I set up Alpine to read my Gmail last summer, and while the nostalgia hit was nice, the browser version was more responsive and useful, cap I went back to that.

It wasn’t (maybe still isn’t?) a strictly proportional representation system, so the urban areas get slightly fewer members per vote. More equal than the Electoral College, but still imbalanced in favor of the rural areas where wealthy people have huge estates that have been handed down for generations.

Churchill lost re-election because he made a really tone-deaf radio address on Labour’s plans for socialized medicine, national insurance, and nationalisation of utilities and critical industries (all of which the overwhelming majority of the country wanted), basically calling them communism, said it would require a “gestapo” to implement, and he wouldn’t stand for it.

Clement Atlee more or less thanked him for that speech the next day, and assumed the Prime Minister role after the Tories were absolutely trounced in the 1945 election.

Atlee lasted 6 years. Labour ran the show with a huge majority for a full five year term, then got an unworkably small majority of 5 seats in 1950. Snap election was called in 1951, and Conservatives retook the majority, despite Labour getting 48.8% of the vote, and Conservatives only getting 48.0%.

…Funny how that keeps happening.

Churchill resumed the role of Prime Minister until he retired in 1955.

If you’re interested in something that doesn’t even exist, and should be more-or-less straightforward:

Music/podcast app that will accept VST plugins (there are many FOSS ones, as well as non-FOSS ones) so that we can compress/limit the sound range on podcasts while in the car. Or even a built-in compressor/limiter that’s based on FOSS compressors.

I was listening to a hysterical podcast episode between three people, but one of mics was way louder than the other two. I had to take it into Pro Tools and fix it myself before listening to it.

There are apps that allow EQ, but none that do actual compression, from what I can tell.

While I don’t have personal experience with this, I did find this from the bad website:

Install pipewire-jack and use JACK audio device in Reaper. Also, yes make sure that wireplumber is installed.

Link to post.

Gentoo. Not an Arch fork, and uses OpenRC by default. I use it and love it. Portage is the best package manager out there, imo.

You can still get binaries of the really annoying things to compile, like Firefox. Otherwise, it’s all source-based.

I’d advise installing it in a VM or on a spare computer first to get your hands around what it is.

In your case, you’ll want to specify the following flags in you makefile:

OpenRC, -systemd

You’ll add a bunch of others in there too depending on architecture and personal priorities.

Follow the handbook. https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/

There’s also Calculate Linux, which is basically Gentoo with a graphical front end, but I think it’s Intel only. CLI is more fun anyway.

Tuesday’s court ruling also permanently stripped Bai of his political rights and ordered that all his personal property be confiscated.

If we don’t get to execute corrupt grifters in the US, can we at least do this?

Debian Stable or Testing. Runs on anything, and Stable - especially - will not let you down. Ubintu, Elementary and dozens of others are downstream of Debian. Bookworm is a great experience, so why not go to the source?

“Testing” is described as containing packages that are still in the queue to be accepted into Stable.

“Unstable” branch is all the newest stuff, whether it works or not.

If you’re in school for anything computer-related, once you’ve settled on a distro, you could also start playing with Gentoo.

Yup - vst is OS-agnostic.

I work in music and audio post, and everyone I work with would love to be able to use Reaper (or Logic, or Nuendo) instead of Pro Tools, if Pro Tools didn’t have the post industry completely captured in the US.

Reaper is a world-class product, and the team could easily charge 10x as much for the pro licenses, and get it. Stick with Reaper.

There are alternative drum triggers for Linux, I’m sure. Even SPL makes a drum exchanger. There’s got to be one out there.

VMR shouldn’t be a problem to run, I just don’t know what the install process would look like.

I’m pretty sure Airwindows plugs are Linux compatible, probably Audio Obsession too.

In any case, Reaper’s stock plugins are awesome. My only real complaint about them is the EQ cramping in the hi-end, which is typical for stock plugins.

Podcast, or some insane Art Bell interview from 30 years ago.

I just don’t want to see ads.

I’m of two minds about people not adblocking.

On one hand: Ads are gross noise pollution, and people are increasingly unaware of all the noise around them (or the noise they’re generating) largely because they’ve been passively trained to “tune out” ads. Also consumerism.

On the other hand: As long as there are a significant amount of people oblivious to the possibility of adblock, corporate ad mobsters and the other worst people in the world out there will largely leave those of us blocking their ads alone. If everyone ran adblockers, we’d definitely live in a world of WEI… and probably worse. So, maybe all those people are watching ads so that I don’t have to, as the YouTube thumbnails say.

In the US, there will always be a critical mass of voters ready to end the careers of anyone who tries to do any of the above.

I’d add that buses for the most part don’t help, and we should revive the trolly systems that Goodyear intentionally put out of business, and furthermore build out mega railway projects to take long haul trucks off the road.

Railways need to be nationalized, and we need to make it easier to live rurally without the need for multiple cars and lots of gas consumption.

And we need to start building a bunch of new nuke plants like 30 years ago.

None of that will start to happen until it is way beyond too late though. And even if the US got onboard with the program, there will always be 40% of the planet who won’t. So fuck it, enjoy nature while it lasts. We’ll turn the sky white to geoengineer away some of the solar radiation, but the line will continue to go down from here.

I still suspect that they had Klobuchar picked for VP until George Floyd happened.

Alpine is great for VM and containers… Light on resources because of musl.

EDIT: I’m saying that the US can’t be relied on to continue supporting the war effort because the GOP in particular has become increasingly opposed to funding it.

I know NATO doesn’t have unlimited resources, but given that this is an explicit proxy war with Russia, doesn’t $100bn seem kind of paltry? That makes it appear that they’re planning on continuing cash infusions from the US.

Well, clearly, to be China is against the rules.

The two major national parties are rushing rightward no matter what you do. Best I’ve come up with is moving to a state where the controlling party is as left as possible.

The only way out is through. Best case scenario I believe we can expect is patchwork fascism across the country, so choose your enclave wisely. After things really collapse, and after the fighting is settled, we can do our best to set things right. But as long as we are going to be shackled to the whims of previous generations going back to the 18th century, actual progress is a dream.

The foxes have run the henhouse since the late 70s, and they’re not about to give it up.