I like houseplants. They have a similar sentimental impact as flowers, but last much longer

I find that I don’t have to tinker with settings anymore than I did on Windows — which is to say that it’s pretty occasional

But what I like about Linux is that in the rare instances of struggling to make stuff work (like when I found out how to run mods in Baldur’s Gate 3 — big love to the random person who made an excellent Steam Community guide on how to mod Bg3 on the steam deck), at least at the end of it, I come away from the process with some additional knowledge that’ll be useful beyond the problem I was dealing with.

The OS is just way more transparent and communicative in a way that facilitates learning (once you learn the basics of how to communicate with it, such as not being terrified of the terminal)

I really appreciate the OP of this (nontanne) for making me see the poetry in something I was familiar with, but had never considered in this way before. I think it actually works really well as a poem, and I feel like I’m going to remember this each time it’s extremely windy

Don’t know if I get a vote here, but I am strongly in favour — especially as you’ve said that it’s not necessarily going to be a bannable offence. I think that rules can serve as a valuable statement of intention — like virtue signalling, except without the negative connotations of that term

I read a thing recently that argued that “purity” is one of the most distinctive thematic motifs in fascistic thinking, and examined how that is a means by which people can slide into right wing ideologies from an initially left wing position.

It was striking because it made it clock for me why there seems to be a “crunchy eco-leftist turns right wing” pipeline. To attempt to summarise some of the article and my own thoughts following it: A purity oriented framework of health situates “toxins” and the like as the Big Bad Other. Many of us are aware of how dangerous the notion of a Big Bad Other is if we’re thinking about people, but it can creep up with us in contexts like this because it doesn’t seem harmful initially. However, by thinking about health in this way, we train ourselves to think in terms of the Big Bad Other, and condition ourselves towards thinking about things in a black and white manner.

Thanks for sharing this post. I know a little about this topic, but I’m always glad to learn more. I love learning about facets of material culture because it’s something that is universally present across all cultures and time periods. Humans make things, and there’s so much we can learn by studying history from this angle — especially anything relating to textile crafts, which has always been an incredibly labour intensive process.

I’m so glad to learn that there are people actively striving to reclaim this part of their history. I love the image near the bottom of the article — those women look so joyously beautiful

I like the vibe of the meme, but it’s a tad ahistorical.

For example, I was recently reading about how the wide farthingale skirt of the 16th and 17th centuries really pissed men off. In modern feminist thought, we often hear women talk about “taking up more space” — well the farthingale was a literal way of doing that.

Of course, fashion trends like this are inextricable from the power of wealth and patriarchy, but the same could be said for the ways in which we struggle against those same power systems today. It surprised me to read of this because I think I used to think about historic fashion as an inconvenient thing that was forced onto women, but it’s far more complex.

In short, if you’re striving to be weird, you’re not doing a thing that was denied to generations of women before you, but in fact building upon a long tradition of fighting for self expression in a world that tries to suppress this. I wrote this comment because I actually find this framing to be even more empowering. It makes me want to be even weirder, to honour the people who came before me who fought to give me this kind of freedom I have.

The freedom we have nowadays comes with many constraints and caveats, but thinking of myself as being the latest in a long line of weird women who refuse to conform makes me think about the people who will come after me. Maybe 100 years from now, historians will be looking at memes like this, or written accounts of women scoffing at men who say shit like “you know, you would be pretty if you didn’t ruin yourself with [short hair / dyed hair / piercings / alternative fashion / black lipstick]”