You’re probably right

(“mad dental science”: Silverbook is the mouth bacteria instead of brushing your teeth guy)

Reinforcing my belief that you can find someone who holds any opinion it’s possible to hold, no matter how dumb it is

Honest to God, I thought a “Librephone” was something that already existed. I think I was thinking of the PinePhone or smth.

Yarvin doesn’t think Trump has the guts to pull off a full fascist nightmare.

It physically pains me to say this, but I think Yarvin is correct here. What IS getting done is bad enough, but he’s right that you can’t really half-ass a hostile takeover, which is what Trump et al seem to be doing. Yes, they’re fucking the US systems up, badly, but they’re leaving the structures too intact. They’re still bothering with things like court cases and gerrymandering. You don’t bother with gerrymandering if you’re not planning on still having elections, yknow?

I also think Yarvin is correct that Trump and crew will ultimately fail because of it. That’s probably cold comfort to the people who have already lost loved ones, or who are dying or going to die because of this administration (and as a trans person myself, I may well be among that number), but it’s not nothing.

So basically, trying to figure out whether someone is actually being altruistic is just the poisoned chalice bit from The Princess Bride, forever

The “sticker” is actually an off-cut from a laptop skin from my other laptop (which also runs Linux, and also has a sticker over its Windows key :P), so it’s held up pretty well

I’m petty enough to put stickers over mine.

Maybe SpiralLinux? It’s basically just Debian with a few twealks, but the btrfs+Snapper might come in handy if/when you need to do tech support.

The story is awful enough, but the headline is making me want to punch someone.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/02/1122871/therapists-using-chatgpt-secretly

NVIDIA

Welp, there’s your problem. I have an NVIDIA card as well and it’s been the source of at least 95% of my Linux headaches.

I’ve tried a few distros and Linux Mint was definitely the most “just works” for me. Make sure you’re using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, regardless of what option you choose. Currently I use SpiralLinux (Debian with a few tweaks) because I really like the BTRFS snapshots and fell in love with KDE during my distro-hopping, but Mint is what I would recommend to the vast majority of people.

Why go to all the trouble of branding yourself as “rational” if you’re just going to reinvent religion?

Seconding (or third-ing, or twelfth-ing) the recommendation for Linux Mint, but also gonna throw one in for MX Linux if the hardware is older.

Mint is a pretty solid choice for like 95% of people. If you’re already using LibreOffice then you’re halfway there, and I’ve been able to run all the games I want through Steam or Lutris (the Flatpak versions are better for compatibility IME). A lot of people use Bottles for games as well, but I’ve never been able to get it to work properly. I think I started using Linux full-time at about the level you seem to be at, and I didn’t run into any major issues.