I keep extinct in the wild and critically endangered species of fish in my aquariums and am a member of a couple of fish focused associations who work with universities for the goal of preservation of species. been considering getting into red listed frogs and cactus, but the communities are smaller (so less access to species) and space is a premium when living in an apartment.

i wish there was more exposure of this hobby because it’s such an affordable, easy and “low effort” thing to do, but a lot of people who care about the environment and animals basically get offended when you keep animals “locked up” in an aquarium. in my opinion, serious aquarists (not the pet store furniture mentality) are invaluable, as a lot of species has been saved from extinction through aquarist efforts and university collaboration to reintroduce them to their native ranges after restoration work is completed (at least Lenoardo DiCaprio made a little bit of social media impact for one of the associations in 2022).

I should add, overfishing is not the leading cause for extinction in freshwater fish, it’s pollution from agriculture, as the vast majority of fish threatened with extinction have no utility to us (or bright enough colors to benefit the commercial pet trade - brightly colored species are generally not even found in the wild, and have their colors from decades of selective breeding by dedicated aquarists).

It probably doesn’t hold up. The idea of overpopulation is wrong because the west is suffering a birth crisis while the third world is having a child boom. It’s not that more children are being born, it’s that their standards are being improved so more of them survive. They in turn will level out and see less children born the better their standards become; so it’s reasonable to assume if standards are collapsing in the west, then in a generation or so, more children will be born.

I’ve said this a million times, but it’s definitely about time we stop spending taxes on a rogue entity across the ocean who definitely does not have our best interests in mind. I’m not convinced it’s even legal and I don’t understand why the legal prospects have never been brought up about this fucking situation. R&D money should not go to a foreign corporation. In addition, I (and pretty much everyone else on the planet) already paid for microsofts products and services so my government can use it (against my will), so why the fuck do they get away with setting a public price at all? It should legally be free or the governments shouldn’t need to pay for it in the first place, and it should legally be open source because it’s publicly funded. There are just so many problems with the entire idea of our government using Windows, Office, and their services.

most software is web based and OS-agnostic so there is no destruction and rebuilding happening, and for everything else, FOSS is literally free. How is it expensive to switch from X with a monthly cost to X that is free? Even if things breaks initially, the cost would equalize and long-term be considerably reduced.

There is no learning curve. Where have you been over the past 7 or 8 years?

It’s just funny how there are 3 ways you can vote on Trump. 1. Not voting. 2. Voting third party/optional. 3. Actually voting for him. But there is only one way you can not vote on him, and that’s voting Harris. The Democrats have really set this up to make it a boom or bust strategy, and the Republicans reap all the benefits.

Oh man, talk about bringing me back in time. My first card was a voodoo 2.

gnome currently because nearly everything i use is designed for gnome and looks mismatched on other DEs. but the gnome workflow largely feels like a prison.

I mean, if I could be cloned, that’d be great? I’d love to have clones. Immortality, baby!

I see a lot of people mention WIRE recently. Did everyone collectively forget how they sold out in 2019 and removed their canary (aka. compromised)?

In July 2019 Wire raised $8.2m investment from Morpheus Ventures and others. On July 18 of the same month, 100% of the company’s shares have been taken over by Wire Holdings Inc., Delaware, USA.

DeltaChat. I don’t use it myself because it’s built on electron (which basically excludes 99% of modern chat clients); but as it’s technically an email client turned into a chat client, we can assume you’re protected by PGP when writing to most users, and with the added effect of not needing to convince anyone to install anything since from their end it’s just an email.

defenestrate.

modern as in stable, good UX, plug-and-play, and supporting features a modern chat client is expected to have with zero hassle.

the stuff needed to convince your mom to install it.

In July 2019 Wire raised $8.2m investment from Morpheus Ventures and others. On July 18 of the same month, 100% of the company’s shares have been taken over by Wire Holdings Inc., Delaware, USA.

Should be noted that their canary was removed at the same time.

XMPP would be viable in theory but for whatever reason no one wants to build a modern client out of it.

there’s deltachat for gpg - i love the concept, since your friends don’t even need to have it installed in order for you to chat with them.

but i am forever stuck with telegram because i refuse to install software running on set-my-computer-on-fire-pls-Electron (which every single MODERN chat application does today, bar Telegram).

wire sold out years ago.

definitely the case for Valve. Corporate vultures will be all over it the second he’s gone.

nah, it’s basically my experience with flatpak and snaps on ANY distro on ANY machine. the fact that everyone’s moving to this crap is beyond me. Am I the only person on the planet that expects a modern computer to run snappier than a PC from early 2000? sure seems like it sometimes, especially when pretty much any software released since 2018 runs electron. Hell, now every manufacturer is moving to ARM like it’s some revolutionary hardware - no, it just vastly improved energy usage AT THE EXPENSE OF PERFORMANCE. we might as well stick with what we have and just pump less energy into the damn thing and have the exact same results.

blimey.

I get the convenience; I do …but it can’t possibly be worth the sacrifices?? sigh.

the day of coders who knew what they were doing is long since gone. now it’s just click and play frameworks to pump out garbage and oversaturate the ecosystem.

Since I started keeping up with all this locally, here is what has happened.

• About 20 years ago, there was a ring of realtors who would were actively manipulating the prices by buying and selling to themselves. They were caught eventually, but they had already caused the damage they set out to do, artificially hiking prices for their buildings.
• About 15 years ago, the government realized that people needs to take more loans for the economy to grow because when you get rid of taxes on the rich there isn’t enough money pumped into the economy to make it grow. So they gave away thousands of social housing units to their friends (private entities) for free who then sold them back to the public.
• The landlords has since been running an “upgrading” scheme of apartments and houses all over the place with shitty things like a new fridge or a new and improved window or whatever have you, which allows them to increase the rent considerably outside of the limitations the law specifies. Of course this sounds like a bad idea because if you aren’t renting to anyone you’re losing money - but when the price of renting is 3 times the original price, it means they will still be profitable if they lose 1 in 3 renters. Not surprisingly, people have started to complain there is nowhere to live because of these conditions. The government isn’t stepping in, because they need these people to buy properties rather than rent - forcing them to take loans, and bolstering the economy. It’s why they started giving away apartments in the first place and causing this issue.
• As a response to demand though, and show of good fate, the government promises to build more houses. By giving contracts and money to private entities (their friends) to construct new homes. And to “fix the issue with cost”, they promise a 20% discount on the price per unit to any buyers who invests into buying the apartment before it is finished construction. Naturally, the buyers of these houses and apartments immediately sell once the unit is finished, netting a 20%+ profit on their investment. Now suddenly there is a huge upswing of houses and apartments, none for rent of course, and average people can’t afford to buy them. Investors though, they keep buying up everything, much of it is empty and not used, and sit on it for 3-5 years, and sell it to the next guy (or if they find the illusive average person who can suddenly afford it).

This is not to mention that the door was opened for american and chinese investors to buy up properties and land, shooting the average prices through the roof. Together with the government (of course a rightwing government has been in power for the past 20 years, causing all this to happen in their quest to privatize and let their friends milk tax money, reduce taxes on the rich, and balancing it out by forcing your average joe to take a massive housing loan), reducing the loans to just 3% to make them “affordable to average people”, which further spikes prices upwards and it ain’t coming down until something catastrophic happens.