Ah, but you must see that recycling costs money! It’s cheaper to pretend you’re recycling and just throw it in the oceans and rivers and landscapes!

I hate it here. We even throw out online returns nearly 100% of the time for all it’s worth, it’s fucking crazy.

I remember months ago people were like “I guess you guys gotta fight us and kick our asses” and I’m lol no buddy, fix your own problems.

I hear ya. I imagine you’re in the States and I’m in Canada myself so we’re better but still feeling it up here.

Curious how living alone would reduce expenses, though.

Like what do I still need help for or what am I doing to build up my community?

For the first one there’s still plenty I can’t do yet. Like sewing for example, but it’s ok because I have a friend who can help me. We save money by me helping her with house things and she saved my expensive exercise pants from a hole in the knee and my work jeans from a couple holes and tears. Which transitions us into what I do for the community because I don’t always trade, either, and sometimes it’s just helping for the love of the game like woth moving. By myself, my ability to organize people and load up stuff in a moving truck is enough yo save people hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars on movers. If people need tools or skills or whatever I’m there. I have a car, which is less common where I am, and my trans friend needed help moving food for the local march last year so I offered to help them with that.

We can’t be experts at everything and we certainly don’t have the time to do it all ourselves. I always try as much as I can but it’s ok to ask others for help and we need to foster that sense of community support. Your ideas are good but they really work best when we can all trust each other and use that trust to organize against the owner class that’s keeping us down in the first place. Money is a good way to handle a lot of transactions of varying scales like this, especially when we have a global world, but the way capitalism uses money is twisted and corrupt, and it removes our ability to care for and support each other. Local businesses thrive when people can pay them and places like Walmart thrive when they’ve choked out competition and driven wages so low that no one can be expected to spend money on local goods, thereby making the town/city/region/country weaker.

Build skills, share skills.

No man is an island. There’s only so much one can do on their own. I can do an awful lot on my own, but even much of that is because I’m learning from so many others. I’m fairly clever, curious, and confident enough to execute what I’m trying to do but I still need others.

We’re the same age. Maybe not in the same situation and I can appreciate that, but as far as time as concerned you’ve got a lot more life to live. I started learning mandolin a year and half ago and can play pretty competently at jams and stuff now. If it’s music you’re looking at, I’d encourage sitting at the piano with a song you like and playing along with it. It doesn’t need to be an expert rendition or any, and honestly a lot of people actually forget that messing around is still practice. You got a lot of time, our lives have barely even started my dude, it just can feel weird since of our nearly thirty years we were kinda just going through the motions of going to school and stuff, not having a lot of personal control, etc… In reality we’ve barely have probably 8-10 years to do much about anything and we should have many decades ahead of us, each also able to build off the last in ways that the “first” decade could only dream of.

And yea, as far as this “mission” goes those are great values and ones I stand up loudly for regularly. Not sure what they have to do with this thread or your original comment or anything but yea. Self-sufficient is also a fine idea, but I would aim to also make communities self-sufficient. The owner class doesn’t really have skills, just money, but we all have knowledge and tools and ability. I spend a lot of time helping my friends fix their homes and cars and stuff(and teaching them that they can do it, too) and if someone needs to be moved I’m the guy to call. Building resilient, connect communities will go a super long way to reach the goals you’re after.

How old are you? You can learn an instrument at any age, my dad learned how to make pastries in his late forties, and there are so many other fun skills and hobbies you can develop pretty easily. You may have missed stuff but you’re still alive and that means you are the one in control of what you are actively doing or not doing right now. Drowning yourself in self-pity isn’t going to do anyone any favours. You can look back at what you missed for the next 30-40 years or you can forward to what you can get done in that time.

I’d also love to know what this “mission” is and I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with being mad at women and has more to do with shit like worker protections and wealth equality such that people can live their lives to the fullest.

Saw a kid at the zoo banging all up on the glass at a turtle yelling “WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP” and his dad aas doing fuck all. Tried to say “hey buddy maybe we chill” but I don’t really think it got through and he only stopped because of coincidental timing(a parent that shitty would probably get mad at me and I was there to have a good day).

(Note: I did have a good day, the zoo is awesome. We pet rays).

Yes, but even people who don’t go online much, even people I actually do care about in my own life, still fall into that category. The people I care about tend to be much nicer and wouldn’t call someone a hag but they do lack a certain level of maturity. Green-text makes it near certain but it’s a “not all rectangles are squares” situation.

Nothing but your missed life? You can live a lot of life without a romantic partner, as much I very much understand it can still feel lonely at times.

A friend of friend I’ve met a couple times is into me. They’re 23 and I’m 30 and I still don’t have an interest. They’re perfectly nice, but…

I think after 28-30 it starts to really not matter that much but before that even smallish gaps can be pretty questionable. And any dude that would consider someone their age to be a “hag” probably largely dates younger because mature, experienced women can tell they’re really just garbage man-children.

Possibly, especially a lot of weird conservative kids who don’t fully understand how relationships work. But really it’s not a huge deal.

They care because people that haven’t bought it should know that these issues don’t seem to be getting better. They should know that their money would be going to that asshole’s pockets. This shit matters and you wanting to plug your ears to discomfort doesn’t change that.

Here that? They did lip service while handing over power enthusiastically to the most comically and obviously evil people they could find!

A big reason why that’s important, as long as it’s done with care, is because conservatives rely on the rhetoric that purely white, conservative communities would be without crime. This kid grew up in a prime setting to show how amazing their way of life is without any “evil leftist” influences and yet here we are. The US has been given every opportunity to show how great theocratic conservative capitalism is and yet it keeps failing because the reality is that it fucking sucks rocks.

Well me and the other guy were talking about laymen, and that’s context this conversation is happening in.

And no they didn’t install Windows, but there’s also really on one “Windows” and spending more got you more but not different so even if you got ripped off at least you knew you weren’t missing something. That means they could just buy any old Windows laptop and call it a day. Now, if we just default to Ubuntu and ask that ASUS and HP and whoever else start selling laptops with that by default that’d certainly be a start but it would, nonetheless, be a hard sell. We should still try, but it’s still gunna be hard.

You just gave four options and an “etc.” and dude that’s not going to make anyone any more comfortable. If people don’t have friends who can help them, and a lot of people don’t, then how are they supposed to even know to ask for Linux, the set of OSs which have a reputation for being finnicky? They’re just supposed to grab a USB stick and learn what ISOs are, jump in the BIOS and mess with boot orders, and- do you not see the problem?

I agree that people should learn this shit. I’m not in IT but I deal with my computer myself, or a mechanic but I fix my own car, or a plumber but I have no problems dealing with certain issues here but a lot of people aren’t like that and are in fact actively discouraged from cracking into their electronics or their cars or their homes. It sucks, but you gotta deal with that before naming off distros when they don’t even know what a distro even is.

People like closed and predictable environments. The step is not to tell them to “get over it” but to instead show them carefully why things are safe. Also to be able to hand them a machine and go “here, it has Ubuntu” because, even though we know it’s easy, asking someone to put it on their computer is not goingnto happen.

Part of why people use Windows, too, is for compatibility. Why would someone go through all that just to end up not being able to use what they know? I’m not even saying they shouldn’t, and may the alternatives are actually better, but now it’s getting weird. And even asking them to pick a distro I mean which one do we decide is “the distro for the public”?

Again, I’m not saying people in this computer age not knowing how basic computer stuff works is a good thing. It is the reality however, and while it needs to change I’m not sure how to go about it.

Did you set it up for her? A normal person is not going to grab a USB and get Linux going on their own computer. And then there are all the distros where even savvy people can’t agree on what’s best and will be like “oh Mint and Ubuntu are both good options” and even having to choose and commit would be a big deal for most people, especially if they don’t have anyone who can help them with it.

It’s not about actually using it so much as it is the barrier to entry. I know that we know it’s actually not that difficult or crazy, but the layman sees basically any computer stuff as magic.

They said that Linux is really good, and they are not wrong that for the regular person, who struggles with even the most basic IT shit, there still isn’t a full “finished” option for them, really. Power users and more savvy people grow the technology but it’s the masses who fund it and the masses need something reliable or at least a close enough friend who can help them.