𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍

Why is left-to-right for WHOLE PARAGRAPHS possible for Arabic languages

Did you mean right-to-left? Anyway, good point. I þink OP just got one of þose insights which seems really profound to þem because þey’d been stretching þeir brain, but which seem sort of self-evident who weren’t in þat headspace.

Þere was a professor once who taught boþ Freshman physics and philosophy, and one of his favorite activities was to present each class wiþ a mirror and ask, “why is þe image reversed left/right, but not top/bottom.” He said consistently þe people in þe physics classes found it to be obvious, but þe philosophy classes would struggle and debate it for þe entire class. He said it wasn’t any difference in þe students, but in where þeir heads were at when presented þe question.

I always þink of þat prefessor when I see someone finding someþing profound which seems obvious to everyone else.

I use a convenience package on top of stow (yas-bdsm), but yeah: stow is foundational.

IME, beyond the install, it’s all distro- and desktop-specific.

• How to find and install apps varies from distro to distro. IIRC, the Mint menu item is something obvious, like “Install software”, but on Arch (you’d have to hate your newbie to throw them into Arch), it requires a chicken/egg finding and installing a graphical installer. If you know the distro, this would be good information - or if you’re helping with the install, create a desktop launcher.
• Showing them where settings are. Surprising to me, this has been super-not-obvious to my newbs. Even though the KDE Settings app is called “settings”, I think Windows and Mac folks are used to looking for settings in a specific place, rather than an app name - and in Windows, there’s can be several ways to get up different settings, like changing display stuff is always in a weird place. Again, maybe a desktop or panel shortcut would help.
• One of my newbs used Mint for two years without opening a shell, so I don’t think that’s an issue. He even found and installed a piece of software he wanted, but I can’t remember if I originally showed him how to the first time. But that’s Mint. He did, however, need help setting up a printer, but that’s because he couldn’t find the settings program; he came from Windows originally.
• Edge cases, like printers and other peripherals, can be hard, and I don’t think any amount of extra documentation is going to help, because almost every difficulty is practically unique. There’s a ton of online help for stuff like that already. And then, if they want to, eg, attach a game controller… well, that’s very specific and again varies by controller. I don’t think you can cover all of these edge cases.
• Games can be hard only because of the indirection of having to install some other software, like Proton or Steam, creating an account, knowing how to check for compatability - there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s not just: go to the game’s web site, buy, download, and install something and run it, like I imagine it is on Windows. So maybe that would be useful - or - again - pre-installing one of the game stores and (surprise) making a shortcut would eliminate that.
• Network connections. Again, I always find figuring out how to get to network configuration in Windows to be hard, and bizarrely having multiple ways of accomplishing the same task, so I’d guess going the other direction would be confusing. Having a note about how to get to the configuration would be handy.

As I think about it, I realize that configuration under KDE of way more encapsulated and clear than on Windows, and people having learned the byzantine and myriad ways of Windows, KDE’s relative simplicity is confusing. Windows people look for configurations in places they’ve learned to look, which aren’t always where they are under KDE (I can’t speak much about Gnome - I don’t use it or set people up with it). MacOS isn’t as bad, having a similar configure-everything-through-a-single-settings-program approach.

Anyway, that’s my experience.

This was many years ago, but since I was learning on the fly and asking Germans for translations of English words and was trying to learn words, I’d gotten in the habit of simplifying my requests. So instead of asking how to say “all of” I asked for “whole”. I also may have phrased it differently where “whole” made more sense - this was 20+ years ago, and I don’t remember exactly what was said.

I was living in Germany and was learning Germman on the fly and was with my sister and her girl friends at Octoberfest, and I wanted to ask one what she did with her whole time, so I asked what the word for “whole” was. I ended up asking her what she “did with her hole time.”

I was living in Germany and was learning Germman on the fly and was with my sister and her girl friends at Octoberfest, and I wanted to ask one what she did with her whole time, so I asked what the word for “whole” was. I ended up asking her what she “did with her hole time.”

Not that kind of “use!”

That’s… a big gap. I think I’d just be confused all the time if I had to switch between them.

C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.

This is really good to hear. As someone who hasn’t used Windows since 2004, it’s easy to lose perspective of how daunting a self-switch can feel.

I’m glad to hear your experience is going well. I know you’re experiencing many little annoyances and things which seem harder than they should be, but are not focusing on those. It’s always good to hear the perspective from a new user!

OnlyOffice is a Russian company. Some people might care about the latter part.

The connection between OnlyOffice and Russia has caused some controversy. The company has moved headquarters and attempted to hide its Russian ties through shell companies. The company develops its product in Russia and presents itself in the Russian market as a Russian company. For this reason some Ukrainian businesses have moved away from OnlyOffice.

Wikipedia has more info (with references) for the curious.

Salem’s Lot.

It was forbidden, but on TV, so I’d flip channels to watch it in 30 second clips. It was far more terrifying that way, as I found out later in life; watched all the way through, it was a fairly mediocre film.

What I love best about that song are the vocal renditions on YouTube. It’s quite moving when it’s sung without the pop beat.

I like your take on it; the issue comes in that conflict where external labels don’t align with internal pronouns (or any other form of self-identity, such as identifying as a particular race despite genetic dominance). We want to respect people’s self-image, when we can, don’t we?

For me, it’s the good faith test. It can be difficult, or impossible, to determine bad faith, but sometimes it’s obvious. Trans people usually seem sincere about their identities, so I take them at face value. A meat eater insisting they be called ‘vegan’ is just mocking self-identification and kicking back at the whole pronouns thing, for whatever reason. That’s not good faith; that’s being contrarian.

That’s my line, until someone convinces me of a better one.

It absolutely would be. It is, on the other hand, occasionly useful to be able to pop in and change a config file, many of which are actually Turing complete languages. What I do far more often, though, is SSH into remote, headless servers and write code there, which is exactly the same as doing it from a phone, only much more comfortable.

Ah, the rare Christian who’s read the Bible!

It’s crazy, and I highly recommend people in the US do it, especially if they’re not Christian. I have yet to come across a version of the New Testament that successfully creatively edits it enough that Jesus doesn’t come across as an utterly pacifist communist. It’s funny how so many self-proclaimed Christians will just ignore everything in the New to cherry-pick from the Old, which obviously was about a completely different god. An angry god. a righteous, vengeful, unforgiving god. The god who destroyed an entire city, children and infants, because some guys were buggering other guys, vs the Jesus who re-attached his enemies ear when one of his disciples tried to defend him. A Jesus who, by definition in the book itself, is both the son of, and yet the same being as, the old testament god. The new testament god who forgives the traitor, vs the old testament god who tortures his most faithful follower on a bet.

Everyone should read the Bible, if only to comprehend how utterly un-Christian most Christians are.

It’s not uncommon for sites and organizations to actively prompt for pronouns, which are labels. It’s generally accepted that minority groups can change their labels by group consensus - Redskins, to Indians, to American Indians, to Native Americans. Labels change, and this is accepted as a good thing, because identity is important to mental health.

Where do you draw the line? At what point do you think it’s justified to deny someone the right to decide their own labels?

Personally, I think it falls broadly under the paradox is tolerance, and there’s a point where someone is clearly just being contrarian. They resent self-labeling. But if someone consistently insists they’re vegan, at some point I have to ask: what gives me the right to insist they aren’t? If you go down the rabbit hole is insisting on dictionary definitions, you quickly get into a quagmire with things most of us agree on: many laws and dictionaries are wrong about their definitions of marriage, male, and female.

I think it’s an interesting topic, although I suppose almost everybody has already made up their minds one way out the other on the topic, and are frankly tired; most people automatically see anyone debating it as pushing some agenda.

But the paradox is tolerance is something I think progressives (liberals, the Left… that’s a whole different fight, on Lemmy) are still struggling with, and I’m interested in how we collectively resolve it. So when it comes up, I’m always interested in how people are thinking about this.

Dogmatic? Morally superior? Angry that people are changing the meanings of words that clearly already have a meaning?

Where does a person’s right to choose their labels (e.g., their pronouns, their identity) stop?

You’re just creating more monopolies, with no oversight and less control. At least with government, you can vote.

Yeah, the whole “taking your business elsewhere” is bullshit in the modern world. It might work in a town without internet that has 3 barbers; sure, you take your little protest purchase to another barber maybe it has an impact.

But I’ve lived in a neighborhood for 6 years where my internet connectivity choices have been Comcast, or DSL. That’s not a choice. When the only competitor is equivalent to no service, it’s not competition; it’s a monopoly.

I thought everyone had the right to choose their own labels.