SlamDrag

joined 1 year ago
[–] SlamDrag@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Very happy with it. $400 MSRP feels right, I don't think I would feel so positively if it was more. I'm on vacation right now and using it a lot to wind down in the evenings.

[–] SlamDrag@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Twitter isn't and never was useful as an organizing tool. Arab spring was a failure. Twitter is actually more useful to the ruling class than not because it gives a way for the masses to expend it's restless energy without changing anything.

[–] SlamDrag@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

I use vanilla gnome. Dead simple, no nonsense, gets out of my way. Perfect DE for me.

[–] SlamDrag@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

As a non-technical user, I think if you have a modicum of technical knowledge it's easy to switch to Linux. But it still takes time and patience. I'm using Linux now on all of my devices (if you count Android as Linux). There is still a lot of idiosyncracy to the ecosystem but overall it's usable. I've found Vanilla OS to be a great experience overall. I had some troubles with Pop_OS! On my Nvidia GPU, that was because it's still using x11 and I use a 4k monitor with a 1080p monitor and needed fractional scaling. Haven't had any issues on Vanilla OS because it uses Wayland. But boy, I had a hard time figuring out what was going on and why my apps were blurry and games weren't displaying properly. Took a lot of googling and perseverance to figure it out, as I didn't know what a display server.

 

A master class in close reading, and a towering analysis of novelist Thomas Pynchon. Really good piece for being an essay published in a relatively laid-back periodical.

[–] SlamDrag@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

In terms of real harm to the rock, both permanent anchors and removable protection don't do much damage. It's mostly the aesthetics of permanent anchors being kind of ugly.

What is more damaging is the increased traffic to an area once it is bolted. Having to bring your own gear, and take it down afterwards becomes a barrier to entry that keeps wilderness low traffic. If you bolt a wilderness area, you can do things like make it permit only, but at the same time climbers are often known to just not get permits and climb anyways :). Then there is also the question of who's job it becomes to inspect and maintain the bolts. Ultimately, bolts only make sense in areas that are already high traffic, where park rangers are highly involved and safety is a real concern. In my mind, the only reason to bolt wilderness is to turn it into non-wilderness. That's maybe too pessimistic of an outlook, but it's the only way I can read this.

 

The rock climbing community has long found itself at odds with park rangers. Very rarely intentionally! But today there is a silent battle between a small group of climbers trying to reform the wilderness act to allow fixing permanent anchors to rock in the wilderness.

The use of fixed anchors, also called bolting, makes routes far more accessible to the average sport climber. Without fixed anchors, climbers must build their own removable anchors on the wall as they climb (called "trad climbing"). This is difficult enough that the majority of climbers won't do it, only the dedicated few. While fixed anchors in themselves do not have an environmental impact, any route that gets bolted in the wilderness will undoubtedly see a large increase in human activity that would harm the local flora and fauna. The Protect America's Rock Climbers act is a misnomer at best, lie at worst. There are already hundreds of bolted rocks within the US, with more than enough sport climbing to last anyone a lifetime. Furthermore, if anyone wishes to climb in the wilderness, they are allowed to, provided they are dedicated enough to climb it in the trad style. It is far more important to protect the wilderness that we have left than it is to create a few more pretty rock climbing routes.