Damn, nearly 60 pounds down. You are an inspiration. I don’t know the answer to dysmorphia, but I hope you can find some peace with it.

What I’ll say is, I’ve got no comp sci degree, and when I started, I had no idea how the terminal worked. But… My mindset was the following:

1. I really don’t like windows, I’m not going back
2. I don’t like paying others to “do it for me”, I want to do it myself
3. I want the freedom to be able to change anything to make the machine fit me, even if that means I need to learn things along the way.

If you’re the type of person where this general philosophy, you’re going to crush it.

But if you’re more along the lines of “I just use this computer as a tool to do the things I want, I just need the computer out of the way, and working consistently so I can get on with my actual goals”, you probably will hate it. Becuase all your troubleshooting experiences will be “why doesn’t this thing just work, like it does on Windows?”

It’s a conversation you should have early, and as often as necessary, with future partners. Yes, it’s a bit strange. But it doesn’t really matter how normal or abnormal the behavior of “others” is, only that you do what works for the two of you!

I can’t speak to it as a desktop environment, but as server, the default customizations around packages are just… Strange. I need to move to Debian at some point.

This is a huge victory, the big takeaway for me is that the person who smack talked the software was willing to get in the room with the designers and help them out. It’s easy to complain, it’s a lot more work to complain, run through user tests, file bug reports, etc. So bravo to that person, and hopefully we can see this sort of outcome on more software.

I’m probably going to end up continuing on exactly as I please because it’s better than rotting. Even with sharing everything I feel like I’m dying of loneliness and I don’t care how dramatic that sounds.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Despite what people on here might say (and it’s a small echo chamber) there are multitudes of other people in the world, sharing their thoughts online, and in person, and they go on living. Is there a risk “of exposure”? Yes, life inherently carries risks. Frankly I would say to a privacy maximalist to simply unplug their internet connection, lest your ip data is somehow traced back to you.

I know you mentioned not being able to afford therapy. You’re probably aware of things like sliding scale payments, and therapists who offer “life coaching” to functionally provide the same service under different billing rates (buyer beware of course).

But as someone who didn’t get into therapy until they could afford it as an adult… Have you read any helpful books lately? They might not be a perfect substitute, but in my case, they kept me going.

Good luck!

Does it even count as a mechanical keyboard if the actuation is from hall effect switches?

This isn’t totally right, but is looks like a Pashmina Shawl, held with a cloak pin.

Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there’s a million Google results for your error message is comforting.

This is my reason. I’ve been using Arch exclusively for a few years, but have used it on and off since 2008. I still don’t consider myself an expert by any means, and I frequently pull the docs and old forum threads to solve issues I run into.

Documentation is the most important deciding factor for me. I didn’t use more fully featured distributions, even if they were “easier” becuase if I can’t look up the answer, and I have to live with something because I don’t know what button to press… I mean you may as well just give me a windows box again.

I can’t discount this very valid point :D

I’m sure the more cultural anthropologist types will have a more eloquent way of stating it, but the US has a hard time escaping it’s religious background, which views nudity as a gateway to sexuality, so people “must remained covered”.

And in the same way, if men are naked around each other, people are afraid of it being seen as a sexual thing. I mean non sexual nudity doesn’t really exist in “standard spaces” in my part of the country anyway.

And man, if an adult and young person were naked near each other, someone would call the cops!

I think Hollywood sexuality is exactly that, escapist fiction. The US is actually a pretty sexually repressed place.

You can sit around any bar and say “oh that girl is hot, I’d love to fuck her!” But you would get looks you’d get if you said “oh that girl is hot, I’d love if she pegged me!”

Maybe it’s changing, but it doesn’t really feel like it to me.

The technical term for this is called a collective noun in English. I did some quick googling, which unfortunately returned a ton of AI slop that I won’t repost here. But it did return tons of answers.

My thought is, your school probably did teach you it was called a Whisper, but who’s to say what’s the authority on collective nouns.

I believe truly having no empathy would make it impossible to form anything other than surface level friendships.

The only precious resource I own is my time, and who I spend it with. The thing in life that makes the hard times seem not so bad, and the good times twice as good, is spending with people I care about, and people that I know care about me.

To be pathological about it… My asking questions about you IS a means to an end. It gives a few useful things:

• I learn about you
• I learn about your worldview, I learn what motivates you
• and I learn where you tend to sell yourself short so I know how to encourage you

Talking about yourself is “giving” when only you share vulnerability. 1 word answers is keeping your guard up. Asking about them is “giving” because you get opportunities to learn about/support/uplift them. People like getting questions. It can make them feel cared for.

And I’m not saying anything is wrong with you. Just sharing my perspective.

And I’m a guy, so I guess you’d really be puzzled if we met IRL!

I was just in a group setting where 3 people who all had a tendency for “same sex attraction” described themselves differently.

One individual strongly preferred the term queer.

The second identified as pan because they liked the flag more than the bi flag, but admitted that bi might be a better fit for them.

The third indentified as bi.

The discussion of accurate terminology could be helpful in some settings, but… In casual settings, or even when negotiating intimacy with other people, what YOU mean by the term means more than the term itself, and you are not out of place by feeling “generally fuzzy” on usage.

This is challenging to read as a human. And I know I’m not the only one. So if we can’t work out all the letters… no way a computer could either. I liken it to the idea that if I type out “detialed”, spell check can suggest “detailed”, but if I write “ditaled” it’s not going to know.

When adult men using the urinal allow their pants to fall down around their ankles while peeing

We’ve been called out, but deservedly so.

I second this. Fastmail has been a joy to use. Since the users are paying, the company has (less) incentives to enshittify. JMAP? Count me in!

This was such a helpful little example, thank you! Like a peek into another world.

Am I crazy? I’m seeing a github page with commits from 6 days ago. When you unmaintained what do you mean, like no new features?