I don’t either, I think it’s super weird and creepy, but most people that I’ve talked to about it have never even thought about it before, and the people around my parents’ age consider it “patriotic.”

This makes sense as I was in school before 2010, so my experience would’ve been from before more schools started adopting them. And my dad would’ve probably been in school in the 50s, so when he was wearing a school uniform with a tie everyday, it was absolutely a rich private school thing.

Key words: so far.

The last time the US enacted global tariffs, it caused the Great Depression.

The last time the US enacted global tariffs, it created the Great Depression, which hit the entire globe and was one of the major contributing factors to the Nazis rise to power. What happens here might only be hurting Americans and killing American minorities at the moment, but the psychotic demagogue in charge here will have real international repercussions soon enough. Honestly though, I think the tariffs have done what international sanctions couldn’t do, which is help convince some of Trump’s cult that he’s the one hurting them. Sanctions would just let him blame the outside world.

You should keep in mind, it will take time for everybody else to truly divest themselves of the orange shit-gibbon and all the corporations based here, and that means time in which the fan spraying shit can turn towards Europe.

Counterpoint: Americans would say the same - “I suppose it probably seems strange to an outsider but in a country where it’s the norm for every school, it didn’t feel like that to me at all.” - about pledging their undying loyalty every morning to the flag on the wall of every single classroom starting at the age of 6.

Not to say that it’s the same thing at all, indoctrination on that scale is completely different from a freaking school uniform, but the base is the same - it doesn’t seem weird because it’s what you were told was normal.

As an adult, I can see some good arguments for uniforms in this thread, but as a kid, I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance in middle school and swore that nobody could make me wear a tie like my dad had to for school. One of the big things that bothered me about school dress codes as I got older was the inherent misogyny on display. Some rules from my high school dress code, for example:

During Spring/Summer, boys may wear t-shirts and shorts. Girls must wear pants or skirts. Skirts must be below the knee. Girls are allowed to wear t-shirts, but only if the sleeves are at least 4 inches long and must be a unisex crew neck shirt. Shirts with a v neck or that show the collarbone are too revealing and are not allowed.

Also in the US is the issue that school uniforms are universally a private school thing, and so create a divide of elitism as a clear signal of those whose parents are wealthy enough to send their kids to a private school vs kids who go to public schools. Those divides start at home, though, and I don’t know how much a school uniform does to deprogram that kind of rhetoric from your parents and their friends.

Sounds more like a computer education deficiency problem.

One hundred and ten percent right. But it’s not something that’s going to go away any time soon, and the older generations will never get over as a whole, so it’s something that we just have to account for when talking about the average user. The average American reads at, what, a 7th grade reading level? And 50% of people are below average.

I brought up PC building because it gave me a better understanding of how a PC works and I know how to troubleshoot in large part thanks to it, which puts me in the 50% of users who could be considered “above average.”

I think for the average to below average user, learning console commands is much more intimidating than learning a GUI. Hell, I’d even bump that up to a majority of users who are scared off by the concept. Programming is often seen as a form of magic by those who don’t know how to program. I agree that Windows isn’t better because of its GUI (especially with how it’s gotten more obtuse with each new version) and that most people are just used to it, but I think a GUI is also inherently easier for more people to learn. Learning commands is more akin to learning a new language (new words with different meanings that probably require a certain mindset in order to comprehend as a whole - learning a new skill) while a GUI should (keyword there, one Microsoft has forgotten) be fairly intuitive to navigate with a consistent design language and interface. I use Blender, and while the vast majority of useful tools are accessible via shortcut keys as well as the UI, people need to keep an image of a keyboard with all the shortcuts mapped out because, my God, it’s a lot to remember.

Basically, I agree that a GUI isn’t fundamentally better than a console, but the original post was from the perspective of the average user, and I think that a GUI is more accessible for the average user than a console. I think a well designed GUI is why Windows took off in the way that it did and why Apple has the staying power that it does. It’s important to remember that 50% of users are considered above average, but that means that the other 50% are below average.

Personally, I’m prepping a fairly major upgrade for my computer that includes a new SSD that I’m going to dual boot Bazzite on instead of switching to Windows 11 (at least until I can migrate everything to Bazzite, then I intend to kick Microsoft to the wayside), and apart from the increasing compatibility of games with Linux and Valve’s work in that area, I attribute even considering Linux to things like the immutable distros and flatpak. I know how to tinker, but I don’t want to have to do that with my daily driver. I get enough of that from my 3d printer!

Counterpoint: As an above average Windows user (I know enough to have built computers, so at least a little more than the normal Windows/Mac user), after reading your comment I raised both my arms over my head to make sure I wasn’t having a stroke.

Obviously, I’ve never used Linux and so don’t know the basics of the internals (and I was never one to mess with the CMD line), but I’d be willing to bet money that 75% of Windows users would look at you like you’re possessed if you said that to them, and that’s why a GUI is so important for the average user. Easily 50% of users don’t even know that “run as administrator” exists or what it does.

So long as they aren’t the ones getting turned into the new fountain on the campus, they couldn’t care less.

Probably a lack of data in the training set. It reminds me of the early versions of facial recognition software which had trouble telling not just black people apart, but also women of all ages and white men below a certain age. It was because these early versions had only been trained on photos of employees at the company, and they were mostly older white men.

Yes, yes they do. Or, more accurately, they didn’t know that in the first place. These people are often just running on what are essentially old wives’ tales of things to be afraid of because it will hurt their masculinity or something.

Ironically, one of the things that I’m moving to Linux for is the gaming performance boost that I’ve heard some people report due to the lack of Windows bloat and telemetry running in the background all the time.

Bazzite, the Linux version I keep seeing people recommend for gaming and people new to Linux has had a big boost in users in the past 6 weeks or so, apparently, that people are completely attributing to Microsoft.

As another LGBT person who grew up during the advent of the internet and learned that there were words for things I had felt for years thanks to the internet (despite living in a very liberal area), I completely agree with both of you.

However, I want to make one counterpoint that reframes these movements to where I think these people are coming from: People like us here on Lemmy, who are aware of FOSS projects and the like are a minority group.

I see these groups as a reaction based on the belief that you either have to deal with the corporations or give it up entirely because nobody else can offer what they do, and the corporations need us a lot more than we need them. They’re effectively a general strike against the nightmare of corporate walled gardens that the internet at large has become in order to force a correction in the ecosystem, and I think if these groups were made aware of the alternatives out there, we’d probably see a large swing in adoption.

Imagine a graph vs just the raw data. Which one is easier to pull the information from and comprehend? Our brains are purpose built to rapidly digest and comprehend a constant influx of visual data and ways to convert raw output into easy to comprehend visualizations dramatically increase a general user’s ability to interface with a system and the data that it generates. The dashboard of your car is a GUI, for example.

Also, there’s the humble button. A single graphic combined with a single mouse button that can be used to perform a near infinite number of actions. It’s a translation layer that allows you to perform actions preset by the company who designed the thing so that a user doesn’t have to already be familiar with how it runs in order to accomplish everyday tasks. I could type “@self -cast ‘light attack’ -target ‘Malenia, Blade of Miquella’” over and over again, but why would I when I can just spam click the right shoulder button on my controller until I die a very quick death?

The issue that Linux users run into (and why Linux has never reached any real traction in the global computer user base) is that they’re usually power users who already use a terminal or are well versed in similar systems. They don’t necessarily need a way to translate data to or from the terminal because they’ve been using it long enough that it feels simple, like a physicist wondering why cars measure the fuel tank with a dial gauge rather than a number showing the newtons of potential energy left in the gas tank. It’s a meaningless number to the average person, who just wants to know whether or not they have gas in the tank and maybe the distance that will let them travel before the tank runs out. You could calculate the latter using the potential energy in the tank, but the average person isn’t going to know that formula and be able to bust it out at any given time, so there’s a GUI in the car that does it for you.

If I’m working, I don’t have the energy to do more than a toasted bagel with cream cheese. On the weekend, especially if I manage to sleep in, I might do something like an omelette or egg sandwich of some kind. If I have the time, I might go big and break out a can of corned beef hash, cook that up and poach an egg in the middle of it, then have that with some toast.

If it was easier to get and keep fruit without it spoiling before I can eat it, I’d probably throw in a mandarin orange or something as an easy to eat side to my usual bagel, but American supermarkets make it hard to buy small batches of food more frequently rather than making a trip twice a month to stock up on groceries.

I think a lot of Americans simply are too sleep deprived to either have the time or energy to ingest anything other than caffeine in the morning.

If you wanna try something different but really good, a lot of breakfast places near me have a variant of Eggs Benedict usually called something like Irish Eggs Benedict, which replaces the ham with corn beef hash. Add a side of home fries, and you’ve got something that’ll really stick to your ribs and keep you full and happy for half the day.

Don’t forget easier access to contraceptives, sex ed, and other forms of entertainment beyond sex. Netflix and chill is a lot more likely to turn into “No, wait, this show is actually really good” than “I’ve got a bucket of chicken. Wanna do it?” is to turn into “No, wait, this chicken is actually really good, let’s not have sex.”

Less accidental pregnancy, especially among teenagers, is a huge deal when it comes to the birth rate slowing down. As is people wanting a smaller family size and waiting to have a kid until they’re ready.

I never said otherwise. I said that the economy does better under Dems than Republicans. That doesn’t mean that it’s the way things should be done, just that under Dems jobs are added to the economy rather than lost and the national debt grows at a slower rate than under Republicans. Between the two, the economy objectively does better under Dems.

I simply was saying that the “Biden bad because brown people and the economy broke because woke” narrative is a farce no matter how you look at it.

Your timescale is skewed. You’re either young, pushing a narrative, or both, so let me describe how things look historically from a sample size that actually matters. 2 presidents is not a big sample size.

Starting in the 80s, the American economy began to decline and the national debt began to rise under Reagan and politicians like him - trickle down economics had begun. In the late 90s, a president balanced the budget and actually began reducing the national debt (by cutting funding to social security and other less than stellar actions). That would be Clinton. And then along came Bush Jr and the post 9/11 forever war in the Middle East. Ever since the start of the Iraq war, the national debt has risen like an ICBM. I remember when news channels talked with disbelief about Bush possibly doubling the national debt within a year.

So it’s 2008, Bush just finished up his second term, and hundreds of thousands of people have lost everything in the 2008 depression (except for Bush’s rich friends. They got government bailouts and made bank buying up all the poor people’s houses). So, what now? Now, a black man who runs on a campaign of changing things for the better wins the election in a landslide, and tries to do most of what he promised. The economy sees large amounts of growth and jobs added, and the spiraling of the national debt slows down. However, Republicans vow to never let a black man do anything in the White House and the Democrats capitulate before the fight ever starts, so Obama is hamstrung and despite trying, ends up being forced by Republicans shutting down the government to not fulfill any of his campaign promises in his two terms (except for installing a healthcare system that Republicans fought tooth and nail against because it makes it illegal for health insurance companies to kick cancer patients off their health insurance and then refuse to cover them for having a preexisting condition: cancer).

Now it’s 2016 and a man who ran on a campaign of undoing everything the black man before him did and the promise of kicking out all the politicians that he’s been friends with since his big business days in the 80s has been elected. And what does he do? He spends the first 2 years largely going line by line and undoing every single thing that the black man did while in office, and then spends the next 2 years mostly giving tax breaks and government money to the friends he said he would kick out and “drain the swamp” while the national debt once again rises like a tide in a swamp and the economy stagnates. Then 2019 hits and the economy collapses again under a worldwide pandemic, just a month after he got rid of the office the black man set up to prevent a pandemic.

So now it’s 2020 and the country has just elected the old guy who was the black guy’s right hand man. He campaigned on not rocking the boat and keeping the course. Nothing exciting, but we’ll see what happens. True to form, 4 years of stabilization happen. The debt slows down, the economy sees jobs come back, and things are looking a little more calm.

Then, in 2025 the old guy who was so upset about the black guy comes back and his swampy friends are right behind him. The debt begins to balloon and the economy starts to shudder under the weight of global tariffs and worldwide uncertainty of a possible trade war against friend and foe alike. And that’s just in the first 3 months of the year.

Tl;dr: the economy consistently grows under democrat presidents and the national debt slows down. Under Republicans, the economy shrinks and the debt skyrockets. This stays fairly consistent the farther back you go, but Reagan is an important point in this because he started trickle down economics and showed the Republicans that big government can be good for them, too, so long as they hold the purse strings, and Bush is the other important point because he’s the tipping point for when the debt went from manageable to using a sink to try to put out a burning building.