sailingbythelee

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Yes, the Germanic tribes most certainly did eventually impose their culture and law on the Romans. Do you remember who sacked Rome in 410? It was Alaric of the Visigoths, which was a Germanic tribe. The Visigoths definitely imposed their laws, the Visigothic Code, when they could on the territories they colonized. And that was after a couple of hundred years of various Germanic tribes setting up relatively peaceful colonies in the Roman Empire. After they sacked Rome, they wanted to adopt the authority and prestige of the Roman Empire, so they became foederati, left Italy, and colonized southern Gaul. Then they colonized Spain by booting out another Germanic tribe, the Vandals, and imposing the Visigothic Code on the locals there. However, this weakened their position in Gaul, so the Franks came along and booted them out, imposing yet another culture and set of laws and creating the basis for modern France. Then the Arabs came along and defeated the Visigoths in Spain and imposed yet another culture and set of laws. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera ad infinitum for all of human history. So, remind me again who the bad guys and the good guys are?

Edit: And with regard to North America, I wouldn't say that Europe colonized North America in any kind of organized way at all in the beginning. European countries competed with one another for land and trade, and many colonists were independents fleeing religious persecution in Europe. My first ancestor in North America was a poor French farmer who left Europe in 1650 because the nobility owned all the land in Europe and he didnt want to be a serf. He didn't have some evil plan to trick the Indians and eventually take the whole continent. His small group of farmers didn't even bring many women. My ancestor married a local native girl. He and his little group largely integrated with the native people. They got the benefits of French farming techniques and crops, and he got the benefits of a new family and culture and the know-how of the locals. Of course, the Church also came along an their motivation was to convert the natives, but from their perspective that was about saving souls (misguided as that was), not conquest and genocide. A while later, after many more Frenchmen had migrated to North America, the French nobility became more interested and the king decided that he would make a more serious claim, but even then he was mostly trying to keep the British out. The French largely remained allied with the natives. Eventually, it got to the point where North America was no longer just a source of furs and an outlet for unpopular religious minorities in Europe and colonization kicked into high gear. The natives were literally at the Stone Age level of technology -- no metal-smelting, no written language, not even the wheel -- so they simply had no ability to maintain their sovereignty and culture once the European machine really got going, so they got steam-rolled. Thats not even considering the terrible effects of being exposed to Old World diseases that they had zero immunity to. Modern estimates are that 90% of the indigenous population of North America died of various Old World diseases long before serious permanent colonial expansion began.

My point is, once again, that many people have been indoctrinated to a narrow, black-and-white view of colonization. It isn't a separate thing from migration, it is one part of the continuum of migration. If you think of it on a continuum, it becomes hard to sustain the binary good vs. evil narrative that you seem to be stuck on.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Sure. How do you imagine colonization actually happens? It is rarely a bunch of conquistadors invading and defeating the local population and then genociding them. It is almost always a long process of migration, perhaps punctuated by conflict and perhaps not. The Greeks founded colonies all over the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, some of which exist to this day. Not every colony becomes an overwhelming nation state. When various Germanic tribes invaded Rome at various times, they came and settled on Roman territory in their own little colonies, sometimes with authorization and sometimes not. When the first Europeans came to North America, they set up tiny little agricultural colonies and mostly had a peaceful (if awkward) coexistence with the local native tribes.

Over time, though, the power balance may change and then the colonists may start to demand more control. If the original and the invading cultures aren't compatible, or if resources are scarce, they may end up at war with each other. What you think of as "colonization" is the most extreme form where one side is so technologically superior and aggressive that the original inhabitants simply have no chance. The weaker culture is subsumed and perhaps even destroyed by the stronger one. But it rarely starts out that way. Colonization is a spectrum from small colonies within a larger dominant culture to extreme cases where the colonizing culture completely displaces the existing inhabitants, and everything in between.

So, is it really as simple as good guys and bad guys? If you think so, think about it some more with a more objective and less doctrinaire lens.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 16 hours ago

I don't think NATO is in any danger. Trump has a very aggressive and bombastic style of negotiation. You saw this with NAFTA. Trump called it the worst agreement in the history of the world. But the USMCA is just NAFTA with a new acronym and now it's apparently the BEST trade agreement in the history if the world. Its the same with Trump and NATO. The Europeans are the worst freeloaders in the history of the universe...until they up their defense spending by half a percentage point to appease the Donald, and then NATO will be the best alliance ever. Typical bombastic bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 17 hours ago

Look at the result of the US election and tell me why you think it is beneficial to promulgate this simplistic colonizer/colonized, oppressor/oppressed narrative. It is no longer useful. Identity politics has become the new McCarthyism of the left. I am on the left, and I want us to extract our heads from our collective asses and start talking about things that matter to non-indoctrinated people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

When Germanic tribes invaded the Roman Empire because they were pushed West by the Mongols, were they the bad guys? When the Romans killed Germanic peoples to prevent them crossing the border, were the Romans the good guys? When illegal immigrants cross the US border in their literal millions to escape the poverty and oppression of central America, are they the bad guys? When the Anishnawbec tribes invaded the territory of the Sioux and expelled them because they were pushed West by the Algonquin, were they the bad guys? The Inuit killed the Dene who were encroaching on their territory because of starvation, were they the bad guys or were the Dene the bad guys? When Hannibal invaded Rome and killed thousands of Italians over several years and attempted to genocide Rome, was he the bad guy, or was Rome the bad guy when they subsequently invaded Carthage and ended the war once and for all? Who were more evil, the Arabs who bought Afrcian slaves, or the African tribes who kidnapped their own people and sold them to the Arabs? History is a series of actions and reactions, not a set of good guys and bad guys.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I'm listening to the CBC right now and the prevailing opinion I'm hearing is that the Democrats lost because Biden waited too long to step aside. Talk about learning all the wrong lessons.

Watch how the Liberal narrative will emphasize that. They want Trudeau to step aside, and if (when) they lose to the Cons they'll say it's because Trudeau wouldn't step aside. Or if he does step aside, he didn't step aside early enough.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Even if they are 100% First Nations, their ancestors were also colonizers. First Nations tribes warred and displaced one another regularly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 21 hours ago (10 children)

This is a lazy and simplistic worldview. Every single square mile of land has been colonized, conquered, re-conquered, and conquered again. In other words, every culture has been both colonizer and colonized. Human migration has been occurring since time immemorial, and human migration generally means displacing whomever was there before. It is often a chain reaction, where one migration causes another, causes another, ad infinitum throigh history. In the most dramatic situations we sometimes label it genocide, but usually it's more of a slow blending of cultures (and genes) over time.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

I don't feel as bad as I thought I would. I've been an NDP voter all my life, so like most lefties I was shocked by Trump's win in 2016, horrified by his COVID bullshit, and appalled by his conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric in the 2024 campaign. Trump is so obviously horrible that I kept asking the same question: how could HALF of the US electorate support him? I just can't believe that HALF of America are fascist misogynistic white supremacists.

So, I started listening to alternative media. For example, I listened to Trump's interview with Joe Rogan (yes, the whole three+ hours). I listened to Bari Weiss's Honestly podcast, where she talks to disaffected progressives, and had a great debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro. And many others.

So far, this is what I've come up with:

  1. The Democratic Party has abandoned the traditional working class, or at least the working class feels abandoned by the Democratic Party. The Dems have become "cultural elites" that too many average people just can't identify with at all. Trump may not be good for the working class, but at least he speaks to them and their concerns. This of course leads to a discussion about how the Dems would have a better relationship with labour if they hadn't fucked over Bernie Sanders.
  2. The Democratic Party has become obsessed with identity politics, at the expense of real issues that matter to most people. Identity politics is pure poison that has become the leftist version of McCarthyism to a lot of people.
  3. The Dems foreign policy is seen as weak by both the left and right. They fucked around on the Ukraine war to the point where Russia is now winning. And they lifted the sanctions on Iran that allowed it to fund Islamist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis and blow up the Middle East. And the left is pissed off that they don't speak out against Israel's aggressive policy toward the Palestinians. So, the Dems aren't pleasing anyone when it comes to foreign policy.
  4. The Dems had a good issue with reproductive rights, but a lot of states are moving to protect reproductive rights on theor own (including ballot measures), which may have relieved some of the pressure on Trump.
  5. People talk a lot about Trump being better for the economy. I'm not sure economists would agree, but that is a large part of the sentiment favouringTrump. Edit: 6. Immigration. How could I forget immigration. Illegal immigration really pisses off Americans, including and perhaps especially among legal immigrants. I'm not sure that immigrants love Trump's immigration position, but most of the country see the Dems as too ideologically compromised by identity politics to be able to do anything constructive on immigration.

You don't have to agree with those positions and I don't plan on defending them. This is just what I've picked up in trying to understand why so many people vote for Trump.

There are some important parallels and lessons here for the next Canadian election. Trudeau and the Liberals parallel the cultural elitism of the establishment Democrats. Singh appeals more to the identity politics culture warriors than he does to the working class. This is a big departure from the NDP's traditional roots in the labour movement. And Poilievre is Trump's mini-me. So, what can we do in Canada to avoid a repeat of the left's failure in the US election? Doubling down on identity politics and cultural elitism isn't going to go well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Virtue signalling: the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one's awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc.,

Virtue signalling is used by both left and right as a signifier of their political affiliation. You can recognize it by the fact that the signalled statement doesn't make any sense except as a political signifier. For example, people who say that Trump won the 2020 election when he obviously did not are either virtue signalling or are complete idiots.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The "United Nations pontifcate"...that's a great phrase I don't think I've seen before.

With respect to your comment, though, aren't we all hypocrites to some degree? We all talk a better game than we actually play, and that is not unique to the West. It is a part of human nature. In fact, you could say that hypocrisy is the first step towards aspirational improvement. I also disagree that the West expects perfection from the global south. Far from it. If that were true, we wouldn't give aid to anyone. It seems to me like you are virtue signalling without thinking through your claims.

 

So, I went out with my daughter to look at laptops for back-to-school and the store was dominated by Windows machines with Snapdragon X Elite chips at very reasonable prices. The energy efficiency, battery life, and quietness of these laptops is amazing. Also, I notice they all have these new NPU chips for AI, which I'm ambivalent about.

I'm a Linux-on-Thinkpad man, so I checked online and was happy to see that Lenovo is offering Snapdragon-based Thinkpads now. With these new developments, maybe it is finally time to upgrade my old T540p.

Has anyone here had experience yet running Linux on a Snapdragon-based laptop?

 

Good day, friends. Since catching the self-hosting bug, I've set up a couple of Proxmox home servers with a bunch of services I enjoy.

Now I'd like to set up a server and local network on my sailboat so I can self-host servarr, pihole, and other services while traveling. The tricky part is that everything on the boat is 12V and I would rather not use an inverter, if possible. Also, it needs to be ultra-low power so I can leave it on at all times and not to deplete my batteries too much.

Criteria:

  • ultra-low power
  • Small form factor
  • runs on 12V
  • 10 TB of storage plus ability to make full local backup
  • Capable of hosting servarr, audiobookshelf, freshrss, etc. via docker
  • HDMI output
  • Full local mirror/backup of the entire file system, including the media library.
  • We will have two laptops and two Android phones to access the server, so the server doesn't need to run a desktop environment.

I'll have a mobile wifi router and a cellular signal booster (or maybe Starlink eventually) for internet access. Since internet bandwidth will be limited and expensive while traveling, I don't want to have to re-download a massive media llibrary if the storage media fail. Thus, I want the media library to be mirrored or fully backed up or synced locally.

What hardware and Linux distro would you use in this situation?

 

Hello fellow self-hosters. I'm currently self-hosting the servarr stack, including jellyseer, radarr/sonarr, prowlarr transmission, and jellyfin. It works great.

I now want to expand my system into ebooks as well. I have readarr already set up, but it is too complicated for my wife. I've also tried calibre, which is great for ebook management,and Kavita, which is a lovely ebook server and reader. But I'm looking for something like "jellyseer for ebooks" that shows what's currently popular and makes it easy for the user to make requests and have those requests sent to an automated backend for downloading. Additionally, it should work well from a phone, and it would be ideal if it could download from Library Genesis.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

I recently purchased a used PowerEdge R420 rack server with a Compellent SC220 Storage Shelf. I currently have four 3.5" HDDs in the R420 and ten 2.5" HDDs in the SC220. The R420 server previously had TrueNAS installed, so all of the hard drives on both the R420 and the SC220 are formatted with ZFS. I'm now running Ubuntu on the R420 using ZFS.

The server I'm replacing is an old gaming PC running Manjaro and BTRFS. It has one SSD with the operating system and two 4 TB HDDs set up as RAID0. I've been using the RAID to store media downloaded via the Servarr stack.

So, my goal is to create a large pool out of all of the HDDs (except the one running the OS) on the R420 and SC220, and then migrate the media data on the two 4 TB RAID0 drives on my old gaming PC over to R420/SC220 pool. I would then move my Servarr stack over to the R420 as well. Ideally, I'd also like to physically move the two 4 TB HDDs over to the R420. Presumably, I would have to reformat the drives to use ZFS rather the BTRFS and then integrate them somehow into the ZFS pool?

Anyway, I'm not sure of the best procedure to accomplish all of this, so I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has any experience or insight. Thanks in advance.

 

CNN reporting on some interesting survey results from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. Seven hundred and fifty adults were interviewed face to face in the West Bank, and 481 were interviewed in Gaza, also in person. The Gaza data collection was done during the recent truce, when it was safer for researchers to move about.

 

Never invade Russia in the winter. Never fight a land war in Asia. Never go for a third term as Prime Minister in Canada. It makes the electorate hate you. I don't complain much about his policies, but Trudeau is screwing his own party over and now we might end up with the Trumpiest of Canadian politicians as PM.

 

Good day, everyone. I took the plunge into self-hosting in the last couple of weeks and set up a server running Linux Mint. I installed the media streaming stack composed of Jellyfin, Jellyseerr, Radarr, Sonarr, Jackett, Bazarr and Transmission according to this excellent guide: https://zerodya.net/self-host-jellyfin-media-streaming-stack/

Before installing it on my server, I tested it on my Linux Mint laptop and it worked perfectly. I also run NordVPN and had no issues running the streaming stack with my VPN running on the laptop. I then installed it on my server (running the exact same version of Linux Mint) and it runs fine UNTIL I turn on my VPN and then I get an "Internal Server Error 500" from Jellyseerr. Jellyseerr is still able to list the requests I've made, but can't display the Discover sections that list popular movies and shows unless I turn off the VPN.

The one difference between my successful laptop test setup and my final server setup is that I'm also running Pi-Hole on my server, so perhaps the problem is related to that? I installed the Pi-Hole using the official Ubuntu installer on the Pi-Hole website.

Anyway, I'm new to self-hosting so I'm not sure if I've provided the necessary details. Any help getting this setup to work with my VPN is greatly appreciated.

 

Monte McNaughton has resigned, making that three resignations and forcing a cabinet shuffle. Nothing to do with the unfolding Greenbelt scandal, of course. /s

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