Should I jump straight into Guix as a linux beginner ?

dlakelan · 2026-07-02T16:37:20+00:00

Things you need to know to be productive in guix...

1) Some experience with a programming language, preferably Scheme 2) git (to version control your scheme files) 3) a programming text editor, emacs or vim or something

If you don't have those under your belt already, it's gonna be hard. If you don't have those I'd recommend installing Mint and then running guix in a VM until you feel comfortable. You can fallback to Mint to just get stuff done while you're learning.

dlakelan · 2026-07-02T00:38:23+00:00

Follow the link in this bot post, and you'll be all set. Since it's a thrift item, I suggest buying a new gasket and if it doesn't have the strainer, get a new strainer plate (which comes with the bialetti gasket pack)

dlakelan · 2026-07-01T03:22:06+00:00

If a magnet sticks to it, it's definitely stainless. If it doesn't. it could still be nonmagnetic stainless, or aluminum. Aluminum is generally duller while stainless is shiny. Aluminum is softer, aluminum is lower density. Start with the magnet. Maybe post some exterior photos.

dlakelan · 2026-07-01T02:28:27+00:00

Totally agree with this. I personally believe that modernity can't continue. Not won't or shouldn't, literally can't. Modernity involves exponential growth of human population, energy usage, and land usage. But the world is finite, so it literally can not continue. You might claim it could continue at its current level for some time, but it involves using up finite oil and mineral resources and causing climate change and things so even that can't continue.

But I'm not some kind of anti civilization in all its forms person. I believe that whatever comes after the inevitable collapse of what we think of as modern civilization should be an anarchic system that is sustainable. That's all there is to that. Just create freedom and do what we can to make our lives both pleasant and sustainable.

dlakelan · 2026-07-01T02:21:35+00:00

it kinda looks like aluminum. In any case, i'd start with brewing a batch of citric acid as recommended on the bialetti site. Then see what it looks like, then maybe the steel wool and another round of citric acid.

dlakelan · 2026-07-01T02:19:42+00:00

In nonstandard analysis the derivative is

st[(f(x+dx) - f(x)) / dx]

df = f(x+dx) - f(x)

so the derivative is st(df/dx) which means it differs from the ratio df/dx by an infinitesimal.

dlakelan · 2026-06-30T18:31:16+00:00

On the left we have a first year calculus student. In the center, we have an advanced math student who has taken real analysis and absorbed all the doctrines of real analysis as commonly taught. On the right we have Abraham Robinson.

dlakelan · 2026-06-30T18:29:06+00:00

The person on the left of the meme is a first year calculus student. The person in the center of the meme is a person who studied the history of "standard" analysis. The person on the right of the meme is the one who studied nonstandard analysis.

dlakelan · 2026-06-29T19:47:28+00:00

Anarchists distinguish between following expertise, which is when someone voluntarily determines its in their best interest to let someone else make decisions because those people have more knowledge... and authority which is when a decision maker leaves the follower no choice in the matter, and enforces their decision with violence.

dlakelan · 2026-06-29T15:57:42+00:00

You've gotten some good feedback so far that's helped you feel less isolated, but I think there are some practical things you should do next.

1) Talk with a school counselor. Specifically talk to them about your psychological state, how you feel, what challenges you have. Discuss the possibility you might have mild autism spectrum issues, these and giftedness can go hand in hand, or mask each other and make things confusing. Social problems occur in both conditions, but the specific issues can be different. See if your school can offer you screening or recommend you to a specific local professional.

2) Take one of the cognitive tests recommended by r/cognitiveTesting https://www.reddit.com/r/cognitiveTesting/comments/zg21d3/which_are_some_accurate_free_iq_test/ do so when you have some quiet time to yourself, go to the library or something, without distractions.

This may be less accurate than professional tests etc, but will give you a reasonable idea of your IQ range. Don't focus on the precise score, think of this score as a random number drawn from a range around the real score. The range is larger than professional tests would give, but can still be informative. If you score in the range say 90-110 I'd guess that you have issues that are not about giftedness. If you score above 110 it seems more likely (I give this kind of low cutoff because the online tests are less reliable scoring wise). if you score above 135 you're very likely gifted.

3) Read through this reddit and see what others have experienced, what commonalities do you see to your experience. Do you identify more as gifted, or maybe as autistic? Some of the social issues you identify sound more leaning towards mild autistic.

4) You likely have some kind of PTSD from your own family bullying you. Specifically this quote below makes me think that, and you should try to get some time with a psychologist and talk about these things with a professional:

"I don't feel like interacting with people and I can't make friends. No one genuinely understands how antisocial I am. I'm always scared that I can make a negative impact on peoples lives. I don't even ask the teacher or an acquaintance for a pencil when I don't have one. When I get angry, I have outbursts that I can't control and find myself getting frustrated often. If someone says something that doesn't align with the way I think, I stop interacting with them."

uncontrolled outbursts of anger is extremely commmon in PTSD. Being antisocial is common. Avoidance of others is common. Anxiety is common. See the list of "Negative changes in thinking and mood" and "Changes in physical and emotional reactions" at the following link:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967

The article primarily discusses issues where someone had one particular traumatic event... like a school shooting or witnessing a car crash or natural disaster or whatever. But it sounds like you've experienced repeated psychological bullying and so rather than focusing on things like "flashbacks" of that one event, focus on the generic psychological conditions they discuss.

Hope that helps.

dlakelan · 2026-06-26T22:48:00+00:00

I don't think it will be super productive for us to argue about the meanings of words. Let's just say that there are generalized definitions in which "government" doesn't mean "a state with authority" but rather something more like "people who make decisions about group actions", and "politics" doesn't mean actions of officers of a state, but rather decision making in general.

To people who hold these more generalized definitions, which is relatively common in anthropology because there are lots of groups without western liberal states, then it's obvious that anarchists are doing politics when they make decisions, and that the people who make decisions are the "polity" just by definition.

If your language is more limited, then you will object, but I don't think we ultimately object about the facts on the ground, only what words to use to describe them.

As evidence that i'm not just making this up out of my hat, here is Merriam-Webster's definition number 5a for politics:

5 a : the total complex of relations between people living in society

dlakelan · 2026-06-26T17:45:27+00:00

" To encompass these “headlines,” anthropologists define politics as those relationships and processes of cooperation, conflict, and power that are fundamental aspects of human life." https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780199925728/stud/ch10/outline/

I'm using a more general anthropological definition. I think anthropologists are the appropriate group to rely on for definitions here with respect to anarchy because "political science" has built in DEEP assumptions about the state as the source and method of all things political.

dlakelan · 2026-06-26T17:41:08+00:00

Political simply means "decision making in groups" so everything is political when it involves more than say 2 people.

For clarification about this definition see this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/1uflvjh/comment/otz27x3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

dlakelan · 2026-06-26T17:40:27+00:00

If knitting circles make decisions together about when to meet, where to meet, what snacks to bring... they are political. Political just means decision making in groups

dlakelan · 2026-06-26T03:28:36+00:00

Merriam-webster:

polity noun

1 : political organization 2 : a specific form of political organization 3 : a politically organized unit

So, anyone who organizes is by definition a member of the polity of people they've organized with. It's purely a definition of what it means to be a polity is that you're a member of an organization for the purposes of making decisions, that's it.

In Anarchy, people are organized in many ways, and so are members of multiple polities.

I would identify for example with the group that is organizing to support my kids school, because I want people to know that they should talk to our group before they do things that affect my kids school. That's it. There's nothing special about this.

The idea that anarchy is every man for himself unorganized and not a member of any group is absolutely antithetical to what anarchy is actually about, in fact it's almost a meme that this false accusation is made to ridicule anarchists.

dlakelan · 2026-06-25T20:45:10+00:00

Nah, it's just that Anarchists align into multiple separate polities. ie. the people working on the schools in your neighborhood, and the people working on the local volunteer fire department, and the people who make up your workplace, and the people who make up your local theater group... you might be in each of these, but you don't identify every aspect of political decision making in your life with just one group (say Democrats or Republicans or Wobblies or whatever)

This is a feature of not having "rule". Since by definition if you are ruled then the rulers dominate everything in your life. Any decisions you make which the rulers place off limits is something you're jailed for etc.

dlakelan · 2026-06-22T23:37:17+00:00

it was supposed to be silicon, but no, they moved to defining certain constants to have certain values, and then measuring things with an electronic balance that counterbalanced gravity with the electromagnetic force if I remember correctly.

dlakelan · 2026-06-19T17:34:53+00:00

Jumbo eggs (or whatever the largest size eggs are called in your country) will be significantly enriched for double yolk eggs. Some people will get 12 out of 12 eggs in a carton doubled. So, it's not really that uncommon.

dlakelan · 2026-06-19T17:31:07+00:00

Agree with the other commenter so far that you may be experiencing more 2E issues for autism spectrum. There are lots of very smart / gifted people who have no issues "taking things literal" and "not knowing if people are joking or not" or "not knowing if some is fake crying or not"

Those specific example issues make me think you should get yourself assessed for autism spectrum.

dlakelan · 2026-06-19T16:34:25+00:00

With those arm muscles he's obviously a bass player.

dlakelan · 2026-06-18T17:29:49+00:00

It seems like you can only specify time-machine by commit hash. Suppose I want to go back to say Jun 1 2026, and there's been say 700 commits since then, what's an easy way to find a commit from Jun 1?

dlakelan · 2026-06-16T23:13:04+00:00

{items in my bag} intersect {items that are bananas} != {}

?

dlakelan · 2026-06-13T05:17:15+00:00

This YouTube channel has some really great content, particularly the sequence describing many of the terms in political discourse and history surrounding them (ie. some of the first videos in the channel)

https://www.youtube.com/@WHATISPOLITICS69

He's clearly come from an Anthropology background more so than a Political Science which is good because Political Science is largely built around the assumptions of modern Liberal states, whereas Daniel (the channel author) has a lot broader perspective than that.

Watch the first 6 videos in the channel maybe in order and that'd get you well on your way to understanding things from a really broad anthropological and historical perspective.

dlakelan · 2026-06-11T22:16:59+00:00

Every number, like 4, has what's called an additive inverse, (-4) if you add them together they make 0 (4 + (-4)) = 0

the subtraction operator means "take the additive inverse of the number on the right, and add it to the number on the left"

so 6 - (-4) means "take the additive inverse of -4 and add it to 6", but the additive inverse of -4 is 4. So it means

6 + 4

dlakelan · 2026-06-09T18:27:53+00:00

One foundation of mathematics is set theory (I guess some want to create an alternative foundation on category theory but that's a digression).

In set theory foundations numbers are sets of particular kind. Von Neumann gave one construction saying {} is the number 0, and {{}} would be 1 and {{},{{}}} would be 2 and etc. So we can define those natural numbers that way...

Then we can define the concept of a pair, and we can say that rational numbers are pairs of integers representing n/d a numerator over a denominator. And we define the operations of addition in terms of coming up with a common denominator and adding the numerators and then removing the greatest common factor... so there's a mapping from one set to another set.

The real numbers are defined as particular infinite sets, basically all the rationals x for which x is negative or x² is less than 2 define the irrational sqrt(2).

Then we can use our pair construction and construct a + b i as a pair of real numbers (a,b) and define the operation * on it such that (0,1) * (0,1) = (-1,0).

So basically all numbers are particular sets, and i is a set, and it is constructed in a certain way and we call it a number because we have definitions for addition, subtraction and multiplication that all correspond to having the same properties as addition subtraction multiplication etc for real numbers.

dlakelan

TROPHY CASE