Begin getting the species out of the solar system.

Yes, I know many of you think we should all die in a fire, but personally, I’m a fan of “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov.

Anyway, wherever you happen to be on this flaming cannonball of a planet we call home, I hope you’re having an excellent day.

That only just scratches the surface, mon ami. ANY celebration, except Passover, (which they refer to as the Memorial) is evil and to be rejected. On top of that, the JWs underwent a major shift around 1975. Internal discipline was ramped way up and overall the religion went to a “Armageddon is coming any day” footing. Children as young as 3 were told that the End was coming soon, and it could happen next month, next week, tomorrow, or an hour from now, and if they weren’t obeying the teachings of the faith that they would die in a fiery apocalypse

This message was repeated to them multiple times a day, with parents being told that they would be held responsible for their children as well. If child was found unworthy of survival at Armageddon, so would they.

Every single waking moment was viewed as a moment to demonstrate faithfulness to the teachings of the Governing Body, every single opportunity to attempt to bring in new worshippers had to be taken. If not, you risked death.

And this is without mentioning that all JWs were expected to have as few contacts with non-believers as possible, except when preaching to them. No friends outside the faith. No relationships on any level with anyone who wasn’t a believer. From the oldest down to the babies, you were supposed to have only absolutely necessary contact with those who weren’t JWs.

MJ was heavily abused physically and mentally in his youth. Being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness fucks you up in a lot of ways so those of us from that era and background were never surprised at how he became a fucked up adult.

And to be clear, none of that excuses the things he did, but it does help explain how they came to be.

60 year old Canadian here…

One of our primary identities is that we are NOT American. Usually it’s just a quiet thing. A “Yeah, we like you as friends but we aren’t you” sort of thing.

Americans have been our friends, our allies, our brothers in arms, the people we help and are helped by when the other is in a jam.

Never before have I seen us come together like this in utter fury at the US. It isn’t just the trade talks. It’s the betrayal of a trust and friendship that went back generations. Three quarters of the country approves of what Carney has done.

Try to find 75% of the US united on any issue and you start to realize how big this is. Trump has destroyed America in the eyes of every one of its allies, and at this point Canada isn’t feeling sorry about what happens to them anymore

Coming from that era myself, buying a VHS tape absolutely gave you ownership of that copy of the movie. Same with music, which is why homemade mixtapes were such a popular and permitted thing.

Studios didn’t like it, but no one went after the guy with the little vinyl briefcase of 100 different mixtapes for every sort of occasion.

Open sourcing of operational licenses.

If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.

CBC BBC Reuters…

And it’s not just them, but those tend to be my primary y news sources.

Diversion aside, can you name any examples of non Democrat or Republican legislators at the state or federal level?

Then why do I only ever see ® or (D) behind names in your government? Why don’t I hear about the Green party candidate for Senate, or the Libertarian in a state legislature? I mean, you say there are other parties, but if they exist surely someone from one of them has made it into the government of a state or to the federal level at some point.

Not trying to be argumentative here, just trying to understand.

I’m not an American, so I could be incredibly wrong here, but don’t you have a two party system? If you don’t vote Democrat, who do you vote for?

uninstalled Chrome a looooong time ago on my Win 10 machine

Contact or join your local SCA group. They may be anachronists as opposed to anarchists, but if you want to learn how make and use weapons and armor of that sort there are few more accessible teachers and trainers.

One of them made large amounts of basic body armor from heavy gauge plastic barrels for use by protesters a few years back. They may not stop bullets, but they are very_ effective versus “non-lethal” rounds and similar.

And yes, the person did get a visit from the FBI, who let the person keep on making as they weren’t working on weapons of any sort. Just the armor.

The US already has died as a global superpower. Only it’s military keeps it going.

Well, all the Nestle stuff gets sent back to them. Pretty much all the big name cereal outfits have orders that damaged products are to be sent to a salvage company.

Happily most cheese and sliced meats can be donated, plus we generally send 8-10 shopping carts of baked goods and produce directly from us to them every day

I’m one of the returns clerks in a Costco. First thing we do every morning is process stuff to send the food bank. It irks me how much stuff we aren’t allowed to send because the manufacturer won’t allow it. Even despite that we send a lot every day. Everything that does spoil at the food bank goes to a local pig farm, who donates pig products back to the food bank whenever he can.

As someone of Ukrainian descent I do. My grandfather fled the Holomodor to arrive in Canada in the 1920s, where he was able to put down $20 and prove out a section of land in a 5 year period to earn title to that land. That said, I am glad you used an actual news source. When I first saw that they were youtube links I was already going, “Oh boy, here we go again with a raging conspiracy theorist,” but I was pleasantly surprised that it was DW News, an outlet that plays on my smarthub, along with CBC news.

That said, you have anything newer than 2 years ago? It would be interesting to learn if there has been any progress on this.

You wanna link some of that claim?

I’m 58, and the only “code” I’ve ever written is hexadecimal for the Apple ][+ we had back in high school. Which isn’t even remotely close to what actual code is. Thanks for the attempt at insult, but it’s my reality, so fuck you too.

Some questions:

What version of Linux does Fedora install? Is it directly compatible with Windows software such as games and OBS, or does it require modifications/compatibility installations such as WINE? Does it have documented support online or is it a matter of haunting forums and such for when problems occur? And no matter how solid an OS is, I will tend to break it, generally by doing stupid shit, but I will break it. Before putting it back together. Which is generally how I tend to learn software.

Frankly, I don’t care.

I’m going to keep using Windows 10, updates or not, until I absolutely have no other choice, hoping against hope that the cracks in the Recall/AI monolith with have spread wide enough that a future Win 12 or 13 won’t have them in it. I don’t run a business. I don’t keep sensitive information on any internet capable devices and my work uses the AS400 system.

I know Linux is a thing, and about a dozen years ago I spent a year using Ubuntu exclusively. While appreciating the OS, I got tired of chanting magic spells at computer every time I wanted to use software I liked on it, and so went back to Windows.

These days, despite being a reasonably tech savvy person approaching 60, I’m getting to the point where I’m just not up to learning/relearning an OS unless there is a critical need, and using Windows 10 there just isn’t. At least not for me.