djsoren19

I worked as a clerk in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy firm as a summer gig during college. The vast majority of my job was reviewing and cataloguing all of the debts that had been accumulated by the debtors of a case. While some of it was the stereotypical "too many credits cards, too many mortgages," the vast, vast majority was people collapsing under the weight of medical debt. Just day after day of going through and seeing how much survival had cost someone.

The worst was when the person died, and the debtor was the significant other who had been supporting their partner in a battle that they lost. Those people hurt my heart the most.

I didn't manage to last the whole summer.

honestly at this point, why even use real numbers? Just ask for a bazillion rubles, it's about as likely as 2 undecillion.

We dismissed

No, the Democratic Party and enlightened centrists dismissed the threat. There were people like me rallying against this bullshit since George W Bush stole the 2000 election. Some of us were able to hear these crazies clearly and realized what they wanted. We were told to shut up and stop overreacting.

Being able to say "I told you so" isn't much of a salve when you're starting down the barrel of a totalitarian regime, but don't paint us all as rubes. People were sounding the alarm, they were ignored.

You continue living without having to entertain hateful bigots? It's worked out pretty great for me.

You don't. Most of us have already either fully cut-off contact with Trump supporting family members or limit our interaction with them heavily. Our country is rotted to the core, and this election won't be the end of it. Even if Harris wins, there will be contestion of the results. There may even be a successful coup by the Republican party. A civil war is not out of the question.

There is no normal. There won't be ever again.

Nah it's fine, see I don't live in a swing-state, so nobody cares about my vote at all!

You say you drink it regularly, have you ever tried to stop? If you suddenly experience headaches and shakes after, I've bad news for you.

The thing is, caffeine addiction is so heavily normalized and encouraged by our capitalist society that most people do not realize they're addicted. They consume caffeinated products with enough regularity that they never crave it, and you're only ever encouraged to stop if you develop a health issue.

There's a really great video by Filmcow that explains how hope is a poison for the mind. I think we're living in a pretty hopeless world, and trying to desperately cling to the pretense that things will change without action from ourselves is dangerous and naive. If there's something about the world that you passionately want to change and you're not working to correct it, you will only disappoint yourself by hoping someone else will change it for you. Give up hope and embrace action.

It was never going to surpass Windows or MacOS, but it has been steadily growing in usage rate. I think now it's at 5% of the market, largely off the back of Valve's Steam Decks which may or may not count as desktop by your definition.

It's just too technical to catch on for mainstream users, and that's honestly fine. I think everyone would prefer Linux offer freedom instead of simplicity.

Cool, now I can try and remember to get fully migrated to Linux before October next year.

Went from living paycheck to paycheck to having a full $1k in my account right now after dumping my ex and moving out. I always thought that having two incomes combined would be better than just my own, but never realized how massive a drain my ex was compared to just taking care of myself.

That being said, I'm able to live cheaply because I use public transit, cook all my own meals, and I don't eat that much. I think for most adults in the U.S., especially those who need a car for transit, the honest truth is that their wages just barely cover all their necessary living expenses.

You absolutely want to do it in-person, but understand this is going to be a long deprogramming process. You'll need to demonstrate how each lie they have been fed is untrue, and correct it with factual information. Once you get far enough down the right-wing rabbit hole, these people start living in a completely separate reality. Not only will you need to deconstruct that reality and bring them back to our own, you'll need to do so in a supportive and caring way, because most people don't respond well to their worldview crumbling. You'll need to convince them that you care for them more than anything else, or they'll retreat further into the fake reality that's been constructed for them.