elect different lawmakers

Elect lawmakers that would pass single payer, like they have in europe. However, this is an unrealistic expectation in our modern political landscape. So we need to change the political landscape to make that possible.

• find a way to dismantle the right wing propaganda machine, or make one as powerful but not a fountain of lies. Difficult since the right wing has the full support of the billionaire owned news media. They are pros who have studied pyops inside and out and excel at it.
• join the democratic party and attempt to overthrow its pro-rich leadership. difficult. Is it really a democratically run institution?

create alternative orgs

create coops and/or nonprofits to provide better options than predatory insurance companies. maybe easier because its grassroots and small compared to changing our national leadership. There’s a danger of genuinely helpful institutions being outlawed due to mainstream medical lobbying.

direct action

we’ve already seen how successful propaganda of the deed can be. but will it actually produce change, or just lead to repression? it has at least communicated the extent to which Americans are disgruntled - not just the deed itself, but the overwhelmingly positive reaction to it.

general strikes, boycotts, other demonstrations might be a possibility. you need an effective campaign to get people on the same page.

Hmmm yeah I have learned a ton of fiddle tunes. Does it count as hoarding when its in your head?

XFCE + xmonad

Playing music. Sure some people can collect guitars or whatever, but really that’s a separate hobby from actually playing.

That the Big Bang is just one of many bangs

Its mainly because of some music groups where I find out about local jams and gigs. But yeah its practically unusable. Have been thinking about starting a friendica instance for the music people.

Recently updated a nixos machine that was on the shelf for five years or so. A few options and packages had been renamed, fixed those, upgrade completed with zero problems.

Looks like they do have both openvpn and wireguard configs. Is it true that for torrenting openvpn is preferred? That’s basically the only reason I use vpn.

I was maybe doing it wrong, but it never worked for me while openvpn did. Glad it works for someone!

interesting. proton has example openvpn configs on their site which was hugely helpful to me. dunno if they have wireguard equivalents, or if those are needed.

I dunno what the best is, but if you choose nixos configure openvpn instead of trying to use the protonvpn package.

As far as stability goes, its hard to beat my nixos setup. I use the venerable xmonad with xfce in no-desktop mode, and the command line for things like wifi and etc. Because I do most stuff with the command line I can get around fine on servers with no GUI. There’s no bling and hardly anything ever changes.

I used to fancy up my desktop and so forth, but those things break eventually and don’t really help me get work done. I don’t want to waste time on that anymore.

That said, getting it set up has been a gradual evolution and there have been awkward times. Like zoom screen sharing goes kind of insane with a tiling window manager (stop helping, zoom). And of course nixos itself is fantastic if what you need is already packaged and ready to go, and doesn’t do anything weird like download binaries. Stuff outside the norm, well now you have two problems - understanding how the software expects to be installed on debian or the like, and understanding how to subvert that process to make it work on nix.

I wasn’t planning on it, my GF bought the tickets without asking me about it, and didn’t know about my pal being into the band. But my friend figured I was the one who left her out. Plus, not everyone gets invited to everything, hey I’m dating someone here. Called me up and berated me about being a bad friend without saying what it was she was mad about. I prefer not to have friends that use that kind of rhetoric.

Mad she didn’t get invited to a concert my GF bought tickets to. Welp

I don’t see nixos in there!

msdn.social gives me ‘server not found’

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/7142-trichinosis

I tried quitting a number of times. Not easy, and demoralizing when you fail. You may have to try several times too.

When I finally did quit I had decided to put off my first cigarette in the morning as long as possible, reasoning that sleep was the longest I’d go without nicotine. One day I went the whole day.

A friend quit at the same time as me, using the gum. Six months later she was still using it, and gave up and started smoking again.

Probably helps that I had quit drinking by then as well. Pretty hard to drink and not smoke, for me.

Xmonad with XFCE in no-desktop mode.

I can use the xfce tools to configure things like mouse and screen settings, but visually it’s just xmonad.

Pomodoro technique. Basically set a timer to do work for 20 mins (or even 10 minutes), then take a break. Then do it again. Sometimes this can get you over the initial hurdle of getting started. Once you get into the task you may not want to take a break anymore.

A similar trick is if you think of something else to do that’s timewasting, like posting on lemmy (lol), then its ok to do it - but only after working for 10 minutes. You can still do those things but prioritize getting something done first.

Another one: go to the library to work. Initially all you have to do is go, not do the task itself. Then you’re there, and there’s nothing to do except for work. This can turn into card games in the library cafe lol, but then you have to choose a less popular place.