As someone who really only went on Reddit for memes and techie discussions, I think I can say this: for my use-case, there was nothing special about Reddit itself. In fact, one thing I have realized is just how little the nature of the host matters beyond ease of use. Sure, certain formats lend themselves better to certain use-cases, but ultimately humans are social creatures, and even in the most inconvenient of circumstances, we find a way to make it work.

And once you realize that, it becomes less about the medium, and more about the people who lead the discourse. From what I can gather, Reddit lost that discourse a long time ago. And as such, their downfall was only a matter of time.

Big words coming from the most hideous and deformed rabbits I've ever seen.

Full disclosure:

1. I am not a psychologist, psychology is merely a hobby.
2. I am from the US, but I will try to stick to my understanding of human emotions as a whole.

One thing I have observed about violence that seems random is that they are often performed by people who have been proverbially "beaten down" by life. When this is the cause, they may feel the need to lash out, but their "beating" was so severe that they become apathetic. They just need some outlet for their pain, rather than a specific individual or group.

Some people will take it out on themselves and it becomes self-harm or suicide. Others will take it out on those who are vulnerable in their immediate vicinity.

Basically, when a person is in a lot of pain, it becomes harder to think about others, because they are already struggling with their own issues. At least from where I stand, random acts of violence is what happens when that idea is taken to an extreme.

As for articles and videos: I'm not sure if you will be able to view the video on this page easily, but there is a transcription on the page: it was shared by a man who claimed he almost became a school shooter. He described what he was going through and feeling leading up to the moment where he almost did it. I think it provides a window into how suffering makes a person volatile:

https://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_stark_i_was_almost_a_school_shooter?subtitle=en

In a similar vein, depression tends to cause a person to focus heavily on their own thoughts and emotions and less on their social connections, not because the person is selfish, but as a means of self-preservation, as described in these articles:

https://neurolaunch.com/is-depression-selfish/

https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/copingwithdepression/2020/12/when-depression-makes-you-appear-selfish

This is just one possible explanation, but it's the one I am most familiar with personally. I hope this helps.

Finally an actual shitpost

Great, now I gave to check for hidden cameras, this happened to me yesterday.

I've read that humans can only sustain maximum focus about an hour. I used to think "I can focus for longer than that!", but I think a more correct interpretation is that "after more than an hour, you start to see diminishing returns on your effort."

Upon more careful reflection, that sounds about right. I do engineering work that involves deep focus and complex mental manipulation, and I can say that you really can't do that for more than 1-2 hours at a time without a break. Try to force it longer than that, and you won't be able to go back for a second round of that in the same day.

The reason why students seem to be able to do it is because of the staggered classes and the variation in complexity for their course load and, you guessed it, taking short breaks in their sessions. Common advice for engineering students is to pair their engineering courses with lower-stress liberal arts courses or courses that use different parts of the brain in a given semester so they don't burn out, and to rest between classes and study sessions.

And lastly, as an ADHD adult, I'll offer this insight on the nature of motivation: everyone's threshold for how much motivation they need to perform a task with sustained focus is different. Sometimes, you just don't have it in you, because you've used the energy on other things. Willpower is not some magical force that you can limitlessly tap into to achieve the impossible; it is very much a finite resource. So if you're struggling to bring yourself to do more towards a specific goal, consider where you can shave off some energy elsewhere. Or, perhaps after thinking about it, you realize you are already putting in exactly the amount of energy you are willing to. In that case, there's no need to feel guilty, because you're already doing what you can and want to.

In a similar vein, Evelyn Wang from Everything Everywhere All At Once... She may not start out badass, but oh boy does that change

See, this was my thought as well. Canonical seems to be going the way of RedHat, and I understand that they need to turn a profit, but my understanding is also that most of their money comes from server support. Not really sure how much they can squeeze out of Desktop users, but I guess that's what snaps are for...

When I truly internalized that I don't have to prove my worth to anyone, even if I don't always know what I'm doing.

Looking back, that sense of self-worth and confidence is what I probably saw in all of the adults around me that made them seem so incredible as a child.

So when I felt that, I thought "huh, so this is what being an adult feels like."

So something I just thought of, and I'm surprised nobody brought up (well, I guess some did indirectly, it just wasn't obvious to me): A major benefit of basing off of Ubuntu is more up-to-date hardware support. While it's true that Debian now supports non-free firmware by default, that doesn't mean that it will be recent.

Debian support for hardware is truly impressive, but it ultimately lags behind because Debian prioritizes stability over new features. This is why routine Debian updates only cover severe bugs and security issues, and from what I can tell that also is the case for hardware support and the kernel.

Ubuntu tries to keep in step with new hardware releases, which makes much more sense for power users like engineers, developers and gamers, all of which seem to be key consumers of System76 hardware. Basing off of Ubuntu makes it easier to satisfy that clientele. I imagine it also makes submitting upstream fixes for hardware-related packages easier.

Interesting two cents! Your line of reasoning is pretty thorough, and I think your educated guesses are fairly sounds! Thanks for contributing! I agree, while switching to Debian as a base would certainly be a lot of work, System76 has definitely gone above and beyond in far more complex ways, particularly with their COSMIC DE effort.

Not really, we tend to have a "main street" where all the popular businesses are lined up, but otherwise a lot of towns are pretty car-centric.

Saxophone. But not always because it's smooth. Because sometimes it ROCKS...

https://youtu.be/7QFNAtnUDJ8

...Or because it's crazier than anything you've ever heard!

https://youtu.be/BARAHLk-8dk

Quite a few:

• Suddenly I didn't need to rely on last minute panic to get boring stuff done: I could just think "this needs to get done"...and do it. I could clear my whole chore list without taking a break every 10 minutes to hype myself up, then go play games for the rest of the day
• I could write a to-do list and actually remember where I put it, and I could even manage to read it!
• My reading speed tripled since I wouldn't keep losing my place every 15 seconds.
• I wouldn't fall asleep just from sitting still for too long.

Corny as it sounds, after taking a long hiatus from treatment and then starting up again, I felt like I turned into Superman.

Ah yes, I remember the equivalent moment for me: I was 8, and Mom asked me if I felt different after taking the pills. I told her "I don't think so?" And then 3 months went by and I noticed I wasn't getting yelled at by my teacher for not paying attention anymore, and I wasn't getting in trouble at home for "ignoring" my parents (it took them a while to realize I was genuinely forgetting things they asked me to do 5 seconds ago).

Looking back, it's wild that it took me so long to notice such a big difference. But I think that's a real testament to how helpful those treatments are: when leveraged correctly, basic behaviors that you would normally struggle with just "click" naturally.

So I've done a Linux install on a 4GB Chromebook, with 16GB eMMC storage, and what I learned is that it really depends on what you use the machine for, and which distribution you run. If all you're doing is word processing, managing emails, and browsing on YouTube, you can absolutely run Linux comfortably with 4GB, provided you pick one of the leaner Linux distros. For reference I ran Gallium OS, which was a Xubuntu flavor specifically tuned for lower end Chromebooks.

ETA: In comparison, I had a relative who bought a laptop off those TV sales networks that had a similar CPU RAM and storage setup, except running Windows 10...it ran slower than a snail, and one day it had a Windows update that was too large to fit on the combined RAM and page space. The poor woman couldn't use the computer because the update forcibly ran in the background and consumed all her memory every time she turned it on. So yeah, you can't game on Linux with only 4GB of memory, but I am confident that I can do a major OS update on it at least.

I'm genuinely curious what exactly is "wrong"?

It's a theme website. GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and even Cinnamon has one...why is this bad?

They are. Which is why these people go for FWB...if they can even get that

So I kind of get this, but from what I can understand it's more tedious from a DevOps perspective to switch package management systems than to just switch to repositories that target older software versions. Hence why I'm curious as to whether simply basing off of Debian-testing like Ubuntu does is the most likely outcome.

As for NVIDIA support, I was playing around with the latest Debian release and almost immediately noticed that the NVIDIA proprietary packages were available by default. In other words, Debian seems to be just as inclined to support an NVIDIA setup as Ubuntu does out of the box now.