noobdoomguy8658

This is a real problem with changing your mind.

I can't believe how many times I've been told I've changed when I no longer found something funny or said something that I wouldn't have in my teen years.

One of the longest-running opinions of mine that hasn't been disproved yet is that many people just don't really mature or age mentally, it seems; they just grow older, without accumulating much if any wisdom.

It's usually a place where you're not bombarding your brain with stimulation all the time, so your brain tries to use the downtime to work with all the information you've been putting into it.

This is actually a big part of learning anything, called diffused learning. Think of how you suddenly get something after a period of rest or not doing anything, some time after you've initially focused on a thing for some time - your brain has actually been using the downtime to structure the data and make better sense of it.

This is also why a lot of people that know how a human brain works suggest mediation and walks, especially without listening to music or podcasts, as well as spending little to no time reading, watching or stimulating your brain in any other way before bed. It needs that time, it's crucial for development. Journaling helps here, too, because it's both reflection and somewhat of a downtime.

Doing chores and not listening to anything counts, too.

But it's all easier said than done in this age of constant hunt for one's attention so they spend more time on your app, giving you more data to sell and more metrics to make the line go up (gotta keep the investors and stakeholders happy, can't afford to not show constant growth).

The suits did. You know, so the line goes up. Because we're all gonna die otherwise or something.

I think it's just true for the vast majority of countries, unfortunately. A country has to have a lot of things figured out and done right before it can regulate and train its police force so well that its population doesn't nearly universally agree with the ACAB sentiment. Or at least doesn't belive they're all incompetent.

i3 isn't a proper DE, though, but I definitely would go with that with that little RAM.

For strictly DEs, I'd pick XFCE - it's just lovely for what it demands.

Recommend anything to read on the matter? Sounds very interesting, but I'm afraid I may find some dubious material before striking anything good.

There are a lot of things illegal in Ukraine that are weird. One is dual citizenship;

Ukraine is, unfortunately, hardly a special case in that regard.

Looking at the most "powerful" passports around the world, you'll see that most of them tend to follow the same restriction, although some more exceptions, whether perfectly legal or just people being more laid-back.

I have no idea since when the same restriction is in place for the Ukrainian passport, but it would make sense to me if they imposed it after deciding to join the EU. Maybe without it, there would be a greater number of people potentially reaping the benefits of holding a member passport without having to contribute much?

I'm just grasping straws here, really.

It's probably a very late response, but I'll still leave it if you want it.

I honestly don't know what typical quality of live is or was ever has been. From my very own experience of someone who's making damn good money - not crazy good money, but damn good - I can tell you that life has gotten much more expensive. My lifestyle is something I think many people would consider enviable, because my expenses mostly come down to food and rent, with a lot of disposable income that, to my shame, is getting disposed all right.

Being a bit of a dreamer, I often imagine purchasing some stuff like real estate or a car because I've switched my lifestyle, or just pretend to be preparing to replace some things in my life. During these times, I look at the prices, and since that had already happened before time and time again, I can tell that the prices for everything have increased dramatically.

The prices, though, are one thing: what's more is the fact that the salaries haven't increased for most people, of course, and the ruble itself has plummeted down, devaluing everyone's salaries basically. The people who get paid in dollars or euros directly or simply receive equivalent sums in rubles are much better off on paper, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that the economy isn't doing well for the people; I don't really think it's doing well for the military either, to be honest.

Now, there's no empty shelves or any kind of shortages that you would notice in your regular life, but I'm saying this because I'm not in the market for anything that's now gone for decades, I believe. For example, various medications are either unaffordable now or are completely absent, with some substitutes taking their place; unfortunately, I don't know nearly enough as to tell you more here.

Another thing that's definitely taken a hit is choice: there's simply much less stuff to choose from now all across the market. That being said, there are some alternatives that have attempted to take the places of the goods that had left the market, but that cannot be said about every niche - and even more importantly, often you can't say the substitutes have the same quality as their predecessors, on multiple levels ranging from sheer product quality to support and service.

The weird conclusion is that it's kinda difficult to say that the country is on the brink of collapse, but you definitely can't say that the sanctions haven't done any damage to the economy and the quality of life here. The consequences, in my opinion, have been far from intended nonetheless, mostly because there are some aspects of dealing with Putin in particular and Russia as a whole that the people establishing and trying to enforce these sanctions simply couldn't have anticipated; to be fair, many people within Russia or deeply associating themselves with Russia couldn't have anticipated those aspects to play, for the lack of a better word, well in this situation.

Things are very complicated and difficult to forecast when it comes to such a scale, I believe.

Who says the Linux community is crappy to newbies?

Don't worry, we have that, too. ;) It's a whole package!

Jokes aside, glad to help. Feel free to drop me a private message here or in Matrix if you have any more questions or something. Happy Linux'ing!

Not to mention Valve's effort with Proton, allowing non-Windows gamers enjoy what they pay for on multiple platforms with great ease; their efforts have been massive for gaming on Linux, and without it, I wouldn't have paid for a lot of games, earning their developers a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

Also the community hub, the workshop, the review system, the cloud saving, the functional wishlist, the gifting system, the shopping cart, the anti-cheat (you're better of with it than without it), the discovery queue, the sales dedicated to specific types of games that actually help people discover games and drive the revenue up for the developers, the (I think) complete transaction history, the refunds system, the friends and the chat and profiles - and probably many more things that I'm either not aware of or couldn't list off the tip of my tongue, combined with internal works that, again, do help the devs in the end.

Steam is much more than a place where one pays for a game to then simply download and play it. It's much greater and more functional than that. None of the developers have to put their games on Steam - nobody forces Epic Games Store or GOG to be this subpar in comparison. Same way nobody forces gamers to use Steam. People use Steam because they love it - or because there's no good-enough alternative, but that's hardly Valve's fault.

Steam charging 30% is not just worth it, but also surprising, given what putting your game on Steam gets you as the developer, and what it gets us, the players.

You can always dual-boot, i.e. have both Windows and Linux... or multiple Linux installations, if you please.

Start with Linux Mint for greater stability and familiarity. Soon enough you'll learn that distributions are basically fancy pre-packaged collections and configurations of mostly the same applications (they're also called packaged), which should make choosing your distribution a bit easier. There are differences, of course, but you'll need a deeper knowledge and more of a nuanced list of requirements before it starts to matter much, so don't stress about comparing them and choosing "the best" for you - you'll always be able to switch the entire distribution or reconfigure your own to fit your specific needs surprisingly easily.

Great questions, thank you. I'll try my best to stick to the point and provide answers that don't span paragraphs. I've already been accused of my very typical Russian tendency to write out lengthy sentences here.

What is your experience when talking to other people about your opinion? Do you think twice talking about that topic?

I think much more than twice before I indicate my position towards Putin, his government, or the war whenever I'm not talking to people I know I can trust. As important as it feels to "spread the word", it's just not safe to be display disloyalty towards the regime: some may tell the police about you (sometimes deliberately exaggerating to cause you more trouble), some may try and fight you, which sometimes ends really bad, and at the same time, sometimes it's just a very regular, easy conversation where you just share your opinions and go about your business, no harm done.

Sometimes, judging by what the people you're conversing with say and how they say it, you can tell whether they're capable of even thinking of doing anything nasty if you disagree and to what degree. It's still best to not risk it and steer away from that kind of talk with strangers or people you're not sure about yet.

How many people you know have a opinion like yours?

Like MINE? Probably just me alone, but I'm saying this because the topic itself already encompasses a lot of issues, like the international law, Crimea, decolonization, imperialistic complexes and ideas, patriotism, guilt, various traumas, and many other things. There's no way two people agree on everything - I've met people who are just as anti-war and anti-Putin and pro-west like me, very liberal or left-leaning and all, but can't even begin to imagine Russia having to pay reparations after the war; there's more: I personally know a person that wants all of it to end, like no Putin, no war type of attitude, but they seem to have something personal against Ukrainians, as if they actually hate them. It's very nuanced and complicated.

That being said, if we boil down my opinion to something as practical as "Out with Putin" and "No more war", then every single person I know would fall into that category: including the people from older generations, the ones that were most affected by the propaganda. Some of them are bitter about it, like they don't want the war to end with anything less than a total Russian military victory, a complete defeat and conquer of the entire Ukraine; some are much closer to me, thinking that the Russian army should just pack up and leave to the borders that were internationally established in 1991, so Crimea goes back to Ukraine as well..

So, in general, the people who want the war to go on are an actual minority. Everybody is tired of it, but each in their own way. I don't think anyone has been affected in a positive way, not after 2 full years of this: even pragmatically, we've all lost too much in both short- and long-term as a country, and even some of the "luckier" people who maybe got higher wages on their industrial facility because the demand has increased go to the same supermarkets and drug stores as I do, they go to the same hospitals, use the same infrastructure and all that, and they've surely suffered the consequences as much as anyone else, and even their (most likely temporary) material gains could never make up for, say, ruined international relationships, maybe ruined personal relationships, maybe dead relatives, and many other things.

Having said all that, I will also tell you this as a bonus: it's getting harder to disagree. Even the pro-war bloggers (the so called z-bloggers) are now getting the stick treatment for getting out of line; they used to think that they're the in-crowd and they have the free pass on reporting the real state of affairs, i.e. openly talking about problems, losses, incompetence, etc., but one thing a dictator can't have you do is steer away from the official line, as that hurts the narratives the propaganda is going for. The irony knows no bounds.

P.S. Still got lengthy and all, my apologies.