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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • I started using Fedora Silverblue on a tablet, seems to work fine so far, but requiring a reboot in order to install new system packages is a bit cumbersome and the process itself takes a while, but ordinary Fedora also doesn’t win any races when asked to install a new package

    I think switching to FCOS or Flatcar on servers that just use containers makes sense. Since it lessens the burden of administrating the base system itself. Using butan/ignition might be unusual at first, but it also allows to put the base system configuration into a git repo, and makes initial provisioning using ansible or similar unnecessary. The rest of the system and services can be managed via portainer or similar software.

    I also do not have long term experience with FCOS, but the advertised features of auto-update, rolling-release, focus on security and stability makes it a good fit for container servers, IMO.

    An alternative to Debian on servers might also be Apline Linux. Which also has more a focus on network devices, but some people use it on a desktop as well.

    If you have many different systems, and just want to learn to operate them all, maybe NixOS might be interesting. Using flakes, you can configure multiple machines from just one repo, and share configurations between them. But getting up to speed on NixOS might not be so easy, it has a steep learning curve.



  • Yes. Meat is expensive, and should be expensive.

    However meat replacement products cost even more, but they should be cheaper, because they are cheaper to produce.

    Diary free ice cream is more expensive. Cow milk is cheaper than oat milk.

    This isn’t just about not eating meat or animal products, this is the whole “vegan lifestyle” food that is unreasonable more expensive.

    Like buying more expensive vegan salt or sugar instead of normal one.

    And if you don’t do that, you are not a “true vegan™”. And the vegan police will come and get you!

    “Oh, the pepper you just ate was fertilized by pig manure, sorry you aren’t vegan anymore. You should have bought the more expensive vegan pepper.”


  • You can accept that they are making a better choice, but then you have to accept that you’re making a worse choice.

    No, people don’t dislike vegans or vegetarians because of their choices, they dislike them because they lord their, what they think “better” choice over others. And create in- and out- groups via labeling.

    Being vegan or vegetarian means that you have to spend more money in the store to buy food, because meat is heavily subsidized compared to vegetarian options. Also, because being vegan/vegetarian is not the default, many products are overpriced.

    Another point is that a healthy and varied diet using only vegan or vegetarian food doesn’t come so natural, so you have to research this more, which means you have to spend time, which again is a commodity.

    So it is not just about good or bad, it is also about privilege and class. So people should not go around making statements about other people making “worse” choices.


  • Currently being vegan or vegetarian is a choice of privilege. An healthy and varied diet becomes more difficult and expensive, when you start removing dishes from your pallet.

    So it becomes coupled with a status symbol, instead of being the default way. As long as people call themselves “vegan” or “vegetarian” because of their choice (people being vegan or vegetarian because of mental or medical issues, is different case), they highlight that status over “normal” people.

    If people are just not eating meat or animal products for whatever reason, without trying to use labels like “vegan” or “vegetarian” to highlight their status, then that is fine and a personal choice.

    Creating societal change, to make vegan or vegetarian the default position, will also lessen the status of the vegans and vegetarians, that use those labels as such. So they have incentives to not produce a political or societal change.

    Vegans & vegetarians should go on protests and lobby to make vegan food cheaper and easier than meat, so that it becomes the default. If they don’t do that, and still call themselves vegan/vegetarian then that might imply that it is all about showing their status, and people don’t like that.

    Consumer choice is a privilege and not about creating an effective societal/political movement. They should not be used as a status symbol.

    (Disclaimer: I eat meat and animal products very infrequently, only when my body demands it. I am also thankful for all vegans and vegetarians, because they gave us more interesting options in stores and restaurants.)


  • Here is the problem: Even paying will not get you out of ads any longer. You bought a TV, well the manufacturer will show additional ads on it. You paid for Windows or a Mac, well Apple or Microsoft will advertise additional services on it, same with Android (Google services) or IPhone.

    Just spending money to be ad free is no longer enough, because companies try to find ways to extract even more money (or information to sell others) from you, now that you have proven to have some. Either be it additional subscriptions or vendor lock in. They never have enough money, they just want all of it.

    So to live ad free, you have to avoid using any product with profit interest or research every company you deal with on what its incentives are, which is very hard or impossible for many people.

    Here is a tip though, try to find hardware that comes without bundled software, and find open source software to use it with.