Yeah, the only truly open source option out there is the PineNote, which is very much non-European. In terms of repairability I expect it would score (relatively) highly though, being designed to be tinkerer-friendly.

Usually i lose a tail. Not this time.

Fucking reptiles.

What an incredibly absurd and unpredictable situation. It’s hard to say who is in the more precarious position, her or Trump.

Thankfully it is a crime, as they are bound by software licenses requiring users to be able to mess around with the system. That’s the only reason it’s possible to access the terminal through SSH from a computer, and doing so is easy. However, getting from there to making meaningful changes is a mess.

For those interested there’s a useful list of Remarkable hacks on github. There have been many useful hacks throughout the ages, but many have been broken as Remarkable has changed the architecture of their cloud service and made various tweaks to the operating system. Some of them I have also found to be too difficult to set up so I just gave up.

Yeah, this is really not such a strength as people might think. I’m all for it being minimalist, and I wouldn’t want to have a web browser on mine. But the system is closed down way beyond what is reasonable. It runs Linux, and the only reason I can see to keep it closed down is that they want to sell their own cloud subscription.

I would love to synchronize files with Nextcloud. Should be easy to do, considering it’s a Linux device. But nope, it’s too locked down and there’s no way.

I have the keyboard attachment. It’s useless - I cannot edit plain text files, only their own restricted word-like format. At some point they even removed the option to email myself the text of the notes I had written, rendering whatever I wrote completely locked inside the device. And while the Linux shell of the device is accessible through SSH, I cannot change the keyboard layout without re-routing the driver which is some sort of deep black magic. So I’m stuck with QWERTY which is pretty much unusable for me.

Their cloud service forces you to pay a monthly subscription for some pretty basic features. Thankfully I get it for free as I had my account before they started charging for all that.

Reading the web sounds bad indeed, but it would be nice to be able to read the news on the device. It would be the perfect device for an RSS reader, had they not closed it down so forcefully.

Hell, if I could just access the terminal from the device I could use the keyboard attachment and SSH my way into my laptop, and I could do my writing work without having to stare at a screen all day. But the only way of accessing the terminal without jumping through a bunch of impossible hoops of third party hacks is through a computer using SSH. It would have been so easy for them to just make one available directly somewhere.

They do not have a linux app and there’s no nextcloud support, so I have to sign in to their web app every time I want to send a PDF to the device. And when I want it back to my computer I have to email it to myself.

Hell, I should be able to run Zotero on it and integrate it with my Zotero cloud. My Zotero library should be directly available on the Remarkable, and my annotations in documents should be synchronized. The Remarkable runs Linux, and Zotero supports Linux ARM. It would be easy to achieve, and would be an obvious benefit to a lot of users. But no, they insist on their own stupid solutions for no other reason than fucking over their users for money.

I use my Remarkable all the time. I wouldn’t want to be without it. But the stupidly restrictive system is not a feature, it’s a pain in the ass.

Ah, right.

I guess it does prove the point that there is still friction in instance selection. I guess I can partly sympathize with those who get so overwhelmed at this point that they just decide it’s all too difficult. People are not used to making their own choices any more.

It seems part of the problem is that a lot of people from here want to explain Reddit users why federated platforms are the only viable options, and the Reddit users misunderstand this explanation of how the platforms work and why they have to work that way as an explanation of how to use them.

Using Lemmy or Piefed is not hard. Understanding why centralized alternatives is not an alternative at all, now that requires you to be interested and understand some things. But we don’t really need people to understand that. We just need them to sign up for some instance or another. Preferably not a tankie one.

If you want a big instance I recommend switching to something like lemmy.zip.

Lemmy.ml unfortunately has very questionable moderation. I’m thrilled you guys are here, but the fact that you ended up on that instance is proof that we have ways to go as a platform.

Welcome!

I hate to say it though, but Lemmy.ml is a sketchy instance. So there is a point to it not being as easy as it should be—it’s hard to see the pitfall of the instance run by the developers being a Russia friendly mess.

Going out guns blazing will be seen as an escalation, even if that’s what they’re doing already. That’s just the reality of the situation. Hell, they’re currently trying to justify their killings with arguments such as “he held a phone” and “her foot fell on the gas after she died”, and parts of Trump’s base are nevertheless buying it. If anyone actually came at them with weapons they would be having a blast.

You don’t end violence with violence against footsoldiers.

Pressure against the regime works. Trump and Vance are not afraid of ICE agents getting killed, they would be overly excited about it. They are not, however, excited to see the country rise in pritest against their fascist takeover.

I’m just saying that the fact that America tends to lose its wars is very meager comfort for those on the receiving end of them. You can’t really win a war as a civilian.

Protests and strikes are working. Organize locally in a positive and constructive manner (maybe get active in a union? Do you still have those over there?), build community and dedicate time and effort to that. Be the opposite of the fascists, don’t just echo their ideas of violence.

It might not feel so badass, but you’ll do more good as a living organizer than as a dead agitator.

If you want to die a martyr, Luigi showed that there’s a better way than to go in guns blazing towards low-level losers working as fascist henchmen. Ultimately the awful people in ICE and US Border Patrol are also victims of this broken system, they’re just too stupid to have figured it out.

Oh yes, because the countries the US invaded for natural resources have all been thrilled to have been murdered by american soldiers. They should really be grateful for the opportunity granted to them by the US to win a good war.

War is shit. Find a better solution.

Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t prepare for the worst, but don’t fucking escalate.

They have been stocking up on heavy military surplus materials for years and are incredibly horny to get to use it. These people are extremely excited about the prospect of civil war. They are not afraid of people fighting back, they are drooling their idiot faces off daydreaming about it.

So yeah, maybe try to think up a more efficient form of resistance, though I sympathize with the sentiment.

It would have been a good idea. At this point it’s a bit late for that.

If course the main problem remains the arbitrary execution of innocent people in the streets, not the bad form by which these executions are performed.

An important distinction nevertheless. There are a lot of calls to abolish ICE, not so many to abolish the US Border Patrol.

If I were American I’d at least like to keep track of who is executing my fellow citizens in the streets. But maybe I’m just a pedant.

US Border Patrol, not ICE.

It’s probably important to remember that ICE is not the only fascist paramilitary that needs to be abolished.

Not ICE this time around, but the fascist pricks in the federal border patrol.

Go back to the original European name - Vinland/Vineland/Wineland. Though that might have been in Canada, technically.

Better yet, find some pre-Columbian name for the land that was used by the actual locals. I’m sure there’s plenty of alternatives, and some of the most beautiful state names in the US came about that way. Maybe some Native American name for the Mississippi river could be a good starting point.

A piece of American optimism:

America has been awful since the start, in one way or another. It was never going to change because the majority population was either comfortable enough, or scared enough of the minorities that they would accept a certain discomfort as long as their fellow man had it somehow worse.

Right now nobody is having a good time over there. We’re approaching a breaking point. And that’s scary, but it’s also an opportunity to build a better world on the ashes of the old. We are on the verge of huge changes.

Change is no guarantee for improvement. Americans should not only protest the regime, but start preparing to rebuild. Get smart. Read your own history, especially the parts you’re not proud of. If you don’t know or fully understand those parts you will never manage to build wide alliances. Read postwar history, read about the French revolution and it’s messy aftermath. Read Arendt, read Rawls, read Steinbeck and Locke. Prepare yourself to grasp this historic moment. You have an opportunity unlike anything since the 18th century to change America for the better. Don’t waste it doomscrolling. Don’t think you know enough already. Prepare yourself to be the kind of person who is needed once the regime falls.

You’re not powerless—on the contrary, it’s an historic opportunity. And in power there is hope.

European optimism:

After the events of the last few weeks I think a lot more people are fed up with this fascist bullshit, and it seems even Eurosceptics now believe we need to stand together in solidarity across the continent. It’s a new European moment, and the American hegemony has been broken. I’m feeling genuinely optimistic.

The protests in Minnesota also fill me with joy.* I sincerely believe things are beginning to crack. Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu are all in extremely fragile positions, and dictators have famously poor life expectancy. Change is gradual, then sudden, and the destinies of these despots are intertwined. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

* I wrote this before they ended in more killings. It’s hard to see joy in it now, but I see equal amounts of hope.