My comment was referring to the fact that it is difficult if not impossible for governments to restrict a civilian’s access to effective lethal weapons. Legally, a government does maintain a monopoly on violence, and they can attempt to continue restricting the civilian’s access, but the continued development of technology is eroding the barrier of entry for effective weapons.

I understand it’s not a department or office lol, what I’m saying is any average joe now has the ability to download a single file off the internet and assemble a functional, reliable firearm with no prior experience. Or manufacture effective fragmentation IEDs. Or 3D print a lethal drone that can be controlled with a phone or a portable game console. With those developments, no population can be fully or effectively disarmed - so governments must accept that the population can be armed regardless of their wishes, and can disrupt the monopoly at any time.

That’s difficult to answer, because both groups use the social shield of religious identity (or more accurately conflating their views with religion to their followers) as a method to both deflect criticism from within their bases and to appeal as a legitimate representative to all who practice the faith (even if their appeal is hypocritical and baseless).

I agree with you that those abuses don’t undermine the concepts and values placed forward by the root faith (as mentioned in my prior comment, religion can serve beneficial/personal value components within a society), but a leader’s ability to wield religion within the halls of governance taints the religion’s “purity” among the populace as a whole. As the lies are perpetuated through generations, some concepts preached by these bad influences can become accepted or even indoctrinated as true values.

So again, tricky question to answer. In my personal opinion, the only way to disarm this particular scenario is to maintain a secular form of governance and keep religion only as a personal or communal liberty away from any decision made at a government level (appeal to empirical evidence or logical conclusions instead), but there are holes in that idea as well. Dang.

While I respect your devotion to your faith as a means of promoting goodwill, I vehemently disagree that faith should serve as any integral component for a just society. Theocracies allow for plenty of corruption, manipulation of history and academia, sanctioned death, and abuse of their populations simply under other names and with varying methods.

Religion can be an accepted component of one’s society. It should never serve as the bedrock of a society, lest it be seized and contorted by the next aspirational oligarchs seeking to write themselves in as “more equal than the others”.

Also that monopoly has been somewhat eliminated with the increasing development of technology that allows for killing without consequences. Drones, rigged explosives, remote detonation, incendiary devices, autonomous firearms, so on. (Developments of improvised firearms, explosives, and incendiary devices with common materials has also contributed to this, along with DIY drone construction).

At this point the correcting factor is if a state is able to control the collective perception or will of a population to a point where pacification is possible (China or UK’s surveillance states, for instance). But that is not a viable long term solution due to it simply bottling the frustrations of the populace rather than extinguishing them.

After all, in JFK’s famous words, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable”. With ideas able to be spread anywhere, no ideal can be stamped out for good, on any segment of the ideological spectrum.

Sucks for those who wish for a cooperative world, I suppose.

As someone with an IT background who has spent countless hours helping family members, you end up with users (mainly children) who copy and paste random crap from the internet and break something, even if there’s safety glass over the self-destruct button (sudo). I’d rather have the extra peace of mind to know they can’t fuck it up.

That’s a reasonable point of view - I’ve just had plenty of negative experiences with immutable distros that completely undo any customizations I’ve performed (SteamOS mostly), but that does somewhat come down to nitpick territory.

A better way to put it is enthusiasts don’t need an immutable distro, but can use one well. However elderly, very young children, and the tech illiterate likely require an immutable distro to prevent accidental (or misguided) mishaps, unless there’s special circumstances that require something else.

It’s what you would recommend for people you can’t trust even with having glass over the self-destruct button. Immutable distros are the equivalent of pouring a concrete shell.

The elderly, very young children, and the tech illiterate (who have no desire to learn) would be appropriate candidates. Enthusiasts, students, programmers, and those who tinker/create probably don’t need that level of safety.

Well, just experimented (removed MicroG and purged the components, reinstalled the Graphene sandboxed play services), and it seems like it just works. Even Aurora seems to work okay, managed to download and install Signal.

So I guess if you’re willing, you can just use Aurora with an Anon acc if you just need base apps without google login.

I wonder if using sandboxed google play services without actual google account login (like in my case, using aurora) is a possible option, since I didn’t really check. It’s probably worth a look on the graphene forums at least.

You can have microG and use something like Aurora store for most applications (What I’m using on my setup right now)

If you list your phone model I can research your options for you. I know overall that Samsung phones are the worst offenders for restricting your options though, along with iPhones OFC.

Wow, that’s one interesting comment history you got there. I’m guessing… Floridian?

Also, as someone who has family members who have worked with clients in the California prison system to make sure they get their rights exercised, we do have due process in this state, unlike your right-wing fantasies, MAGAt.

Go suck off Desantis, and while you’re at it, why not visit Alligator Auschwitz for some tourism of the “accomplishments” of your state.

Cody (from AlternateHistoryHub) covered most of the states’ anthems in this video and even ranked them.

Spoilers: ::: spoiler Tap for spoiler California’s anthem gets S tier :) :::

Man, I love that California is my home. Fun fact by the way, we have our own state anthem, and it actually slaps

Although more people associate it with the NCR from Fallout: New Vegas than the actual state. But hey, something to aspire towards! :)

Ah that makes sense. I do reuse the jugs tho, so at least those aren’t wasted.

Hook up an Xbox/PlayStation controller using Bluetooth XD

Is liquid detergent still a bad deal? I have no qualms against using powder instead, but my family always stuck to using bulk laundry detergent liquid (I forget the unit size of the 100 load bottle exactly), and I thought that was a good deal.

There’s nuance for sure (guess I should have worded the root comment better), but I’m referring to activities involving fake/generated content, conspiracy theories, or things like dismissing science or verified historical events.

Anything that allows distributed hosting without any central accountability will inevitably have right-wing content uploaded - we have this problem in the fediverse as well. I think the best solution is to create an instance within these platforms that can stick within a certain niche to build trustworthyness (ie: an instance solely dedicated to news footage/documentaries).

Think of this like a Wikimedia-esque entity but just for a single peertube/Odyseey group (that would allow distributed cloning ala piratebay/annas archive)