I’m currently learning Catalan, doing Duolingo until I find some class (which there should be one in a couple of months). It’s relatively easy for me since I already speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese and understand almost everything in Italian.

Nope, just extra dimensional cause for creation, no higher purpose required, for all we know whenever two rocks collide in that scenario they create a universe.

Also no, you’re completely missing the point, if God is omnipotent he could have made humans to never suffer and still be free, in theory most Christians believe that Heaven is free of suffering, do you cease being yourself when you go to heaven then? Just because you or I can’t imagine a world where humans are free but can’t hurt one another doesn’t mean that’s beyond the realm of possibilities, and if your counter argument will be that then we wouldn’t really be free, I tell you that humans can’t explode someone by looking at them, so he already imposed some limitations on the amount of harm we could cause to each other, yet you don’t see this as less freedom because you just accepted that’s the natural state, I propose there could be a natural state where humans can’t cause harm to each other and are still free.

Yup, eventually believers reach the same stopping point but instead of saying “I don’t know” they go “God did it”, until science explains how that happened, so believers go to the next thing and say “well I don’t know how this happened, therefore God”. That is called “the God of the gaps” and it’s a terrible argument, it’s okay to admit we don’t know something.

And no, I’m not talking about Abraham, I’m talking about Jesus, the whole reason why Jesus is crucified is so that his blood can clean the sin of mankind. The basics of Christianism are the following tenets:

1. God can’t (or doesn’t want to) coexist with Sin
2. God requires blood sacrifices, usually animals, to purify Sin
3. God offered a loophole, by sacrificing an innocent person anyone can point at that sacrifice and say “I’m using this sacrifice to purify my sins”.
4. Because there are no Sinless humans he had to come down in human form to sacrifice himself so that he could charge the innocent blood price for the Sins of mankind

Otherwise why would God need to offer himself as sacrifice to purify sins? Couldn’t he just say “all sins are gone”? However you look at it he asks for a blood sacrifice, however he allows you to cash in his own blood sacrifice in its place, and if you don’t he sends you to Hell, very loving fellow.

Foundation is great, have you also read the Empire trilogy? Also after reading Empire + Foundation you should read The end of Eternity, it’s an amazing book whose impact is only felt if you’ve read the other books.

I rarely get into these sorts of debaters because they’re almost always pointless, however a few of the things you said made me want to answer this.

You’re completely missing the point for the first argument, people can’t choose to fly or kill each other by staring, so if humans were created by God then any flaws in humanity, including but not limited to ability to suffer and cause suffering, is part of God’s design that he could have removed. In other words, if God gave people the option to cause harm knowing they would (omniscience, remember) then he’s directly responsible for everything bad that happens, it’s like a father that gives a sharp knife to a kid and tells him to go run and play with his friends. God could have prevented suffering to begin with, therefore the fact that it exists proves that suffering is part of his plan. If that’s the case then yes, you being bullied and your bully being in an abusive home is all done by design, which is very twisted if you think about it.

As for the second argument you admit that things exist outside our universe that can affect it, if that’s the case you don’t need God to create the Universe, we could be the result of a collision between two extra dimensional rocks. And that’s sort of the point of that argument, i.e. that you don’t need God to explain the beginning of the Universe because whatever question you have about the origin of the Universe can also be directed at God (e.g. and what caused that) and whatever answer you give using God can also be used for a non-God answer (e.g. extra dimensional causes)

Those two arguments are very biased. The first one is only a problem in Christianity, and like you said it’s a silly argument, God can be malicious and that solves that issue.

The second one is a bit trickier, because you’re making the same mistake you accuse others of making. There are two possibilities, either something can come from nothing, or it can’t. If stuff can come from nothing God is not needed to create the Universe (and while physics have been able to prove this, let’s look at the other possibility just in case). On the other hand if stuff can’t come from nothing then stuff must have always existed, otherwise you will get the problem of where the stuff that did that came from, and that applies to God too, so of you can ask “where did the Big Bang came from if there was nothing” you can also ask “where did God came from if there was nothing”, so in this scenario you also don’t need God, because if it can come from nothing then other stuff can also come from nothing so we’re in the other scenario.

Also those are two of the weakest arguments against God, and they specifically go after the Christian God of the gaps. Better arguments against the existence of God are usually about pointing at contradictions in the definition, similarly to how you said nothing can come from nothing but made an exception for God, another example is omniscience vs free will (if someone knows what you will do then you’re not free to do different), or omnipotence in itself (can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he can’t eat it?), and if we’re talking about the specific Christian deity the fact that he needs an innocent blood sacrifice to forgive people should be a clear indicator of the type of being you’re dealing with, and it’s not an all loving entity.

Damn, I thought I had sent the reply and it’s been erased.

I’ll keep it short, muscle memory for qwerty doesn’t go away that easily, at least it didn’t for me, but I’m able to type blindly in qwerty (just not touch typing). Still I think that something I can use in my laptop is very useful so I can keep the ergonomics on the go.

I don’t have the exercises, it was just something someone told me to do, I’m sure whatever your doctor is telling you would be better.

For the split vs ortholinear I think split makes more difference, whenever I use a normal keyboard I feel this, but never had any pains related to it, it’s just more comfortable.

Why not use thefuck which also corrects typos?

I understand, and I agree, although I’m reading all the replies are already becoming wall of text so I’ll skip parts but I have read them and they’re all interesting.

I’ve landed on Night.

That looks interesting, although I would be weary of learning a layout that only works on specific keyboards, it will make it hard for you to use a laptop on the go, work in an office with a normal keyboard or any other similar situation.

Furthermore, how bad did things become?

I think it’s easier if I answer this first. At the worst I had problems holding heavy stuff in my hand, as in fingers lackesld strength or didn’t respond properly. And for my lower back at the worst it was constant pain where I needed to lay down with a pillow on my lumbar to stretch. After fixing those I became very aware of the initial feelings, such as numbness or feeling pain when stretching (which btw I strongly recommend you check out wrist and finger stretching exercises as they help a lot). Lots of the changes I made (e.g. split ortholinear keyboard) were probably not needed, but the wrist pain that kickstarted everything got me worry enough that I don’t want to take any chances.

After a couple of hours, I do experience strange sensations that border on pain. Furthermore, there’s (almost) always some level of unease/discomfort. Thankfully, resting continues to feel good and I get especially revitalized after sleeping well. But I acknowledge that this isn’t sustainable.

It’s not, those are exactly the early signals that you asked me about, you think that because you’re able to rest and stretch and it goes away that it’s all fine, but it will require ever more stretching and resting until they don’t go away ever. At least that’s what happened to me, at the beginning I would stretch my wrist and fingers and rest for a while and be fine, eventually that became next day I’ll be fine, then over the weekend, then never.

Wrist pain and fingers that feel wacky. So, this is basically carpal tunnel 101.

That’s exactly what I had, although mine was never actually diagnosed, but I had all of the symptoms and my dad had to do the surgery so I have family history. It does get better if you adjust, I don’t feel any of the symptoms I once did, and it is sustainable I haven’t had any symptoms in about 10 years since I switched to a more keyboard centric flow and the layout, so putting in the work does help out. I should say I had 24 years when the symptoms first appeared, so it was kindof young which was one of the reasons I got very scared about getting those symptoms so early.

org-mode seems to be Emacs’ forte.

Org-mode is absolutely wonderful, I haven’t tried any replacement because the reason I abandoned org-mode wasn’t emacs related, I kept using emacs for org-mode for a while after I dropped it as my main editor. The reason is that there’s no compatibility with other editors or apps. Everything uses markdown, and for most basic stuff markdown is good enough. I do miss habit tracking, task management, table calculations and other neat stuff, but the commodity of using the same format for everything and that other people use it as well outweighs all of that for me.

“Who goes there?” and “It’s only a model” could work without any more context. But I think I would go with “Oh, don’t be such a baby” even with context I think lots of people won’t immediately recognize this.

I don’t consider myself hardcore, but I haven’t posted to Reddit since the API thing, I read stuff there because there’s lots of content, but I strongly dislike the official app so I refuse to use it, which means posting would be a hassle.

One of my favorite games is a hidden gem that I never see people mention. It’s called Out of Space and it’s a couch co-op game similar to Overcooked with two major differences, it’s less frenetic so you can play it to chill out, and it’s procedurally generated so you have lots of replayability. For me and my wife it’s the perfect game of “let’s play a round of something”, yet I never see it mentioned anywhere.

Curious to see this at the very top of your list. Perhaps I should make my switch to Sway rather sooner than later. Thank you for the endorsement!

For me it was a lot off wrist pain, so switching to a more keyboard centric way of interacting with the WM was very impactful.

I intend to learn this with the alt keyboard layout after the more ergonomic split keyboard has arrived. Wish me good luck 😉!

Which alternate layout are you considering? I recommend grabbing something you typed and feeding it here to check heat map of keypresses you would have done to have some visual representation of your usage.

So I suppose that by effectively removing most need for a mouse, the switch to a trackball has been less impactful.

Bingo, I actually switched to trackball before going to keyboard centric WM, but after it I’ve even gone back to mouse a few times feeling almost no difference, because I end up using the mouse a lot less.

Btw, perhaps related, would you happen to be aware of hints? If so, could you touch upon its relevance?

I have, not exactly it but similar stuff, I used to use a browser called conkeror that had emacs key bindings, and have tried to learn a very similar system to hints in the past. Honestly, when I has lots of wrist pain they were useful to completely remove the need of a mouse, but they’re clunky and not as efficient as a pointer so I tend not to use them.

Curious. Is this a special ergonomic chair (or something)?

Nope, just a Secret Lab Titan Evo, but any good chair would do, I spent a year with a cheap Amazon chair and had lots of back pain.

Did you advance/progress in increments because you were testing out the latest addition to the setup? And thus, only introduced a subsequent change after judging that you were not ‘done’ yet?

It was more of a gradual thing, I had wrist pain, so I switched to a trackball, that helped but didn’t got rid of it. So I tried AwesomeWM, found Conkeror and slowly the pain started to fade away and I dove deep into the keyboard centric thing learning touch typing and Colemak. Eventually other issues came on, like pinky strain from Emacs, or a different kind of wrist pain from a small keyboard that made me switch to a split one, or back pain that made me invest in a good chair. I don’t think my setup is “done”, it adapts to whatever my body is asking, but I’ve started to listen carefully and switch stuff on the early signals because that first wrist pain was an eye opener on how bad things can get if you ignore them.

I am so glad to read this! While the journey until I am able to interact with my systems without any pain seems far away right now, success stories like yours make me so pumped to pull through.

Do you feel pain now though? If so what? You should address that immediately. At most points I would have answered that I felt no pain with my setup, because those things build up gradually, if you’re at the point of feeling pain the time to take action is now.

About the emacs plugins, yeah, by the name I can tell you those do the same to the ones I cited, my point is that the plugin ecosystem for it might be a bit less extensive, and not sure how to set shortcuts that use vim key bindings for other plugins.

I would only try out Emacs or Neovim through a opinionated config.

Why? Having had an emacs config that I copied from somewhere and ended up growing and becoming something unmanageable, I’m have a very strong opinion that one should build your own config files from scratch to know them. Presets are good if you’re going to be using them bare, but if you’re going to customize them they can get in the way. And that’s another point for Nvim for me, their configs are very easy, I followed this guide and had a working config that I could easily expand in no time.

org-mode FTW

Ah, I miss org-mode, it’s too bad the world went with Markdown instead.

Granted, I’m still very much enjoying Emacs. But, I shouldn’t disregard/dismiss Neovim any longer. It’s time to revisit this rabbit hole 😂.

Meh, maybe, maybe not, Emacs is great, I just never would have gone with evil mode, it sort of feels like it defeats the purpose of both emacs and vim in my mind for some reason. It’s like if someone told you they put a Ford engine on their Chevrolet, it feels convoluted and strange to think on that solution before thinking of using a Ford.

I would agree with you but I don’t think women are marginalised in my society.

Then you don’t agree with me, and you should look closer at your society, it’s easy to overlook how certain groups are marginalized if you’re not part of them. I recommend you read some posts in some women only communities (instead of trying to tell them how they should feel) to see the sort of thing they have to go through.

I get where you’re coming from, on paper our society treats women equally, there are no written rules or outlandish inequalities, and some of what feminist complain is not even real, such as the gender pay gap. However that’s not the same as saying there aren’t any inequalities nor that it’s even comparable. Yes, men do have issues in our society; Yes we need to address those; No, we shouldn’t laugh at me for opening up about their issues; Yes, men can have safe spaces where they talk about their issues without having women judge them for it. And all of that is the same for women, there are lots of ways in which our society treats women as inferior and if you can’t recognize that there’s really nothing else to tell you than “pay more attention”, but there’s no worse blind that those who don’t want to see, so I’m sure there’s nothing I can tell you that will make you stop and listen and look around, talk to your mom, sister, or some women you know and trust, listen to their stories about that time their boss slap their ass or their ex-boyfriend forced himself on them, or even the time the creepy guy started following them around.

As someone who opposes lots of what feminist theories claim and what some feminist groups preach and do my answer is: Yes, obviously, you have to be a special kind of stupid to not realize that women are marginalized in our society. Next you’ll tell me that outside of black live matter no one thinks blacks are marginalized.

Rhapsody, the band all of their songs progressively tell an epic story that I would love to see in movie form.

Alternatively Nightfall in Middle-Earth from Blind Guardian, love the Silmarillion would love to see a movie about it.

Honestly Scenes from a Memory would make a great movie, and now I have to go listen to it again

I walk, it’s not ideal but I take one for mother earth and walk the whole 10000 cm to the store when needed.

I think 13 year olds are a bit too young to get married

No, there are other ways to get access to your machine without needing it. In general you can classify vulnerabilities as either code execution or privilege escalation, a code execution vulnerability allows an attacker to execute code on your machine, a privilege escalation allows him to break barriers that you might have imposed on him.

For example, if you’re running service X as root, and someone manages to find a way to use something on service X to execute code, they might get a reverse shell to your box and run anything there. So you might set service X to run as your user instead of root, now that vulnerability is less important because it only compromises your user, but the attacker could use this one in conjunction with the other one to gain control of your user, then escalate to become root.

If this is something you’re interested in, there’s a cool website called hackthebox where you have to do these sort of things for real. If you want to have an idea on how it looks, there are some excellent videos here showing walkthroughs for many of them he boxes, I recommend checking something labeled easy since these boxes can get quite complex, but it will give you a good idea of the steps attackers need to take to compromise your system