I've used GNOME since early 2.x. GNOME 3 was a big shift. But so what?

Current GNOME looks and works great on my desktop and laptop. I can launch whatever I need quickly. I can manage workspaces and windows and files. It gets out of the way. Do I think their insistence on no tray icons is stupid? Yep, but it doesn't matter, there's an extension for that. Does it work with touch devices? Yep. But I don't care because I don't use touch devices with it. Does their Online Accounts thing work in a corp environment? Not really. Oh well.

Like, I barely think about GNOME. It's just there doing its job. It's FINE. It works. It looks nice. I have no major complaints.

The only people it "left behind" were users who thought early Windows was peak UI, didn't have the neuroplasticity to try something new, and thought the project owed them something in return for using it.

Again, oh well.

You see this kind of dogma pushing in so many places where you'd expect scientific objectivity to rule the day.

For example, we all know COVID is airborne. But the WHO put the word out that it wasn't, made up a "droplets" narrative that conveniently avoided triggering workplace safety rules in most countries, and sent forth legions of credentialed people to beat back any uncomfortable questions.

Now, years later, they've been embarrassed into addressing the misinformation they put out. But instead, they've just invented new terms: "infectious respiratory particles" that "spread through the air". They won't say "airborne", again because that would trigger workplace safety laws and public health rules.

On and on it goes, in so many fields.

Bingo.

My kids and I have been sick so much this year. We had two more rounds of COVID across our family since September. Other families we know are seeing the same thing. Before the pandemic a few colds and MAYBE a stomach flu type thing were the norm in a school year.

All I can take away from this is that the pandemic isn't over and being sick has made us more vulnerable. Not that anyone cares.

Retail investors are just exits for people who've been holding for the last couple of years.

Holders need a mania so they have someone to sell their worthless tokens to.

So a few whales make the price climb and get some media coverage going, retail storms in with the FOMO craze, and the smart money happily sells to retail. Demand dries up, the price falls, the dejected retail bagholders wait a few months and sell at a loss, and the game starts again.

Don't be the greater fool. You've missed this round.

Where I am (Canada), COVID-19 is categorized as a Risk Group 3 human biopathogen , along with HIV, Monkeypox, SARS-1, West Nile, Yellow Fever, mad cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, rabies, chikungunya.

Legally, the RG3 pathogen is "a category of human pathogens that pose a high risk to the health of individuals and a low risk to public health and includes the human pathogens listed in Schedule 3. They are likely to cause serious disease in a human." Here is the text of the law with that definition.

Notice the legal difference between "public health" and "individual health"? Public health is mostly about managing group behaviors so that society can keep on doing what it does without being wiped out by disease.

What individuals should care about is individual health.

Just because COVID presents as a cold during its acute phase doesn't mean it's not doing heart or lung damage. I personally know three people who will likely never be the same after being infected. I have zero interest in ending up like them.

The pandemic is still raging - 1 in 19 people are estimated to be infected in Canada this week ) - but public health has decided it's under control "enough." If you're happy to be fuel for the economy, go nuts, I guess. If there were outbreaks of West Nile or Yellow Fever (same RG3 classification!) at work or schools, we sure as hell wouldn't be going there. But since really sick people vanish from public view, this is easy to keep a lid on.

We know that aerosolized COVID can float in enclosed spaces for hours, and that you can get infected by walking into a room long after an infected person was present if ventilation/filtration are poor. A decent FFP2 or N95 that fits you properly will significantly reduce your chances of getting sick. It's such a simple and easy thing to do.

Everyone thinks they aren't susceptible to propaganda, but no one is wearing a mask.

You don't get to come back a year (or a century) later and say, "Hey, I just found out what that painting is actually worth. Give it back."

Actually... Why not? You said yourself you're in the wrong and you certainly acted in bad faith, so why shouldn't your victim have their demand to annul the deal enforced?

As opposed to people with nativist and inward looking views, companies like Apple HAVE to work overseas, and if you keep following the US govt kool-aid, then you will only be able to do business with Western Europe and other allies.

Try to understand that a big part of the world actually sees the US as the big bad empire that they portray China to be and it makes sense that they ask Stewart to tone it down a bit.

It's not that China is a big bad empire, it's that Xi is an emperor who's unable to placate his people with promises of a better tomorrow due to China's economy having caught up enough that the rubber band has gone slack and dictatorships being inherently incompatible with the rule of law which a strong economy requires, so his only hope for survival is to placate them with promises of glory which makes a confrontation with China and West pretty much inevitable, and Xi knows that. It's the same deal as with Russia, US is simply being wiser than EU was.

Basically, what's business to Apple is a weapon to China, and China is a fundamentally hostile nation to anyone who doesn't think Xi would make a great world leader, which he wouldn't judging by everything I know about life in China and also because he's a genocidal tyrant. That's not "nativist" or "inward looking", that's simply realism.

I recently saw a very insightful interview where dictatorships are defined by things you cannot criticize, like the CCP in China, Kim Jong-un in Korea, etc. In the US the thing that will absolutely get you canceled will be talking about the Israeli lobby and the influence such a small group holds over US culture in general.

Seriously? You're equating getting canceled with getting disappeared?

Note that such a system would also prevent Slashdot from leaning left and censoring conservatives, which they're doing now by institution an idiotic "karma". Slashdot karma is all about politics. And Slashdot is left leaning. One could express that cutely as "CowboyNeal is an imbecile".

But you're not being censored. Your comment is right here, readable for all who care to engage with users with bad reputation. That you have managed to earn a bad reputation through your own actions does not reflect badly on Slashdot or CowboyNeal, it reflects badly on you. It is the consequence of your actions, in other words, your karma.

That most people ignore you doesn't mean you're being censored, it just means that they think you and your opinions are not worth listening to. That your response to this is that the government should force them to pay attention just serves to demonstrate that their judgement is completely right. It's not a political judgement, it's a judgement about you as a person.

Given your vitriol here, I think you know that too, and judging by the fact that you keep posting on Slashdot despite hating the place I doubt you're more welcome elsewhere either. So perhaps you should reflect on the only common factor for a change, try to see your self from other people's eyes and maybe, just maybe accept that you might actually be the one who's in the wrong and needs to change? It's painful, but so is eternal bitterness, and there is no government big enough to make other people like you, so those are your options.