I have a school age child in a super red state and I am rather surprised we have had free school lunches and even breakfast for the last 4-5 years. Granted, poverty is really high around here and I am certain that this is most kids’ best meal of the day so it may not be high quality, but its better than an empty stomach. This is all paid for with tax money which is something I am totally in favor of. The bigger issue is summertime hunger since those same kids are out of school for about 3 months so they even offer a meal option during that time as well but I am not sure how it works since we don’t use that service.

100% agreed on the point made about how conservatives only seem to care about fetuses and consider them grease for the machinery once they get born but somehow this backward-ass state is doing the right thing…for now at least.

Haha, I was too lazy to zoom in on the picture but now I can see that the bottom unit was not a VCR like I initially thought. Point to you, internet stranger :)

I’ll take the bait. This is a classic AV rack setup which is a relic of the bygone era. Looks like a pretty typical configuration with a Receiver/amplifier, CD player, Laser disc player(?), double tape deck, and a VHS Cassette player. And of course you have to have the colossal speakers to accompany this technological tour de force from the early 90s. The little box may be a headphone amp but not sure.

Once you had all of this, you officially made it. I never quite did and this is one of my many regrets. I will go back to the nursing home now…

When I was building a new dedicated Linux gaming PC, I opted for Mint as my Distro because of all of the recommendations and the very helpful compatibility database which gave me more confidence in the new components I was picking out. What ultimately killed my interest in Mint with the Cinnamon DE was the use of X11 and I had an issue with screen tearing that no amount of tweaking could fix.

After forcing Mint to use a newer kernel version, so it could actually detect my Radeon 9060XT, and making my system unbootable while trying to edit the X11 config file, I ultimately switched to Fedora Workstation which uses Wayland. This solved my problem and also allowed me to use variable refresh rate and HDR with no issues. I am not using the rolling release version of Fedora; the versions I am getting appear to be stable and only a few weeks/months behind.

As a Win10 end-of-support refugee, I ended up on Fedora Workstation which uses GNOME as the DE and I have really enjoyed how clean and functional it is for me. I guess I just don’t care enough about extensions and customization to want to use anything else so the common complaints about GNOME don’t affect me.

In sharp contrast, when I demo’d the KDE version of Fedora using a LiveOS on USB, I immediately disliked it and stuck with Workstation. I have been daily-driving Windows based operating systems since 1995, and grew up in an exclusively Apple/Mac household; so having experienced all three, Linux with GNOME has been the coziest option and meets 100% of my needs.

I can appreciate that others have strong opinions on this, but I don’t have any issue going between Win11 at work and Fedora Workstation at home and it just makes me love my Linux system even more.

TL/DR: I despise MicroSlop and their persistent enshittification of their products and user experience; Linux with GNOME allows me to experience something simplified and clean that looks nothing like what MS offers.

Thank you for clarifying and I don’t disagree at all with the points you raise. Unfortunately in application, the higher ideals seem to be lost on these red-hat troglodytes who are in the majority in my local area. I used to believe similarly that minds could be changed with rational and candid discussion, but my own experience has been that MAGA types just double down when presented with anything that doesn’t align with what they have come to believe; until they are negatively affected by one of the horrible things they support of course.

I haven’t given up entirely but active avoidance appears to be the simplest near-term solution. The problem is the currently dominant political party has done a very effective job of demonizing anything and anyone with an opposing viewpoint to their proponents. That alone makes open discourse almost impossible.

I can certainly appreciate the sentiment behind this comment but I would have to challenge its applicability in a deep red part of the US. The danger here is expressing incompatible beliefs to people who vocally and energetically talk about rounding up and “shooting all of the democrats” they can find. As much as I would like to accept the fact that they have the right to this opinion, I am also self-aware enough that I chose to keep my own politics (independent but left-leaning) to myself.

Would they really kill me? Probably not. Would I be immediately treated with hostility? Almost certainly.

I think there is a stark difference between “different” and “opposing” viewpoints and I imagine it would be nice living in a place where being open-minded was a common virtue. Unfortunately for me that isn’t really viable at the moment.

+1 Fedora (Workstation, in my case) When I set up Fedora on the machines I loaded it on, I normally allocate 50 GB to /root and the balance of the space to /home after setting up my swap and /boot partitions. This has worked well for me so far, YMMV. It also sounds like its not a bad idea to leave a small percentage of a drive un-allocated but I haven’t done this personally.

I really appreciate this explanation and have been striving to do the same with my child. I was raised in a fairly standard religious (protestant) household and actually had a period when I really bought into all of it. But when I reached my teenage years and the things I was reading and being told started to make me ask questions, that the people who seemed to have all of the answers would essentially clam up or double down on the dogma they were throwing out.

Being an atheist in America is a bit of a challenge as an adult, but I have learned to navigate the social situations that would potentially “out-me” to folks who are religious. As a result, I have had many conversations with my kid to prepare them for these kinds of conversations since being an atheist is apparently almost as bad as being a democrat (and a socialist!) in the part of the US I live in. I would like to think that my child will steer clear of religion at this point and that he will remain a free-thinker but I suppose only time will tell.

The loss of belief for me started with a loss of faith in the people I was always taught to trust. I never want my child to ever look at me that way when they realize everything they were led to believe is made up.

This may be one of the most repulsive human beings in US politics (top 10 for sure). I lived in SC when she started her run for the national stage and she was simping for everyone that would give her air-time. Then she got in a car accident and the other driver was killed and Mace wouldn’t shut up about how it “was God’s plan that she survive and run”. I am so glad she failed and is losing her spot for now at least, I wish her only the worst.

So I started reading this post since I figured it would have some interesting comments but its becoming apparent that there is some sort of ulterior motive here for the OP. I suppose it should have been obvious this was an exercise in bad faith since their initial comment includes, “…for no logical reason at all”. But congratulations on getting some decent engagement on this platform.

OPs basic question is being answered with valid points and their responses indicate that they are just reacting defensively and trying to explain away or excuse all of the horrific things the Catholic Church is provably responsible for. As for me, I wouldn’t trust my kid with any religious organization because I think they all have a pedo problem and can’t keep their hands off of children; their minds or their bodies…just look who keeps getting convicted of these crimes and I can assure you it isn’t the atheists people should be worried about.

So true. As a former feral/latchkey kid I am no essentially no-contact with my parents because of how shit they were and still are. I don’t want my kid to ever wonder if I am proud of them or love them so I never miss a chance to say it. Things can happen so fast and tragedy is all too common in the US with a child in public school.

Same. The only time I have ever waited in line for a game release was the midnight launch of The Burning Crusade expansion for WoW and I can’t say it was worth it. Certainly never did it again if that tells you anything.

If you combine that rule with the ability to endlessly stack Draw 2 or Draw 4 cards, you have what I think may be the most evil version of Uno that can be played. We called it Thermo-Nuclear Uno (i.e. Mutually Assured Destruction) since you knew that dropping a Draw 4 would almost certainly lead to someone being buried in cards and it might even be you. Even if you manage to dodge the stack, payback is coming and you won’t get lucky every time. I can remember games that we would finally just quit after an hour since no one would ever be able lay down their last card. Merging two decks can make this even more brutal and cuts down on interplay shuffles too.

Too right. I got pushed out of the Windows ecosystem by the forced obsolescence of Win10 and after dabbling with an older version of Ubuntu in the past and iOS, Cinnamon felt like I was hanging on to what I was trying to leave. GNOME just worked for me functionally and aesthetically. I use Win11 at work and hate every minute of it.

It was at least on the version I tried and it was super annoying trying to figure out why it wouldn’t detect my GPU which was an RX 9060XT and not supported by the default Linux Kernel. Once I upgraded the Kernel, that got my AMDGPU stuff working but I could not overcome other graphics issues like persistent tearing (even with V-sync).

This is the exact same reason I ultimately gave up on Linux Mint and switched to Fedora. I could not get rid of tearing and I fragged X11 (and made my OS un-bootable) on multiple occasions trying to fix it using recommended tweaks to config files. It was looking like a Wayland based solution was what I needed so I chose to move on.

GNOME haters can just put away their knives since I am no fan boy; I just wanted to completely escape anything resembling a MicroSlop experience and Workstation gave me a clean DE, more current package releases, HDR, Variable refresh rate , and solid gaming performance with a minimal amount of fuss. CachyOS was next on my list if Fedora didn’t work and I am still considering trying it out someday. That said, there is no question that making the switch to Linux as a new user can be daunting and I would still suggest Mint for older hardware with less of a gaming focus.

You bring up another important positive for the instant pot: when I wash the rice, I tend to scrub hand-fulls between my fingers under running water and swirl it around as the bowl fills. Since the inner pot is stainless steel, I am not worried about damaging a non-stick coating like you tend to see on other rice cookers. Additionally, once the cooking cycle is complete, I have learned that letting the pressure drop over a period of about 10 mins before venting helps release the rice from the bottom of the inner bowl so sticking isn’t really a problem and I never get any burnt rice either.

The one thing I am not sure about is how well the rice would keep if it is left on warm all day like you describe for households that make a large batch for multiple meals. I typically make just enough for the meal at hand and some leftovers for fried rice later so I suppose the instant pot serves it purpose well but it may not be the solution for everyone.

This is really interesting regarding the extra water and I suppose it makes sense with the more basic models that have a vent hole. I have been using an Instant Pot for a bunch of years now and have a custom pressure cooking setting that gives me fluffy and perfect brown rice using water at a 1:1 ratio. I believe the cook time must be slightly longer than the white rice setting(default button). 21 mins and about 10 mins to cooldown before venting gets perfect results 100% of the time.
I have been tempted to invest in a more traditional cooker like a Zojirushi thanks in large part to “Uncle Roger” but paid $45 for the Instant Pot and I don’t really use it for anything else.

Slight correction may be in order here…the target of your ire should probably be the conservative fundamentalists (aka Y’all-Qaeda) in the US; the Satanic Temple folks are generally atheists and seem pretty chill to an outsider like me.