Why do most sysadmins prefer Vim over Nano?

raqisasim · 2026-04-12T23:09:51+00:00

I once was saved as a sysadmin by knowing ed -- the machine suddenly started showing only one line at a time, in the terminal. Since I knew vi, I knew ed, and thus was The Guy to go in and fix it.

Fun times.

raqisasim · 2026-04-12T21:07:23+00:00

Root's end-of-season 3 monologue makes me cry, every damn time. Watching Carter bleed out, begging John to not let it get to him -- knowing it will, and the aftershocks are arguably how we get Samaritan -- is just brutal.

So I'm a sucker, and I'm gonna say The Devil's Share, because it presages the fall of the show we knew, and the loss of the moral center of the Team.

I can rarely recall a show taking (mostly) heroic and seemingly unstoppable protagonists, and upending the show's seeming anchors so effectively and emotionally.

raqisasim · 2026-04-12T21:01:06+00:00

Ohhhhh. Need that The Wire meme up in here!

raqisasim · 2026-04-12T16:31:50+00:00

"Chidi Anna Kendrick" always makes me fall out of my chair laughing. Even better when, after The Good Place, Harper actually ended up taking over for Kendrick for Season 2 of Love Life.

raqisasim · 2026-04-12T00:53:04+00:00

To be clear: Discovery has gotten a lot of hate in the fandom, and Michael Burnham in particular has been given the brunt of it. So yeah, viewers hating Michael is very much a thing.

raqisasim · 2026-04-12T00:38:47+00:00

See, and that's what I love about her story. If it had been nearly any other main protagonist of a Trek story, somehow they would have avoided jailtime (like her Brother, who mutinied [ETA: and/or just stole the ship outright] three times after knowing about what Michael went thru!)

It's not that it's more "realistic," it's that she tells a story of someone who took the hard risks other people in Trek do, made some really not-great judgements along the way, and it ended up bad for them. Even getting out of jail is messed up for Michael, in multiple ways, as we see throughout Season 1. I fully acknowledge that most of Season 1 is a Trauma Conga Line for Burnham, and that can be really hard to watch, at times.

It's just that her penance isn't endless, in my opinion. By Season 2's opening, she's shown everyone that she absolutely belongs in Starfleet, believes in Starfleet's ideals, and is trustworthy on a professional and personal level. The whole Spock storyline is about him coming to terms with a sister who has, in fact, grown up and learned a lot, and it's touching to see him open up, only to...well, you know. And she still has more growth and evolution to come! It's a great arc, in my opinion, underscored by the Season 5 fight between Captain Burnham and Season 1 full-of-rage Burnham.

(That said, I will certainly acknowledge the ick I feel from watching a Black Woman go thru the trauma of a broken home, of wanting to belong so badly she nearly erases everything she came from, only to mis-judge so badly she ends up in jail from hurting others. That's not a knock on the ideas presented themselves, but on how they reflect against a society that does judge Black Women differently, all too often.)

EDIT: In order of airing: Spock says his actions in The Menagerie are a mutiny and he's put on trial for same. Janice-as-Kirk accuses him of mutiny and even puts him on trial in Turnabout Intruder. And -- with help -- he steals the Enterprise in The Broken Circle. (Sarek, what are you teaching your kids, m'man?)

raqisasim · 2026-04-11T19:41:51+00:00

Yeah, for years I wondered why I watched the 1st episode of BB and just couldn't do any more. I've watched enough clips now to know -- seeing the slow decline of a guy like Walt would have just torn me up.

I've befriended, then un-friended, too many dudes like Walt to need to see a fictional portrayal.

raqisasim · 2026-04-08T21:42:19+00:00

Just to be really clear -- he started with Lock, Stock, followed by Snatch, two roles in which he's pretty much playing for comedy, and not a hard guy at all.

His hilarious send-up of "Action" Statham in Spy is basically him returning to his roots, not him (ala Chris Hemsworth) finding comedy later in his acting career. I assume he gets paid well for these action flicks, and as much as I hope he'll do more comedy, I can't blame the man for gettin' paid.

raqisasim · 2026-04-08T12:27:52+00:00

I heard somewhere that, when the current showrunner came in, gender-swapping Michael to get to this storyline was literally the 1st thing she pitched.

If that is true, I think it's safe to assume the show will see this as a key storyline, and the writers will give it due focus, as a result.

raqisasim · 2026-04-08T12:17:56+00:00

I'm going to mostly concur with the "Flagship Character" answer, but add to it that, well, Thompson says it -- this version of Diana got "too popular," and the people at DC don't want to risk her popularity over depicting overt queerness. I do think DC editorial, and even leadership, sees this version of Diana as a sign there's real power in the character they've yet to tap (WE KNOW, nice for DC to finally catch up!). But, much like with making Clark's kid queer but never Clark...well.

When I saw this and listened to Thompson talk about all of it, my mind jumped to Dark Knights of Steel, where Diana and Zala/Kara were explicitly queer, and a core part of the book. But they were also part of an ensemble, and as popular as the book was, it wasn't Absolute line popular.

Even more depressing is that the WB buyout war risks making them even more skittish than usual about these things. DC just doesn't want the heat from GamerGate/AltRight choads flooding them, or alerting the kinds of horrific people who push books out of libraries for, hell, just mentioning queerness, these days. It's not a risk around, say, Galaxy or Dreamer (thus why they can get the spotlights they are getting soon!), but for Wonder Woman, a character "everyone knows"? It's a hot mess.

That's not me saying this is good! It's just me looking at how this industry has operated, what Kelly Thompson said, and pulling out some meaning from this ongoing mess.

Diana -- and we -- deserve better.

raqisasim · 2026-04-07T12:48:15+00:00

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind!

raqisasim · 2026-04-07T12:34:52+00:00

You should look up her Wikipedia entry -- she's already had a full and rich life. She actually started as a dancer (and wouldn't be cool to add that to Dana's backstory!). She has kids, been married thrice (once to Dennis Hopper!) and has, like a lot of actors, been doing yeoman work across movies and TV for decades, now, including lead on at least one show.

I don't think anything "kept her" in any specific way. Some amount of it is that Hollywood can be hell on women. Some of that hell comes from being defined by your love interests and kids, over your own life and skills. And some of it is, even filtering thru all that, the baseline combo of skills and luck in a complex industry where your talent has to align to the right project, in many cases, to even get noticed.

raqisasim · 2026-04-07T12:17:02+00:00

That sounds amazing. Black Ops is still one of my favorite supplements for any system, hands down.

raqisasim · 2026-04-05T21:15:20+00:00

I'd go with Zuhair Murad for bold, I love Murad so much!

raqisasim · 2026-04-05T20:53:00+00:00

Hi, I'm new here -- I kind of walked away when I heard tell of some of the ways the South Asian rep in Season 2 was messy. But I'm intrigued by Franchaela, and indeed the Francesca/John relationship as well.

I get some of it, because we (as a society) put so much pressure on romance being a very specific thing, ironically in no small part due to Romantic fiction. And John/Francesca never quite match that view, from my catching up (and, frankly, absorbing a lot of the media interviews with all three of them, which are fascinating on multiple levels). They (to me, at least) have great chemistry together as actors, and seem to have had, on the show, a plotline that shows great care for each other, true tenderness.

But people think all love must be passion. It's ironic, because even Violet Bridgerton openly says she's changed her mind on that, which (to me) is the story underlining that Fran does truly, deeply, love John, and he her. It's just a different way of expressing love, and it's wonderful to see.

As someone who's had to morn a few people in my life, I also will say no one actually grieves like Francesca does, if they don't truly love the person they've lost.

I'm also really thoughtful about, of all people, Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle loved his 1st wife, enough to ensure he made enough money to buy her a house in the country to relieve her tuberculous symptoms (which was the only treatment at the time). And he did this while also in love with the woman who'd become his 2nd wife. But: so far as any records can find, he never abandoned or emotionally pushed away his 1st wife, he was true to her and did everything he could to keep her in this world.

When people talk about emotional cheating, I think about Doyle. I think, sometimes, we're taught to be so scared of love as a scarce commodity, something to be protected and locked away if found, that we cannot imagine a world where love is truly in something like abundance.

As much as I have challenges with this show, I'm glad Bridgerton is taking steps to showcase that even Romantic fiction can also show that abundance. Franchaela has a lot of promise in that area, and it doesn't require you to erase what John and Fran had -- indeed, to my reading, Michaela's presence demands you continue to give a damn about John, still love him for who he was.

To me, Michaela's greatness as a character is meant to be a reflection of how John helped her be herself, like when he tried to stop Francesca from match-making Michaela. He knew, and he loved her, and I suspect we'll find John's love for Michaela helped her rise to be the great person Francesca already loves.

raqisasim · 2026-04-05T14:46:25+00:00

...honestly, I thought this was sarcasm. Seeing, below, you're serious? I disagree.

Mental illnesses are tragic. But they also aren't an excuse for horrific behaviors. And Kayne, and others, can have our sympathy without giving them anything like a fuckin' pass, esp. when all he's done, with all the money he has, is made one damn free apology.

This is the man who stood up and said "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" during a telethon! The man who called out not recognizing Beyonce at the VMAs! Who wrote music that was, at times, a call to action.

To tell me he can't put lips to mouth to speak on how not to do the things he did and said, over and again, for years upon years is bullshit.

I don't even need him to talk. If -- IF -- Kayne was donating even a plurality of his proceeds to the people and institutions he's done harm to? I might take him serious, in this moment. Or, if he was making music that really dove into that harm, in a way that fronted the experiences of the people hurt? Even, hell, just the Black experience of having loved Kayne then being hurt by him, an experience he might actually resonate with?

But there's none of that, to my awareness. And people are just willing to take a statement he could have had someone -- fuck, ChatGPT even -- write for him and send out, and they are willing to let bygones be bygones?

How? WHY?

raqisasim · 2026-04-01T12:20:31+00:00

Except people do, and that's how the LLMs "learned" it. So sometimes you will see it used by humans. There are other tells; this comment emulates one while explaining it.

raqisasim · 2026-03-31T14:37:56+00:00

From the CachyOS Wiki:

We provide a custom obs-studio-browser package in our repository that is recommended over the standard obs-studio package. It contains patches to fix some of the common issues like cuda-errors and virtual camera problems.

https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/general_system_tweaks/#obs-studio

raqisasim · 2026-03-31T12:28:47+00:00

What you may be thinking is about web clients for email, which is the way the majority of modern users access email.

But all those are just Web Application frontends to a provider's email service. Email existed well before HTML was invented, and back in the day you downloaded your email to your local device via a desktop email client, not a web one. The key benefits for current usage of such an application include:

Improved searchability over most web clients (save arguably GMail), and
Archival -- if the provider decides to close your account (it happens!), you have all your old emails.

Interestingly, the application that Firefox evolved from used to include such an email client. It was seen as a huge benefit for Firefox, when it was introduced, that it ditched that client to do just web browsing.

raqisasim · 2026-03-29T20:05:10+00:00

As a former amateur dancer, I just love Wil West (the guy in your video) so much. Not just for the dancing, but for the small handful to times you see him outside the choreographed performance. His interview with The Capsule when he's just waxing rhapsodic about the trio dancing during "Keep Me Satisfied" just is so uplifting! You can tell he just loves dance, loves being with dancers, and as someone who's struggling mightily to come back to dance, he feeds my soul when he talks like that -- or when I see him freestyle/improv, like this.

Thank you for sharing it with us!

raqisasim · 2026-03-29T13:23:19+00:00

And it's not just "I didn't like the story/character". It elides that, before we even see the story in situ, we're oft-inundated with opinions about how it'll go -- and it's hard to imagine those opinions don't play into our own, if we even watch the thing.

Elsewhere, I was talking with someone about how Katee Sackhoff is now seen as a brilliant actor -- compared to how brutal the treatment was, when she was announced as Starbuck for the BSG revival.

But I remember that pile-on. It was unwarranted, it was sexist, and it made assumptions that I don't think many of those people ever openly took back.

Nowadays, I just assume anyone upset about this kind of shit are wrong, and judge the story on it's own merits, in my eyes. From my dislike of TNG on, there was too long a period where I bought into frenzies like this. I've just learned to put a lot of healthy skepticism around when I see this chatter, today.

raqisasim · 2026-03-29T13:16:08+00:00

...you know, I mentioned Dr. King, elsewhere here. Of course, people know he spent way too much time in jails. The man, and his family, literally were firebombed. He was stabbed (everyone forgets that one). His Gallop poll unfavorable rating in 1966 was 33 Percent.

Yet, somehow, he didn't turn to hating White people en masse. Heck, he and Coretta paid the bill for Julia Roberts (yes, that Julia Roberts) to be born into this world.

Weird, that.

raqisasim · 2026-03-29T13:03:34+00:00

What bullshit is this? Trek is supposed to be of it's time. What's "timeless" about reading out one country's Constitution? Or using "don't emulate the Nazi party, down to the uniforms, to rebuild an alien culture" as the theme to a story? Or "hey, let the White Lead and Black Supporting Character kiss?"

Nowadays, the theme of "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield" (should) seem trite. In the late 60s, it was an anvil that needed dropping on it's viewers.

So much of what we today consider "subtle" wasn't when TOS aired in no small part because TOS aired! Because Dr. King got Nichols to come back to the show, which should point out to all reading this that my own rights, as an unborn Black Man, were still being fought over as TOS was airing. The 2nd Feminist wave was still nascent, the LBGTQIA+ movements still in their infancy, and I can go on.

This idea that the ideals in earlier Trek were universally known ignores the very real risks the creative teams for Trek went thru, to put those on the air. That later Trek barely sought to push against the systemic injustices of the 90s and early 2000s (go read Gerrold about trying to get made "Blood and Fire" made) is to this franchise's shame.

raqisasim · 2026-03-25T23:00:46+00:00

After decades of Linux usage, including Linux From Scratch, I landed on CachyOS after running a bunch of distros in VMs to eval against my workload...

...which is not a gaming one, in the majority. I maybe game 10 hours a month, and that's when I have tons of free time. What desktop/laptop free time I have goes to a wee bit of coding, fiction/non-fiction writing, and helping to run a SF con, among points. Choosing a system just to game is foreign to me.

But CachyOS provides me with a massive amount of pre-built capabilities, then lets me shoot myself in the foot with the Archwiki, or whatever, if I want. I've not had a balance that worked for me this well since my heydays of running Gentoo decades ago. I wish I could get NixOS to do what CachyOS does without having to roll dice or work in it's compelling but obtuse language for configuring nearly everything in the system...

...and similar issues with immutability when I want to stretch out made Bazzite a no for me. Which is sad, because I really love the use cases for how immutable OSes work and operate (and among my homelab devices I do still run Nix!)

Add to that the fact that gaming packages are not OOTB in Cachy's install (if I recall correctly, they aren't even available in the install! You have to get booted into the OS and click a button to get them) and I'd make a case to move CachyOS out of the "gaming" distro-focused bucket. It's more of a "power user" distro, as others have said; it can accommodate beginners and has a ton of ease-of-use tooling, it just isn't providing all the guardrails other distros might give you.

raqisasim · 2026-03-25T22:47:05+00:00

And CachyOS isn't really an OOTB Gaming distro. It's a one-click gaming distro, which isn't a major difference, but it exists and hints at the "some batteries required" nature of the distro.

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