I think there is so much you can do for how you look - skin care, hydration, diet, exercise, etc. can radically change the way a person looks - but I tend to agree that personality matters much more. My point is that most people seem to get lost trying to make themselves physically attractive, and incel culture like looksmaxxing seem to fall into that logic as well, but they miss that the bar is lower than they expect. And of course, your point is missed by this community as well - that looks are even less important overall than how you hold yourself and interact, etc. - the mental stuff is the most important. Luckily good diet, hydration, and exercise help with that too!

also it’s probably more important to not be too unattractive - people are focusing too much on the ceiling but they need to focus on the floor

arse

rsync is not really comparable to syncthing, it’s like comparing Excel to C++ or something. I need to be able to get lay people to install and use it, and syncthing has a UI that allows this while even I would have to do some work to get rsync to do everything syncthing is doing for me right now.

is there a more efficient alternative that isn’t centralized?

I live in America, people here operate in the opposite fashion of a hive - in a hive the organism is the collective, and the individual is just a part of the whole. In the U.S. many people refuse to take minimal actions to benefit others and even themselves out of the perception that it might be viewed as collectivist.

social politeness has gone too far \s

tbh I have daily interactions with real humans in the flesh that make me think more people should be concerned about their actions and words than they are, lol

though the habituation of state and corporate surveillance is disturbing and should be combated fr

well you wouldn’t want to be caught doing / saying / thinking the wrong thing would you?

Ah, I think you may have missed my point - I am responding to the claim that both parties are equally bad. While I can understand if you are primed to expect my points to be accompanied by a liberal attitude that voting is the main form of political action, let me clarify for you that this is not what I’m saying.

Obviously middle-class Americans have a tendency to think voting is the most significant political action that can be taken, maybe if they are really into politics they might make different consumer choices (avoiding Chick-fil-a, refusing plastic straws, etc.), and even more extreme people might participate in a peaceful protest.

Brick throwing on the other hand is something people who have nothing left to lose do, desperate acts from those who are barely surviving poverty, who are being harassed, jailed, raped, and killed by the police, and so on. Brick throwing isn’t done to carve out civil rights, it is survival.

To that end, Democrats who might advocate for and uphold civil rights have a pacifying and stabilizing effect in so far as some of those pressures that result in marginalized groups throwing bricks are alleviated. The GOP on the other hand seems to care little about stability, they are unskillful tyrants in that sense.

Ultimately all I am saying is that elections do have consequences, which is so obvious it should not have to be said. My statements do not imply elections are the only political events that matter.

For trans people in the U.S., the difference between a GOP win and a Dem win in the house, senate, and presidential elections is the difference between having or not having certain rights.

Federal prisons now will force trans women to be transferred to male prisons and they will be denied gender-affirming care like access to estrogen.

If you are a trans person in the U.S. there is a clear difference between the Dems and the GOP - one is clearly better than the other.

Nothing has responded to this, shown it to be false, etc.

It does not require that we overlook that the Dems have far-right policies, especially on immigration and international affairs. It does not require we defend U.S. imperialism to say the Dems are better than the GOP for trans people in the U.S. Both are true.

I understand the moral disgust and the impulse to see how villainous the Dems are, I feel the same way, but if you care about the political outcomes, you can’t ignore that there remain significant and tangible differences between the parties and their policies.