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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2023

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  • My journey was Windows-> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Arch.

    (Infuriatingly i still use windows for gaming, but nothing else.)

    Did i mention that i use arch?

    More importantly:

    fucked up all my data with no backup.

    One time i messed up a script and accidentally copied 40,000 mp3s to the same filename. 20 years of music collecting, literally going back to Napster, all gone.

    Well, not completely gone. I’ve got everything uploaded to iBroadcast, and I’m pretty sure i can download my library. But I’m not sure i deserve to.




  • The enumeration on the losing side of that debate is probably correct. But as a person who was in my early 20s in 2000, I’d like to offer what I will characterize as The Historical Context and Definitive Conclusion to This Debate.

    No one actually gave a shit about that debate. Sure, it came up, but it did not alter anyone’s party planning. We weren’t actually celebrating the changing of the millennium, we were celebrating because we had a permission slip to do so. Any attempt to withdraw that permission was unwelcome.

    In Paris on December 31st, 1999, at around 11pm local time, someone threw themselves in front of a metro. The trains were free that night (because it was the 100 year anniversary of their opening iirc), but because of that suicide, at least one of the train lines was substantially delayed. The streets from the center of the city to the north side were crowded well toward dawn as everyone chose to walk home instead of wait indefinitely in a stinky train station.

    That person, who chose to end their life on the tracks that night, holds the core truth of the debate within his death: it’s a ridiculous debate and those who would fight for it should just stay the hell home and let the rest of us drink a lot and dance.






  • You’re right, I’ll concede that – but only because BSG is an amazing show and very few characters can be reduced to “good” and “bad” – even the “antagonists” (in the traditional sense of those characters working against the stories’ progression) have pretty valid reasons for doing what they do.

    Gaius (sp?) is one of the closest characters to “bad” – but not because of the bad things he does, but because of the bad things he is – ie, vain, selfish, etc – and the fact that he lets those negative characteristics drive his actions.

    All the characters have flaws, but the “good” characters do their best to mitigate their flaws, and let their positive traits motivate them. For example, Adama often acts before he thinks, a trait that is awesome in combat, but can be less positive other times – and he (as best he can) seeks advice and counsel from the people he trusts (eg Saul Tigh) – he knows he can be impulsive and he knows his “instant judgement” decision making isn’t perfect.

    Cavil (that’s his name I think) is close to “evil” but he does have reasons for his actions – preservation of his “species” (though really it’s just himself) – but he’s evil because of the fact that he doesn’t listen and acts with disloyalty and dishonor.

    (There’s an amazing comeuppance for the titular character of the show Nathan Barley that epitomizes this idea: Barley doesn’t actually do anything wrong, but his motivations are repugnant, and his motivations are what’s revealed… Shit I should write a whole essay on that…)

    Are there contemporary shows that are as good as BSG? I kind of gave up on TV after Firefly.



  • Cylons being manipulated by other cylons doesn’t absolve them of guilt.

    BSG did have a few instances of the reverse of OP’s question tho – where the “good guys” turned out to be bad" – trying to say this without spoilers; it’s a 20 year old show but ffs of you haven’t seen it, go see it now.

    • the (temporary) new admiral
    • several main characters during the part where they live on the dirty planet
    • a very specific set of seven main characters (wink wink) … .and more,…

    And there’s one specific example of the full 360 – a character that starts good, turns bad, but turns out they were actually good all along. I won’t give the name, but they were passing messages to the resistance.

    That show was awesome.

    One note tho, on the topic generally: flipping character alignments is a frequent pre-shark-jump thing, and is often bad writing. In BSG, tho, all of the “flips” are pre-planned, or at least 100% true to their character (eg the 360 example above).



  • You’re being downvoted because people people think you’re being obtuse, but, as a person that overuses logical thinking to a diagnosable degree, my suspicion is that you’re doing that. Also because your tone is kind of…not good.

    The whole point of the Serenity Prayer (“accept the things I cannot change”) is that it includes “change the things I can” – so the things Davis is changing are things she CAN change, by definition.

    But her point is that she is reframing what she believes she can and cannot change. Recategorizing, if you will.

    She’s invoking the third part of the Serenity Prayer: the wisdom to know the difference. As we grow and learn, our wisdom increases, so the things that belong in the first two categories will shift.

    Things that used to be things that can’t be changed are becoming things that she can.

    To understand the quote, you just have to give it some space to breathe, and not be so logical about it.








  • I just wrote like a 10 page response to another comment on that same post I made so I don’t think I have the energy to go too deep on this - so, to keep it short:

    1. I was just rebutting that person’s claim that a car and a digital object have the same relationship to value, and they don’t; physicality requires resources that “digitality” doesn’t.

    2. I feel like you might’ve agreed with me in the second part? Or, if not, I think you managed to destabilize the entire data economy in like 2 sentences, so, fuck yeah.