My UCAS university application is done and submitted!

I’ve been listening to a lot of rock/punk/adjacent genres, like Die Toten Hosen, Kino, Chewie, Ska-P, Bjornarna, Nova Koma, Starshooter, Luke, BTR, the pillows, Jufkamental, and Ornatos Violeta!

They are supporting devices deemed obsolete by manufacturers and are working towards making your phone last longer, I would say that’s pretty environmentally conscious. The “eco” TLD makes sense, I think, when you look at their goals.

Hey, that’s pretty neat! It looks like the name is based off a rock structure in Italy, representing stability :D

It’s also nice that it’s easier to pronounce for non-native English speakers (or as a matter of fact, non-English speakers!)

The new .eco URL is also interesting, from what I can tell it’s operated by a Canadian company called “Big Room”, and to register, you need to pledge that you will support positive change for the planet and you need to be transparent about your actions that could affect the environment.

We’ve already seem sites with the .org TLD get struck down by the U.S. government (e.g. Autistici/Inventati getting sanctioned as a “global terrorist organisation” for providing email and blog hosting services to “far-left antifascist terrorists”), so moving away from that is probably a good thing.

I’m on a laptop, since I don’t need the power of a desktop, and I like being able to use the same computer at home and on the go (e.g. school, and soon university!). I’m running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma, and it’s fantastic! My specific device is also one of those 2-in-1s (with a touchscreen OLED with amazing colours!) that can flip into a tablet, which is very handy. No plans to upgrade it any time soon, but the battery has degraded a lot (58% health), so it might need to be replaced soon.

Desktops make more sense for people who do more graphically intensive stuff (gaming, video editing, 3D modelling, etc.), and if you don’t need the portability of a laptop, desktops are great since they are upgradeable, quieter, and full of I/O.

I mean, all band names are made up in the end of the day. A lot of them are based on various pop culture references (think characters in movies or TV shows), for instance, the French band Luke’s name comes from the American movie “Cool Hand Luke”, none of the members are actually called Luke.

Die Toten Hosen literally means “the dead trousers” in German, and it’s slang for “boring” (though their music is the opposite of that!), while Die Ärtze means “the doctors” in German.

Ska-P is short for “ska punk” which is a mix of ska and punk (and it’s an awesome genre to listen too!)

Kino is Russian for “cinema”, and there’s a variant of the “absolute cinema” meme that instead used a picture of Viktor Tsoi (the GOAT) with the words “absolute Kino”

Putting bases on the Moon means we can do more studies, experiments, etc. outside of Earth, particularly tasks that are difficult to complete by current rovers. Human physiology in low gravity situations, lunar geology, possibility of water and life outside of Earth, that sort of stuff. I’ll also echo what others have said about how the Moon could become a launching base for future explorations, given its lower gravity and lack of an atmosphere.

There isn’t a conspiracy by lizard men to set up a Death Star, this is driven by the curiosity of humanity and our desire to explore the unknown. The “race” to have the first base between Americans and Chinese is, like during the Cold War between the former and the Soviets, a push to be the first, trying to show that they are ahead in terms of technology and science. In a nutshell, it’s driven by curiosity and, at least partly, national pride.

Music is a universal language, almost none of the ones I listed perform in English. I’m just here for good beats! Will check out some of those you listed :D

I love Otoboke Beaver too! Definitely a fun band to listen too

Not a recommendation, but you should look for a big fan, not a small one. The bigger ones are a lot quieter, as they don’t need to spin up as fast to push the same amount of air. The tiny fans sound like jet engines, please don’t get one of those!

Alternatively, you could go with a fan that you flap with your hands, they usually fold up neatly and you don’t need to go looking for a USB outlet. Perhaps not as convenient though

If you didn’t know, CoMaps has a desktop Linux and macOS version! I believe GNOME Maps (also on Linux) recently got better offline maps support too

I would imagine that it’s the easiest for the model to produce. Bold colours, clear and distinct shapes, that sort.

It doesn’t help that the companies have scraped the entire internet (which is a can of worms in terms of both legality and ethics) and then some, so it will mimic the advertising strategies employed everywhere (again, bold colours, clear shapes, etc.)

Honestly the actual hardware is very competent for the price, and a lot of the technologies Valve is showing off (foveated streaming, Windows PC games on ARM Linux VR, etc.) are awesome!

It’s more how people are comparing the price to the heavily subsidised Meta doodad that is less open, has similar or worse specs (especially when it comes to streaming it seems), and is owned by Meta (selling your eyeballs to advertisers is not something I would like to do personally)

More people who kiss the toes of dictators. Those who ignore the atrocities of Stalin and similarly despicable figures, “tankie” as in the tanks used to silence civilian protests

Anarchists are far left, but they would be very insulted if you called them tankies (their whole thing is anti-authoritarianism!)

People who love authoritarianism and intentionally skip over their atrocities, the term “tankie” refers to how the military (tanks) were used to crush the rebellions of many authoritarian regimes, notably, the Hungarian uprising in 1956 being crushed by the Warsaw Pact and the Tianamen square massacre in 1989 by the PRC.

It’s usually used to refer to supporters of the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, etc. who deny all the bad, inhuman things about those states.

I think it would be neat if somebody made a community-run list of stable Lemmy/Piefed communities and categorised them by their rules, where the servers are, etc.

As for now, I think it is best to recommend a few instances that you know are reliable. Push them towards more local instances. If they live in Canada, lemmy.ca, piefed.ca, lemmy.blahaj.zone, and piefed.blahaj.zone are good options, I know feddit.org (Lemmy) and feddit.online (Piefed) are both hosted in Germany. sopuli.xyz is hosted in Finland, piefed.nz in Kiwi land, etc.

Or perhaps instances that relate to their interests, like programming.dev or retrofed.com (both are pretty self-explanatory)

My littlest brother still loves replaying Titanfall 2 on the PS4

The PS4 (the original)! I used to love playing on the Wii as a kid during “social skills class”, which I attended because I was diagnosed with Asperger’s (now part of the autistic spectrum), but we never had one at home.

Hooray for emulation! PS2 and GameCube were a golden age for gaming, and the DS/3DS catalogue is unfathomably large.

I just convinced a friend to use Piefed, hooray!

Their main draw was the search on Piefed being soooo good

I don’t think we need to dedicate a holiday to some racist guy. Strokes the ego of the racists too much in my opinion.

We should also abolish the birthdays of monarchs as holidays for similar reasons.