banneryear1868 @ banneryear1868 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Gaming for me is mostly fine on Linux, it's running Ableton with standard plug-ins that doesn't work, surprisingly. Basically the only way I can run my own hardware for a music rig is through Windows. Also the odd thing like "run this firmware update utility" for various devices, then you'll have to go forum diving where people have tried all the workarounds to realize the workaround is just "use winblows."

I'm a mixed environment sysadmin for almost 15 years so Windows doesn't bother me as a product as much as others, I don't like Microsoft's business practices, but I can pretty much disable anything I don't like on Windows Enterprise. Like they are compliant with security regulations regarding critical infrastructure, as much as people justifiably rant about privacy concerns they try and force on to end users, but you can get around a lot of that with the same old commands. Our isolated environment isn't sending data to Microsoft or anything from our workstations for instance, and this traffic is heavily monitored and audited.

Yeah look up disabling edge through group policy, it's quite easy and will be reapplied on every boot and login. Try finding the powershell command for everything too because you can save as a script and rerun it anytime as needed. There's a "Reclaim windows" script on github that does a lot of this and you just have to comment/uncomment what you want done.

Understanding the historical circumstances I find myself in and devoting the majority of my effort in to things I can control.

I don't think people don't really act their religion, it's the religion that acts them, or embodies what their ideology is, or what the ideaology of the state is, or ruling class. The best definition I've heard for ideology is, "the mechanism that harmonizes the principles that you want to believe with what advances your material interest."

I grew up fundamentalist in the Mennonite Brethren and Evangelical Baptist tradition, then and was exposed to some Christian Socialist ideas and the New Monasticism movement in my later teen years. The radical pacifism of my ancestors required they migrate around Europe to avoid anabaptist persecution, conscription and military service, and they got very lucky by avoiding both the Russian Revolution escaping to the Weimar Republic (which included bribing train guards with paska buns), and the rise of the Nazis by emigrating to Canada.

I'm now an atheist but find a lot of atheists are not very knowledgeable about religion and use their performative opposition to it in a way to assert moral superiority in a way that gives them power in a political and civil religious sense. To me many atheists are ardent followers of civil religion, accepting the morality of individualism and the default morality of our culture, which itself has a lot of Christian aspects. As a Christian I found myself essentially untouched by all atheist arguments because they didn't seem to recognize the religious beliefs I had. We actually read some of the New Atheist books like God Delusion in Bible Study, an agnostic religious professor was present at a session to answer questions and provide better resources for anyone interested.

I prefer the Marxian view of religion that people's religious beliefs are not the source of their actions but instead that the religion is determined by conditions and motivations external to it and that religion is used to morally justify these conditions, as well as provide a means to address the suffering caused by conditions. We see religion evolve as people's relationships with production evolve as well as power struggles and compromises between state powers. People often view Christianity as wiping out paganism rather than adopting aspects of it that would solidify state power for example. And people often treat religion as it's own domain separate from culture, but I think that doesn't explain things like civil religion or how religion actually functions. The way Calvinism during the 1600s develop alongside capitalism and these new economic relations it's hard not to see religion in this way, and in the US you saw things like the Adventists and Mormons come out of Christian tradition which is basically a historical record of this process.

I think an error is the idea that atheists aren't necessarily religious in an ideological sense, because a lot of them follow notions of civil religion and morality that are very much attached to theistic religions, or at least rely on the existence of concepts found in theistic religion. The idea that atheists and Christians are separate ideologically I think is false, in many cases they merely take the same moral framework and apply it for different political ends within the same broad economic consensus. And this makes a lot of sense as the recent Atheist movement in the 00s was very politically attached to the post 9/11 stuff that was happening. That movement split in the 10s along culture war lines as well, I personally saw many atheists turn into "race realists" and anti-feminists and the skeptics group I was attending basically ceased to exist because of this.

Yeah it always annoys me how some outspoken atheists often treat the Bible and other religious texts in the exact same manner the stupidest religious people do (maybe harsh way to say that). When I was still a Christian I was basically immune to atheist critiques of the Bible simply because I didn't recognize the Bible in the literal way they attacked it, and the Christian arguments against Biblical literalism I found to be way stronger than atheist ones that dismissed so much information to function.

I think it's not pedantic because it's very important to recognize that Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation was reacting to what slaves and abolitionists had decided the war was going to be about. When people say "it was about slavery" and attribute that to Lincoln, who very clearly did not believe he had the power to end slavery even despite people telling him in times of rebellion he did, and this is incredibly well documented, this takes away credit from the slaves, former slaves, and abolitionists who decided they would fight for the war to be about abolition and succeeded in that.

In another comment I shared a letter written by a freed slave to the mistress who owned his child, a letter who's contents would have been punishable by death even from where he was writing it in the north, but it expresses perfectly the sentiment that caused the war to be about abolition. In the letter he says a thousand black soldiers and him are coming and that she will burn in hell etc.

So when we say "it's about slavery" from the very beginning we need to be clear that it was specifically the confederates going to war over the right to own slaves at the start, while the north was going to war to preserve the Union. It became "about slavery" in the sense of freeing slaves and abolition after slaves, freed slaves, and abolitionists fought for that. It could very well have been a senseless conflict if it weren't for abolitionists, and they fought despite the racism they faced in the north as well, because they had a higher purpose for fighting even above the generals who they fought under.

...I am agreeing they mention slavery, that's why the Confederate states seceded, they didn't want the federal government interfering with their right to own slaves and run their economies using them. For Lincoln however he was both being "smart" in not attacking slavery directly because he knew if he alienated his supporters in those states he would be making a strategic error, and also because he didn't think he could actually do anything about it as president. At the time when Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation, the people who would sympathize with that message were far ahead of him in recognizing and adopting emancipation as a moral justification for the war. Lincoln basically said, if you are fighting this war for freedom and liberty, join and fight for it. The error we make looking back is emphasizing this speech as the turning point, it was actually reacting to what abolitionists, slaves, and former slaves had already done.

I shared an excellent hour and a half interview with civil war historian Barbara Fields in another comment expressing this sentiment, often reciting from books and historical letters throughout, that gets deep into this topic. Obviously people are downvoting it, but she explains it clearly:

“it was the battle for emancipation and the people who pushed it forward… it was they who ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher. When a black solder in New Orleans said “liberty must take the day nothing shorter” he said in effect that when we count out those who have died and survey the carnage is must be for something higher than Union and free navigation of the Mississippi River”

The declarations of secession from the southern states makes it clear they are seceding because of the federal government's unwillingness to enforce their laws regarding ownership of slaves (right to private property) in non-slave states. At the same time Lincoln had no intention or even thought he could legally do anything about slavery in the south, very plainly stated in his first inaugural address on March 4 1861 as he desperately tried to avoid a civil war:

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

For the north, and America as a whole, the idea that the war was about slavery as a moral evil was something the slaves themselves fought for. Even though they faced racism from northern troops many former slaves understood the reason for the war to a deeper level than even their northern generals.

Love the actual history getting downvotes here... this also doesn't conflict with it being about slavery. The thing we shouldn't do is equate "about slavery" in the way the Confederate states meant it when they seceded, with "about slavery" in the sense of abolition. Lincoln did not enter the war to emancipate slaves and fight for abolition, his first inaugural address on the eve of war leaves no question, a direct quote:

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

Lincoln's primary motivation was keeping the Union together at first, and obviously that changed, because we have the Emancipation Proclamation. The moral issue of slavery was hugely important for the North's motivation and for people to fight though, many being emancipated slaves who understood the true point of fighting more than their northern white commanders, and who also faced racism from other northern soldiers yet still fought with them. The point is it wasn't some goodness of the government that defined this war to be about slavery, it was actually the slaves that did that and those that were sympathetic to this cause.

Barbara Fields is an expert on civil war history and makes the case for this view in this excellent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ncnTNkeoOM The question of Lincoln's motivations at the beginning of the war as Union before slavery and whether he can be excused is addressed at 55 minutes.

"it was the battle for emancipation and the people who pushed it forward... it was they who ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher. When a black solder in New Orleans said "liberty must take the day nothing shorter" he said in effect that when we count out those who have died and survey the carnage is must be for something higher than Union and free navigation of the Mississippi River"

Spotswood Rice, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864:

I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God-given rite of my own. And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there. For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up through, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try you the day that we enter Glasgow. I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you. You never in your life before I came down here did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me. My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeance on them that holds my Child. You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs. I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.

(It's not known if Spotswood had a showdown with Kittey but there are property records indicating he lived with Mary and his wife after the war.)

Edit: It's people downvoting historical letters from freed slaves and historians reading testimonies of black Union soldiers that makes me think my time on this website is just about over...

All politicians at this level are products of marketing consultants. Biden is cosplaying as a younger person with his lifts and fillers. Trump is cosplaying as a rich guy. Obama cosplayed a progressive etc. Clinton failed cosplaying as a likable normal human person.

Yeah this name calling stuff is cringe and shows how Americans have the maturity of 12 year olds. "His name is Donald Drumpf! He has a dumb name guys! HUSSEIN Obama he's a Muslim!! NIKKI IS INDIAN SHES AN INDIAN HER NAME IS ACTUALLY INDIAN!"

Shakira Shakira

Not really that simple, the fact that the 13% Obama-Trump voters likely secured his victory is one major complication with these typical "MAGA yokel" interpretations of who Trump's supporters are. Also the alt-right people who supported Trump in 2016 don't necessarily support him personally anymore but will still not be voting Democrat, mostly because he governed like a milquetoast Republican and wasn't the anti-establishment personality they wanted. Similar to Obama actually, at the end of the day he was an American president and did what they do. The idea there are strong racial lines (as if that was a valid identifier for people anyway) is also dubious as many voters in the "hispanic" category are strong supporters of Trump, his number of black supporters isn't insignificant either.

This also misses the point that Democrat supporters are part of the same political system by which MAGA exists in, it's all one economic consensus that is leading to this, so everyone would be blamed for acting within this system and they would deserve it. At least in this hypothetical Nazi Germany endgame fantasy.

Important point here is the Allies didn't select for German civilians who supported the Nazis, they ALL shared blame for it even if they were just doing what they could to survive under the circumstances. Keep that in mind if you're a Democrat voter and think you've "done your duty" or whatever. Saying you hate Trump online doesn't matter for anything and the only Germans who had any respect after WW2 likely died in the resistance or in camps. So the moral posturing within the very political system that's causing this by which you asset superiority because you are anti-Trump, at the end of the day it has zero significance if it doesn't work. Given Trump's polling numbers I wouldn't be so sure of my effectiveness if I were a US Democrat supporter right now and feel like I had no basis to assert that "I'm on the good side."

The only way out of this political era has to come from outside this structure of politics, because the two parties in the US consent to the same economic arrangement that causes this problem. MAGA and Trump are a reaction to economic conditions that neither party is going to change, and actually rely on not changing.

These media outlets basically created Trump's brand, and "bOtH siDeS" absolutely because it wasn't conservative news media clips the alt-right were gleefully consuming in 2016, it was compilations of liberal news anchors with "shocked" expressions reciting the latest Trump tweets. Can't believe it's still happening but we're back to Trump outrage news cycles and online reactions to it just like 2016.

The date puree for the filling I make extra and use it as a spread, so good. It's still a process but it's not a lot of work at once and cleans easy. The creator of this recipe is really good at teaching the indicators and not just measurements which is why I love this one in particular.

You can get really good powdered stocks too, if they were shitty that would be another story but if you find a restaurant supplier with specialty foods in bulk they likely have a good stock option. I got a pail of dehydrated mushrooms from the same supplier here in Canada and they have the fancy spices and all that too, different saffron varieties even.

I don't have enough meat scraps and carcasses coming through to make proper demi-glace or stock in the quantity I use so I prefer a dehydrated powder used in restaurant service for home use. My scraps usually end up in a single soup recipe.

And yeah I love making French stews and all that, and I make components of French meals, but I'm talking like a full contemporary French menu from appetizer to dessert. To me that's a very simple menu, some basic ingredients of exceptional quality, each prepared in a way that makes them taste as good as they can using techniques it takes a lot of experience to get good at, with some experimental or playful element that isn't too pretentious, then plated and presented in a creative way. That type of meal I will gladly pay for because it's almost the fact someone else has imagined it and made it real that makes it worth it, like I wanna see what kind of tricks they're doing that I wouldn't have thought to do. Not only that but everything has to come together perfectly for it to work, and even if I know I can technically do it all, can I do it all at once by myself as a home cook? That's why I respect the restaurant process for this style of food.