I can’t imagine it’s going to be very long before Elon’s hostile attitude toward basic safety results in a high-profile catastrophy involving human deaths under the ospices of Space X.

Honestly, this isn’t much of a hypothetical for me. At work, my choices are Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu. I’m quite happy with Ubuntu, though I’ve switched away from the default desktop environment to i3.

I use Arch (BTW) on my personal systems. And Ubuntu isn’t as bad as I worried it would be.

My main gripe is snaps. Firefox is practically unusable as a snap. And my employer forbids installing any software (save for a select list of exceptions) not via the officially-supported Ubuntu way of doing things. Chrome is available without snap, so I use it on my work machine. Which annoys me, but if I’m less efficient in my job as a result, it’s their own fault.

I was really excited for CJDNS (not to be confused with “Domain Name System”) at one time. It’s a mesh networking protocol. And they’d established an “Internet 2” (as in, a sequel to “The Internet”) based on the CJDNS protocol called “Hyperborea.”

I haven’t heard anything about CJDNS in a good while now. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other efforts looking to do something roughly the same, but I’m not up to date on anything more recent.

Llama is not Open Source

I kindof hate the slogan “they go low, we go high” (from Hillary’s campaign.)

But this is an example of the “good” side of that slogan. The political left(-of-what-passes-for-center-in-the-U.S.-now-a-days) isn’t given to publicly calling for assassinations of the opposition party. It’s not even given (and, yes, there are exceptions) to calling privately for assassinations of the opposition. And that’s a good thing.

It means the left(-of-U.S.-center) hasn’t turned into the fascist-dictatorship-trying-to-happen that the right has. It’s not the left(-of-U.S.-center) calling for civil war and pandering to creeps who chant “blood and soil” while carrying tiki torches around the capital.

The day left(-of-U.S.-center) news sources delight in assassinations even of opposition as dangerously unhinged and power hungry as Trump because that sentiment started with snide remarks like yours is the day we have to worry that maybe the Democrats are sliding into their own brand of fascism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m for radical support of LGBT rights, womens’ autonomy in matters of personal health, universal free healthcare, and most other “liberal” causes. (I also identify as well left and libertarian-ward of the Democratic party and would love to see “to each according to need” be our modus operandi. I’m also for direct action.) I don’t fault the Democrats for being “too radical” by a long shot. (More likely, the Democrats will continue to be far too willing to let the Republicans control the narrative and cheat their way to political power. And that’s the bad side of “they go low, we go high”) And I don’t believe it’s very likely that the Democrats will slide into widespread advocacy for political violence like the Republicans have much more so already.

But taking delight in assassination attempts and wishing they’d been successful – even those directed at Cheeto-flavored Hitler himself – isn’t helpful.

All that said, I get it. I’m pissed at the U.S.'s descent toward fascism, too. But wishing him assassinated isn’t going to change anything for the better.

Microsoft gives the Wine team infectious mononucleosis. Got it.

But seriously, Microsoft is nobody’s friend and shouldn’t be trusted.