you can live in an old 1965 VW camper van or a tent trailer or fancy stainless steel Airstream or a huge diesel Winnebago. It’s up to you, but there are trade-offs. You can probably buy a broke-down old camper van on the cheap right now, if you are willing to learn to fix it up and then live in a very small space. Or you can work and scrimp for half a lifetime to afford that huge Winnebago. Most of us would pick something in the middle, making trade-offs between comfort, time, and cost.

A good book to start thinking about the philosophy of cost-conscious sailing is “Get Real, Get Gone” by Rick Page. Their philosophy is that small and simple is better than big and fancy for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is affordability and the ability to get started sooner than later. But be careful. If you read it, you may ditch your life ashore and end up a sea gypsy floating around the Caribbean in a small boat learning to fix diesel engines!

Also, by the way, there are plenty of smart, nerdy, do-it-yourself sailors. There is significant overlap in attitudes and mindset between the do-it-yourself sailor and the self-hosting computer nerd.

But truly, I hope I have convinced you that sailing is not only for the rich. It is for the adventurous. As a matter of fact, I’m heading out today for a week of wilderness sailing on board my very affordable sailboat. Maybe I’ll see you out there one day!

There is a certain satisfying symmetry to sailing the high seas while sailing the high seas.

I like the idea of using an industrial pc. Small sailboats experience a lot of vibration and sometimes violent bouncing, slamming, and heeling. Most things on a sailboat have been tossed around and flung onto the floor at some point, so it will have to be bolted down.

I don’t know, maybe something like this?

KINGDEL Desktop Computer, Fanless PC, Intel i7 8th Gen CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, HD Port, VGA, 2xCOM RS232, W-11 Pro https://a.co/d/0eODy8RH

I was looking at something like this mini-router with OpenWRT:

GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX) Pocket-sized Wi-Fi 6 Gigabit Travel Router, Extender/Repeater for Hotel&Public Network, VPN Client&Server, OpenWrt, Adguard Home, USB 3.0, Network Storage, TF card slot https://a.co/d/0iP7qaKj

For a signal booster: weBoost Drive Reach Overland - Cell Phone Signal Booster for Off Road Vehicles | Boosts 5G & 4G LTE for All U.S. Carriers - Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile & More | Made in The U.S. | FCC Approved https://a.co/d/00PNi0AE