here we go again

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

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  • Make no mistake - the policing situation in Portland is 100% political, from the police side. Policing is AOK in the more conservative areas of the metro area - the rest of the city is intentionally left to rot despite no actual reduction in funding or capabilities. Portland in media became a “liberal stronghold” and our (naturally) right-wing police force (which have colorful and long-standing local history with regional white nationalist groups) have decided to make their political statement by selectively performing their job duties to attack liberals.

    I have family that’s a part of this shitfest, on the LEO side. The shit they say after a few drinks on Thanksgiving is disgusting. The issues plaguing Portland are 100% intentional by the police. They view themselves as “teaching Portland a lesson about their liberal government” and boast about how they’ll drive past dangerous and criminal events if it looks to them like it’s just a liberal or undesirable “getting what they voted for”.

    There are private groups to help you track down and (sometimes forcefully!) recover your stolen car in the city, because if you call the police to report a theft, they’ll wait until you tell them what part of the city you’re from and if it’s not the conservative areas they’ll just tell you they can’t do anything and hang up on you. No report, nothing. They’re well aware that this lack of report number impacts your ability to make insurance claims, by the way - another chuckling boast over Thanksgiving when I asked.

    They won’t stop until they “feel respected” again. To them, this means zero oversight, unlimited budget, no questioning, no consequences, and conservative leadership over the city. The disgust I feel when I see our “public servants” now after being educated on their perspective is alarming even to me.


  • I’ve been working through my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 - it’s fairly enjoyable, I’m glad I ignored it outright until well after big patches rolled out. There’s something very satisfying about blowing up enemies through a camera.

    I’ve also picked up Dwarf Fortress (Steam) for the first time. It has a lot of depth but has been fun to learn and try and figure out. I just flooded a section of my fortress by digging into an underground river.

    My chill-out puzzle game has been Can of Wormholes and it’s pretty fun! It’s weird for sure… but definitely fun.








  • I use Arch for all my computers, including my “critical” systems. I only do full upgrades when I know I have the time to troubleshoot something broken, but rarely need to do so.

    More than this, I actually use Arch as the OS for thousands of computers for my work that end up in customer hands, who expect stability. I’m not sure at what point it stops being Arch, though - I pin the package repositories to internal mirrors with fixed package distributions from specific dates to control the software that goes to them, so it’s not really rolling release anymore I guess - I control the releases and when updates go out.

    Arch is what you make of it. My Arch project desktop pc is constantly shifting and breaking and needing attention as I continually improve it and play with things. My Arch laptop that runs my life and work and is the most important computer I own is a paragon of stability and perfect functioning.




  • I agree and disagree. I feel if a school - especially a publicly funded school - has any responsibility to teach children anything, it should be how to navigate society’s requirements. I would much rather have been taught basic finance and taxation and career planning and political systems and stuff than the same exact span of World War 2 history 4+ years in a row (this was my high school). Parents should absolutely have a responsibility in teaching their children too, yes, but that’s assuming ideal parents. In reality, today’s parents are struggling too much (in part due to never having been taught how to navigate society properly) to impart actual beneficial lessons to their children on these topics, then our schools are neglecting to fill in the gaps before ejecting the kids into adult life with demands and expectations that were never communicated to them.




  • this is a wake-up call to this industry and any other industry enjoying a glut of “free” (as in beer) proprietary tools owned entirely by private (or worse: public!) organizations.

    this will always be the result. every single time. if you think you and your industry are immune to getting bait & switched, you are very wrong.

    chaining your livelihood to a for-profit organization is begging to eventually be extorted in this manner. greed is inevitable.



  • Cops are well aware standing in front of a car gives them a free pass killing someone

    This “technique” has been demonstrated enough that frankly, I think that any rational person would conclude that in any situation where a cop walks in front of your car, you’re better off just gunning it before the cop has a chance to extrajudicially execute you first. If they walk in front of your car, it’s clear they’re just itching to murder you. The threat has been made, you should fear for your life. It’s you or them.