shikitohno

I’ve never seen any of them cause problems; they simply ride the trains all day.

Maybe this is dependent on country or region, because I see wildly different behavior between the unhoused in NYC and Manchester, in the UK, for example. In NYC, I've personally seen them pull a knife on random people, masturbating in the middle of the day on the train, two blind guys panhandling try to beat each other with their canes, each accusing the other of faking it to invade the other's territory, smoking crack in the middle of crowded cars and plenty of other problematic behavior.

When I've been in Manchester, they've always been pretty reserved, just trying to do their own thing and get through the day without doing anything to draw unwanted attention to themselves. You wouldn't even know a lot of them are there, unless you're out after the shops close, and then there's suddenly a bunch of people in sleeping bags in the doorways, just trying to sleep out of the wind and rain in a spot that might be marginally warmer.

Too many people just view scientifically sound treatment as drug addicts getting stuff for free, and get pissed off that someone else gets a "benefit" that they aren't entitled to. They completely ignore the knock on effects that drug addiction has to those around someone going through it and just focus on what they perceive as unearned rewards for bad behavior.

I kind of think that a lot of people would be in favor of the same programs if they were pitched without being centered on the person getting treated for their addiction. Like, instead of saying, "This plan represents the best method we have to get people off drugs," some of those same people that are totally lacking in empathy would be in favor of it if it were put forward as, "This is a way to get all those druggies off the streets and trains where they bother you, and it's actually way cheaper than putting them all in prison, so it works out that we spend less of your tax money and save you in the long term." Which is a pretty damning indictment of those people.

You could probably make a big enough threat to the companies just by saying, "If our audit finds you are, in fact, sending meritless denials to try and pad your bottom line, you need to reach out to all those impacted and inform them that the denied services will be covered 100%, along with any follow-up care needed as a result from the treatment you denied. And the fine is 150% of the cost of all claims you denied."

Shareholders ultimately don't care about the CEO, they can get another one. Hit their bottom line hard enough, and they'll take note, though.

At lot of this strikes me as non-issues, or even bordering on entitlement.

Well, for instance, if you're contributing your own code, there is a high bar to clear. It often feels as if you need to surpass whatever the existing functionality is. Just to get accepted, you have to offer something better than some existing product that may have been around for decades.

Well, no kidding, that's how it works in most things. Why would a project accept a contribution that doesn't add a previously missing feature or improve on the implementation of a current one? I would be pretty suspect of using a program that accepts a random commit so that a college kid can check the "Timmy's first accepted pull request" box and let them pad their resume.

Some would-be contributors are very familiar with programming, reading, and writing code, but they may never have opened an issue or sent a pull request. This is a scary first step. Others may have the necessary tech skills, but not the creativity. Where should they you begin? Also, if someone is scared, that can result in impostor syndrome. The fear that people all over the world will see your bad code is a powerful factor reducing the urge to share it.

These are all things that the greybeards being maligned had to figure out at some point, I don't really see the harm in new contributors being expected to do the same, especially when there is an abundance of documentation and tutorials available now, which simply didn't exist in the past.

For instance, there are a lot of folks doing mods for video games. This can be a very creative activity, there is lots of room for innovation, as well as outlets such as streaming to reach an audience. It applies to all sorts of games, such as Pokémon, Elder Scrolls, and Minecraft. Game modding is a great way in. It could even be a way to set up a company, or to make a living. But it's not considered as FOSS. For novices getting interested, it could even be attracting people away from getting into FOSS development.

Again, nothing new here. No, game mods weren't nearly as prevalent in the past, but new devs have had the choice between contributing to FOSS software and contributing to/creating proprietary programs for as long as FOSS has been a thing.

I don't think the old guard should be dismissive or rude to newcomers when their contributions aren't up to the standard expected to be accepted, but they also aren't getting paid to be these peoples' mentors. It kind of reminds me of posts I see in language learning communities, where people would get all upset, "I completed the Duolingo Spanish tree, but the cashiers at my local Mexican restaurant speak too fast for me to understand and they switch to English when I try to talk to them in Spanish." Cool that you want to try and use the language, my friend, but these people aren't being paid to be your tutor, and you may well be making their job more difficult and/or holding up other paying customers by trying to force random people to listen to your extremely basic, and likely incorrect, Spanish. They don't have an obligation to put everything else in their work or life on hold to try and stroke your ego.

Curiously, I don't see any mention of what, in my view, is likely a much more serious issue to getting new generations of contributors involved, as well as having a more diverse set of contributors. Access to technology and relevant education is far from uniform. If little Timmy from Greenwich, CT has had a personal computer he was free to mess around with to his heart's content from the moment he could read and attended a well-funded school with the possibility of studying computers, programming, and early exposure to things like Linux from grade school onwards, it shouldn't come as any surprise that he's more comfortable working with these concepts and more likely to wind up contributing successfully to FOSS projects than my friend Lucas, in Brazil, who only got a second-hand computer when he managed to get accepted to university, and had no real concept of Linux/FOSS until I explained to him why I couldn't just install a random, Windows-only program he thought would be useful to me.

To draw another language learning comparison, it's like how in the US, most students will only study a second language for a couple of years in high school and two semesters at university, if they attend higher education, and then you periodically have people going, "How come so many Americans fail to speak a second language compared to students in Europe?" Then, you look at the curriculum in countries like Germany, and realize they begin teaching students English as early as grade-school, often adding another foreign language later on. Is it any surprise that, when they have nearly a decade of foreign language instruction, compared to the mere two years many Americans get, alongside a fair bit more exposure to and encouragement of engaging with foreign language media, that they wind up being more proficient at using said language on average?

It's hardly a perfect solution that will completely mitigate all of the issues with getting younger and more diverse groups of people to contribute to FOSS projects, but I don't doubt that having access to computers in the home from a young age and access to more extensive education on computers and related fields from a much younger age would go a long way towards getting more people involved. Of course, even then, having the downtime to be able to dedicate to contributing to/maintaining FOSS projects is a factor that will disproportionately favor historically privileged groups. Even if she has the knowledge and ability to do so, a single mother working three jobs in the Bronx in order to keep a roof over her family's head, food on the table, and the lights and heating on simply might choose not to spend what little free time she has writing a badass new MPD client in Rust that has plugins to integrate with Lidarr and automatically fix metadata with beets based on matching the hashes of files to releases on various trackers in order to scrape the release data from them, no matter how cool the concept might sound to her. And it's not really something I could blame her for.

Beyond games, hardware support would still be a pretty big one. If Linux is widely adopted enough, it makes more and more sense for hardware companies to make sure their new devices will be supported on launch day. Not having to worry about my network card being too new from a brand that has poor/no Linux support would be a pretty big factor in influencing my purchases the next time I'm looking for a laptop. Pretty sure I've also encountered people complaining about being unable to use all the features that their new GPU offers under Windows, because the company hasn't released a Windows driver and devs working on Linux are still in the process of reverse-engineering things to write an open driver that is feature complete.

Another big one would be configuration of peripherals, as there are a fair number that assume you have Windows to run their proprietary configuration tool. I've come across mice like that, as well as mechanical keyboards that require some proprietary Windows program if you want to flash the firmware and customize your layout.

More Linux users also makes it a more attractive target for devs in general. That could mean you get a cool, new hobby project that someone is working on and decides to make a FOSS Linux version, could mean companies at least offer a Linux version of their proprietary software that doesn't have a comparable Linux alternative. There's a lot of software out there that people need for work or school, especially in more niche fields, where there's not a viable Linux alternative and your job/school isn't going to change their entire workflow just for you.

I'm sure others can come up with further examples that wouldn't occur to me.

You keep saying this is a practical response, but won't say how, so I'm done with you. You're the one talking in hypotheticals here, as if bills with no chance of getting passed are actually going to accomplish something. You just keep repeating the same statement about these bills, with zero factual basis.

Good luck out there, because it sure seems like nothing is getting through to you, and I see you talking in the same circles with others now that I've looked around the thread more.

You might want to work on your reading comprehension, as that is not at all what I said. Let me spell it out loud and clear for you. Republicans already did a terrible thing removing women's right to autonomy over their own bodies. Several Democratic Senators proposed bills that would impose restrictions broadly within the same category that would impact men, rather than women, if they were to pass, but have literally none of the dire consequences women face from the Republican actions. These proposed bills have literally zero chance of passing into law, and thus will not have any effect. Now, then.

this is a very practical solution.

Let's pull up the old Cambridge dictionary for that pesky word I've bolded.

relating to experience, real situations, or actions rather than ideas or imagination

Now, since these aren't going to pass into law, and thus have no binding effect on reality, how exactly is this a practical solution.

it isn’t. this legislation prohibiting female bodily autonomy already happened. raped children are being forced to keep their rape babies. women are dying in the parking. lots of hospitals. they are being bounty hunted for seeking medical care. That’s not performative. those are real life effects of these people. you want to allow to steal civil rights, including basic human dignity.

Uh, I don't know how to break it to you, but those are all the consequences of the Republican policy that have already taken effect, and these laws don't propose to undo any of them. Once more, they don't even level the field of oppression, since they aren't going to pass, and the people writing them know this.

A practical solution would have been addressing the filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court to prevent the conservative-packed court from doing exactly what they did. Or actually codifying the protections obtained from the Roe v. Wade decision in law at any point in the 50+ years since the ruling was initially made. Either one of those would have actually prevented this situation.

You have yet to articulate in any way how proposing laws that these legislators know will not be passed will do literally anything aside from generate some media coverage. Unless you can do so, there's no point in engaging with you any further. I don't know if you're just a troll, or if you really believe this will actually provoke any real change, as you refuse to explain why you believe this to be a practical solution that will bear fruit, either by correcting the wrongs done to women in this country or by making men face vaguely similar (but not really, kind of hard to equate dying painfully and unnecessarily from being denied healthcare with a $10,000 fine) consequences, in spite of all evidence indicating otherwise.

restricting people’s bodily autonomy and healthcare so that they are dying in the streets of the US is not “performative nonsense”.

That's not what I said, and you know it. Republicans implemented a concrete policy, with dire real world consequences. These proposed bills are dead before they've even finished drafting them, and accomplish nothing beyond creating a moment of tone-deaf political theater so that people who already agree with them can pat themselves on the back.

This does nothing to undo the harms of Republican anti-abortion laws, it doesn't prevent any of those women from dying, it's performative bullshit preaching to the choir. This isn't going to make Republicans suddenly go, "Gee, I never thought of it like that," it's just to get brownie points in liberal circles.

They could have, I don't know, removed the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court to prevent Republicans from doing exactly what they said they wanted to do the last time around, but that's a step too far for the Democrats. I mean, it could have put the matter to rest definitively enough until they had a legislative majority that would let them codify abortion rights, but heavens forbid they kill off one of their great fundraising cash cows and lose the ability to campaign on "If you don't vote Democrat, the Republicans are going to undo Roe v. Wade!" This is another blunder like Hillary's pied piper strategy that came back to bite them when Republicans did the thing Democrats thought couldn't seriously happen.

If women’s rights are restricted in that country, then so should be the men’s.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and even if they did, you and I both know these bills have a 0% chance of actually passing and changing anything.

This is a valid and effective proposal to counter the reproductive rights recently stolen from women.

Since you're so sure this isn't purely performative, but a valid and effective counter, would you care to quantify that efficacy for me? How many of these bills need to be proposed and die before they even hit the floor to win over enough Republicans? How many until women who lost their reproductive rights actually see them restored? Until women stop dying from being denied basic healthcare? I'm not expecting an exact number, but surely, you could give me a ballpark estimate and a timeline for these efforts to start producing results, as confident as you are in this strategy.

Nah, this is performative nonsense to grab some headlines and say, "See, we're doing stuff," that doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually passing and changing peoples' lives. Meanwhile, the Republicans are running roughshod all over the Democrats on things that actually have pretty immediate, overwhelmingly negative impacts on peoples' lives, like the shitshow that is DOGE, and the Democrats are just angrily wagging their collective finger and going, "Why, Mr. President, if you don't knock that off, I'm going to really get cross with you. I daresay, I may even use uncouth language in reference to your person, despite the esteemed office you occupy!" They aren't even making token efforts at trying to derail any of his cabinet picks and get some GOP defectors to help block them.

They've tried nothing and thrown up their hands, so now it's time to draw out the tried and true playbook of looking as incompetent and out of touch at a key moment in history as they can possibly manage to do, short of outright switching party membership and taking up the GOP mantle themselves.

Yeah, it's pretty good, especially in the summer time.

On topic for the thread, the way I make it has pretty much always gotten a "WTF are you trying to feed me?" look from Dominicans. Okay, more of an "Ay dios mío, este muchacho" eye roll and a "¿Qué es este menjunje que tu tá inventando allí?" from them, if I'm being honest. For the ones I've gotten to actually try it, though, they all agree it's pretty good.

I have the usual mix of milk and orange juice, add in some sweetened, condensed milk, vanilla extract, and then I add jam/preserves instead of just sugar. I'm partial to cherry preserves, but if chinola jam were a thing I could get here, I'd probably just stick with that. Toss it in a blender with some flaked ice, and 30 seconds later, you're that much closer to developing diabetes. Depending on the sort of night I'm having, I might toss in some spiced rum, too.

Can't be, I actually recognize all the sponsors as real brands with existing products, rather than shit I've never heard of that turns out to be crypto nonsense, shell companies, Philipp Morris in a mask, or some combination of the three.

Probably IndyCar, let's go to the nose cam, brought to you by Verizon, for another angle on this one.

I think the biggest pro for me would be that sane policies at the federal level that are broadly popular in my region could stop getting blocked by yokels representing states that sometimes barely even have the population of the semi-rural county I grew up in in the Northeast. Ditto for not having to worry about corporate interests from those same states filing frivolous lawsuits that manage to block the implementation of the odd policy that does make it through, like student loan forgiveness.

Also, I'm not above admitting that there's a great deal of appeal in the potential schadenfreude of all the "But I don't want my taxes paying for the trans, minority welfare queens getting bottom surgery! Down with any social safety net!" Republicans from the South and Midwest being forced to reckon with the fact that they have actually been the welfare queens this whole time, and it's only been by the grace of those dang liberal states paying in disproportionately high shares of taxes that get funneled towards red states that their shithole states haven't yet collapsed entirely. Let's see how Alabama fares with its whooping 1.1% of the national GDP when they no longer have federal funding to prop them up. Their top 5 employers are all public institutions that likely depend on federal funding to remain operational, and 2/5 of them are military bases. Good luck, guys, the South will fall again.

For cons, obviously it'll suck for the people who still live in those states until they finally move, but that's been the case for a long time. If the decent regions help finance the move for those who are willing to leave, but unable to for lack of money, I'm kind of fine with it. Same goes for overlooking criminal charges when people are unable to leave their state due to some BS non-violent crimes landing them on parole and being refused travel permissions. If Mississippi wants to lock you down as exploitable labor because you got pulled over with some weed, or loaned a kid a book that said gay people actually aren't the spawn of Satan sent to destroy US civilization, come on over. They can keep their sex offenders and violent criminals, though. For the folks that don't move because "Oh, but my family is here and I love them too much to move away," or similar reasons, good luck with living through the second feudal age, but that's your own choice.

Likewise, it'll be sad to see them destroy national and state parks in the name of business, as well as visiting those places while they still exist being a much riskier proposition.

Honestly, I think most red states severely underestimate how poorly things would go for them if they were to be cut loose, while overestimating the popular support they would enjoy and their international appeal as trade partners. Even for the ones who are in a relatively favorable economic opinion, like Texas, would probably see absolutely insane levels of brain drain from industry and higher education that would leave them dead in the water, barring state-sanctioned violence to prevent people from leaving.

That said, their economies would be devastated. Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky would all see between 20.7%-30.7% of their overall revenues for state and local governments vanish overnight if they stopped receiving federal funding. States like New York and Texas could probably come away at a net profit just by retaining the taxes they'd previously passed on to the federal government, even factoring in how many new services would have to be provided for at the state/regional level that were previously financed by the federal government. For the states like New Mexico, Mississippi, and Alabama that manage to claw back almost all of what they contribute in federal taxes, if not get more back in federal funding, good luck. Somehow, I suspect their new, libertarian overlords in Texas aren't going to be so keen on subsidizing their impoverished neighbors to any real extent.