MS Office, and in particular Excel, is a bit of an outlier here (you said often, not always). I wonder if that's one reason for its success: it simply allows people to get work done. It's not always the best tool for the job, perhaps even not often, but people get work done with it and it doesn't get too much in their way. Still too much for my taste, but that's beside the point.

I imagine there's also other advantages, for example the overhead cables are easier to sabotage.

Great impression of an idiot. Most black Americans are Christians, in higher proportions than other ethnic groups in the US, so hiring more black people means hiring more Christians. I don't know how to reconcile that with your take, that bit is on you.

Enough with the reductionism.

This is not an argument, this is just repeating populist talking points. Starting with describing human beings as "illegals". Do you have any bit of evidence that what you say may be true? Granted this topic is uncertain in essence, it's hard to predict outcomes of certain policies with certitude. But where is the quantitative evidence, with context, that you may be right? By context I mean balancing the beneficial with the detrimental instead of just propping up the detrimental.

I think it should be non controversial that no matter what the punishment is for being in a country illegally, the punishment for employing someone who is in that country illegally should be more severe. We all have our own ideas. What problem do yours solve?

Anyone moderating this down is trying to create an alternative reality, because they cannot handle that there exists such a thing as valid criticism of Israel. Poor things.

You can take another step back. A society built so that car is the default mode of transportation is skewed towards car usage. Exhibit A: the USA.

What is the value of looking at these things in terms of how skewed they are?

I genuinely have no idea who you are targeting with that comment, and based on what. Can you clarify?

What exactly do you mean with "skewing"? The point of subsidies is to influence choice to produce certain outcomes that are considered beneficial. If the subsidies produce the outcome they seek, then they work. I don't see how the concept of "skewing" fits in that discussion. What is the unskewed baseline?

I get your point but I don't think it is universally true. I believed your story from the start; but it is a story of using Ubuntu and Snap, which I think are two parts of that problem you describe, that the software infrastructure/stack/whatever we call it sometimes fails through no fault of the user.

This problem is real, but it is also not affecting everyone equally. It affects users of Ubuntu and Snap a lot more than users of Debian stable who stay away from Snap. I know because I am both, one at home and the other at work. My experience is that the one thing Ubuntu has going for it is the installer. Other than that, Debian basically just works, and by that I mean everything works out of the box. After a one-time setup you get recent versions of Chrome too, if you're into that.

My original criticism of Gnome is just based on my experience of it, every time I have tried it I have had issues with it. These days XFCE does everything I need from a DE and more. I can't think of why anyone would need the added complexity, bugs and resource usage that come with features, while missing basic defaults that I have come to expect from any WM. I haven't tried Gnome in recent years so what do I know, but every time I read something about it, it pushes me the other way. I understand that some people prefer to use Gnome. But I believe it is a fallacy to present specific problems resulting from specific choices as universal problems affecting everyone indiscriminately.

I can't relate to the story you mention (or can't remember it happening). It sounds really annoying. To GP's point, if you don't like Gnome (and I can relate to that), just use a different DE. It's really easy and they're basically all better.

None of what you wrote concerns the operating system.

5 million accounts is significant in a country of 28 Million inhabitants. There aren't that many social media networks.

Care to extend that line of reasoning to humans? Do pesticides shorten our lifespans?