Gossip is unavoidable. Humans are social critters. Be nice, friendly, and helpful to others and that is what they will talk about.

Related. Avoid being one of those “there’s no point to small talk” people. There’s a very good point. It’s to figure out who’s an asshole. You can come across as too important for other people if you don’t chit chat about the weather. I’m not saying it’s the way it should be or that it makes sense. It’s just the way things are.

There’s also nothing wrong with talking about people when they aren’t present. What you shouldn’t do is spread rumors or create drama. Saying you heard someone is going sailing on vacation to someone else. That is completely innocuous. Saying they are married and going with their former spouse is creating drama.

To me, staying below the radar is one part playing by those rules, and another part just being kind of boring. Seldom do I hear gossip about myself nor do I have anything to say about anyone else other than small talk. Hope that helps

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I think your woke-o-meter is asleep. People are boycotting Murica. I want to find the root of this evil. The only thing “woke” about being a patriot is I sleep with my eyes wide open. You should aspire to be more like me if you want to do battle with the Militant Leftists.

Don’t have culture? What about Elvis?

John Wayne movies. McDonalds. Anything (appropriated by) Walt Disney. Etc

Ouch. I only said no politicians or ceos because everyone would more or less say the same thing

It’s too easy to come up with a list of 20+

Canned soup is rated?

https://bearblog.dev/

You can self host if you want. I use netlify

You can try a bleach dilution on an older pair. Something you might otherwise throw away. Start with 5:1 water to bleach and try stronger concentrations until you get the desired results. Make sure you measure and record your measurements so you know the ratio that works best

Disclaimer: This could ruin your clothes. You should see what others have to say before trying. I’m a scientist not a… person who knows useful things

I might have missed something, but when they say they want to socialize I take that to mean talk to people. They have friends but don’t know what to talk about. My suggestion was talk to the people they know about those people’s interests. Know your friend likes boats? Cool. Ask them questions about boats. Now you are having a conversation where the other person is doing most of the work.

Talk to the people you know about what they want to talk about

While I love sway, it’s not the easiest to work with if you want to do something specific. swaymsg -t get_tree and get good at jq 🤣

~/repos

I left it open ended so you could choose how to answer or how specifically. I guess I should have added more of a prompt. For me I was thinking independence from big tech or consumer culture.

X ray vision

Parry and hit back. Ask her why it matters what you use if you can function with them as if you use google. Then return fire with your favorite reason not to use google. For me, I like to open the dev tools in Firefox, and show the head of any website. Let them choose. Find the line with google analytics, google tag service, or google ad sense. “Wow this website has nothing to do with google. Why is this here? To track you. Did you know that google can track your mouse? Even if you don’t click on anything? Or they can track you by installing fonts?” Etc. Etc. Scare the shit out of them and they’ll leave you alone. Hopefully you can slowly begin to convert them.

I agree not sweeping Linux under the rug is important, but what about something like:

Doors: Powered by Linux

After all, Linux is just the kernel. It isn’t the operating system <insert long Stallman rant>. Saying ”Powered By" is both accurate, and the brand recognition horse shit people go for

Make no mistake. I don’t like that brand recognition is an important consideration, but it’s important to recognize what works for many people

I can see where you are coming from and chrome os is a good and bad example of what I mean. It’s a bad example because of the lack of transparency. It’s a good example because it creates a “brand” around the product. Linux lacks brand recognition to the average person, and when we approach getting folks on Linux, we do one of two things. We pick a brand for them, or we explain what a distro is and that linux is actually the kernel and that its really GNU/Linux or GNU and Linux etc. I want to get to the point a non technical user makes the choice themselves

Outside of just buying computers with Linux one them, imo the best scenario would be if there was a recognized brand, like chromeos, which people could point to and say “you’re good with computers and fuck windows. Can you install Doors?”. You have to admit an operating system called “FuckWindows OS” would be appealing to those who utter the words several times per day.

I’m also not suggesting we go guns blazing into doing this so much as presenting a consideration why we are less effective than we’d like and what we could add to our focus to improve conversion rates.

TLDR: Linux, or our representation of it, is confusing to the average person. Could we address this with a distro whose purpose is to establish a stronger brand?

Not at all, but there is a difference between creating a finished product and creating a finished product a particular way. If you make a suggestion for how I do something, and it isn’t stipulated to be part of the finished product, then I can do it however I want. If however part of the contract is I do it your way, then that matters. Hope that clarifies things