Maybe you suspect a similar situation with the Democrats, that those holding power sabotage their efforts, or maybe the analogy doesn't work in that way, but I think that people like this Charlie Brown trope because his failure isn't the result of a lack of ability; it's an excess of hope and trust.

I've heard plenty of people say that Americans are idiots because they don't realize the system is rigged against them and they believe the American Dream that anyone can achieve success. I think plenty of them know that the world is a harsh place with untrustworthy and adversarial people and that they are at a personal disadvantage compared to the wealthy and powerful, but they choose to persevere regardless because they believe hope is better than nihilism.

That can work against them. They might vote for a political party even if it fails them. I'm not saying that kind of hope is sane or rational from a game theory perspective, but it's very American to keep it up anyway.

I think that's a quintessentially American fable. Most people will never achieve great success, but they can experience the thrill of imagining opportunity, and even if they know it's illusory, that moment of faith and effort before failure is the heroic action.

People will do stupid things like bet their life savings on a game or a bad idea, but they feel heroic for having tried regardless, knowing that if enough people keep trying, someone is going to succeed, and they get to experience that success vicariously in some small amount because they tried just as hard as the one who succeeded, experienced the same struggle, and somebody made it, even if it was never going to be them.

One of the things I love about XFCE is its modularity. It's literally just a collection of programs that work independently, so while I use DWM, if I need a panel, I just type "panel" into dmenu, and XFCE panel runs right on top of it with no problems, aligning perfectly over the DWM top bar.

If you want to try a more complete DE, I'd recommend COSMIC. It's fresh and fast and very customizable.

If one doesn't subscribe to traditional Marxist ideology, this argument won't land the same way, but elements of these ideas have made their way into popular ideas of value.

O&O Shutup: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

All the missing privacy switches you'd want. Run it after any updates.

PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

The real utilities you'll want to control your UI as a power user. Just autohide the taskbar and disable showing badges and flashing. It's a lost cause, and you can mostly just forget it exists. Use alt+space to launch things and keyboard or mouse shortcuts for window management. It's actually pretty good at mixing floating and tiling.

WSL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

I'm sure you know about it, but it works well even for most GUI apps these days, although it still doesn't support fractional scaling.

The things I find most thrilling always relate to being challenged. Finding someone better than me qualifies. Having ideas challenged or being proven wrong are the most positive experience I’ve had, especially being forced to change deeply held beliefs. I mention this because it’s one of those things that I always hear people say that everyone hates, but I’ve always felt the opposite, just from a pure chemical feeling perspective. I don’t think I could possibly be unique in that experience.

If management is convinced of the benefits of LLMs and the workers are all just refusing to use them, the main problem seems to be a dysfunctional working environment. It's ultimately management's responsibility to work that out, but if the management isn't completely incompetent, people tasked with using them could do a lot to help the situation by testing and providing constructive feedback rather than making a stand by refusing to try and providing grand narratives about damaging the artistic integrity of something that has been commoditized from inception like video game art. I'm not saying that video game art can't be art, but it has existed in a commercial crunch culture since the 1970s.

Whether it's irresponsible to let kids play the same games as their friends is of course up to individual parents. I think it's possible to both be exposed to these types of traps and learn how to avoid them. They can't gamble without access to money from parents anyway.

https://theconversation.com/how-the-buddha-became-a-christia...

The AOSP works for those different companies because it’s free to modify. Huawei had to move away from Android (still using parts) because Google services were not free or available to them. That was fine because at least the core parts remained free.

If the basic functions of life like paying for things don’t work without Google, it’s a problem. That’s bad for people and too much pressure for Google to do the right thing for people who have different needs.

People like things to be consistent and reliable. When we’re talking about technology, they probably don’t know what specific coding or licensing or development practices lead to that, but they know that they don’t like it when something they use gets worse over time.

When things they use everyday change at the whim of one company that has full control, they don’t always like it. Having software that’s free to modify and distribute makes it so people will always have options and not depend on one company or another having the same opinions about what makes software good.