This is 100% the way to do it, you can dabble as much or as little as you want, with familiarity one reboot away, and that takes all the stress off the distro selection.

Initially, treat the Linux OS as just fully disposable, which you may realize you have some subconscious resistance to, I think I did. Plan to try a few just to compare the overall experience, you may find that one really just feels more intuitive or smooth than the others, and there are many worse ways to select a longer-term distro to use.

Delicious. That last one especially, scrolls right off the tongue.

Feels like something Ricky from Trailer Park Boys would deliver.

ENTIRELY possible that this exact line is what sent me down the path of noticing and loving tortured idioms. And I forgot all about it, so thanks!!

Color me intrigued!

I love botched idioms so much. “It’s not rocket surgery” is my go to, but the best ones are unintentional (and completely torture the original).

Best I’ve heard lately was on the air, local NPR affiliate, and the unfortunate lass said something, complimenting I think a film director, saying “He’s hitting all cylinders at just the very top level”.

(The original is “firing on all cylinders”, which just describes an internal combustion engine working properly and not suffering from that particular degradation, cylinders misfiring. Hitting them, anywhere, let alone “at the top level”, is utter nonsense and it was delightful to me, she flat out abused that idiom)

Edit to add: some related favs which aren’t quite botched idioms but which kinda “rhyme” with the idea - both meaning “okay, time to get the thing done”:

• “let’s kick this puppy” (given to me by a particularly influential teacher)
• “let’s shake this baby” (my own personal creation, occurred to me while getting my kiddo ready for one thing or another)
• (these having the same flow as e.g. “let’s knock this out”, “let’s blow this taco stand”, etc.)

OOF, cheers and well done homie! That’s delicious.

Currently rehabbing an old drive or two to begin my transition away from Windows during some upcoming time off! Enough is enough, MS has made it abundantly clear that users should not expect to own or control their Windows installations anymore. Complete deal breaker and I doubt I’ll be back.

That’s a great point. And truly, it speaks to what may be the root of the problem - skin in the game. Skin in the game shapes how we solve problems. When leaders make it plain they have none, people notice and reasonable problem solving falls apart.

At some point, I personally blame Jack Welch at GE decades ago for pioneering & normalizing this (thanks Behind the Bastards) - companies shifted from prioritizing outcomes for stakeholders to only prioritizing outcomes for shareholders. Historically I think that was because better outcomes for all stakeholders was seen as the primary driver of better outcomes for shareholders. Jack Welch realized they aren’t nearly as coupled as everyone thought - over the short term only, a crucial distinction! To be fair, someone else would have, too, if he were never born.

For an example, he pioneered the tactic of closing profitable manufacturing plants that were not as profitable as he wanted - and despite the net loss of profit, and the sudden deep trauma to a town full of human lives - investors liked it. It’s the origin of “line goes up”.

Oversimplifying a complex issue of course because I don’t want this to get any longer, but that behavior really does make two different systems of inputs and outputs that are often in competition with each other. One system for investors, and one for everyone else. And a growing number of people see it, see the different outcomes, and are rightfully enraged.

With that said, angry people are easy to manipulate and abuse, which is counterproductive and bad, and I’m not so much disagreeing with you as offering another point of view. Cheers!

I appreciate your measured takes and inside point of view, more of both are always welcome (not that you need my invitation lol, you’re basically famous around here).

The problem I see, though, is all the most morally defensible and procedural fixes require the healthy functioning of institutions that have been weakened, dismantled and / or perverted and turned against us. And a frightening number of us see that now and feel that normal channels for change are closed. I’m not at quite that point myself, but I know how bad it is for so many and I don’t blame anyone who reads our current situation that way.

Our institutions no longer fix our problems, and that’s growing worse, not better - the deck is getting stacked more and more heavily against us as time goes on.

I’m not advocating mass violence. What I am saying is that executives who create conditions like these, for people suffering under an increasingly-dysfunctional and hopeless system like this, should absolutely expect their lives to be in danger on the daily - out of just pure pragmatism. I’m not putting a value judgment on that, I’m saying it is flat out inevitable.

CEOs frequently measure any and all human events as costs to be managed. Especially these insurance executive pieces of shit. I don’t see why a certain number of fairly predictable CEO murders resulting from their hideous behavior should be any different.

Lol ah yes, the “fork me daddy!” camp weighing in

When did they add blackjack and hookers?! That’s a hell of a feature update

We’ll also assume that destroying the universe takes constant time.

Well yeah just delete the pointer to it!

For real. This is my basic approach to parenting too and I feel the same way about both substances (while also enjoying both), but I’ve never seen it expressed in just the right way like this. It’s perfect. Another one I’ve found useful is “drinking is borrowing happiness from tomorrow”. Applies to certain other substances to a degree but damn if it isn’t exactly right for alcohol. A loan is not always a bad idea, to be clear, but it’s good to be clear on the terms of any loan, lol.

Definitely not wrong! Especially once you’ve dialed in your routine of anti-malware utilities to run on pretty much everything. It’s like an antibiotic cocktail, lol. Or did you prefer the “back up and nuke on sight” approach?

Yep, I did similar around the time. Can’t blame people for being mad that the thing they bought is damn near unusable (and was destined to be, but they didn’t understand that part). If someone buys a new bike, even if it’s cheap, it shouldn’t roll like you’re on gravel after a couple weeks and become impossible to pedal within months. But damn, there were a lot of horrible machines sold in those days.

And then of course, the least fun part of that era, the guys who would bring their machines back weekly despite very stern warnings to stop visiting “those sites”.