I love Evangelion. I don’t love this stupid bullshit.

Armed with what?

Guns, knives, blunt weapons, tasers, bear spray, hand cuffs and zip ties.

Taking the stand in the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates, Terry Cummings showed jurors an AR-15 firearm and an orange box for ammunition that he contributed to the so-called quick reaction force the Oath Keepers had staged at the hotel outside of Washington in case they needed weapons.

“I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” said Cummings, a veteran who joined the Oath Keepers in Florida in 2020.

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-florida-virginia-conspiracy-government-and-politics-6ac80882e8cf61af36be6c46252ac24c

But a review of the federal charges against the alleged rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs. An additional suspect also allegedly planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties the night before the riot and remains at large.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters-were-armed-here-are-the-weapons-prosecutors-say-they-used

Online sleuths who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions say he is the same man they identified to the FBI who is currently individual No. 200 on the bureau’s Capitol Violence page, which he first appeared on three years ago. Videos and photographs from the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed him with what appears to be a gun in his waistband. As NBC News previously reported, that man, John Emanuel Banuelos, told Salt Lake City police that he was at the Capitol and had been captured on film with a gun. “I was in the D.C. riots,” he told the investigators, according to a police transcript. “I’m the one in the video with the gun right here.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/new-jan-6-footage-appears-show-rioter-firing-gun-air-capitol-attack-rcna138137

And I recall Hillary’s plot to get electors to “vote their concious”

The source you’ve linked quotes Martin Sheen and other “celebrities”, not Hillary Clinton, who conceded the election as someone who believed in democracy would (despite being much more popular than Trump and winning the national vote by millions).

Also, you should know that official electors are not always bound. As a Trump voter I know you’re not big on education or knowledge, but if you want you can read all about unpledged electors here.

Meanwhile, what Trump and his gang of indicted co-conspirators did was to submit a slate of fraudulent and fake electors to the election certification process in order to literally steal swing state electoral college votes and appoint himself President. Or as he likes to say “dictator on day one”.

Here’s a list of the names of the fraudulent electors in each state that Trump tried to overthrow.

Just because he wasn’t charged with treason doesn’t mean he didn’t commit treason by advocating an armed insurrection against our democracy. (See: the US post-Civil War Reconstruction Era for further examples.)

And if you want to why he wasn’t charged for that, it’s because of Republican Special Counsel Ken Starr’s disastrous opinion that sitting presidents are above the law and can’t be prosecuted, and must instead be impeached–which, if you remember, Trump was, not once but twice. Of course now Trump is arguing that he’s still above the law and deserves “total immunity”, which only further shows that he is, in fact, a wanna-be dictator.

Saying “Trump wasn’t charged with a crime so therefore he did nothing wrong” and “Trump can’t be charged with a crime because current and former US Presidents must have total immunity from prosecution” is very clearly circular logic.

He didn’t hurt your democracy though, he didn’t try to keep the opposition off the ballot.

Yeah he just repeatedly called the election rigged and tried to replace the Biden electoral votes with Trump ones by means of an armed insurrection.

But hey, he failed (just like how he fails at everything else) so no harm no foul. That’s how law and society work, right?

What does any of that have to do with LGBT rights? Seems like an ad hominem at best.

Is this the part where y’all jump the shark and pretend like Palestine is a mecca of progressivism and civil rights?

Hardware wise, you’ll be hard pressed to find any even half-way popular computer that can’t run some form of Linux. So I’d say just get something that’s within your budget. Those x86 APU-based mini pcs that you can find for ~$200 are becoming pretty popular for projects these days. Something like a Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi or whatever might also be fine depending on what you want to do with it, just keep your power expectations in check. If you want to spend more money on something with graphics hardware, I’d recommend going for AMD over NVidia, just because the drivers are built into the kernel and essentially no-hassle.

When it comes to software, especially if you’re on x86, just arbitrarily pick one of the reasonably popular distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, PopOS, or any of the other ones you’ve probably heard of. One of the first things to learn about “Linux” is that there’s a whole ecosystem of software projects behind it, and there is a lot of overlap between the software that each distro runs. Yes, there are some meaningful differences between, for example, Ubuntu and Fedora, but I think they are much less meaningful to a noobie (who is just learning the basics of Linux) or an expert (who probably knows enough to bend and customize just about any distro into whatever they want).

Small caveat #1: If you prefer to have a desktop that more closely resembles Windows (like the one of the Steam Deck’s desktop mode) you might want to pick a distro spin that uses the KDE Plasma desktop. On the other hand, if you want to play around with something that’s a bit different than what you’re used to, it might be worth checking out a distro spin that uses the Gnome desktop. I can recommend them both for different reasons, so you might want to check out some videos of them to see what you’re more into before picking. (Other desktops are available, these are just the two big ones! So there truly are a ton of options to explore here if you want to.)

Small caveat #2: At this point in time are you more interested in stability or customization? If you want a truly rock-solid Linux system that’s hard to ever break, you might want to consider one of the new “atomic” distributions like Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (or others), though you might find some of their limitations annoying. On the other side of the spectrum, if deep customization and flexibility is what you’re looking for, then you might want to venture into the deep end with things like NixOS or ArchLinux, just keep in mind that they can be very technical and overwhelming for noobs. Personally I have been using Fedora Silverblue for a couple years now and I love the stability of it, and I can work around it’s limitations with distrobox.

Another thing to consider is just using what you already have. For example, playing around with Linux in a virtual machine, setting up a Linux-based server on one of the popular VPS services, or just plugging your Steam Deck into a dock with a keyboard and monitor attached and playing with something like distrobox (which you can probably find a guide on how to set that up for your deck).

In this case I’m not saying it because it’s “their message”, I’m saying it because it’s the fucking truth.

The American political system is a tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans. You’re either helping one side pull or you’re helping the other. You don’t have to like that, only understand it. Vote for political reforms (like ranked choice) if you want to change it.

Be critical of Democrats, please do. But do it in context of time and in proportion to the scope of the threats posed by the increasingly authoritarian cult that is the GOP. The next election we lose to Trump will be the last. He hasn’t been shy about his intentions in the slightest and 4 years from now he could easily be in majority control of ALL 3 branches of the US government.

Thats not a “message”, it’s the cold hard truth.

Criticize all you want, just be fair about it, and understand that you’re helping the GOP.

Because if you’re going to actively help Trump implement a fascist autocratic takeover of the United States, you should at least be intellectually honest about it.

Nobody is sending Pelosi to the Hague because she wants the mere potential of Russian political interference (something we have had evidence of for years) to be investigated.

Hell, the ICJ didn’t even have anything to say against Israel and the IDF themselves, despite what reading too much lemmygrad would have you think.

The American political system is a tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans. You’re either helping one side pull or you’re helping the other. You don’t have to like that, only understand it. Vote for political reforms (like ranked choice) if you want to change it.

In 2024 you’re either fighting against Trump and his cult or you’re fighting for them. It’s really that simple.

Modartt’s Pianoteq is a nice Linux native, physically modeled piano plugin.

In my experience yabridge is fantastic. With a bit of initial setup, it’s the closest thing to a native experience that I’ve come across.

You do control it with a CLI interface, so you need to be comfortable with that.

You also need to have already installed the Windows VSTs manually using WINE or whatever, and so there’s a bit of a typical “how well does this work under wine” crapshoot and a bit of a learning curve there.

Nobody’s but when the war ends the number of hostages Hamas has will be an important factor in just how fucked Gaza will be.

How so, and what’s the endgame here? Keep as many innocent civilians hostage in perpetuity?

Here you are admitting that Hamas’ actions have benefited literally “nobody” thus far, and at the same time you’re suggesting that they keep doing what they’re currently doing (something which, as we’ve already established, is a war crime) because it will “be an important factor” in the future, in some very abstract and vague way?

As the saying goes “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.”

Yep, just showed your true colors.

Not sure what this ad hominem is supposed to suggest, but it’s weak either way. 🤷

In that case Israel should also be surrendering its leadership and soldiers to stand trial in the Hague for genocide (or at the very least collective punishment).

I agree that Israel’s actions over the last few months should be put under just as much scrutiny as Hamas’, and in fact, they are. https://apnews.com/article/genocide-israel-palestinians-gaza-court-fbd7fe4af10b542a1a4e2c7563029bfb

No Western country has declared support for South Africa’s allegations against Israel. The U.S., a close Israel ally, has rejected them as unfounded, the U.K. has called them unjustified, and Germany said it “explicitly rejects” them.

China and Russia have said little about one of the most momentous cases to come before an international court. The European Union also hasn’t commented.

So far there doesn’t seem to be much of a argument that anything that Israel has done up until now rises to the level of a war crime, while as I shared above, the Geneva Convention is explicit that terrorist hostage-taking of innocent civilians is, on its face, a war crime. If Israel is proven to have done things that are so blatantly war crimes, they should be held accountable for those things. It’s the only reasonable position to take, frankly.

As always, if you find yourself arguing against the Geneva Convention you might want to reexamine the ethics and soundness of your position.

Israel (specifically Netanyahu) has repeatedly stated they want security control of Palestine “from the river to the sea”.

Hamas have also repeatedly stated, including in their 1988 founding charter, that the goal of their jihad is the complete destruction of Israel and genocide of Jewish people in the Levant.

Neither Netenyahu nor Hamas believe in a peaceful two-state solution in which Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can live together peacefully. If I had my way they’d both be totally stripped of power.

hostages one of the few ways Palestinians can actually do anything to improve their lives

Genuine question, how has Hamas taking hundreds of innocent people hostage on October 7th improved the situation in Gaza or Israel in any way? Whose life is better today than it was a couple of months ago as a result?

International humanitarian law prohibits taking and executing hostages. Such acts are considered war crimes (GCI–IV Common Art. 3; GCIV Arts. 34, 147; API Art. 75) and can be tried before any national court, under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The Convention defines a hostage taker as “any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (‘hostage’) in order to compel a third party, namely a State, an international inter-governmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage, commits the offence of taking hostages (‘hostage taking’)” (Art. 1 of Hostage Convention).

The Convention further specifies that not only those who commit such an act but also any person who attempts to commit or who participates as an accomplice in such an act or attempt is accountable and must be punished.

At any rate, regardless of whether you feel Hamas’ jihad is justified or not (it isn’t, in fact), hostage taking is an international war crime. The Geneva Convention is the bare minimum standard on this, and as such our opinions and political leanings are irrelevant.

The bare minimum Hamas can do now is to release the remaining hostages and surrender themselves to the IDF to stand trial, so that the innocent people of Gaza can start slowly putting their lives back together.

Holding civilians hostage for 3 months isn’t “war”, it’s an act of terrorism and a war crime.

Edit: I see I struck a nerve with that one.

They won’t get anything from handing them over

I guess Allah doesn’t reward people just for doing the right thing then?

I can only imagine being so brainwashed to believe that the Houthis harassing, threatening and attacking one of the biggest international trade routes on Earth, while indiscriminately targeting ships from various countries and ignoring multiple warnings from the UN, Britain and the US, is in any way legitimate.

They attacked civilian ships, they were warned not to, they didn’t stop attacking civilian ships, and now they’ve been retaliated against as promised. Let’s see if they’re smart enough to finally stop fucking with international civilian trade ships.

Do you think America enforces sanctions against Russia by attacking their civilians?

Follow up, do you have a clue how anything in the world actually works?

The terrorist Houthis in Yemen, like Hamas, are backed by Iran–all three of which have individually called for the genocide and annihilation of Israel.

Last week America gave the Houthis one final warning (after multiple others) to knock off their piracy and hijacking of international trade routes.

Instead of widely heeding that warning, they made the very stupid decision to call America’s bluff. As the saying goes “fuck around, find out.”

By the way, Iran is also an authoritarian Islamic theocracy in which women are subjugated, homosexuality is subject to persecution, and freedom of expression is nonexistent. They represent the model of a Muslim State under Sharia religious law, back Islamic terrorist groups in various parts of the world, are creating instability in the region (like the Oct 7 attacks and these trade route hijackings), and are generally not your friend no matter how much koolaid you drink or what medal you pick up in the mental gymnastics Olympics.

So the Houthis get carte blanche to attack international trade routes because something someone Israel?

Hard to believe we’re still making people this dumb. Darwin must have gotten something wrong.

You should be mad that Israel is getting weapons when Ukraine isn’t.

But not at Biden.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-sets-test-vote-ukraine-aid-despite-republican-opposition-2023-12-06/

When it comes to Gaza…

There is no US President, real or hypothetical, who would stop military support of Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks. And there is no US President, real or hypothetical, who is going to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza before every last Israeli hostage is accounted for.

Biden’s policies on Israel so far are not far even from someone as left as Bernie Sanders, because rational minds understand that there is no simple solution to middle east peace, nor has there ever been.

We’d all like to see Hamas release their hostages, and Israel to release those who have been held without due process. We’d all like to see an end to the violence and hostility, and an end to the era where both Israel and Palestine are under the control of fascist authoritarian regimes. Sadly it’s not as simple as sending Jared Kushner over or whatever delusional shit Americans want to come up with next.

I’d love to see every last dollar of the US defense budget go to whooping Putin’s ass in Ukraine, but that’s also not very realistic.