I grew up in an IFB cult due to my parents wanting to assimilate to American society. In the American South, you align to a church and people leave you alone, and that church provides everything for you. That church is your social network. I thought it was normal for church sermons to end up with the crowd angry, and everyone getting into their cars to go protest something together. We used to leave church to go protest other churches on Sunday. Yell at the people from other churches when they came out from their sermons of demonic teachings. Sometimes we would protest churches that spoke in tongues, other times we would protest churches that let gays in. We protested the church where the pastor had a ponytail. During the week, we would protest at the county courthouse. We would protest things that I don’t even remember. We protested Wal-Mart when they sold Power Ranger toys because they were demonic. Everybody was scared of my pastor. When we mentioned to people what church we aligned with, people backed off.

My parents were just trying to make it in the land of the free. It’s better than what they left in Southeast Asia.

Since I’m from the cult, even today I’m prone to evangelizing things and questioning consensus.

My parents left the IFB cult by the time I was 10 and returned to Buddhism. By then, it was more acceptable and there were a couple other immigrant families, but we still got swastikas on our house. People spread nasty rumors about us and in high school it came out. Girls were not allowed to date me, or were forced to break up with me. One time a sheriff’s deputy pulled me over, took my blonde girlfriend out of the car, and back home to her parents. She never spoke to me again, and married a boy from their church a year later. I saw on Facebook that she is now pregnant with their sixth child.

In the military, I practiced as a Buddhist for a few years due to heritage. I went back to Christianity due to convenience and wanting to fit in.

Even in my mid 30’s, I was trying to make extreme Christianity work. First I fell into the spiral that is the New IFB. I corresponded with Pastor Steven Anderson. He was always very cordial and we had what I thought were fair and respectful theological debates. What was different about him was that he was not a racist, which was a welcome change from the traditional IFB. He was probably the first religious person that I could talk to who wasn’t condescending, and who saw me as another person. I read a lot of scripture then, and found my way back into Christianity. Do you see how I’m still prone to cults?

I later studied LCMS Lutheranism since it seemed authentic with lineage and history. They seemed very knowledgeable and scripturally sound. I corresponded with Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller. I learned more about the bible from the LCMS than I had learned in 35 years as an IFB member. I was going to leave my career and focus on the LCMS. The LCMS members know the bible and the history behind it. They are the biggest bible nerds on the planet. Even Steven Anderson agreed to disagree on theological debates. He disagrees with but respects the LCMS. (this is a complication of conflicting passages in the Bible which they both view as infallible and inerrant) Again, he was always cordial.

[personally identifying information and stories paragraph redacted]

I went back to my old church, and tried to convince my wife that we would start attending an LCMS congregation. This was March 2020. Then the rest of 2020 happened and we found out that we don’t belong. As non white, non black people, we never did. Even my evangelical all her life, but still brown wife hates organized religion now. She is now an athiest. I’m not going to share those stories, you just have to accept it. We have distanced ourselves from all forms of Christianity. Our children, who as of 2020 were going to enter private Christian school, are being raised as skeptics and are in a very progressive and tolerant school. They cannot remember a time that they used to go to church, and find the teachings to be silly myths. I started wearing my Buddha pendant again in defiance of Christianity and in preservation of my heritage. But if I had to start clean, with no legacy, I would probably follow Taoism.

I still respect the ELCA, however. They are as close to what Christ preached as I have seen. It’s just the mythos of Christianity isn’t for me, isn’t about my people. There are no ties there and no reason for me to pretend any more. I am my authentic self.

I might delete this later.

I guess don’t get involved then?

Also, this conjures images of Shinzo Abe in a fighter jet with the numbers 7-3-1 on the side.

No, Facebook and Twitter are still useful for the status quo.

Fox News isn’t rallying people to support Palestine.

Thanks AIPAC, for protecting Americans from foreign misinformation campaigns.

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Maybe SuSE?

Play Minetest.

I remember the last few versions of Netscape Communicator had a “Shop” button.

This was the sign that Netscape had lost the browser war and was giving up.

Never heard of this service. Thanks.

I’m still on a Fairphone 4 – in fact, in December it surpassed all my previous smartphones as the one I’ve owned and used the longest since smartphones became a thing. However, I’m on CalyxOS and have always used a GCam port for taking photos. So I’m not sure if I will get this camera software update or if I have to move back to the (buggy) stock Fairphone OS to see the changes.

This is a big complaint for me. I know that there is the official standalone APK, but if I am running a de-Googled phone, I want to be able to use Signal and have it update on a regular basis.

I mean licensing comes in here. The FOSS licenses allow this. Microsoft EULA and copyright almost certainly does not. But yes, I get the sentiment.

It’s almost as if all of the FAANG/Magnificent 7 market outperformance the past 15 years was built on the backs of the free labor provided by the FOSS movement. But then they will turn around and claim that non-western companies steal IP, etc and have US intervene to ban competition, or sue in courts. Kind of funny.

Back to the tech discussion, I’ve been using doas for a few years now instead of sudo. Even on my GNU/Linux machines. It’s a lot simpler to setup for desktop workflow machines.

I agree. There should have been an official Firefox repo from the beginning.

I do remember twenty years ago, Firefox development was incredibly Windows-centric. At one point it felt as though Firefox for Linux was a second class citizen. This was a radical departure from the Mozilla Suite which was maybe the first major desktop software to go from close to open source. For many years afterward, as a BSD/Linux user, I continued using SeaMonkey for that reason.

I assume having an official repo was just never a priority in the early days.

I’m an older millennial. My take on the GenZ entering the workforce: Super accepting of people of color, LGBTQ, vegan diets and green initiatives. Just really fun, pleasant people to be around.

I just changed projects recently from an office that skewed younger and it’s like I ended up in 2003 again. The office is just slightly older than me and it’s just a weird vibe…people randomly ranting about EVs and how they would never own one as if anybody asked; dancing around asking what my ethnicity is as if it matters, etc. Talking bad about Asians and then looking my direction and stopping mid conversation. Ranting about vegans like it’s physically hurting them. It’s disheartening. There’s no positivity and no small talk; it’s just dead silence unless you are hating on something that has no bearing on your life.

I can’t wait to finish this project and move on.

It’s kind of terrible now. Since late 2023, when I go to search technical specs of hardware, I am presented with a view that looks like browsing an online shopping catalog. It’s weird and unwanted. For personal use, I went back to DDG.

Man locks the front door to his house after refusing to answer the question, “Why do you beat your wife?”

Looks like Meta is using some of the stock price increase from the past few months to fund their media marketing campaign again.

It’s an election year. We are going to hear more about this and omg China.

Just remember that unlike Insta and FB the far right doesn’t go viral on TikTok. The platform that supported insurrection, the company that has allowed the far right to flourish and led to a direct assault on representative democracy, remains unpunished and is bigger today than 2020.

The truth is that a lot of loyal customers are boycotting Starbucks right now over unionization and their stance on Palestine. So Starbucks is trying to bring them back physically into the stores and are using the balance on their cards as leverage. Starbucks has already uncharacteristically been running several promotions to get people back to their stores, with the red cup and the Stanley thing.

If Starbucks has to return the customers’ unused balance without bringing them into the stores, then they may have lost those customers for good.

Whatever system76 decides it will be, I guess. That’s really the unexplored area of my keyboard because it’s so wildly inconsistent from one laptop manufacturer to another.

I do, however, recognize Microsoft’s leveraging power over laptop manufacturers. They are the reason we got the Windows/Super key to start with (although ThinkPads held out until 2007) and later why everyone was forced to go to 6 row chiclet keyboards in 2013. So I’m certain the community will standardize this key for something useful across all distributions.

I would love a drop-in electric drivetrain for my vehicle when the gas engine finally dies.

Or maybe a classic car from before computers with a drop in electric drivetrain.