Those two videos are pure chaos condensed into rapidfire hilarity and one of the few things I can rewatch just about anytime

For future readers looking to set separate default pulseaudio or pipewire sinks for individual apps, this his how I accomplished it.
If you're using pipewire config, sink_name will be called node.name in the capture.props of the module.

For flatpak apps, I used this per-user override only for my current user:
flatpak override --user --env=PULSE_SINK=(sink_name) (full application name)
For example:
flatpak override --user --env=PULSE_SINK=live_sink com.spotify.Client

For steam games, insert the respective environment variable into the launch options if you already have some, or otherwise put PULSE_SINK=(sink_name) %command% in there.

Steam Tinker Launch maintains a gamecfgs/customvars/(Game ID).conf config file for each game to set custom environment variables in, which you can most conveniently find through from the launcher's Main Menu > Editor > find the customvars entry. In there, just put the line PULSE_SINK=(sink_name) and you'll be good to go.

I actually think "it could happen to me" is probably the worst reason to care about something? or at least the most base.

For sure. It is a very egoistic, but also universal and logical reason. "Bad things shouldn't happen" would be a moral reason to care, but even if that's not enough, "This might affect me" should make you wary.

To think "This won't affect me, hence I don't give a damn" is both an egoistic mindset and an idiotic assumption.

But yeah, when those voice gen scams started claiming to be panicked ransom demands from kidnapped relatives it was like... Jesus Christ who wouldn't fall for that on a bad day?

I hate everything about this. Voice Gen could be useful enough, but even if the idea of something imitating your voice wasn't so universally creepy as to be a part of plenty of horror stories, a small percentage of humans being such massive assholes that turn every new tech into a new avenue of exploiting people ruin it.

From the CD section:

If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable

This right here is why "dumb people deserve to get scammed" is an idiotic sentiment. One day, all guardrails may fail and in spite of all caution and consideration, you too may slip up and fall for a scam. Would you like us to point and sneer, because you were dumb and should have been more cautious?

I'm with you: We should fix trust issues, not make them worse by laughing at those who trusted.

The best feature of the sky is all the stuff that's behind it

How dare he zip past the congestion with a low-density vehicle instead of contributing to it, wasting fuel (whatever type) and making things worse for everyone like a proper, respectable, carbrained citizen?

Almost as bad as subways, I tell you! Those bastards take a whole chunk of people past the traffic at once, the audacity 😤

Sarcasm aside, I do think people need this angle pointed out to them: Low-density transport options for those where they make sense help those for whom it doesn't. The more short-range traffic happens on bikes, in busses and (light) rail, the more space there will be on the streets.

Aesthetically pleasing like a blank canvas, a bare concrete wall, a block of clay, an empty manuscript: Brimming with potential to become something.

Wouldn't have been hard to name the game in the title, at the very least

The question here is whether you've crossed the line to radicalise yet, like so many of us have.

I've been teetering on that edge for a while now. I can't give you a simple answer, because I'm a coward and an optimist that doesn't like severe sudden changes. I want things to get better, but I'm afraid of the anxiety a revolution would cause me.

On the other hand, there's a part of me that argues the anxiety would be worth the price and my reluctance is selfish. It waxes and wanes with my mood and energy. Particularly in the grinding mill of wage slavery, those swings have become more erratic and extreme.

Or whether you think screaming vote at people in the Most Important Election of Our Lives:tm: (Again) will this time achieve anything after the "most progressive president in history" or whatever bullshit they were pushing.

Yeah no, Most Important is a load of bull, and most progressive president (of the US) is probably neither true nor a particularly significant achievement for a nation whose history started with genocide, went on with slavery, half-hearted abolition motivated by politics rather than morals, never actually fixing anything but elections (domestic and foreign) and secured peace at the price of getting to freely infiltrate their military all over Europe and leverage the treaties to support - you guessed it - more genocide.

I'm no friend of the US politics and established. I'm just deep in denial and dismantling that delusion in a mind as rigid as mine is taking a long time.

I want to believe in peaceful means. I want to believe that the election can at least help slow the descent long enough for local movements to gather support, expand into regional, national and global initiatives to build a better world.

Rationally, you are right. Emotionally, I am still slave to my irrationality.

You are advocating for something that literally exists for the express purpose of preventing revolution.

I did not consider that angle, but then, my frustration doesn't actually resolve from ticking a box that I hate. I wouldn't have guessed that other people might feel differently about that.

Thanks for your polite and productive contribution! I understand your argument much more clearly now, and I deeply appreciate you disregarding Hanlon's Razor and assuming malice rather than ignorance. I'm sure that's the way to create a better and more friendly society.

Death to America is based tho. Oligarchic Superpowers ought to be destroyed.

Not at all! I hate both of them, and take no issue with voicing that. That was meant more as a comparison that not even vocal protest would change the fucked-up fact that one of them is going to be in power, precisely because the system is rigged against such influence.

Though I do believe that the lesser evil is preferable until change from outside the system enables actually good options to gain a foothold. In my opinion, one of them is less bad, and voting for him to stall for time is a reasonable option while other efforts are made to eventually render the vote entirely obsolete.

So your suggestion is to boycott the vote, in the anticipation that this will somehow change the electoral system? That suddenly, the people in charge will go "Oh wow, we've got such low voter turnout, I guess we'll need to abolish the system that keeps us in power"? They won't apply those same rules anyway. Hence my suggestion would be to use the system to slow the descent while mobilising people outside of it to affect change.

But you got me curious. What strategy to you suggest to fix that system? My personal hope so far lies with educating people, having discussions like this one, in the distant optimism that it will erode support in the system and the backlash when inevitably, this conflict of ideologies escalates to violence or at least massed protests. But I'm an idealist, and tend to be naive, so I'd love to know your take.

Agreement in all points.

I found another way to sum up my point in the meantime: Not voting means that you let the rest decide, and effectively give your assent to their decision in advance. Spoiler voting may hurt your preferred major party. Hence, voting for that major party is the most reasonable choice within the boundaries of the election.

But outside of it, FPTP and the liberal bourgeoisie should just take a fucking hike.

If you want to effectively oppose Biden, vote for the candidate most likely to beat him. If you want to effectively oppose Trump, vote for the candidate most likely to beat him. If you want to oppose both, throw yourself on the floor and have a tantrum because it's about as useful as voting third party or abstaining.

That's the issue with FPTP and Spoiler Effect. You can vote for the lesser evil, to buy time for efforts to actually install some form of democracy. Not voting doesn't oppose Biden nor Trump. It just passes the decision on to the rest. If you didn't try to change the outcome, you're tacitly agreeing with it.

The US "democracy" is fucked up. There's no winning. The best you can do is try to keep the political course from steering into Nazi waters, because that's sure to fuck up any chance of change, peaceful or otherwise.

The difference in percentage points between splits of 5/4 and 5/5 is 5.555...

In absolute terms, yes, not doing anything doesn't support anyone, but in a context where the comparison between candidates is determinant and actual political consequences are on the table, the potential of your vote matters. Choosing not to vote means choosing not to oppose whatever candidate ends up winning.

Choosing to let them win is no different in effect to supporting them, with the exception that it doesn't support a specific candidate up front, but rather lets the rest of the voters decide which candidate profits from your inaction.

Not voting benefits the candidate whose victory was not challenged by your vote. Thus, you're effectively donating your vote to the collective.

You're reintroducing complexity into my simplified example and making very valid points about external factors influencing decisions, but I'd like to hear your argument for how the Spoiler Effect isn't real.

The comparison with piracy falls flat because one is a personal entertainment with limited effect where inaction merely affect your ability to enjoy the game, the other is a political affair where even inaction can have consequences on others.

Man, I suck at recognising humour. I thought the OP was a joke, but the comment might be serious. Ah well, F for eFfort I guess :D

It's First Past The Post, which means the candidate with the most votes wins, no matter if they have majority approval. The actual way individual votes affect the outcome depends on state, voting district and a bunch of other factors that aren't relevant for this explanation.

Not voting mathematically ends up supporting the candidate with the most votes. Suppose ten people have the right to vote, there's three candidates A/B/C, the vote is split 4/3/1, one person abstained. Candidate A wins. The person abstaining could have voted for B to change that outcome, but didn't, so their abstinence supported A.

Now, who exactly you vote for matters as well. Suppose candidates B and C have similar ideas that very much oppose those of A, but one voter ended up going with C over some issue particularly significant to them. It stands to assume that the C-voter would have been happier with B than A.

By not voting for B, they have inadvertently weakened B's position, which is called a Spoiler Effect: Because they ony have a single vote, any votes not put toward the two most popular candidates end up wasted, as the actually significant race happens between those two.

For those reasons, any vote not spent on Biden risks supporting Trump in the event that he turns out the winner. Thus, if you oppose Trump's politics, it's vital to support Biden (unless you oppose his even more, in which case you're kinda fucked).

First Past The Post with a single, non-transferable vote is an awful system that always leads to binary politics where typically both parties will want to appeal to as many people as possible, sacrificing ideological integrity and eventually leading to a stagnation, unless one side's propaganda happens to shift the overton window in their favour and the whole system begins to gradually shift into their direction as well.

I'm not pretending to have a solution. Voting systems is one hell of a complex topic. All I am certain of is that any system that ends up silencing actual progressive leftist voices is shit and should be abolished.

Most international experts consider the outbreak of a third world war unlikely in spite of global surges of violence

Not mundane, but the implications would be horrifying to 1923 society still recovering from "The Great War".