#operating environment

[divorcedtom]

gretchen sees dylan g as a version of her husband who is motivated and competent while her husband has never been able to hold down a job. but dylan g was literally created to do that job and only exists to do that job. he isn’t a version of her husband who has managed to “find his thing”— he just never had a choice in what his thing would be. he’s been robbed of the freedom to try to find something he’d be passionate about, even if it would’ve meant failing a bunch along the way

[discopaws]

Agent Caspar's pad

[sluckythewizard]

[PUT INTO PLACE, TIED DOWN AND ARRANGED, AND IS NEVER THE SAME, AGAIN.]<-listen to my favorite songs. VAMPIRES ARE WONDERFUL ARENT THEY. THE FLESH IS SO MUCH MORE DURABLE. SO MUCH STRETCHIER THAN HUMANS. THE STRESS DOESNT KILL A VAMPIRE THE SAME WAY IT DOES A HUMAN. YOU CAN TAKE THEM APART THREAD BY THREAD AND LEAVE THEM WIDE AWAKE WITHOUT WORRY OF THE BRAINMATTER SPOILING UNDER VINEGARY AGONY.

[dykedvonte]

I'm probably going to post about this on the MW subreddit, but I still find it pretty hilarious that most fans assume the "struggles" Jimbalaya was dealing with back on Earth were related to criminal acts (usually in order to demonize Curly) meanwhile most of the pieces of clues I've gathered from the HFIM dlc and the QnAs we got about the characters' lives have lead me to believe Jimbalaya's struggles were about poverty.

In the HFIM dlc we're pretty clearly playing a fish version of Jimbalaya, and the whole game is about how a capitalistic system ruins people (fish) and those that climb up help perpetuate the system and those that go down just get eaten. So it's pretty interesting to me that Jimbalaya fish even after consuming other fish and items... keeps going down.

But it was the third QnA that sealed it for me. Curly's hobbies are around a lot of friends and family that he could join interesting things. And of course play snow sports in Winter. Winter snow sports... which let's be honest is a pretty expensive hobby to have. Meanwhile, Jimbalaya can't afford any hobbies other than joining one with Curly.

I think this kinda just adds more fuel for Jimbalaya to both envy yet aspire to be like Curly.

I dunno, it's just fascinating to me watching so many fans claim the "struggles" were so obviously to do with crime when most of the current evidence I noticed seems to point towards money related issues.

-🌟 Anon

I think both are valid and valuable interpretations that’s the MW fandom makes but I think the major problem with it is the severity in which they make Jimmy out to be every factor wrong with men in society.

Like I think it’s interesting to use the idea he has some record, misdemeanors/petty stuff, that has complied to make his life more difficult. It’s all his own doing for his entitlement and general behavior but it can also be used to comment on Capitalism banking on desperation and envy. A lot of his actions are desperate because he knows his crimes on the Tulpar will make it virtually to climb any ladder, anywhere anymore due to their weight. Like in the end the problem is undeniably how the proverbial rat race creates environments that fosters Jimmy’s and creates ineffective systems like Curly represents.

Curly on the other hand benefits from the corporate part of it with his financial freedom, stability and prestige but he too is socially stagnant, deeply unhappy in the identities placed on to him and unrecognizable as anything other than a cog in the machine. I think this goes in tandem with the other members too as the identities placed onto them in the scenario all represent stages in capitalism and class discrepancies: Anya represents largely marginalized identities (particularly women in blue collar fields/harassment) and how they ultimately have to fend for themselves. Daisuke a sort of perception of both a class between Curly and the rest, protected no matter the effects of the establishment due to his home life but at the same time he is the metaphorical future gen, things stripped from him as the older generations squabble amongst themselves in private conversations leaving him unequipped. Then there’s Swansea being sort of those who have lived through it, knowing how it ends but ultimately still lack the skills, resources and want to change it, letting it cycle.

The entire thing with Jimmy circles back to the fandom ultimately wanting easy solutions to the events in the games, a face to blame and a weird black and white thinking to issues that are dangerous to view that way.

[coochiequeens]

Ladies, we can participate in their conference by registering on WECAN’s website. It started June 23 but there is still a few days left.

The Ecofeminist Movement Is Surging. Here’s What Its Advocates Want

More women are connecting environmental degradation with attacks on women's rights, seeing both as rooted in similar values. They’re drawing on personal experiences and reams of research to make their case.

By Katie Surma June 21, 2025

Ayshka Najib (second from right), a climate activist based in the United Arab Emirates, protests at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, UAE, in 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Ayshka Najib

It was an audacious moment. During a recent government hearing, allies of former President Jair Bolsonaro berated Brazil’s environment and climate minister, telling Marina Silva she was “hindering our country’s development,” didn’t deserve respect and should “know your place.”

“You just want me to be a submissive woman,” Silva replied. “But I am not.”

A lifelong Amazonian environmentalist credited with helping slash Brazil’s deforestation rates, Silva walked out after further verbal attacks from members of the powerful ruralista caucus—a pro-agribusiness bloc known for pushing policies that drive deforestation and land conflict with the people living in the rainforest. 

For a growing women’s climate movement, the exchange was more than political theater. It revealed a connection between aggressive resource extraction and attacks on women.

Ecofeminism, a theory that emerged in the 1970s, argues that the conquest of nature and the control of women stem from the same values. Brazil’s own history, ecofeminists argue, reflects this: During the 1964 to 1985 military dictatorship, the regime oversaw widespread gender-based violence and launched “Operation Amazonia,” a campaign to colonize the rainforest and eradicate its Indigenous residents.

In the era of climate change, this theory is gaining traction and urgency from the Amazon to the Middle East. Armed with data and their own experiences, women in this new climate movement are pushing beyond calls to simply increase female leadership in forums like the United Nations’ climate talks. They want to take down the systems they see as root causes of climate change, including patriarchy, capitalism and extractivism—the global pursuit of natural resources for export.

“We didn’t just arrive at this moment of climate chaos,” said Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and executive director of the U.S.-based advocacy organization Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network. “It is built upon systems that have created the conditions for us to be at war with our planet instead of living in harmony with nature.”

WECAN, founded in 2009, is one of several organizations convening women across movements and borders around these ideas. From June 23 to 28, the group will hold its 7th “Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice,” a virtual summit featuring more than 125 women leaders from 50 countries. Speakers will include scientists, policymakers, Indigenous leaders and grassroots organizers across two dozen panels covering topics such as food sovereignty, forest protection, land rights, climate justice, alternative economies and the rights of nature. The public can participate by registering on WECAN’s website.

Osprey Orielle Lake (second from left) marches with the Women for Climate Justice contingent at the Rise For Climate March in San Francisco. Credit: Emily Arasim/WECAN

Past participants have included Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva. This year’s lineup features Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland; Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change during creation of the Paris Agreement; and a wide range of Indigenous and grassroots leaders from around the globe.

For WECAN��s Lake, the movement’s work has never been more urgent. Already this year, the planet has seen climate-fueled wildfire, flooding and triple-digit heat waves across multiple regions. 

“This is not just an environmental crisis,” she said. “It is a justice crisis and a societal crisis, and how we respond and who is centered in that response matters deeply.” 

The Land and Its Heartbeat

Lake and other women in the movement describe climate change not as a glitch in the system, but the system’s logical outcome, the result of centuries of extractive economies built on disconnection from the natural world. For these women, the path forward isn’t just cleaner energy—it’s a deeper transformation that heals the relationship between people and the Earth. 

Ayshka Najib, a climate activist based in the United Arab Emirates, put it this way: “Capitalism is only 500 years old—we created these systems, and we can create newer ones rooted in equality, justice and respect for everyone’s rights.”

To do that, the movement increasingly is looking to women in the Global South—the Indigenous, Quilombola and local communities that have resisted extractive industries while cultivating their own sustainable economies. 

For this, the Kichwa women of Sarayaku, Ecuador, are providing a master class. For decades, multinational corporations have sought to extract oil and minerals from their ancestral lands in the Amazon. With the arrival of industry to the region came workers. And with workers came prostitution, alcohol and violence, said Patricia Gualinga, co-founder of the Amazonian Women Defenders of the Rainforest (Mujeres Amazónicas Defensoras de la Selva).

A participant of WECAN’s Reforestation and Forest Protection Project sorts collected seeds to sow in plant nurseries in Sarayaku, Ecuador. The project, led by Patricia Gualinga, aims to restore trees threatened by extinction and to reforest lands damaged by climate change and extractive industries. Credit: WECAN

“Women a generation before mine suffered tremendous consequences,” Gualinga said in an interview conducted in Spanish. “Many were sexually raped by workers.”

As forests were razed and waterways polluted, women—responsible for cultivating food—bore gendered impacts. Their workload increased, their health suffered and their traditional knowledge became threatened. “We’re always in constant touch with the land,” Gualinga said. “We can feel it, we can feel the land and its heartbeat.”

Driven by escalating threats, Gualinga and others formed Mujeres Amazónicas Defensoras de la Selva, a coalition of women from multiple Indigenous nationalities, around 2012. They organized protests, partnered with groups like Amnesty International and defended their territories by physically monitoring the forest and turning to the courts. Gualinga’s testimony, for instance, helped Sarayaku win a landmark victory based on the Indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2012. 

Their activism has come at a cost: They’ve faced threats, harassment and arson attacks. Still, the women have persisted. 

Patricia Gualinga was the president judge at the 6th International Rights of Nature Tribunal. Gualinga is a Kichwa leader from Sarayaku, Ecuador. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

Gualinga and other women in her community have become prominent human rights defenders and promote the idea of the “Living Forest,” a worldview that recognizes the forest as a living, self-regulating being. They’ve launched reforestation projects, held inter-generational trainings and are leveraging their traditional knowledge to build businesses like the creation of all-organic hair products. 

“Ultimately, we are here to support other women and amplify their voices,” Gualinga said. 

Growing Danger for Women

In communities around the world, extractive companies, climate change and pollution hit women and girls hardest or in gender-specific ways, particularly in low-income populations. These impacts range from adverse pregnancy outcomes to likelihood of displacement and heightened risk of gender-based violence. 

More than 842 environmental conflicts worldwide from the late 1960s through 2022 involved “women environmental defenders as visible leaders,” according to an academic analysis of environmental conflicts documented by the watchdog group Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), considered an undercount. At least 81 of those women were assassinated. 

In the United States, violence against Indigenous women is so widespread it has its own name: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, or MMIW. Many of these cases are linked to the presence of extractive industries, like oil and gas development, near tribal lands. A 2016 federal study found that 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, with more than half reporting sexual violence. 

Osprey Orielle Lake (left) stands with the Indigenous Women’s Tongass Delegation in Washington, D.C., advocating for forest protections. Credit: Melissa Lyttle

The danger isn’t receding. Climate impacts are growing more severe, and the world is on course to exceed the Paris Agreement’s temperature limits. At the same time, governments and corporations are ramping up extractive projects to secure so-called “transition minerals” like lithium, cobalt and nickel, as well as land for carbon offset schemes. The result: a new wave of land conflicts, often in territories that already have a history of violence linked to extractive industries.

Just this month, in Mexico, state police detained Indigenous land defender Estela Hernández Jiménez as she documented alleged abuses against other members of her community, according to the watchdog group Front Line Defenders. At least 10 officers were involved, with witnesses reporting that police used “physical aggression directed at sensitive areas of her body” and that officers “ripped off a button of her blouse, partially exposing her chest, and violently subdued her,” according to Front Line Defenders.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment. 

“The Same Systems” at the Root of Problems

Experiencing climate-intensified flooding is what first pulled Najib, the UAE-based activist, into the movement. 

In 2018, when she was 14 years old, Najib was visiting her grandmother in South India when the region’s worst flood in decades hit. Trapped inside their home for days without electricity and water, the family eventually fled to safety. The trauma lingered.

“I was afraid to go to sleep because if I fell asleep, the next time I opened my eyes, I’d be underwater,” she recalled during a recent interview. 

Ayshka Najib speaks with youth climate activists. Najib works with the Untied Nations, focusing on just transition work in the Middle East and North Africa region. Credit: Courtesy of Ayshka Najib

Now, Najib works with the United Nations and other organizations focused on the gendered impacts of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa. There, worsening heat, water scarcity and ecosystem collapse are magnifying existing inequalities. In communities along Egypt’s Red Sea, for example, many women depend on fishing and farming. But marine life is vanishing, crop cycles are shifting and women—often the primary earners—are losing their ability to provide.

That economic strain, Najib said, has a domino effect: a rise in domestic violence, early child marriage and school dropout rates among girls, as well as growing barriers to basic health needs, including menstrual hygiene.

For those who may balk at the mention of the word patriarchy, Najib underscored the bevy of laws in the region that prevent women from owning land, depriving them of revenue and power to make decisions about their livelihoods. 

Ayshka Najib protests at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, UAE, in 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Ayshka Najib

“We have to understand that the same systems that fuel climate change are the same systems that inflict violence on women’s bodies and restrict their rights,” Najib said. 

Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body convened by the U.N., has said that colonization is a reason some places face worse risks from climate change.

Zukiswa White, a Johannesburg-based climate activist, traces her country’s climate vulnerability back to colonial land theft and resource plunder. First Dutch settlers, then the British, pushed Black South Africans off fertile lands to establish mining and agriculture projects for European profit. 

That legacy, White said, persists. Today, extractive industries still dominate the economy and marginalized communities bear the brunt of environmental harm. White works with some of those communities, many of which are impacted by large industries like oil and mining. Those groups, she said, reject Western ideas of progress and are reclaiming or prioritizing other ways of being. 

Zukiswa White speaks at a press conference at the United Nations climate change talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024. Credit: Katherine Quaid/WECAN

“We’ve been sold the lie that there’s only one path to development,” White said. “But we know things haven’t always been like this—and around the world, there are millions resisting a culture of endless growth and exploitation.”

This, she said, is a core struggle for the women’s climate movement: “Big business has captured peoples’ imaginations. We need to break that.”

“They Are the Solution”

What alternatives does the movement promote? 

When asked, Lake began by drawing a sharp line between the dominant extractive economy and the women-led models rising in its place. Extractivism, she said, is rooted in domination of nature and labor of the many by the few. It thrives on hierarchy and treats the Earth as a thing to be exploited. But women-led alternatives offer a different path, grounded in collective care for all and a reciprocal relationship with the natural world.

This ethos has naturally aligned ecofeminists with the growing rights of nature movement, which seeks legal recognition of ecosystems as living entities with inherent rights—like a river’s right to flow or a whale’s right to migrate.

Many tribal nations as well as countries including Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, New Zealand and India have passed such laws, making the rights of nature a gateway to rethinking how societies are structured. The laws aren’t merely symbolic. In Ecuador, a forest has defeated a mining company in the country’s highest court. In Panama, they’ve been used as a basis for establishing a marine protected area for sea turtles. And in Peru, a river basin degraded by decades of oil spills can now go to court, through its Indigenous legal guardians, to fight back. 

Lake pointed to a range of other thriving initiatives: reforestation projects, “well-being economies,” the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, seed saving networks and cooperatives focused on agriculture, locally owned power and childcare. 

“Research is pretty clear that when you take a lot of these community-led solutions, often run by women, they’re highly successful,” Lake said. “When you add them all up, it creates a very large solution that supports local communities and cares for more people than these top-down programs.”

But that cumulative impact, she said, is often ignored or dismissed.

“If you look at one person or community doing a food sovereignty project, you might think, ‘Oh gosh, they’re only feeding 1,000 people. How can that save the world?’ But people fail to mention that if you add up hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions, of these small, local solutions—they are the solution.”

WECAN executive director Osprey Orielle Lake addresses media at the United Nation climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024. Credit: Katherine Quaid/WECAN

Next week’s Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice comes against a global backdrop of backsliding on women’s rights and environmental protection. 

In March, the U.N. reported that one in four countries is seeing increased gender discrimination, weaker legal safeguards for women and diminished funding for gender-related programs—or all three. That includes the United States, where President Donald Trump has championed broad rollbacks, from defunding women’s health services to gutting mentions of “women,” “gender” or “climate crisis.” He has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax and has presided over one of the most sweeping assaults on environmental and public health safeguards in modern U.S. history, including cuts to renewable energy initiatives.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s called drill, baby, drill,” Trump told Congress in March.

Women leaders in the movement are using the turbulence to underscore what’s at stake and to fight harder. “If we don’t push back,” Lake said, “we will keep losing ground.”

Having honed its organizing process over the past 15 years, WECAN plans to take the insights from next week’s assembly and turn them into a call to action aimed at governments, financial institutions and international agencies in the lead-up to the COP30 global climate change gathering later this year in Brazil. In the past, the organization’s advocacy has contributed to milestones such as the establishment of the first Gender Action Plan under the U.N. climate negotiations.

“What’s really essential in terms of how we create the world we want is to have direct interventions with policy makers and government leaders,” Lake said. “Our narrative, our solutions will be brought into the mainstream.”

[noirandchocolate]

Itsy-bitsy headcanon before bed:

I’ve mentioned this in (very minor) passing before but in my lil’ AoC-verse, the Yiga Clan has been surreptitiously farming mighty bananas in Faron for centuries. I just think, that they have too many stockpiled (and in the other timeline, every member who pops up to kill Link has some) for their stores to come solely from theft and happenstance gathering.* And after all, bananas don’t grow in the desert or highlands of their home…

Anyway, they “farm” in a way that makes the groves look very natural, so nobody else would tend to notice they’re not just growing wild. Just as they’ve been looking after the apple trees on Satori Mountain as stated in my linked post up there. The thing is, that means the Clan can’t defend their crop too intensely, and they always lose some of it to passers-by. In the past, there have been some incidents where Hylians have thought they were farming bananas in the general area; these were dealt with by quickly grabbing as much of the crop as possible, laying natural-seeming traps, and putting illusions on the trees to make them look blighted until the Hylians gave up again for another while and moved their operations somewhere else in Faron.

Post-Calamity, Master Kohga made it known that it’d been his people tending a large amount of banana trees all this time and that they hoped to plant more and expand their operation. Princess Zelda, as one show of gratitude for his assistance (*cough saving her father’s life cough*) and to aid in her own push to legitimize Yiga participation in commerce, worked with Kohga to draw up formal documents to the effect that yes, that land and those trees/bananas belong to the Clan. Which Kohga privately thought was annoying political theater since why wouldn’t it be theirs, why should the Yiga have to make nice to ~earn~ a right to what their hard work had created, but…still, he saw it as a step in the right direction by the Princess, surely (since it seemed she was trying hard to make nice from her end, too <3).

So where do the Yiga farm their bananas? Largely all along the stepped cliffs of Ubota Point, with a smaller reserve crop (looking even more wild and natural) on the higher areas around Bronas Forest and Kamah Plateau.** Post-Calamity, the Clan has been able to start building an open and permanent base of operations on the Point, as they’ll begin to sell and ship some of their crops to places besides their home in Karusa Valley (Urbosa and the Gerudo are among their first big customers, hehe). The Yiga’s once-small Faron Team has been bulked up considerably now that they don’t have to hide. Things are just getting underway with this, but it feels like a good start to their business relationship with Hyrule. Yay! :D

Okay goodnight everybody! <3 <3

*There’s turn-in quests in AoC where the Clan wants to buy up every mighty banana in Hyrule. This is to sustain them while they understandably are shorter-handed and all-hands-on-deck with the Calamity (thanks Astor) and haven’t been as able to tend their crops, which they haven’t been up front with Hyrule about anyway ofc.

**As I’ve also said before, I headcanon that locations on the BotW/TotK map are bigger in “real life” for lack of a better descriptor. So Faron in general is big enough for the Clan and Hylians to be farming bananas and other things too. But incidentally, Ubota Point’s environs are the area in BotW where you can find the most mighty bananas, just growing everywhere! …and personally I’ve also been attacked by a bunch (ha! I have made a banana pun!) of Yiga in Faron both before and even more after that timeline’s Kohga fell in a hole, so….

[rxttenfish]

i still find it absurd how many people lose their shit over anglerfish and other deep sea fish and talk threateningly about how scary and awful they are, and then you look at them and how big they actually are, and they're just like, the size of your hand, maybe. like this isn't even a swarm situation, they're notoriously solitary. it makes more sense to be the token trope of a person standing on top of a chair screaming about a mouse.

[commodorez]

Doing more with less with GEOS by Jonathan Sturges, Alex Jacocks

GEOS/GeoWorks on C64, C128, Apple II and IBM XT clone

VCF East XIX

[oblivious-aro]

Maya Fey in Ace Attorney 1: Her insecurity about her usefulness after she loses her powers provides an interesting commentary on the ‘magic user’ role that girls in fiction (especially in 90s/00s media) are often given to ‘justify’ their presence in a primarily male cast to a primarily (though not exclusively) male audience. Her magic is her use. Her magic is her value. What message does this send to the audience who lives in the real world where girls can’t use magic? 

Not only is the inadequacy one would feel from not having access to the ability they’ve been led to believe gives them their value acknowledged, the game then goes on to assure that these fears, although understandable, are unfounded. Maya isn’t useful because of her ability to channel spirits, but because of who she is as a person. Yes that does include spirit channelling sometimes, but Maya doesn’t lose her value when she loses that power. She still makes essential contributions towards winning trials because she is just as stubbornly determined as Phoenix to find the truth. Maya’s value doesn't come from having a special power, it comes from the same attributes that give Phoenix his value; attributes that anyone can have, no matter what they’ve been led to believe about themselves.

Maya Fey in all subsequent games: Constantly gets kidnapped and/or needs to be saved by Phoenix.

[lambda-core]

I turned him into a potato

[starrieslight]

code black's medical accuracy goes to shit every episode but by god do they give these characters layers

[sl33py-g4m3r]

Debian 12 w KDE Plasma let's go~~~

I've got no idea why I didn't like KDE before tbh.... cause trying it now, its kinda nice~~~ last time I tried it was idk how long ago.... when I started messing around with linux to begin with.

It, unlike xfce, has a software updater so I don't need to use the terminal on debian~~~ it looks really snazzy tbh.

last time I used it was idk how long ago..... a decade ago? and I guess now it's just Plasma and not KDE anymore? ??

annoying problem that I fixed~~~~ also for some reason the icons and stuff on my second hard drive have reverted back to dev/sda for my main OS partition and dev/sdb for where all the rest of my data is... and idk why~~~ but the lock icons on everything in that drive is gone~~ and idk what fixed it......

also time.... the date and time was incorrect and i had no idea why given I've selected the proper time zone.... I was just really confused and idk why.... but now I did and it's fixed~~ I had to change the BIOS time to UTC

and since there's no "sync w internet" and you need EXACT SECONDS now the time is slightly off cause I didn't time it down to the second.... but putting my BIOS time into UTC instead of local time fixed it~~~

also still don't know exactly why I can and could get debian to boot and install perfectly fine on my machine even with secure boot and the like from a windows install still on. when linux mint debian edition just.... wouldn't......

stupidly simple fix but I'm happy to have figured it out myself~~~ hope I like KDE more than I did a decade ago. idk why I didn't like it that far back... maybe it was worse? or there was too many customize options and it paralyzed me?

but now I like it so far~~~~ wonder if I can do it up like windows xp/95? lol. throw myself into customize options of KDE and be lost here forever :)

slowly figuring stuff out and my preferences in the linux world~~ idk why I liked xfce..... the KDE log in screen is nicer and more sleek and modern~~~

will gnome stuff work with kde? if I install gnome games? I always install gnome games and then never play any of them lol I mean I'd assume they would but idk~~

idk why I'm documenting my journey with trying different distributions or desktop environments here..... cause I feel no one really cares..... but I got no one around me to talk linux to... even if I am still (in my own eyes) a newbie at it....

welp~~~ back to system config~~ :) hope that's fun~~ and to find accessibility settings~~

what was up with the clock tho? why did I have to set my BIOS time to UTC to get it to be local time? how does linux configure time? never noticed that before~~~

I distro hop a lot I think~~~~

and would ya believe it my function keys STILL WORK~~~~ WOOOO~~

edit: there are swipe gestures to go back on browser?? gonna like KDE I think~~~

yet another edit: double check bios cause I'm a doofus sometimes~~ secure boot is still on but now greyed out and can't toggle it off, fast boot and something below fast boot are disabled~~

still have no idea why pure debian is able to load with secure boot on (permanently now I guess) and linux mint wasn't able to despite it being debian as well.... but debian 12 works so neat~~~~

bad thing tho about the "swipe to go back" is that I keep almost doing that while trying to scroll down~~ could just use the arrow keys but got so used to using the touchpad to scroll ...

[usurpator]

RE puzzles are great

[divinekangaroo]

Stuck in hospital again as the 7yo is not having a good run of it. He's long had and has further developed an absolutely visceral physical terror reaction of blood tests, too, which is interesting given he's unbothered by blood/injury in non-medical settings. But was watching how he and the medicos were trying to interact, him desperately shrieking/begging that they tell/explain everything, let him pick what finger, let him pick exactly what moment it goes in, let him pick exactly what moment it stops; the way he would go so rigid they couldn't do anything, couldn't pull his arm into position, him crying, no you can't do it now, you have to come back in 10 minutes; then him and I hit on the method of doing a 'practice run' over and over at his request where I'd pretend to be the nurse and come in and do it all to him (with no needle of course) until he was calm enough to go, ok, they can do it now BUT they have to come in and say [insert string of words] and [string of words] and start in the corner and come around the bed in exactly the same way you did---

All so he had some sense of control.

And in the meantime, they'd come in and just go, 'look over there! pretend it's not happening! think of something nice! look at your iPad!' until the mad fighting and writhing escalated too far and I had to pull them aside and explain that no, actually, what would help him was letting him work through what was being done to him and understand every step in detail in advance, and trying to force him to look away was making him panic worse.

Anyway, after five lots of it today, two sets of sheets changed (the visceral wet-sobbing and drooling he absolutely *soaked* through them), they brought in a "Certificate of Bravery" for "letting his blood be taken", and THEN the buggers took a photo of him looking absolutely white-faced and miserable with the nurses, and gave him stickers, and when they left the room he crumpled it all up and shoved it into corners under the mattress, muttering, I didn't want a certificate, I didn't want stickers

[binch-i-might-be]

I do wish some overwhelming evil would befall my boss