It's good to see that M$FT is tackling the important problems:
The sight of a Blue Screen of Death will also be a thing of the past, too. Microsoft is now officially redesigning its BSOD so that it’s black and not blue.
New research shows southern resident killer whales grooming each other using kelp they’ve modified, and researchers think it’s the first time researchers have documented marine mammals making tools.
The 2025 China-Europe Seminar on Human Rights opened in Madrid, Spain, on June 25. Centered on the theme Human Rights in the Era of Digital Intelligence, the seminar explored both theoretical and practical approaches to redefining human rights protec…
A new version of fontconfig release recently with the added option to disable bitmap fonts. If you're using a rolling release distro, this might break bitmap fonts for you. It definitely does on Arch (and likely Arch-based distros) because they opted to disable them by default for some reason (AFAICT upstream gives the choice but does not recommend one way or the other).
This'll cause fontconfig to skip bitmap fonts, your apps won't be able to access them.
I'd recommend a user-level fontconfig file. Create $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf with below contents and you get your bitmap fonts back. This negates the file in /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-b
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A new version of fontconfig release recently with the added option to disable bitmap fonts. If you're using a rolling release distro, this might break bitmap fonts for you. It definitely does on Arch (and likely Arch-based distros) because they opted to disable them by default for some reason (AFAICT upstream gives the choice but does not recommend one way or the other).
This'll cause fontconfig to skip bitmap fonts, your apps won't be able to access them.
I'd recommend a user-level fontconfig file. Create $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf with below contents and you get your bitmap fonts back. This negates the file in /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf. This is the first time I'm configuring fontconfig so there may be a better way ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This should've definitely been news imo especially because this is not the default behavior of upstream. I shouldn't have to read fontconfig PRs to figure out why my fonts broke, even on Arch.
To allow users to choose one of 70-yes-bitmaps.conf, 70-no-bitmaps-and-emoji.conf, or 70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf for default installation. Fixes https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/issues/474 Changelog: added
Trump’s June 4 travel ban included Sudanese nationals, while the administration also imposed sanctions on the country facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
These numbers seem to all be pre-DOGE bullshit. This is still the pre-Trump 2.0 data. Just wait until the 2025 numbers come out, and then 2026 will likely be even worse. If the US can survive and make it to the other side of this nightmare, there's going to be so much work to do.
It's a pretty clear, rapid rise in China becoming the main contributor to their database, and given the US political situation and academics famously being poached by China and Europe, I don't think Harvard will retain that #2 position for even another year.
The Nature Index tracks the affiliations of high-quality scientific articles. Updated monthly, the Nature Index presents research outputs by institution and country.
Fedora Silverblue -- a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.
Bazzite has been working so well that even the wife has converted over. It cured my distro hopping so I haven't played much attention to how other distros have been doing.
A question - can I use Bazzite for uses other than gaming? I game on my laptop, but most of the time I'm writing code. Could I use it for that or should I go for something like Fedora, Debian or Arch?
I would say that development is the one thing that can get very annoying on immutable distros.
Flatpaks can only get you so far (as seen by the VS Code Flatpak's limitations that have to be worked around). I don't even use VS Code, so I can get around that pretty comfortably, but I have to use Distrobox for a lot of miscellaneous developer tools, and even then, I still run into problems and I can't install container tools inside of the containers that I'm already working in.
Not to discourage you from trying. I can still get by with some dev work on Bazzite, but it's waaay easier to do the same dev work on CachyOS (Arch-derivative) because I can just install shit normally and it will work.
The whole of Fedora atomic distros are interesting in an exercise in getting good with layering and distrobox. Pop_os 24.04 just to see if a third pillar of Linux frontends with GTK and Qt is viable. People are always pissy about Manjaro but they seem to have an interesting present being pre installed on the Orange Pi Neo handheld
I use immutable distros for the stability, and the nixOS approach isn’t for me.
You can install whatever you like using a tool called distrobox, which allows you to run containers easily.
I have an arch Linux container, and I have access to the entire AUR if I so please. I use that container to run Steam, and performance was the same as on Bazzite using the natively installed Steam.
The Arch derivatives, CachyOS and EndeavourOS. They’ve really done a good job with Arch and cultivating their own communities. It’s paid off for them and Arch isn’t really seen as just a hobby distro like 15 years ago, or a meme like the last 5 years.
Bazzite, for both general desktop use or dedicated for gaming. Just strength to strength from the project. I hope Fedora’s proposal to remove 32-bit libs doesn’t hurt them. By far the best, just untouchable, atomic distro.
Linux Mint for the first time in about 10 years is being seriously recommended to new users and not laughed off as a Linux Windows clone. That team has never stopped putting in the effort and deserve it. I don’t know how they’re going with/plans for Wayland, but I hope smoothly.
Fedora. I’ve never used it personally. But since starting with Linux in 2006 I’ve only ever seen or heard of it as kind of “being there” but not really talked about much. People are talking about it now as being a reliable and solid choice for new users and
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The Arch derivatives, CachyOS and EndeavourOS. They’ve really done a good job with Arch and cultivating their own communities. It’s paid off for them and Arch isn’t really seen as just a hobby distro like 15 years ago, or a meme like the last 5 years.
Bazzite, for both general desktop use or dedicated for gaming. Just strength to strength from the project. I hope Fedora’s proposal to remove 32-bit libs doesn’t hurt them. By far the best, just untouchable, atomic distro.
Linux Mint for the first time in about 10 years is being seriously recommended to new users and not laughed off as a Linux Windows clone. That team has never stopped putting in the effort and deserve it. I don’t know how they’re going with/plans for Wayland, but I hope smoothly.
Fedora. I’ve never used it personally. But since starting with Linux in 2006 I’ve only ever seen or heard of it as kind of “being there” but not really talked about much. People are talking about it now as being a reliable and solid choice for new users and intermediate users.
Debian. I do see Debian mentioned now a lot more than it has been in years. I think people generally are becoming more satisfied with the idea of a stable OS, ages not writing it off as being left behind, constantly out of date, can’t run latest AMD graphics, etc. In my mind, flatpak helps that a lot, since you don’t need to wait years to get the latest versions of programs, but I don’t know for sure that is helping this current wave of success.
On the other hand:
Tumbleweed seems to be stagnating. They’ve made some changes and moving away from yast for the first in forever. The switch to selinux has affected proton usage in a way that it’s not super “new user friendly”. Even amongst people wanting to try out Opensuse, you often see “I’ll give Slowroll a try.”
PopOs’ cosmic desktop is still in early stages, and you do hear good things, but popos seems even less talked about now. They might have hit their peak 3-5 years ago, or maybe it will come around again for them like some of the distros above.
Nobara was massively talked up a few years back. But not so much now. And you do see discussions like “Nobara had too many problems on this machine, I just went straight-up Fedora”.
The other main hobby/enthusiast distros that were getting discussed more in the last few years - NixOS, Void Linux, Alpine. Not so much anymore. NixOS definitely did take off a lot more than the others, but it still just doesn’t come up as often as a couple years ago.
Debian. I do see Debian mentioned now a lot more than it has been in years.
I haven't noticed much difference, Debian has always been the go to distro if you wanted reliability and repositories that cover almost everything. Debian has always been an excellent choice for productivity. It's not by accident that Debian for more than 20 years has been the distro with by far the most derivatives.
By that standard Arch is the only distro that has achieved something similar, and it may be somewhat telling that SteamOS switched from Debian based to Arch based. Arch is way smaller in scope, and more nimble and easier to maintain. But AFAIK they do not have the democratic process Debian has, so I'm not sure it can really be called community based distro like Debian. Arch has more of a top leadership. Debian is probably the most true to the Free and Open Source ideals among the big distros.
Oh yeah, there’s a big difference now in distro conversations.
Debian was never talked about as a serious contender in distro hopping, discussions around “best distro for me”, starter for new users, etc. Just an occasional; “of you’re going to choose Ubuntu, just pick Debian and go straight to the source”.
But it was often pointed out that Debians pros is what made it not recommended for general end-user. It’s strong for servers and productivity. But its stability meant kernel and mesa updates were slow, many programs lagged. Gaming performance suffers and new hardware support is weaker. It was recognised that Ubuntu and Mint would add convenience for everyday use cases on top of Debian.
Especially the early to mid 2010s was all about “bleeding edge/rolling release is too likely to break, Debian is too stable to get updates, pick something in between”
Now, this problem is being lessened, at the same time people are liking the stability for general desktop use. Bleeding edge became highly recommended 5 -
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Oh yeah, there’s a big difference now in distro conversations.
Debian was never talked about as a serious contender in distro hopping, discussions around “best distro for me”, starter for new users, etc. Just an occasional; “of you’re going to choose Ubuntu, just pick Debian and go straight to the source”.
But it was often pointed out that Debians pros is what made it not recommended for general end-user. It’s strong for servers and productivity. But its stability meant kernel and mesa updates were slow, many programs lagged. Gaming performance suffers and new hardware support is weaker. It was recognised that Ubuntu and Mint would add convenience for everyday use cases on top of Debian.
Especially the early to mid 2010s was all about “bleeding edge/rolling release is too likely to break, Debian is too stable to get updates, pick something in between”
Now, this problem is being lessened, at the same time people are liking the stability for general desktop use. Bleeding edge became highly recommended 5 - 8 years ago, and now in 2025 people care less about that and it’s easy to make stable distros work for your needs just as well.
Now people will regularly say “use Debian, it’s solid and reliable” and not follow up with “you’ll have to deal with old packages though”
That's the thing though you really don't have to deal with old packages. The ones that count are in the backports repo and for everything else there's is flatpak. Plus I think the reason steamos switched from Debian to arch was the methodology changed from being mutable to immutable and making it more for a handheld vs installed on many systems. It had nothing to do with the quality of the distro.
I’m not discussing quality of distro here, but people’s changing perception of Debian over the years. The way that people currently use/suggest/recommend distros has put Debian more in favour than say 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
It’s always been good depending on use case, but people currently are recommending it more for general use than has been typical before. And I think it is, as you said, that some of those past limiting factors are not a big problem anymore. I did suggest that in my first post.
Debian was never talked about as a serious contender in distro hopping
Back in 2005 when Ubuntu was all the rage, the first alternative to Ubuntu was almost always Debian. Only later when Mint became a thing, that was also an obvious alternative, because it was similarly focused on being easy to use.
And also PCLinuxOS and Mandriva, those were the big recommendations as well. But we’re pre-dating the common distro hopping discussions I think we had in mind by going back that far too.
But we’re pre-dating the common distro hopping discussions
No we aren't, Linux fora were full of them even before Ubuntu more than 20 years ago. Debian, Suse, Fedora, Mandrake, Mepis, PCLinux. Distro hopping was always a thing people debated.
The rest of that sentence is a bit confusing, who are we? And how am I supposed to read minds? And going back was kind of where we started, because you claimed it was a new thing for Debian. Debian was definitely recommended to general users, for many good reasons. Stability and huge repository among them, but also user friendly install procedure, and good package manager, that handled dependencies way better than Suse and Fedora.
Fedora has gotten much more stable and reliable in the past decade. 15+ years ago it was generally regarded as nice but unstable. I'd say nowadays for a moderately technical user it offers a better experience overall than Ubuntu or Mint. There are still unfortunately some pitfalls for new users (media codecs come to mind). In fact, the only issues i've had in most of those 10 years have been related to GNOME plugins or the Plasma 6 transition, problems that also occured on Ubuntu.
I have 2 computers: one running Ubuntu, one Fedora. This has been my setup for over a decade. I have lately been finding Ubuntu more and more cumbersome to use, with less of the "just works" experience i remember having in the past. Perhaps the focus on cloud computing has caused the desktop to languish a bit.
I would like to try Pop!_OS, but i haven't had a free evening for a while to do a backup and reinstall on one of my computers. It's also been a while since i used Mint, so my impression could be out of date.
The nice thing about Linux overall (compared to macOS and Windows) is tha
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Fedora has gotten much more stable and reliable in the past decade. 15+ years ago it was generally regarded as nice but unstable. I'd say nowadays for a moderately technical user it offers a better experience overall than Ubuntu or Mint. There are still unfortunately some pitfalls for new users (media codecs come to mind). In fact, the only issues i've had in most of those 10 years have been related to GNOME plugins or the Plasma 6 transition, problems that also occured on Ubuntu.
I have 2 computers: one running Ubuntu, one Fedora. This has been my setup for over a decade. I have lately been finding Ubuntu more and more cumbersome to use, with less of the "just works" experience i remember having in the past. Perhaps the focus on cloud computing has caused the desktop to languish a bit.
I would like to try Pop!_OS, but i haven't had a free evening for a while to do a backup and reinstall on one of my computers. It's also been a while since i used Mint, so my impression could be out of date.
The nice thing about Linux overall (compared to macOS and Windows) is that each update generally improves on the experience. On commercial platforms the experience gets worse as often as it gets better, usually both at the same time. GNOME and Plasma are both overall much better than they were a decade ago (despite a few regressions) while macOS and Windows are both worse in general.
I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then switched to Linux Mint for a while and dabbled with Manjaro for a hot minute, and ultimately found my home on Fedora Workstation for the past several years. Once set up with rpmfusion and 3rd party codecs it's a very solid and reliable distribution. The new atomic projects (and derivatives) look very interesting too.
This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.
Hi all,
after I've added support for Clear Linux containers to distrobox (http://github.com/89luca89/distrobox), I thought that it would be a nice experiment to show the performance benefits of Clear Linux even on non-Clear distributions.
While Void isn't exactly under rated ( it is very highly rated on distro watch for one ), for someone looking for a systemd free distro or a light weight one in general, it is a decent choice. The repos aren't as broad based as Arch but they do have newer versions of the software that they host.
I could be wrong, but aren't Linux Mint and Pop OS ultimately based on Debian? (Mint is based on Ubuntu which in return has a Debian base). Debian was my main entry way to the Linux world and there is a reason why so many distros are built on it. Very old as well (not as old as Slack ware but Slack ware isn't exactly noob friendly).
All those packages, but terrible/lacking documentation and LSP support 😭 And, yes, I've tried nixd and nil, and they're not even close.
I've tried to learn Nix multiple times, and even got by okay running NixOS for a year or so, but doing almost anything that isn't just adding a package to a list in a nix file or flake was like pulling teeth because everything is documented so poorly (or not at all). It would take me hours to do what I could have done in seconds with any other package management tool or configuration management because I'd have to scour hundreds of search results to find someone that did the thing I'm trying to do because there was little-to-no documentation for it.
Nix is a tool with amazing promise that could solve so many problems if they could get their documentation and LSP support up to the standard of something like Rust.
I discovered they have a Matrix server where people will literally debug your config for you and help you solve issues. But you are right, if you try doing it yourself without help you'll be pulling your hair out
Love Fedora with KDE, my new daily driver. Tested Endeavour, Manjaro and also Mint and openSuSE but finally went with Fedora. Debian (on the other side) is my preferred base for servers and services.
Ton of comments, and I havent read them all, but I wanted to ask if you really meant popular or if you wanted something for a specific reason. Easy for new ppl to linux, good for desktops, etc etc.
I dont really use GUIs on linux, except for when I want to have a fancy pants riced network monitor type situation. I am a big fan of NixOS except for python Dev stuff. Big fan of being able to clone a machine or recover a machine with a single conf file.
If the only thing holding you back from NixOS is my python comment, my issue was with Numpy, which really really demands that you install it globally. Pretty sure you can make it work by using a dev-shell, installing it globally in that shell, then doing everything else in that dev environment normally. I was newish to nixos at the time.
Otherwise I tend to fall back to ubuntu server, but only because it was something I knew. I prefered Centos7 back in the day before RedHat killed Centos. NixOS was my move from there. Been using Alpine as the os in my docker images, but havent really explored a lot of other recent linux os's at the moment.
We don't know and, let us be frank, due to the nature of the community, it is impossible to know... Distros could report the downloads but if it became a KPI, it will be abused right away.
Fedora is well funded and probably the best overall. Now, its ties to US and IBM/Red Hat will keep it constrain in growth.
OpenSUSE is a second contender in funding and best overall, but German branding has taken a deep these last years... I know the government actions should be separate but, in reality, is that SUSE as a company will be constrained in growth too, therefore OpenSUSE. Its community need to be more global too.
Debian is king still. Much of development depends on the previous 2. However, in spite of huge progress lately, still not the best for new Linux users. That is why Linux Mint, Ubuntus, TuxedoOS still exist, but their growth won't be much as Debian gets better and better, but always a step behind the corporate funded ones. For today
The Chinese Linux offerings are becoming well funded are very interesting... but there is a bridge to cross that most of
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We don't know and, let us be frank, due to the nature of the community, it is impossible to know... Distros could report the downloads but if it became a KPI, it will be abused right away.
Fedora is well funded and probably the best overall. Now, its ties to US and IBM/Red Hat will keep it constrain in growth.
OpenSUSE is a second contender in funding and best overall, but German branding has taken a deep these last years... I know the government actions should be separate but, in reality, is that SUSE as a company will be constrained in growth too, therefore OpenSUSE. Its community need to be more global too.
Debian is king still. Much of development depends on the previous 2. However, in spite of huge progress lately, still not the best for new Linux users. That is why Linux Mint, Ubuntus, TuxedoOS still exist, but their growth won't be much as Debian gets better and better, but always a step behind the corporate funded ones. For today
The Chinese Linux offerings are becoming well funded are very interesting... but there is a bridge to cross that most of the world still not ready to cross... partly, because there are reasons to be skeptical since the community developing it is highly regional, partly is just plain racism. It is a pity, because these would have the biggest potential for a mayor breakthrough with all that money and human capital pouring from different companies, but I don't see it capable of breaching that regional aspect.
Finally we have Arch. I see it better positioned for future than Debian TBH, but we are talking 5 years down the line. It won't be Arch though, it will be some new variant like CachyOS is doing today that brings Arch to the public... maybe KDE's new bet?!
I haven't play much with them but this is my take:
Deepin. (Just released v25) Based on Debian. Community distro. Very well done and very modern look. It is heavy though and the beta I tried had glitches. Being primarily developed in Chinese though one can tell English was added later. If they only dedicated a bit more effort on languages it would be amazing. It is as much different from Linux Mint as it gets... for better or for worse, but I like their take.
Ubuntu Kylin. Institutional cooperation with Canonical. Haven't tried it. It is just Ubuntu catering their offer to the Chinese market. If you like Ubuntu's or Mint and you language is Chinese, this is for you.
OpenKylin. Fully Independent (No Debian, Arch...). Community distro. Its usage for now seems to be more for institutions though.
There are others but for niches.
China, of course, it want to get independent from MS and Apple so in the next years is going to push heavily for alternative OS so it will be interesting to see what, and for sure, our FOSS community will benefit from that as DeepSeek benefited the AI.
Q: Would a normal system (read: I'm not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?
A: No. This is literally unsupported.
Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?
Sure fam. This is actually a situation that might come up a lot. Basically any instance of dependency hell caused by conflicting dependencies would be resolved if two different versions of the same software could coexist. - Peeps that are maintaining packages probably have to deal with this every once in a while as well. Especially if the packaged software relies on some very niche (and possibly questionable) dependencies*. To point towards one of the most openly discussed cases of this, consider watching by Brodie in which the takedown of the unofficial packages of Bottles is being discussed. - E.g. whenever one tries to compile software themselves OR install/use them as/from binaries/tarballs. - E.g. installing packages as PPAs or other third party repositories (like e.g. the AUR) can also come with dependency hell and are often the reason why breakage occurs.
Excellent choice fam! However, as much as I adore Fedora Kinoite, it might not provide the best onboarding 😅. If you're fine with that, then please feel free to go ahead and embark on your journey. However, I would suggest you to at least look into uBlue's offerings:
All operate within the paradigm of providing a so-called "batteries-included" product. So, going through the whole mumbo jumbo of RPM Fusion's Howtos to see what's relevant for you to apply and painstakingly waiting for them to be applied can be skipped.
Furthermore, based on your precise needs, you can choose to adopt more opinionated variants:
Bazzite, on the other hand, is their game ready variant that de
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Excellent choice fam! However, as much as I adore Fedora Kinoite, it might not provide the best onboarding 😅. If you're fine with that, then please feel free to go ahead and embark on your journey. However, I would suggest you to at least look into uBlue's offerings:
All operate within the paradigm of providing a so-called "batteries-included" product. So, going through the whole mumbo jumbo of RPM Fusion's Howtos to see what's relevant for you to apply and painstakingly waiting for them to be applied can be skipped.
Furthermore, based on your precise needs, you can choose to adopt more opinionated variants:
Bazzite, on the other hand, is their game ready variant that defaults to KDE
Or, if you prefer a minimal installation, you can choose to install their base images instead. These basically offer Fedora's images (including Kinoite) with the absolute minimal of hardware enablement and other essential uBlue goodies.
If you are a system crafter at heart, then perhaps you're more attracted towards creating your own bootc image. This can be achieved by uBlue's own image-template OR through the community-effort in BlueBuild.
Regardless, fam, enjoy! And please consider to report back on your findings 😉! I would love to read your adventures of venturing the exotic waters of Fedora Atomic 😊!
Universal Blue manufactures a diverse set of operating system images to provide the the reliability of a Chromebook, but with the flexibility and power of a traditional Linux desktop.
Apologies for the 'spam', but I was afraid editing my previous message would be in vain. If you desire/crave for decent documentation, then Bazzite deserves another endorsement. While its documentation isn't as expansive as the excellent ArchWiki, it should be more than able to answer your questions.
Secondly, if you happen to come across an issue that has been painstakingly difficult to resolve, then please consider consulting its many community channels for support. There's a Discourse, a Discord and an AnswerOverflow. So pick your poison 😉. FWIW, I've always had great experiences on their Discord.
Garuda absolutely nails it with their helper app that sets you up with a choice of popular software, handles updates, and gives you easy access to common settings.
It makes it very approachable for people new to Linux.
Whats the purpose of gentoo over arch and when do you draw the line of diminishing returns? It sounds like gentoo is a lot harder for not much more reward.
İçimden, "Bunca lafın üzerine kankim asaletine yakışanı yapar da bir teşekkürü esirgemez herhalde," diye düşünmüştüm. Ama maalesef, Türkiyeli olması hasebiyle daha level atlayamamış 😂. Olsun, demek ki henüz kalkınma vakti gelmemiş 🤣.
Tried Manjaro and Opensuse for a presentation machine lately: issues over issues, that just shouldn't exist on new installation (problems with USB disks, input). Came back to Debian asap because Debian, weirdly, "just works (tm) now.
I daily drive Fedora and I think it has the best Gnome desktop.
But in terms of "best at what they do" I'm blown away by Mint as an apporoachable easy to use "just works" OS. It instantly became my recommendation to new linux converts. Everything is easy to set up. It's remarkably user friendlly. Good software store, flatpack support out of the box. Brilliant hardware support. I like the aesthetics as well.
I have an old Core 2 machine and I tried to get every potato grade distro running on it. I tried Puppy, and Linux Lite, and AntiX and all the "this will run on your toaster" type distros and had problems with every one of them. Mint XFCE installed no problem. It ran beautifully. I pressed my luck and installed a Quadro K620 and an old firewire card (trying to back up old Mini-DV videos). It handled ancient hardware perfectly. Butter smooth 1440p desktop computing and light video editing on an 18 year old machine.
I've started using Nobara recently, and I like it a LOT. Makes it really easy for a noob like me to both play games and edit videos. I actually made a Monster Hunter video entirely in Linux with Davinci Resolve, and it worked really well. I've been an adobe tool my entire editing life, but I really like the switch I recently made :)
NixOS is amazing, but it's also got a crazy learning curve. Once you grok it though, it really changes the way you configure your computer.
Fedora is always my favorite big name distro, they're constantly pushing the envelope and adopting new features that need some stability and exposure to mature.
I'm currently using Pop!_OS, which is a great desktop distro.
I was using MX Linux a lot which is amazing for both times when you need a portable distro with lots of features and when you need something that will still run well on older machines.
Facebook users opting to upload their photos for “cloud processing” are inadvertently giving Meta AI access to their entire camera roll, including photos that have not been uploaded to Facebook’s servers.
The United States’ strategic pivot toward Asia in 2011 signalled a fundamental realignment in global geopolitics, driven by China’s ascent as America’s principal peer competitor.
I'm a huge skeptic of the idea that the US would ever do anything to legitimately "make the world a better place" without having some sort of ulterior motive for fucking over poor people of color in the global south, but there's no fucking way I'm reading an article published by RT.
Yes but nothing as bad as the Raddle guy. He sent me over 300 DMs over the course of an hour because I called out his deranged sockpuppet website. So far, the world guys just seem to get drunk and mad or do vote manipulation
"Purposefully" is debatable, but whether intentional or by happenstance, damn it really is odd that so many descendants of Nazis are all over my imperial core countries that backed tons of fascist coups over the past 75 years.
Bold of you to assume I am American, did you not check the instance I am from ?
Yes, there are many lies about China, but don't get stuck in second opinion syndrome. China is both worse and better than you know.
The fact the government lies about China, while China is still bad behind the scenes, can both be true. During the cold war, both sides accused the other of being evil, and both were right.
Don't let anyone who puts a "communist" sticker on their own forehead fool you into supporting them.
I am sorry but since when is German left leaning public broadcast the same as fox news?! I understand that sometimes some topics are generally over- or underreported, but putting these next to each other is nonsensical.
Exactly. That is what bothers me about most anti Americans here in Europe. The US absolutely did many terrible things, but that does not automatically mean that the Russians are the good ones. They did many terrible things too.
Historically, Western Europe has been just as bad as the US, especially France, Germany, and the UK. Russia hasn't been as bad historically, especially not when they were Socialist, when they were inarguably one of the most progressive countries in the world.
Something like a one-party political system with dear respected leader, concentration camps, surveillance, social rating system, GFW?
Note how I don't say anything about propaganda from every crack. That's because western propaganda has successfully evolved in the conditions of outright censorship not being allowed. Like killing cockroaches in a building again and again you make them evolve for the poisons used in the past.
If you are going to pick the "all this is not credible" line, then don't bother. Also credible is a synonym for "believable", and nobody can make you believe things you don't want to believe.
The majority of the world, notably Islamic countries, who've been bombed by US and british planes for almost a century now, disagree with you. Only the countries aligned with the US empire are buying this line.
You can also just go to Xinjiang, and see for yourself, unlike the main person peddling this narrative, Adrian Zenz, an anti-semitic evangelical who works for the US government, and doesn't speak a word of mandarin.
The period where the Soviet Union supported Cuba, Palestine, Algeria, Vietnam, China, and countless other liberatory struggles? Where the Soviets sent the first human to space before the US? Where the hard effort in building up an industrialized society was beginning to pay off greatly despite the devastation suffered during World War II?
Yes, the Soviet Union was far more progressive than the US and Western Europe in that period, where the western countries were busy committing genocide, colonialism, imperialism, and more. I don't need your "help" if your worldview fundamentally rests on excusing genocide and twisting a country that aided in the liberation of many countries as worse than that, somehow.
This person wouldn't believe the sky was blue unless you linked a study proving it.
The Huyghur genocide. Not recognizing the independence of Taiwan. The entire way their "democracy" functions. The lasting damage the "one child policy" has done to their demographics (by their own reporting, not the wild exaggerations of the West)
You don't need to pick between the sides you're being offered today, don't fall for this false choice fallacy. Freedom isn't choosing the correct master to serve.
If you disagree, I invite you to go to Tiananmen square wearing a Winnie the Pooh T-shirt and see what happens.
The fact that you only do this "all lives matter!" style equivocation in one direction.
Fuck ALL corporations. Fuck ALL governments. Is that clear enough?
Oh? So can I get a "fuck the government of Ukraine"? How about "fuck the government of Taiwan." How about "Fuck the republican party AND the Democratic party, neither of them are your friend, they're both out to squeeze you"? (The last one being very different from what you were saying during the election, where, for some reason, your "everyone is bad, maaaan!" stance was nowhere to be seen...)
No one has ever said they were, it's just a lazy strawman westerners use so they never have to justify always treating their countries as the good guys.
Funny that you tie that to the skin color of the people. Most people including me make the distinction based on the following criteria: 1. Does the government have direct control over the broadcast? 2. Is the channel allowed to criticize the government? 3. Is founding decided by the government? 4. Are you at risk for not having the same stance on a topic than the government?
In the case of Germany, all of these are not true. In the case of authoritarian regimes, they are. That is the key difference.
The meme assumes the Western context. We don't trust the US government because of the centuries of violence and exploitation. We had to go looking for that information because it is minimized and buried at every turn by the compliant national media.
On the other hand, the supposed abuses of the Chinese government are loudly broadcast at every turn. You'll find if you go looking outside of Western sanctioned sources that all of those criticisms are absurd fabrications.
Therefore, someone in the western context who says they don't trust the US or China is trusting the US media for information about China but not about the US itself. Does that help?
He’s saying anyone that claims to not trust the West nor China only distrusts China because they were propagandized by western news sources.
I don’t find that particularly compelling because I think assuming someone’s information diet and discarding it in order to invalidate their view is lazy. I’ll leave it at that so I don’t get put in timeout.
"Oops! I killed 15 million people, but it was an accident. My bad. Who knew forcibly moving all the farmers to the city and making them work in factories would cause a famine?"
-Mao, probably
PS: 15 million is the low end number. 15-55 million is the commonly accepted number, with some estimates as high as 70 million.
At some point you'd think he'd look around and notice.
It matter for the same reason a tribunal need to know the motive of a crime to give it appropriate punishment. It's not about the morality of the action, it's about a logically sound and coherent picture of the event.
Peoples doing something bad for terribly bad reasons is coherent, peoples doing something bad for no reason at all isn't. The fact that you don't have any explanation as to why an entire government composed of thousand of peoples would do such a thing -like it or not- is a very big hole in your narrative, and rise some serious questions about it's consistency and therefore about it's likelihood (because an incoherent statement can never be true no matter what).
Insisting that the event happened the way you say it did without providing any rational or cause-effect relationship and becoming defensive when explicitly asked to provide one puts both your narrative and your argumentation in it's favor in the same category as those of conspiracy theorists who insists that "they" lie to us and immediately gets mad when asked to explain why "they" would.
You're talking about narrative, spin a story about tribunal, and then spin a story that I'm defensive. I'm not.
Insisting that the event happened the way you say it did without providing any rational or cause-effect relationship
Literally what the first commenter gave - there was a widespread famine in China, it's caused by Mao agricultural policies.
What are you contesting here? There was no famine? Famine is the narrative? Or that it wasn't caused by policies but by... What? Weather? Weather was good.
I don't understand your point, please clarify it, in a way that isn't just calling your interlocutors stupid or defensive.
I’m sorry, but why would that matter? We tend to judge people by their actions, not their intent, when it comes to mass deaths.
Right?
Right?
Maybe it's my autism but dismissing a relevant question by implying that the person who asked it is immoral/unempathetic for even asking it seems pretty defensive to me, and is a non-argument regardless.
Literally what the first commenter gave - there was a widespread famine in China, it’s caused by Mao agricultural policies.
Now that one is on me, I could have worded that better. By cause-effect relationship in this context I meant the cause who's effect was that the government chose to take whatever course of action you believe is responsible for the famine. Peoples take decisions for reasons, bad reasons sometimes, yes, but reasons nonetheless.
It's not about agreeing with the reasons, it's about coherency. That an entire government, a group formed of thousands of peoples, would act all in concert with no motive, especially for a project on suc
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I’m sorry, but why would that matter? We tend to judge people by their actions, not their intent, when it comes to mass deaths.
Right?
Right?
Maybe it's my autism but dismissing a relevant question by implying that the person who asked it is immoral/unempathetic for even asking it seems pretty defensive to me, and is a non-argument regardless.
Literally what the first commenter gave - there was a widespread famine in China, it’s caused by Mao agricultural policies.
Now that one is on me, I could have worded that better. By cause-effect relationship in this context I meant the cause who's effect was that the government chose to take whatever course of action you believe is responsible for the famine. Peoples take decisions for reasons, bad reasons sometimes, yes, but reasons nonetheless.
It's not about agreeing with the reasons, it's about coherency. That an entire government, a group formed of thousands of peoples, would act all in concert with no motive, especially for a project on such a large scale and which would take so many resources, is nonsense. If you can't present either proof that they really took the conscious decision to manufacture a famine or a motive to explain why they would want to do that, the claim that the famine was intentional is extremely dubious at best.
Also, speaking of a government's actions as if only the one person at the top was to blame is something peoples trying to speak about politics and history seriously should avoid.
What are you contesting here? There was no famine? Famine is the narrative? Or that it wasn’t caused by policies but by… What? Weather? Weather was good.
There was a famine. But it was not man made with the purpose of killing a large portion of the population, again, as the other commenter pointed out, why would they do such a thing? And why did they stop doing it? It makes no sense.
The famine was the produce of a great number of different factors, inefficient and backward agricultural methods, bad weather, compound effects of WW2 + the Chinese civil war, mismanagement, trade embargoes, etc... But others could explain it better than I can.
An other point we disagree on is the number of deaths from the famine. Numerous western academics intentionally inflate the death tolls of countries ruled by communist parties, most infamously "the black book of communism" and the "victims of communism foundation" who literally count Nazi invaders killed by the red army and peoples who could potentially have been born but weren't as victims of communism.
I don’t understand your point, please clarify it, in a way that isn’t just calling your interlocutors stupid or defensive.
I called you defensive but I did not call you stupid, nor did I imply it.
The famine was the produce of a great number of different factors, inefficient and backward agricultural methods, bad weather, compound effects of WW2 + the Chinese civil war, mismanagement, trade embargoes, etc… But others could explain it better than I can.
Would the governing body of PRC in 1962 attributing the famine to government errors convince you otherwise? Would the Chinese government 20 years later confirming the same and reiterating it was the Mao policy that was faulty at the core convince you?
If not, can you imagine a fact that would convince you, that the responsibility for that famine is on the then Chinese government? What is it?
Would the governing body of PRC in 1962 attributing the famine to government errors convince you otherwise? Would the Chinese government 20 years later confirming the same convince you?
I'm not sure where you're going with this. That the famine was accidental and (in part) caused by bad policies and mismanagement is what I'm saying happened. You're agreeing with me there.
If not, can you imagine a fact that would convince you? What is it?
If you think the famine was accidental but the government's bad policies caused it/made it worse, I already agree.
If you think that the famine was intentional and the government was trying to kill peoples by starvation, I would need proof that they at least discussed it internally in order to be convinced. Leaked internal documents, testimony from peoples who were there (and can prove that they were), recording of meetings between party officials, that kind of things.
The Great Chinese Famine was an enormous tragedy but it very obviously wasn't deliberate.
Also important to note, after a constant cycle of famine throughout its history, this was China's last. The CPC worked hard to make sure something like it would never happen again.
The following is a slightly expanded version of a speech given by Carlos Martinez at a recent event marking the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong. Giving a short assessment of the life of someone like Mao Zedong is not an easy job.
Getting people to read even short articles is impossible.
Just be honest with yourself any say that you're not looking to challenge your orientalist biases, that you just want things to confirm them.
The communists were the ones who defeated fascism in ww2, Mao being one of the most important leaders in that fight against japanese fascism. To equate Mao with nazis or the axis powers, who they shed so much blood to defeat, is sickening.
And you are impartial, saying someone you do not know has an "orientalist" bias. Throwing out pejorative words, linking to lengthy fringe arguments like a Trump supporter telling me to watch Hannity.
I see you're defending your heroes by parsing words and cherry-picking books and news and rallying your arguments (and propaganda) to defend them. I expected nothing less from you; it's exactly the same thing a Trump supporter would do.
Carry on, comrade. Enjoy yourself. You have the evangelistic fervor of a Baptist preacher.
The People’s Republic of China oversaw the largest increase of quality of life in human history, and the previously mentioned famine would be the last in a region where they have frequently occurred throughout history.
The PRC’s legacy is not one of causing famine, it is of ending it.
everyone knows that china was perfectly alright before the communists came, no one died of hunger and no one was addicted to opium, also no one died by the hands of the japanese nor it was occupied by other western powers.
The following is a slightly expanded version of a speech given by Carlos Martinez at a recent event marking the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong. Giving a short assessment of the life of someone like Mao Zedong is not an easy job.
That covers recent history. What about Egypt, or the Roman Empire?
You didn't mean increase in quality of life for everyone in the world, just for the people under that government?
There's a lot of candidates in "human history".
I'm pretty sure there was no comparative research involved in your assessment, but you might look at Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_… but there's no mention of China there at all.
Probably because Wikipedia is orientalist and just a Western megaphone. But you quoted them, so maybe not.
If you have to go back to the time where agriculture was first being developed to find a jump in quality of life comparable to what Communism brought to China, does that not show that Communism brought about an enormous improvement to the Chinese people? Even if it technically isn't the most significant improvement in all of history (which is still kind of a fuzzy thing to quantify)?
And how is it relevant that they only improved the quality of life of their own people, beyond just being pedantic about the claim "largest increase of quality of life in human history"? Like, was it necessary for Mao to invade all the neighboring countries and modernize them too so they could qualify? Very strange way to move the goalposts.
I see you're defending your heroes by parsing words and cherry-picking books and news and rallying your arguments (and propaganda) to defend them. I expected nothing less from you; it's exactly the same thing a Trump supporter would do.
Meanwhile you do something a million times more honorable and simply refuse to confront new information, dismiss it all as propaganda, and say your opponent is equal to a Trump supporter (for what? for having principled stances that he backed up with multiple sources? How often do Trump supporters back up their claims with sources that aren't PragerU videos or AI generated images?). You're implying that Dessalines is being intellectually dishonest when he has done nothing incorrect in this conversation: he made a claim to counter your unsourced claim, cited his sources, and when you refused to learn anything at all he's just calling you out for falling back on Western propaganda. Is any of that wrong?
This kind of post-truth nihilism is completely fruitless. If you dismiss evidence that contradicts your preconceived notions on the basis that evidence against other unrelated facts might also exist, then the only valid beliefs are the ones you already have. You've arrived at an epistemological position that rejects all new knowledge and positions all knowledge you already have as infallible.
Why not evaluate the claims and their evidence, instead of starting from the position that any defense of Mao is comparable to defending the Nazi Holocaust? Not to mention, if you did come across a group of Holocaust deniers, is this really the weak response you'd give them? Not even going to produce any evidence in support of your own claims?
The government obviously has some influence, that is undeniable. But it's limited and saying that they don't criticize the government is just wrong. You can watch many channels on YouTube. You can look at it yourself. They do that and it is undeniable too. Also, the government is prohibited by law to decide the founding. They have minimal influence on the total budget, but they can't decide who gets how much.
Yeah, I think it does. But I still don't get it why the man in the third image is with nearly closed eyes. Is he answering the question by mimicing a Chinese face, meaning China told him not to trust what China says?
Description: Eye squinting happens when the eyelids are compressed together serving to constrict the eyes. It can sometimes occur in just a fraction of a second before disappearing.
In One Sentence: Narrowing the eyes is due to physical or emotional pain.
How To Use it: When you do not like what is being said or seen, simply narrow your eyes. This tells others that you do not like what you are seeing or hearing. You may perform this eye language in brief within just fractions of a seconds. While people may not consciously perceive the signal, it will likely still register subconsciously. If the person for whom the cue is intended, notices, they may revisit their proposal and add additional incentives to ease your negative judgment.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “What I’m seeing is causing me emotional or physical pain and to prevent all that negativity from coming into my body I’m going to squint and block to resist.”
Variant: See Anger Facial Expression, Hand To Eye Gestu
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Description: Eye squinting happens when the eyelids are compressed together serving to constrict the eyes. It can sometimes occur in just a fraction of a second before disappearing.
In One Sentence: Narrowing the eyes is due to physical or emotional pain.
How To Use it: When you do not like what is being said or seen, simply narrow your eyes. This tells others that you do not like what you are seeing or hearing. You may perform this eye language in brief within just fractions of a seconds. While people may not consciously perceive the signal, it will likely still register subconsciously. If the person for whom the cue is intended, notices, they may revisit their proposal and add additional incentives to ease your negative judgment.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “What I’m seeing is causing me emotional or physical pain and to prevent all that negativity from coming into my body I’m going to squint and block to resist.”
Variant: See Anger Facial Expression, Hand To Eye Gesture.
Cue In Action: a) A person will wince when reading objectionable portions of a contract. b) She winced when the student missed the correct note on the piano. It caused her visceral pain.
Meaning and/or Motivation: An eye blocking form of body language designed to prohibit distasteful images or even thoughts from being received at full view. Narrowing eyes indicates contempt, distaste and anger. A person will not only squint from seeing objectionable sights, but also negative thoughts or sounds.
Wincing falls into the category of microexpressions since it can happen in only fractions of a second before disappearing, yet it remains full of meaning.
I was referencing nation states in general, not a subsection of the working class. Don't get me wrong, rightoids are unbearable. I wish I could vacate this planet and leave them to play their shitty reindeer games with each other.
These institutions (nation states) garner a level of devotion much like religion, regardless of their ideology. Tribalism.
Nation states path to power is the capability to muster greater standing armies then other more decentralized ways of life. That is why the working class is so heavily divided through these imaginary lines on the globe.
I can't read that as it's paywalled. Anyway here's a lot of links about this topic, several from African leaders and diplomats on the difference between Chinese trade and development in Africa and actual imperialism as practiced by western countries:
I can't read that as it's paywalled. Anyway here's a lot of links about this topic, several from African leaders and diplomats on the difference between Chinese trade and development in Africa and actual imperialism as practiced by western countries:
With the US establishment’s attention firmly fixed on the impeachment hearings in Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to have expanded NATO’s mission into the Far East, to oppose the Communist Party of China.
ITT: people saying "the US and China both seem bad" and being told that they obviously just want to kiss America square on the lips because China has never done anything bad ever
It's not paywalled. I think you didn't even bother to click "read full article" or whatever the button name is. They might ask you to register witb a free account.
If you want to use other people opinions as an argument, I'm going to ask you for what you asked for - studies. Preferably published in journals, not essays by socials celebrities like Caitlin Johnstone, nor articles in Chinese newspapers, nor Reddit. And that's because a deluge of weak sources is worthless - that's how US propaganda works and enforces itself.
Extra points if the studies are not from China or it's close Allies, just so that you have exactly the same requirements as the ones you asked for.
To be an anarchist you actually have to consistently hold anarchist positions. Not being a liberal 99% of the time and only bringing out the facade of anarchism when you need to justify acting like a western chauvinist.
You can't be an anarchist and a fanatical supporter of the democratic party at the same time
Was Leopold bloody years of terror vastly worse? Yes. Who is arguing with that? Is China benevolent and non exploitative? The African studies done by locals tend to say no.
Classic US foreign policy propaganda. It's not Uyghurs, it's specific fanatical jihadi separatists among Uyghurs who made a guest appearance among the other head choppers in Syria after the government fell and are openly looking for international support to do the same in China. You're completely wrong if you think that all Uyghurs want to live under Sharia law in some Uyghurstan.
I'm a little confused because the comic only has two panels? Additionally, in the second panel the character's eyes are still round not any other shape - I don't see squinting at all? (If you were trying to draw a head that small with eyes that were squinting, you would use angled lines, not circles)
In any case, I believe the interpretation of the comic intended by the creator is: "Panel one represents what Western liberals say about China. Panel 2 represents the media environment they swim in"
i find it more horrific that the US supported head chopping jihadists in afghanistan to prevent a soviet aligned democratic goverment there. and in every other interventions, the US found themselves on the reactionaries side, and still continue to do so to this day with the headchopping wahhabis in Syria for example.
Many studies have been conducted on China-Africa relations, including those written by Fairchild (2020), King (2020) and Nyadera, Agwanda and Kisaka (2020). This article builds on the latter studies to confront the real myths and realities of China‘s Africa policy. Firstly, It is worth noting to highlight the significant contributions of Fairchild (2020)‘s research study that revisits how sub-Saharan African countries especially those of the continental coastal democracies with abundant mineral resources engage with China for equal mutual benefit particularly in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Okay, so of the 3 major contributions to this study, at least one, seemingly the most significant, states that Chinese diplomacy (particularly BRI) is mutually beneficial.
After a careful critical analysis of China‘s Africa engagement in the context of the three highlighted countries, FairChild (2020) argues that even though BRI has been presented historically as a debt trap di
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Many studies have been conducted on China-Africa relations, including those written by Fairchild (2020), King (2020) and Nyadera, Agwanda and Kisaka (2020). This article builds on the latter studies to confront the real myths and realities of China‘s Africa policy. Firstly, It is worth noting to highlight the significant contributions of Fairchild (2020)‘s research study that revisits how sub-Saharan African countries especially those of the continental coastal democracies with abundant mineral resources engage with China for equal mutual benefit particularly in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Okay, so of the 3 major contributions to this study, at least one, seemingly the most significant, states that Chinese diplomacy (particularly BRI) is mutually beneficial.
After a careful critical analysis of China‘s Africa engagement in the context of the three highlighted countries, FairChild (2020) argues that even though BRI has been presented historically as a debt trap diplomacy, a mere interpretation of BRI as neo-imperialist risks analysing China through the lens of European history that discounts the active role of African countries. Forthright, he says that it is unfair to choose a one-size-fits-all understanding of China‘s practices in Africa.
So Fairchilds (2020) study, argues that interpretation of BRI as neo-imperialist is a reactionary Eurocentric view which both applies European imperialist intentions to China and removes the agency of African countries. Also that you can't take a "one size fits all" understanding of Chinas involvement.
It is not far-fetched that this argument is rendering FairChild (2020)‘s research to sound more like a study conducted from a Chinese perspective that did not compare China‘s involvement in the coastal democracies with the likes of In-land African countries of Zambia, Angola and Kenya. Therefore, leaving us with a gab as to how come this stance is not broadened and compared. Hence, this study aims to build on top of Fairchild‘s study whilst disagreeing on not choosing a one-size-fits-all definition.
So they accuse Fairchild (2020) of basically being a China simp for not researching and comparing inland African countries. They aim to disagree with the premise that you cannot apply a "one-size-fits-all" analysis to Chinas involvement.
There is also the Study conducted by King (2020), that discusses the human resource traditions of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and those endorsed by the BRI with particular attention to the Education Action Plan for the BRI published by the Chinese Ministry of Education in the year 2016. The research article‘s value contribution stems from explicitly comparing the FOCAC HRD pledges with the recent ones related to Education Plan under BRI. A review of the same context is done under FOCAC VI and FOCAC VII that compares the discourse of action plans of the different plans, goals, and pledges in the implementation in various African countries including in Ethiopia and Kenya. A clear generated scholarly view from the study highlights that King‘s study supports the two plans undertaken between both China and the African States by indicating that social welfare is important to the development and also quotes Xi in 2017 who highlighted that ―Improving people‘s livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development‖ (2020: 233). And additionally, supports his argument by quoting (Frankopan, 2018: 242) who has described China-Africa relations as ―win-win‖ through the mutual benefits and using cooperations combined with incentives to weave countries, peoples, and cultures in a so-presumed win-win scenario.
So now we establish that King(2020) also takes the view that Chinese diplomacy efforts are mutually beneficial after analyzing human resource traditions and those proposed by the BRI, particularly the education aspect of the plan.
It also references another study Frankopan (2018:243) who also describes Chinas relation as Win-Win and mutually beneficial.
We should then understand that the current article seeks to differ completely with the above highlighted of presenting China and Africa relations as win-win and add several relevant empirical findings that render his article relevant but short-sighted and best limited and myopic particularly looking at how China is not engaging in a win-win in the countries under study.
So this study is specifically trying to argue against these previous significant contributions as being short sighted, particularly because China is not engaging in "Win-Win" under the countries they will research. Harkening back to their prior insistance that you can apply a "one-size-fits-all" analysis.
The study of Nyadera, Agwanda, and Kisaka (2020) engage the attractiveness of China's Africa engagement has raised some of the controversial perspectives and views recently. Also, this is a tale that continues to be welcomed with mixed feelings, from disquiet to confusion. They all show that China‘s Africa engagement is driven by its demand for minerals and oil whilst it delivers Africa‘s infrastructural needs. In Non-Economic drivers of China‘s Africa engagement, they all pinpoint at personality traits of Xi. They quote Cabestan in 2012 who understand XI‘s personality traits as driven by his ―realistic, efficient, and relaxed Party Secretary, conscious of the need for China to move towards a market economy‖ (2020: 09) that is useful in analysing his approach to Africa. Prominent former and current African leaders are understood to be in good books with Xi including Robert Mugabe (Late and Former Zimbabwean President) who described XI as a ―true and dear friend‖ of Zimbabwe. His personality and leadership credentials and work have earned him his first honorary degree by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2019. He is also understood to be having the choice of words, outspoken in nature that increased his interactions with African leaders. The second reason relates to the decline of Western countries‘ major investments in Africa in the post-second world war.
So basically, we establish that yet another study, Nyadera, Agwanda, and Kisaka (2020), frames this relationship as Win-Win "we get infrastructure they get resources". Which is partially informed by Xi Jinpings own established personality as a "realistic, efficient, and relaxed Party Secretary, conscious of the need for China to move towards a market economy". It also establishes that Xi is highly regarded among African leaders and institutions, and vice versa.
.........
If you read the article you can know I'm not nitpicking positive aspects, I'm not jumping around, this is the start of the study.
To avoid making this comment as long as an actual breakdown of an entire academic article, having demonstrated my willingness to engage with the work, can you go ahead and state some of what you believe to be the more valid points against Chinese involvement/framing Chinese involvement as imperialist from the study.
If you're not logged in they give you a button to log in through your institution. Alternatively they seem to let you create an account to view a limited number of articles per month.
If they want an account you are paying with your data whether they use it or not.
It could still be a good source I just wanted to portray the not logged in view.
I'm not talking about the YouTube algorithm, I know that there are many problems with that. I just wanted to make the point that anyone can watch a show like Extra 3 or the Heute Show and see that they, in fact, do criticize the government a lot. May right-wingers say that they are leftist propaganda and apparently leftists thing they are conservative propaganda, which I find quite interesting. And I obviously also don't like all the shows either. There is a reason why I stopped watching Kurtzgesagt years ago.
Capitalism good (and make sure you know NOTHING regarding economic theories!)
Women dumb
Non-Europeans (ethnically, and even then the Germanic tribes are at the top of the chain [Anglo-Saxons included, evidently]) bad and/or dumb
Gays bad
Christianity good (only when antithetical to the message of Jesus)
(white) America good
Israel good
Have I captured the essence of the 'classic' ignorant and angry white American? Honestly, it fits pretty well for FN and EDL dudes in France and the UK, respectively...
Losurdo really drives home that white/western supremacy has been a global project that's gone through many phases, not just limited to one country.
The word untermensch for example, comes from lothrop stoddard, a US white supremacist and eugenicist who greatly inspired the nazis. They also took lebensraum from manifest destiny, and openly wanted to emulate what the US did to its native population, in eastern europe.
After the nazis broke the rules and attacked westward and started western infighting by attacking britain and france, then lost in ww2, the US took up the mantle of the west's leading country who would keep the non-white populations of the world in check, by bombing anyone who dared to challenge colonialism or neo-colonialism, or impede their control of resources and prevent the spice from flowing.
From the "civilizing missions" of the British, French and the Dutch to the theft, plundering, pillaging and desecration of indigenous lands and its people in the "New World", with all of it mirrored today only this time with different targets, it's clear as fuck that a majority of today's US' white population do not stray far from their European colonialist ancestors and don't want to...
Maybe I'm doomposting but I genuinely don't know how this vicious cycle of white supremacist entities scratching each other's backs and evolving in the process of doing so could end..
I personally don't think there's much hope for the imperial core countries at least, but they're a minority of the world's population. The rest of the world doesn't want a leading country, they want trade on an equal basis, and a multi-polar world with international bodies that can resolve disputes impartially. Capitalism isn't even as sustainable as feudalism, and will likely have a much shorter lifespan. Enriching a few at the expense of the many isn't sustainable in the long-term, because the many will fight back and eventually win, as they have done and will continue to do.
Empires generally have a long, whiny decline into obsolescence... I think ancient Rome (after all the civil wars, imperial overextension, instability, famines, civil unrest) it eventually emptied out to ~1% of its peak population before it was conquered. If it isn't politically stable, doesn't inspire people, and no one's willing to fight for it, it can't last.
"Democracy" has nothing to do with "free healthcare" or any of those things listed. Democracy only means that the citizens vote. They can vote for stupid/bad things but it's still a democracy. Similarly, a dictatorship that does some good things is still a dictatorship
What you have in America, I don't live there. But yes, I do, just a bad one. And if you believe in this meme I raise you another one: would you consider Kim Jong Un a democratically elected leader?
No, the People might just be stupid. You see, many people are gullible and get convinced easily by rallies of some rich politicians. Sometimes, they might even believe that one day they will be as rich as them, and so they see something good for the rich as something good for them. But, unless the people are threatened to vote, or the polls are manipulated, it's still democracy
Democracy is when voters are undereducated and lied to by politicians in order to vote against their own interests, and not democracy is when voters are directly threatened. You are very smat.
Can the propaganda have more pixels next time please and thank you, how am I meant to understand the wishes of glorious leader if I can't even make out the words?
Lol imagine being so brainwashed that you don't uncritically believe when USAID funded outlets tell you North Koreans are so ~~genetically~~ intellectually inferior that they honestly believe Kim Il Sung is god, was the best sportsman ever at everything, and he's immortal now? Dude they literally make them pull trains by hand because they're so poor, I heard somebody say it!
All the hours and weeks and months and years of footage is all faked tho
Yeah. But also a quick test to see how far gone American society is: if the Dems get elected it means that, at least for the sake of optics and spin, morals play some sort of role still.
The liberal brain, gentlemen. Tou Thao was convicted for keeping bystanders from intervening while not doing anything himself. He might've been less worse, but he still deserved to go to prison. And he remained unrepentant to the end. Of the four cops he got the second worst sentence despite never laying a hand on Mr. Floyd precisely because he refused to admit any culpability. It really is a good comparison, seeing this comment.
It's really a great representation because if Floyd actually overpowered Chauvin, you know for a 100% fact that Thao would have resorted to the same direct violence himself, he just didn't have to because someone else was doing the dirty work sufficiently.
Yeah...they are watching and doing nothing...a failure and an accessory. The results are the same whether they are there or not, when they could prevent atrocities.
This who is better bullshit doesnt matter, they are complicit.
If we remove the Republicans, things get better. If we remove the Democrats, things stay the same. It's not a question of who is better, but who is worse. Until we change the voting and representation systems (hello Approval Voting and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting) picking the lesser evil is the only logical and moral choice.
They are complicit by only striving to be less evil. Would you be happy between choosing a rape and murder of your parents or just a murder? One is clearly less than the other so we should be happy with that over the alternative.
One is clearly preferrable, neither is acceptable.
Dems had power for enough time to change elections and did not, thus enabling this regime.
It's no accident, I'm sure. They are better, as they're not helping the killers, but they're nowhere near as good as is necessary to stop them. Pretty much the perfect definition of the average democratic politician these days: you vote for them to stop the killing, but you know that - whether by choice or not - they won't do anything to prevent more deaths when the killers come back into power.
I'm happy we're electing people like Zohran Mamdani, but we're going to need a lot more of them before our leftmost viable party can be considered even a little left. We need politicians that make change, and when the system doesn't let them, they band together with the rest of the population to force it, instead of just complaining about how they wish they could make change but can't. The leaders need to be leading the charge, to battle if necessary.
That doesn’t matter at all. He won the primary with a grassroots campaign, so he doesn’t need their funding. Being in the blue/Working Families column will win the know-nothing vote in NYC.
The key is for us to seek out the progressive on the primary ballot and vote. We shouldn’t be rewarding the candidates that have the financial means to find us in our living rooms. Sign up for mailers if you forget to vote. Sign up for mail-in ballots if you have an irregular schedule.
It's less about funding, and more about the fuckery they can do by making Cuomo run as an independent. Electoralism will never be the permanent answer, revolution is still necessary, but Mamdani is still good for now.
That's the thing; most democrat politicians hate him nearly as much as the republican ones do, as they're more similar to one another than either is to him. There are a few exceptions, but we're going to need people aligned with Mamdani to be the norm rather than the exception if we want the democratic party to become a real force for good.
Better in a vacuum, yes, but as /u/disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world pointed out, a huge amount of voters pay absolutely no attention, and just vote for whatever color they've always voted for. Hell, a bunch of people searched "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on election day, because they paid so little attention that they didn't even know about Harris. That's an extreme example, sure, but it's just not a realistic expectation to think people will really think hard about a 3rd party, especially when it won't get a proportionate amount of attention even if it got a huge amount of support, thanks to the billionaire-backed media.
If we don't get someone into one of the 2 established parties, we're crippling ourselves, likely to the point of immediate failure. It would be significantly more viable to change one of the parties by flooding it with new socialist politicians than it would be to build up a new platform based on socialism from the start.
Nah, entryism is a proven failure. As conditions worsen, people pay increasingly more attention to politics. Reformism in general is a lost cause, revolution is necessary, but entryism is especially bad.
It can’t have been proven without participation. Congressional primaries haven’t seen more than 15% attendance in over 40 years. We’ve been allowing retirees from the Silent Generation and now Boomers to decide our candidates. Gen X and younger need to actively participate in primaries and attempt to take the party over before we can actually say we’ve proven anything.
The US does not have a unique set of physics that only it applies to. We have a wealth of historical experience proving the ineffectiveness of entryism, even in the US. People have tried this, it doesn't work, and even if it did miraculously work we would have a worse party than if we put all of that effort into building up PSL.
It matters because the party isn't the people, it's infrastructure. It's buildings, it's support staff, it's mailing lists and payment processors
It's getting a special (often unfair) place on the ballot in all 50 states. It's 50 (often flawed) primary processes that follow local laws
And it's a banner. Not one people like, but it's one banner. A banner that theoretically stands for democracy and the common man
The left is not organized. Do we rally behind a fresh, ideologically pure banner? Which one? How long to work out which group is the best? How long until we can build up that infrastructure?
Fuck that. Winning is what matters.
The people are on our side for now, there's so much anger and energy. How long until they adjust to the new normal and go back to refusing to believe in a better world?
We have a chance right now. The next 18 months. In one sweep we can take a tattered banner and get in control - before people get cold feet. While they're still just screaming for someone to stop Trump.
We can use
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You spelled "take" wrong
It matters because the party isn't the people, it's infrastructure. It's buildings, it's support staff, it's mailing lists and payment processors
It's getting a special (often unfair) place on the ballot in all 50 states. It's 50 (often flawed) primary processes that follow local laws
And it's a banner. Not one people like, but it's one banner. A banner that theoretically stands for democracy and the common man
The left is not organized. Do we rally behind a fresh, ideologically pure banner? Which one? How long to work out which group is the best? How long until we can build up that infrastructure?
Fuck that. Winning is what matters.
The people are on our side for now, there's so much anger and energy. How long until they adjust to the new normal and go back to refusing to believe in a better world?
We have a chance right now. The next 18 months. In one sweep we can take a tattered banner and get in control - before people get cold feet. While they're still just screaming for someone to stop Trump.
We can use the momentum to unfuck our democracy once we take control, but we can't get distracted. There's no room for purity or lofty ideals. We have to take what is offered and exploit every opportunity. We have to use the system against itself.
The infrastructure and design of the DNC is built from the ground up to service its donors, wealthy people. There isn't anything about a bourgeois party we need. Just join a party like PSL and learn from the success of other Socialists around the world. It isn't about ideological purity, it's about practicality, and what you're describing has never happened, ever. Entryism does not work, again.
The US never had a democracy. Trump is about as bad as every other president, only more honest about how evil it all is. The system cannot be used against itself, the state must be smashed and replaced entirely.
I understand that you have a lot of anger and energy, and I think it would be fantastic if you channeled that into studying successful leftist movements, read some theory, and join a good org, rather than try to repeat something that has never succeeded, ever.
Socialism isn't on the table. We're so incredibly far from that. Let me know when the revolution is coming and I'll be there for it... Until then we very real issues that we can make a bit better. Not good - we're totally fucked - but we can make things less horrible
There's a genocide in progress. We're going to go through a depression. We can tea party the Democrats to be more progressive... There's no time to build up something new
I can't impress on you enough how many people are going to die
I don't think you understand. Your plan of entryism is not a feasible solution. It isn't that it isn't as good as socialism, it's that it can't work to begin with. The DNC cannot be "tea partied." Entryism does not work, the infrastructure of the DNC is made to be resistant to it.
The most likely path to stopping the genocide in Palestine is revolution, and failing that, a third party electoral victory. It isn't about the purity of the solutions, but the feasibility. We cannot make things less horrible by relying on a system designed to never move in a more progressive direction.
Again, join an org like PSL, read some theory (I made a Marxist-Leninist intro reading list you can check out if you want), and study historical leftist movements and how they came to power. Don't fall for the endless trap of entryism.
I don't think you understand. Your plan of entryism is not a feasible solution. It isn't that it isn't as good as socialism, it's that it can't work to begin with. The DNC cannot be "tea partied." Entryism does not work, the infrastructure of the DNC is made to be resistant to it.
The most likely path to stopping the genocide in Palestine is revolution, and failing that, a third party electoral victory. It isn't about the purity of the solutions, but the feasibility. We cannot make things less horrible by relying on a system designed to never move in a more progressive direction.
Again, join an org like PSL, read some theory (I made a Marxist-Leninist intro reading list you can check out if you want), and study historical leftist movements and how they came to power. Don't fall for the endless trap of entryism.
It's time to read theory, comrades! As Lenin says, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Reading theory helps us identify the core contradictions within modern society, analyze their trajectories, and gives us the tools to break free. Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components, as noted by Lenin in his pamphlet The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: | Audiobook
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx's Law of Value
Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
As such, I created the following list to take you from no knowledge whatsoever of Leftist theory, and leave you with a strong understanding of the critical fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism in an order that builds up as you read. Let's get started!
Section I: Getting Started
What the heck is Communism, anyways? For that matter, what is fascism?
Breaks down fascism and its mortal enemy, Communism, as well as their antagonistic relationship. Understanding what fascism is, where and when it rises, why it does so, and how to banish it forever is critical. Parenti also helps debunk common anti-Communist myths, from both the "left" and the right, in a quick-witted writing style. This is also an excellent time to watch the famous speech.
Section II: Historical and Dialectical Materialism
By far my favorite primer on Marxist philosophy. By understanding Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism-Leninism. Don't be intimidated!
Further reading on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, explaining how Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates. This is also where Engels talks about the failures of previous "Utopian" Socialists.
Section III: Political Economy
That's right, it's time for the Law of Value and a deep-dive into Imperialism. If we are to defeat Capitalism, we must learn it's mechanisms, tendencies, contradictions, and laws.
Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value. Marx is targetting those not trained in economics here, but you might want to keep a pen and some paper to follow along if you are a visual person.
Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions. Marxist-Leninists understand that Imperialism is the greatest contradiction in the modern era, which cascades downward into all manner of related contradictions. Knowing what dying Capitalism looks like, and how it behaves, means we can kill it.
Section IV: Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
Can we defeat Capitalism at the ballot box? What about just defeating fascism? What about the role of the state?
If Marxists believed reforming Capitalist society was possible, we would be the first in line for it. Sadly, it isn't possible, which Luxemburg proves in this monumental writing.
Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, without needing to be replaced with one that is run by the workers, in their own interests.
Section V: Intersectionality and Solidarity
The revolution will not be fought by atomized individuals, but by an intersectional, international working class movement. Intersectionality is critical, because it allows different marginalized groups to work together in collective interest, unifying into a broad movement.
Critical reading on understanding misogyny, transphobia, enbyphobia, pluralphobia, and homophobia, as well as how to move beyond the base subject of "gender." Uses the foundations built up in the previous works to analyze gender theory from a Historical Materialist perspective.
De-colonialism is essential to Marxism. Without having a strong, de-colonial, internationalist stance, we have no path to victory nor a path to justice. Fanon analyzes Colonialism's dehumanizing effects, and lays out how to form a de-colonial movement, as well as its necessity.
Solidarity and intersectionality are the key to any social movement. When different social groups fight for liberation together along intersectional lines, the movements are emboldened and empowered ever-further.
Section VI: Putting it into Practice!
It's not enough to endlessly read, you must put theory to practice. That is how you can improve yourself and the movements you support. Touch grass!
Mao wrote simply and directly, targeting peasant soldiers during the Revolutionary War in China. This pair of essays equip the reader with the ability to apply the analytical tools of Dialectical Materialism to their every day practice, and better understand problems.
Congratulations, you completed your introductory reading course!
With your new understanding and knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, here is a mini What is to be Done? of your own to follow, and take with you as practical advice.
Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to us to protect ourselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it.
Read theory. Don't think that you are done now! Just because you have the basics, doesn't mean you know more than you do. If you have not investigated a subject, don't speak on it! Don't speak nonsense, but listen!
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground, let nobody be forgotten or left behind. There is strength in numbers, when one marginalized group is targeted, many more are sure to follow.
Be industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. Liberals will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water droplet against a mountain, think of canyons and valleys. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
I'm not. I'm saying the strategy of entryism is far less likely to work than revolution would be, and would be less likely than a third party winning on a more progressive platform. Again, Entryism doesn't work, it's a fantasy, and the more energy we waste on it the less likely we are to get to a better world.
I know you know better comrade. They're stuck in the endless loop of trying to fix something that's broken, while it's functioning perfectly at keeping the status quo.
When I read that, again 🙄, I like to post this, from 1871
"It is well known that the Americans have been striving for 30 years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in spite of all they can do they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. "
..."we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends – and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it. "
not really just that, as the system resists when actual socialists get into significant power in capitalist institutions.
weve been there, done that. i assure you they will be doing their best to stop or coopt him, if they aint already.
the bright side is you just got an opportunity to actually really improve things materially, hes a good sign. this will depend more on his supporters than himself though, and i don't think the us public is just about ready to actually really materially support a socialist dissident in power.
Not exactly. The mass pig expansion program across the country in the 1990s was spearheaded by Bill Clinton. The pro pig Dems are just as actively racist and murderous as the pro pig Reps.
if you still think that reps and dems are the same after Trump's actions during his current term, then you must not be reading any news or you're willingly blind to his atrocities.
"willingly blind to his atrocities" Says the Blue MAGA character that for a year at least didn't want to see the painfully obvious mental state of Genocide Joe(IDGAF) but worse, his atrocities in occupied Palestine or the kids he put in cages in record numbers. Complete hypocrite.
Let me guess: You didnt vote for Harris and wouldnt have voted for Biden? You still call him genocide Joe showing how completely stupid you are. Under Biden Gaza got some help at least. Trump wants Gaza to be cleared of Palestinians to built his Hotel there. Why dont you call him genocide Trump?
You are responsible for everything that is happening to palestinians under Trump if you didnr vote for the only candidate that could have beat him.
I don't live in your embarrassing banana republic. I just make fun of you idiots. He will eternally be Genocide Joe bcs he did absolutely nothing to end it, on the contrary he helped tand armed those genociders. The Pissraelis said it themselves. OC you in your infantile campist reasoning want to make it about Trump. Trump bad, our side good! Any criticism means you're from the other side. And I love Trump, yes he's a slightly more fascist AH than Blue MAGA but he's very good at destroying your shithole. Expediating the demise of your warmongering shithole. This is the best thing that can happen for the world. Since 95% votes for 1 of 2 MAGA sides you all deserve it. I feast on your tears. Please cry more.
Or historical exploits/trojans/etc. that deserve more attention? I've mostly heard about lucrative vulnerabilities that concern Linux servers, but what about the end-users on desktops? Or is the Linux desktop market small enough that we mostly just see one-off instances of users blindly running malicious scripts?
I haven’t heard of any such cases, but it is a smaller pool of users. Also, many desktop Linux users know more about using a computer than other operating system users, since it’s less common for Linux to come preinstalled. So that may affect it, too.
I imagine vulnerabilities with the Linux kernel or common utilities do apply to desktop users as well, which is a good reminder why staying up-to-date is important. But to my understanding, exploiting remotely would need a way of sending data to the target. And most desktop computers won’t have ports open to the internet for anyone like servers will.
I know that Wayland’s design does make it more difficult for a user-mode program to act maliciously, like as key-loggers or reading the clipboard.
Sorry for the late reply. Also @Cricket’s response is great and actually references a source!
Anecdotally though, as a user, I’ve noticed that some things require extra permissions. Usually there’s a prompt from the operating system that’ll ask for permission capture the desktop, which lets me specify which window or monitor to share. It uses the “XDG Desktop Portal”, which was already what allowed Flatpaks to securely access OS resources, and it has a whole bunch of different requests for resources and permissions. It’s similar to a web browser, where it’ll prompt you for privileges when an app wants them.
The hardest pain point for me has been that an app cannot detect keyboard input if it isn’t focused. This could prevent key loggers, but it also makes global shortcuts not work. There is a protocol that allows an app to request a key be forwarded to it, but it’s not widely implemented in apps (discord, for example) and I
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Sorry for the late reply. Also @Cricket’s response is great and actually references a source!
Anecdotally though, as a user, I’ve noticed that some things require extra permissions. Usually there’s a prompt from the operating system that’ll ask for permission capture the desktop, which lets me specify which window or monitor to share. It uses the “XDG Desktop Portal”, which was already what allowed Flatpaks to securely access OS resources, and it has a whole bunch of different requests for resources and permissions. It’s similar to a web browser, where it’ll prompt you for privileges when an app wants them.
The hardest pain point for me has been that an app cannot detect keyboard input if it isn’t focused. This could prevent key loggers, but it also makes global shortcuts not work. There is a protocol that allows an app to request a key be forwarded to it, but it’s not widely implemented in apps (discord, for example) and I’ve had to rely on workarounds.
In a response to an article written for Bloomberg by Jason Schreier investigating the ten year "development turmoil," lead level designer Brian J. Audette refutes the notion that the game was "compromised" in a post on their bluesky account.
The full post reads:
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one.
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a _better_ Dragon Age, only a _different_ one.
I thought the game was alright overall, but it certainly did not feel like a Dragon Age game. The overall story was decent, however a lot of the dialogue was hamfisted. The real problem was that the gameplay felt like Jedi Survivor without the refined combat mechanics. As a result, combat quickly became tedious and repetitive. I also found that the NPCs were more or less fungible, and it really didn't matter who was in your party. This is a stark contrast with previous Dragon Age games where the whole fun was in scripting the behavior of different characters and coming up with clever ways of combine their abilities. Simply having kept the original mechanics, warts and all, would've resulted in a far better game in my opinion.
Well done comrade
echo
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