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Cake day: March 26th, 2024

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  • Debian is on a roughly 2 year release cycle, and typically has a 6 month (-ish) freeze leading up to the release. So software in the stable release will generally be somewhere between 6 months and 2 years out of date. (My math might be a bit off but hopefully you get the idea).

    Ultimately, it comes down to how you use your system, and what you need/want from your software. What you consider to be “the things that matter” will really be the deciding factor here. Need the occasional newer version of an application or library? It’s probably fine. Need the latest, greatest desktop environment? You may want to pass.

    There are a number of ways to install newer versions. Backports, if it has what you want, is the easiest and safest.

    There are other ways as well, but depending on what method you choose and what software it is, you may need to be careful not to break something. (I’d recommend not adding random third-party deb repositories for this reason).

    Flatpak seems reasonable, but I haven’t used it much (once or twice I think). I typically use backports, or occasionally do my own local backports from sid.

    Snap and AppImage are also possibilities. I don’t use snap, and I think I installed something proprietary by AppImage exactly once.

    If it’s not in Debian at all, then I need to handle that a bit differently. But to me that’s a different issue than the ‘old version’ issue that Debian is often derided for.

    Anecdotally, I’ve been daily-driving Debian stable (including for gaming) for over 20 years, and it suits my needs well. But of course, YMMV.






  • So, yes. I’m well aware of that. But thank you (and I mean that sincerely!) for pointing that out. I’ll explain…

    But first, as an aside, I’ll say I’m not a fan of snappy when it’s also grossly imprecise (or worse, dishonest). There’s too much dishonesty and “spin” in politics as it is, and we could do with less. But I digress…

    Anyway, while you’re correct about it being shorthand, I submit that there are people that don’t follow gun-related politics, but have heard “regulate guns like the cars” and take it to mean exactly that because they’re unaware that it has a deeper meaning.

    In fact, there are 2 (unrelated) people in my friend group that believed this, until I told them basically what I wrote above. I didn’t do it as some sort of gotcha - they’re my friends - I want them to be able to make informed decisions based on facts. And they’re not dumb people - they were just ignorant of the issue and parroting said snappy phrase without understanding it was shorthand for something different. Now they have a better understanding of the topic, and a better understanding of what kind of regulations they do and don’t support. I don’t agree with their positions 100%, but that’s fine. My goal was to educate and get them thinking about it, not convert.

    So, with respect, I intend to ignore your suggestion about how to respond to this phrase in the future, for as long as it keeps being used in the same way without any additional explanation. Not because I’m trying to be an agitator (I’m not), but because I think this discourse is helpful for bystanders that aren’t steeped in this stuff, so that they don’t misunderstand.

    After all, if there were 2 people in my little friend group that didn’t understand the phrase as shorthand, there are probably plenty more out there.

    And to that end, thanks again for helping by posting the missing “additional explanation”.



  • You may think you want guns regulated like cars, probably because you heard it somewhere and thought, “yeah, that seems reasonable”.

    But if you stop and think about how cars are actually regulated vs how guns are actually regulated, I think you’ll maybe see that it’s perhaps not so reasonable an idea after all.

    First and foremost, guns are already regulated in significant ways that cars are not. For example, requiring background checks, prohibiting purchasing/owning by particular groups of people (e.g., felons, drug addicts, domestic abusers), and numerous places where you’re not allowed to take them.

    None of those restrictions apply to cars (though maybe they should), so “regulating guns like cars” implies rolling back those restrictions on guns. (Otherwise it wouldn’t actually be “like cars”, would it?)

    Second, a lot of restrictions on cars are for common use, and the minute you fall outside of that, many of those regulations don’t apply.

    For example, in many (maybe the majority of? Not sure) states, the whole license/registration/insurance requirement only applies to vehicles that are operated on public roads (of course, your bank will require insurance if you finance, regardless).

    So a farmer could buy a brand new pickup for cash, sign an affidavit saying it won’t be operated on public roads, have it delivered by flatbed truck to his farm, then his 14 year old kid could drive it around all day with no license, registration, or insurance, and everything is (potentially, depending on the state) completely within the law as long as it stays on the farm.

    There are parallels that can be drawn with gun purchases for use on private property, but hopefully you get my point by now.

    So for sure, if you want more/better gun regulations, then by all means, advocate for that. But please don’t suggest that we regulate guns like we do cars because that’s a terrible idea.


  • BillibusMaximus@sh.itjust.workstoScience Memes@mander.xyzHoney
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    3 months ago

    To expand on this… Part of what happens to the nectar inside the bee’s honey crop is the addition of various enzymes (IIRC invertase is one. I don’t recall any of the others) that modify the sugars and other compounds in the nectar.

    So nectar goes in, the result of nectar + enzymes comes out, then it’s dried until the moisture content is low enough (~18% is what I was told as a beekeeper. Who knows how the bees measure it…)



  • We used to feed our cats almost entirely dry food, with wet food as an occasional treat (no real schedule for wet, just every now and then).

    But over the years we’ve had a number of cats that had health issues that were mitigated by switching to mostly wet food.

    So now it’s reversed- almost entirely wet food with dry food occasionally (every couple of days or so). At least, for our indoor cats.

    We also take care of a feral colony (many of which we’ve TNR’d), and those cats get dry food for logistical and cost reasons.



  • Interesting bee fact -

    In a hive that has been queenless for a period of time (long enough that there’s no way they can raise a replacement queen), one or more workers may develop the ability to lay unfertilized eggs.

    Due to how honeybee genetics work, those unfertilized eggs can hatch into drones (males), which may then have the opportunity to mate with queens from nearby colonies.

    I guess this is sort of a last ditch effort to propagate the hive’s genetic material before it fizzles out and dies. Which I think is fascinating.





  • If you have like-minded friends, start your own. Even if none of you have ever played before, there are plenty of resources online to help you figure it out.

    If not, local game stores will often have bulletin boards where groups post that they’re looking for players or players post that they’re looking for a group. If the store has space to play, you can sometimes even join in on games there.

    Or if you don’t mind playing online ( personally I don’t care for it) you can sometimes find a game to join on sites like roll20.


  • I don’t have an alternative program to suggest, but there are some workarounds for using redshift.

    First, in the config file, you can set the location provider to manual, then specify a lat/lon and it will use that location in its time calculations. I do this on my laptop, and it works well except for when I cross multiple timezones - things are obviously off a bit.

    Second, with the caveat that I haven’t tried this, it looks like you can also manually set dawn/dusk times in the config, which sounds like what you’re after.

    See man 1 redshift for more info.