uploaded April 19, 2018
odysee
youtube
Hey, hey, hey. Okay. Is this thing on? It looks like it's on, but where's my webcam? Maybe I should get one of those.
Thoughts on minimalist program? Not enough thoughts. Okay. So I figured I might as well do a livestream. Technically, if you look at—let me move this around. Sorry. I'm using OBS this time. Well, it was last time, but now I have this custom screen. So I threw a bunch of memes up just to try it out and figure out how it works. Anyway, one of my Patreon incentives a while back was to do livestreams if I reached $250 a month, so this is part of that. We just reached it yesterday or something like that, so I figured I might as well go ahead and do it.
I don't have any topics for this. I might have topics for it in the future. I'm not going to start livestreaming Fortnite or something like that. So I guess pretty much this time I can just answer questions. Oh, is the music still on? Jeez. Okay, let me get rid of that. Yeah, that's sort of annoying. It was the UNACO theme from Deus Ex. Oh, is it loud? Let me move this away. Yeah, I think it's right in my face.
Is there a GNU-approved PUBG ripoff? I doubt it. So yeah, pretty much just throwing this up there for regulatory compliance, but I'll answer whoever's question. Let me get the chat window. Where is the chat window? Okay. Where do you get your music from? The song that was playing was from the Deus Ex video game soundtrack, or whatever, from way back in the day. Let me scroll back and see if I missed any questions worth answering.
Luke, are you a furry? No, I'm not. Proprietary memes. Norse, Old Norse, North Germanic language. I don't know what about them. Let me scroll down to this. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, a couple people have asked: I had some stuff come up last week and I didn't do the Arch configuration video. I'm going to do that. I actually have it all planned out. I have the slideshow ready. I just need to record it tomorrow, so I'll probably be doing that.
Awesome versus DWM? I don't really have a strong opinion. I'd probably go with DWM, but I don't use it. People always ask me my opinions on window managers and stuff, and honestly I haven't used so many that I really have strong opinions about them. Pretty much all of them do the same stuff. It's just an issue of configuration. The reason I use i3 is because I happened to work out a configuration that deals with it, and transferring to DWM or something like that would be a lot of pain. So I might do it, but DWM doesn't really have many advantages over i3. I'm just used to i3.
I don't have any special thoughts about Old Norse or North Germanic languages. I never really studied them. Studying Icelandic is really common in formal syntax nowadays just because they have some interesting quirky things about them, like quirky case or whatever. But yeah, I've never really gotten into Germanic languages. I used to just study Romance languages and that was my thing. I honestly don't know that much about Germanic other than knowing English, and I have some good historical knowledge. Oh yeah, I studied Gothic too, but that's of course not North Germanic.
When are you starting the linguistics series? That's probably going to be at the end of this semester just because I actually have some stuff recorded already, but I might have to edit it. I'm sort of thinking about how to approach linguistics as a whole field, I guess. I really want to do videos on it, but it's hard to just start making them. Linguistics classes are taught in a very structured way usually, and I don't necessarily agree with that. Originally I was just going to do it according to that structure, but I sort of want to devise something of my own as a computer science student and as a non-linguist. Would looking at the basics of linguistics enrich my life in any way? I wouldn't do it just to do it. I mean, I didn't study linguistics to do it. Actually, I'll say I have a lot of distrust in people who get into linguistics just because they hear there's something interesting about it and they come from philosophy or something. Unless you don't really have any reason to study linguistics, don't force yourself to.
How can you seriously use i3 to get things done? Recently I had to write a thesis and read PDFs, write LaTeX, do stuff in MATLAB, and window managers just get in the way. I don't know. I'm used to it. I don't understand what the problem is. If you have multiple windows, I just get in the habit of using different workspaces or telling them to spawn on different workspaces or something like that. When I got into tiling window managers I was like, this is what I've always wanted. I'm so glad that this is here. I had no idea. But yeah, if it's not your thing it's not your thing. There's nothing wrong with that.
It's actually extremely similar to Old Norse. I guess he's talking about Icelandic. Depending on who you ask, Old North Germanic just has two languages. There's modern Scandinavian and then Old Norse, which is basically the same as Icelandic with some minor differences. But again, I don't know enough about the languages to have strong opinions on them other than that they exist and I know the basics for historical linguistics and stuff.
Thoughts on the Unabomber Manifesto? I don't know. Go read it. That's my thought. I remember last time we talked about it in the last livestream and then a bunch of people posted threads on G and Paul about how you should all read it because apparently people liked it.
Still using Void? No, I haven't used Void in a couple months. A lot of people think I'm still using Void. I have nothing against it. I just use Arch Linux. It's a little easier to work out than Void mainly. One example is this stream would be really hard to have on Void because I'd have to get PulseAudio running the way I wanted to. Of course, in order to then—well, actually I wouldn't necessarily need it for this screen—but if I'm recording from the desktop or something, that's nice to have anyway. Again, no strong preferences on Void, but I just don't use it.
Have I studied any form of occultism? No, not really. Best ThinkPad ever? I don't know. X200 or X220, whatever. Depends on how much you care about freedom or something.
I noticed that several of Nietzsche's works were listed as your favorites on your website. Where should I start with Nietzsche? That's a hard question. Nietzsche is hard to start with just because you really have to understand the social context of his writing, and a lot of it gets lost. He has this style that is basically a bunch of beating around the bush. So I almost want to say you could try anything and just read it. I will say there's one—I forget which book it is—but way back in the day I think H. L. Mencken translated a couple key works of Nietzsche, and I think there's one, maybe it's The Genealogy of Morals or maybe it's The Antichrist or something like that, but Mencken did an introduction. Mencken's preface is actually really good if you just want to get into Nietzsche. It might be nice to start by priming your brain with what Mencken wrote. I'm trying to actually—I might have it on this bookcase. Give me a second. I can't find it. But yeah, look up one of Nietzsche's works prefaced by Mencken. I recommend reading that and then maybe getting into it. It doesn't really matter what you read. You might want to read them in chronological order, but whatever.
What's the best building material for living out in the sticks, and why is it rammed earth? From my understanding that takes a lot of manpower. It's very labor-intensive.
Thoughts on private trackers? I've never used one. I don't really care.
Make your face bigger and get rid of the memes. Actually, I think I can just scroll over here and move that. Maybe I'll get rid of this meme. This meme is probably causing a bunch of bloat, so maybe I'll get rid of that. We don't need the CIA guy. Maybe I'll bring him back.
Did you go into formal logic? I'm not big into formal logic. In fact, I think—I don't want to say formal logic is a lot of the problem in modern linguistics, but I'll say the overcomplication of it is. A lot of people go into the realm of formal logic and then they make derivations and conclusions in that realm and then they take it to natural language and assume that it's something real. I think a lot of contemporary linguistics is overformalized in a lot of ways, and I don't necessarily like that. I have nothing against people who are formally inclined, but you just have to know that there are different things: a formal model does formal things and a nonformal model does nonformal things. A lot of people don't necessarily understand the difference. Actually, that's going to be part of my dissertation.
Are you going to be doing any YouTube collaboration? I don't know. I don't really know any YouTubers personally. I know there are a lot of people in the tech YouTube area that subscribe to my stuff and comment on my videos. Trip Code does. Kai Hendry does. Chris Opendenti does, but I don't really know those guys. And I'm also not big on, like, if I did something with someone, I'd want it to be in person.
Thoughts on Firefox Quantum? I've actually been using it recently. This chat window here is in Firefox Quantum. I've just sort of gotten used to it. Obviously all the old add-ons are gone, but I've sort of managed. I use one of those Vim add-ons and then Ad Nauseam, and that's about it.
Cure for baldness? Maybe I'm the wrong person to ask that. I will say if you're going bald, just shave it. Just shave it. This is what I tell everyone. This is what I wish I could tell myself back when I was 25 and balding, because a lot of you spend all this time trying to get your hair to look right or to make you look less bald. But I realized when I shaved my head, I look less bald now than I did back then just because it's a shaved head. It's like a different kind.
Zidnaf does linguistic stuff on YouTube. Yeah, I've seen his videos. I'm not downplaying him. He has sort of a Wikipedian knowledge of linguistics. It's not that he puts out bad content or has put up bad content in the past, and he's owned up to it when people correct him, so he's fine. He's an all right guy, and he's probably like 20 or something. He's really young. But I don't really have any reason to reach out to him. And I also feel weird reaching out to people who have a larger following than me. I don't know how big his is, but I feel like he's in the hundred-thousands of subscribers area, and he does his own thing.
What are my thoughts on Chomsky? Chomsky was a mistake? I don't know.
Ever tried Vivaldi? I thought you were talking about the musician. I was like, no. I didn't know if that was like an artist meme or something. No, I haven't tried Vivaldi. Isn't that proprietary? I don't even know. If it's proprietary, there's no reason for me to try it.
Do you block ads and trackers, or are you moral friending? I don't really consider not blocking anything moral friending. I think that's sort of the opposite. Ads are malicious in a lot of ways. A lot of people put internet ads where they don't really belong, where they don't really need them. These huge corporations have negligible internet bills, but they also want to have ads. It's just sort of silly.
After the forum thread, does Jordan Peterson make any more sense to you? It's not like he didn't make sense. I just wanted to see if there was something behind him that I didn't understand. And I'm getting the feeling that there isn't a lot there. I understand why people like him because he's this kind of symbolic, somewhat appropriate way for people who don't want to rock the boat to not buy in with leftist opinions or something like that. But he strikes me as really sort of basic in a lot of ways. My opinion didn't really change about it.
Vid with Brian Lunduke? That's funny. I'm not against doing something with Brian. I'm definitely not against it. I think I said this on the forum once: me and him just have totally opposite personalities, even though we're sort of interested in the same things. The way I think of it is I'm sort of a predator and he's like a prey. You know what I mean? I feel like he would be the one who wouldn't want to work with me. I'm too hot to handle or something. That sounds really silly, but if he contacts me, I'll do something with him, as long as it's not too silly or something.
Is there anything to the theory that Latin is a more logical language? I don't know what that means, a logical language. I think that's a meme. Not really. I don't like the people who are like, "Every language is equally complex and equally logical," because that's just meaningless. But I don't think there's any sense in which a language is more logical. In terms of complexity, some languages are complex and some languages are simple. But in terms of logicness, I don't know how you know one language is more logical than another. It doesn't mean anything.
Maybe I should get Terry on the stream. He's not too hot for me to handle.
Best if I contact Wendle from L1 Tech? I sort of have the same idea with everyone. My view is my channel is a lot more—I mean, I'm less of a shill. I don't want to call anyone a shill. Some people are, but especially guys at L1 Tech, they're not shills or anything like that. They're just more conventional, like let's present Linux and talk about how nice things are and oh it's fun and blah blah blah. Obviously that's what I'm doing partially. Not for Linux's sake or something like that. I'm not a Linux evangelist. But I'm just a little edgier than a lot of the channels, and I'm not going to reach out to them. If they reach out to me, I'll do something for them.
Did you filter your water with Alexa Pure water filters? It'd be a shame if you became gay.
Also, can you read Var books yet? I don't have any of Var's books. I do have his RPG. I bought that, which is interesting. I've never actually played it. I've sort of leafed through it. I've watched some games, but I've never played it myself.
Where do you see yourself on the political spectrum? I think people can probably figure that out.
Are you still in Georgia by any chance? No. I'm in Arizona right now. I'm going to be moving back to the Southeast pretty soon. I'll probably be in Georgia. I'm applying to different jobs for while I dissertate or whatever, which may or may not happen.
Where do I see myself on the autism spectrum? Is Trip Code your waifu? Oh, Jesus, kids these days. I keep reminding myself I need to ban the word on my channel. Best way to learn a language by yourself? Just do it. You have to force yourself to do drills and stuff like that. Having a nice book to work off is obviously recommendable, but you just have to get in the mindset of doing it. When I was learning Latin, for example, it's not like there's anyone who speaks Latin for me to talk to, but I just got in the mindset where everything I thought I had to think in Latin. I had to force myself: how do I say this in Latin? How do I pronounce this or that? So yeah, you just have to get in a mindset of doing it.
What do you know about Albanian? Nothing special. A lot of people study it for Indo-European just because it's a less valuable language for historical linguistics, even though it's an Indo-European language, because it borrows so many Romance words, so many Latin words and stuff. It's not attested until very recently, so we don't know too much of it. Way back opinions on Hans-Hermann Hoppe? I've never actually read—actually, you know what? I think I did read something of his. He's just the meme, you know. I don't have anything against him, of course. I'm familiar with his work, but I don't really think of him as someone I would treat as an archetype. I think of him as more of a meme than an intellectual, which I'm sure he doesn't like. But it was funny back in the day to see him at all these libertarian conferences and, as the memes go, talking about physical removal.
What do you think about different keyboard layouts like Dvorak? Back when I was more autistic in high school, I think I forced myself to try and learn Dvorak. I don't think they're sort of a meme. It's funny because it's like, oh, if you can totally deprogram all your muscle memory and learn this alternate keyboard layout, you might be minorly more efficient in typing. It's a meme.
Thoughts on Steve Kaufman? I don't remember who that is. The name sounds familiar. Do I have a role model? No, I don't. And I don't recommend having one. Having a role model is like reading self-help books or something.
The length of your Vimrc determines your level of autism. How autistic are you? I'm 182 currently. Let's see. My Vimrc is 266 lines. My i3 config is 454 lines, which, geez.
How do you feel about Neovim? I've never really used it. Did someone say something about Esperanto? I do not condone Esperanto. I'll just say that.
Opinions on Richard Spencer? I don't mind him. I don't think he's a big deal. He was sort of made into the meme by the media. I never heard of the guy until he got on news channels and stuff like that. I'm not downplaying him. I'm nothing really against the guy. He doesn't really stand out that much. He sort of feels like a forced meme.
Bashrc length? My Bashrc is only 157 lines. Thoughts on Lojban? No, that. All constructed languages—those just don't do that. It's a waste of your time. The whole concept of conlangs is just ridiculous. It's hard for me to even explain why that is. It's just a totally useless waste of mental energy when you could be learning another real language that has some kind of use or literary history. Constructed languages, and my views aren't necessarily aberrant among linguists. Everyone thinks they're sort of a meme.
Would I participate in internet blood sports for us? I'm not against it. I'm not big into petty arguments. If someone invited me on a stream, I might do it, but I'm just not the kind of person who gives that much of a damn about arguments and insulting people. I don't really watch that stuff. I know it's really popular nowadays, but I'm not really big into it.
If you actually want the auto preview for LTE, just look up Vim live tech preview on GitHub. Or I think if you go to my website, lukesmith.xyz/law, I have a guide for how to install that if you don't just have Arch or something like that.
Thoughts on Bruce Hayes of UCLA? I'm sort of curious how you know. Yeah, he's one of my academic grandfathers. Mike Hammond is one of my advisers. He has a bunch of interesting work that partially inspired some of the stuff I do now, where prosody drives syntax and stuff like that. I haven't read any of Bruce Hayes's books or anything like that. He is coming to Arizona next fall, I think. We're having a conference and he's one of the invited speakers. But I've never met him myself.
When's the last time you played a game? Actually, funny you say that, I was playing a game today, which is extremely rare. I was playing Zero AD, which is just like a Linux Age of Kings clone, which looks a lot better. Well, it's not exactly like Age of Kings, but it's basically like it.
Have you studied Japanese, and what do you think of it compared to Latin languages? I haven't really studied Japanese. Are you wearing a Casio? Yes. Did you ever give Emacs a try? Yeah, I haven't done a follow-up video to the Emacs thing just because I'm not going to use it. A lot of people gave me some good videos, good tutorials or whatever, and I might do a video on that, but Emacs is for a kind of workflow that I just don't have. I'll probably do a video on why that is.
Watching any movies lately? Actually, you know what? I feel like I did watch some movie. Maybe I should check my downloads. I'm not big into media, of course. I'll watch stuff every once in a while, but you know.
Could you try Skyrim on your ThinkPad X220? I don't know. Possibly. Obviously not on Linux. I don't think it runs on Linux, but whatever. Minecraft server when? I don't know if I'll have a Minecraft server. I have played Minecraft, even on this computer, I think.
What's a funny joke you heard lately? I don't know. I don't have any. Red pill me on your languages. What do you want me to say? There's nothing to say about Uralic languages. I don't know any of them. I don't know the grammar of any of them. Maybe distantly related to Indo-European languages. I can't tell you anything special.
Does Casio watches have proprietary software? I don't think they really have any software. And of course in Stallman's view it's funny how Richard Stallman sort of justifies some of the more ridiculous things about his worldview, where like, "Oh, this microwave runs proprietary software, so what are you going to do about it?" And his metric is like, "Well, if you can't update it, it doesn't actually matter," which I think is totally arbitrary because it can still be just as malicious.
Opinions on Romanian language? Nothing much about it. I've done some work on Romanian, and when I did Romance languages I worked on it a little bit. I was about to write my thesis on Romanian vowel shifts and stuff like that, but that's too specific.
Can someone from Europe become a college teacher in the US without much hassle? If you have a PhD, I don't think it'd be a problem at all. If you just want to teach at a community college and you have a master's, that might be a little more difficult. I'm not quite sure. But if you have a PhD, you're totally fine. If you just have a master's or a BA, you may be able to teach at a community college if you're—well, they're probably not going to like it, but they might give you a visa to come over.
How do you feel about the fact that humans will soon be made obsolete by computers? Yeah, don't count on it. Minecraft is a symptom of a dying nation when all men turn inward, wasting their creative energy, and civilization collapses. That's not untrue. There was one time—there's this guy, Primitive Technology, who has this channel where he builds a bunch of stuff in the forest, a hut, a building made of bricks or mud or something like that. And someone posted a comment once that was like, "Wow, it's like Minecraft in real life." And someone was like, "Nah, that's just called real life, man." That's what Minecraft is. It's like a way of feeling very productive without actually doing anything.
Luke, I installed Larsbs and doing Control-Shift-X moving the arrow keys doesn't work. Control-Shift-X. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, it doesn't work because I didn't set a binding to that. I don't know what you're thinking about.
Okay, we're moving a little fast. Nick Land with primitive characteristics. Luke, do any of your machines have SSD? What was your first reaction to using Linux on an SSD? Yeah, all the computers I use on a daily basis have their OS on SSDs. I'm very anti-consumerist with most technology stuff: don't waste your time on a super modern processor unless you have a workstation or you're a hardcore gamer or something, which you shouldn't necessarily be. But when it comes to SSDs, SSDs are a good investment. I recommend getting them. They make a huge difference in boot time and usage time. Now I can barely even use computers not on SSDs. It just seems so slow and annoying.
So you just described all video games. Yeah, that's fair.
Have you ever given Gentoo a shot, or did you not want to go through the process of moving your configs over? I actually installed Gentoo a long time ago. I never actually ran it, but I installed Gentoo before I installed Arch. It's a funny story. It was one of those examples of me realizing—this was when I first started using Linux. I saw all the memes and I was like, I'll install Gentoo. Of course, it was a painstaking process. I finally installed the whole thing, booted into it, and I logged into the blank terminal, and I was like, well, what do I do? How do I get a desktop? How does that work? I didn't know. I installed it, and I didn't know enough to actually start using it. So I don't know, maybe I'll try it sometime.
Whatever button is the shutdown binding? The shutdown binding is Super-Shift-X. That's what it is. It should have a confirm prompt now.
Do you keep a boot USB stick just in case things hit the fan? Actually, not. I don't. Maybe I shouldn't. I have occasionally thought of taking minimalism maybe a little too far and just moving my entire computer to basically a USB and just taking it wherever and running it on other people's computers. But, you know—
You said that your Linux videos are meant to show how cool things in Linux. Have you thought about doing similar videos for linguistics instead of uploading lectures? Officially speaking, I don't think of my linguistics content as content. I put up lectures just because I happen to record them and I figure why not put them up. But I have no illusion that any of my subscribers will get anything from any of those, because most of those are just graduate-level, very particular problems in formal linguistics that aren't necessarily interesting to other people. So yeah, eventually I will put up linguistics videos. It looks like it might be at the end of this semester. I have some stuff recorded. I might have to do some editing and stuff.
You're not minimalist unless you've used Alpine. Yeah, I've thought about using Alpine. But most of this autistic minimalism and minimizing the packages you have installed is sort of a meme.
Do you play online games? No, not really. What do you think about the ThinkPad T500? I've never used them. That's true. One of the things about having this YouTube channel is people make this assumption that I've tried every piece of hardware and every bit of software and I have all these really strong opinions about them. I really don't. Most of the stuff that I've used and feel confident enough to have opinions about, I'll make videos on eventually. Everything else, I don't have an opinion on when it comes to technology or whatever. Keep in mind I've only been using Linux like two or three years.
Have you ever tried BSD? No, I haven't. Why not just do a second channel just for linguistics so you don't have to worry about subscribers? Because ultimately I sort of think of my channel as mostly technology. That's just happenstance. It's been what I've been doing recently. I reserve the right to do whatever I want on my YouTube channel.
Happy Israeli Independence Day. Oh boy. Is it Israeli Independence Day? I don't even know. Happy weekly Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Thoughts on Brian Lunduke? I think we talked about him before. We just have very opposite personalities. I'll give him a little dance every once in a while, but none of it's super serious. I'm open to showing up on his show if he wants it, but I'm not going to contact him. It's his job to contact me if he wants.
What's my favorite anime? I'm not—I don't condone anime.
How the heck did you get such a channel name as Luke Smith? I didn't. My official channel handle is Luke Smith XYZ. You can look on YouTube and look up Luke Smith and a bunch of other Luke Smith channels are going to show up just because my channel is still like a personal account. A lot of people make a separate channel account that has different info, and I never did that. I still use my personal account. So that's why I'm still named Luke Smith, and I think I could name myself Luke Smith. There doesn't have to be just one name, but at the back end my YouTube name is Luke Smith XYZ. So if you type in youtube.com/c/lukesmithxyz, it'll come up.
Bokunopic. Do you shampoo my beard? No, I actually don't. Well, I used to shampoo my beard when I first shaved because I still had shampoo, but now I have no reason to own shampoo whatsoever. I will clean my beard with soap and stuff, but you know.
Notice you sometimes say your a's like a and install. Yeah, I don't know. That might be a southern thing. I think I just have very back a vowels before L's or other liquids and stuff like that. But I don't really have a very—there are some aspects of my accent that can place where I come from, but I have a pretty generic East Coast accent, outside of a couple things.
What are these retracted messages? Does this mean the guy said Torx or something? I don't even know.
Have you ever encountered any resistance in your discipline from any SJW types who found out about your worldview? Yeah, that's basically everyone I work with. Imagine how that's like. I'm probably going to do a big expose once I'm done with my PhD on just the amount of crap that I've had to put up with since being here. Even before I had this YouTube channel, people can just smell dissent. It's like, oh god, he doesn't smell like a cuck, there's something wrong with him. And I had to put up with a bunch of crap, and it just goes on and on. But I'm not going to talk about that until I'm officially out of the program, just because it's a pain. If you're someone—unless you are a turbo cuck—you shouldn't be working in universities. You shouldn't be working in the bureaucracy. You should be having a real job. You should get your life in order and be independent, because it's not the place for you. A university is like a church for insane gas liberals. It has no other purpose other than the nominal stamp of you have a degree, which doesn't even mean that much anymore. So I don't condone it. If you're thinking about it because you see stuff I do about, oh yeah, he's a PhD student, maybe I should do that, don't do that. Don't do it. Look out for yourself.
You telling me you're not woke? What am I? There's nothing I know that I'm not woke about. What do you mean by a real job? A job where you don't have to get paid by the government because what you're doing isn't actually something that people would pay money for. Like being a linguist, which has no social function. No one will be improved by that. No one is going to pay money for you to do that. I mean, granted, there are people in very specific situations who have to be translators or something, but the idea of formal linguistics is not a real job. It is something that, like, the only reason most jobs in university exist is just because people have convinced the government that that is a good investment of taxpayer dollars, or really it's not even that.
It's hard to underestimate how insane it is at a university. There's this narrative that a bunch of conservative conservatives have where it's like, "Oh, those universities, they're just a bunch of liberal professors." But you don't understand how conspiratorial and how organized it is, and how thin the veil of pretense about that is. It's really crazy when you see it from this side. AI running government? Let's hope that never happens. Probably won't. If you're a physics or a math PhD, you're still going to have to put up with the same stuff. Probably less, but the problem is not necessarily the people who harass you on a daily basis, which will happen. If you live in a department focused on the hard sciences or something like that, you might get less of that, but it's not worth the effort.
Make your face bigger on the screen. Damn it. I gotta save room for the me actually. Maybe I could move the memes. Lars 2.0 is coming out. There are a couple reasons I haven't put it out recently. It'll be coming out, I don't know, by the summer or something like that. Paul is always right. Yes. Have you redpilled anyone IRL? Yeah. Do you have a girlfriend? Not really. Not officially. What do you think of Paul Joseph Watson? I think he's a meme. People will occasionally email me asking what I think about these sort of milktoast sinite people, and if you like them that's fine, but you're probably just on your way to something bigger and that's why you still like them.
Christ, how am I going to—I don't even remember what I named all these things. Oh, wait. That's that. No, we'll keep that. And then get rid of this. Move this over here. Make my face bigger. All right. Is that—are you guys happy now? Floors. Floor is still proprietary software. Is there any Vegas-like software you know about, Kaden? I missed that comment, but I'm not really big on video editing myself. I used to use Blender for a bunch of stuff, but I'm not really big into video editing. I think you should pretty much avoid it if you don't need to do it. A lot of my videos are organized in that way. But Kdenlive is usually what people recommend. I've never really gotten into it. I used to use Blender, though.
Where do I go to learn about Luke Smith's worldview? Is there a site about my worldview? I don't think so. Trump, yes or no? That's not a yes or no. It depends on what the alternative is. Trump is what Trump is. There's not really that much to say about it. Trump, the fact that he happened, is very fortunate. But I think a lot of people had very high expectations. There's a bunch of people memeing about 4D chess, like every stupid thing he does is 4D chess, but the reality is he's playing 4D chess with you, like people on the far right. You got to be careful about him. So I think you have to treat Trump as a force of nature that you just have to sort of get used to. You have to sort of understand how to co-opt his energy.
I didn't know about Stix Hexenhammer running for governor. That's funny. What do you think about Steven Crowder? Again, same thing. Did you feel inferior when you first shaved your head? I felt weird looking at yourself in the mirror, but yeah, I don't look back and be like, "Oh, I shouldn't have done that." It was great. When are you going to do a video on Hackintosh? Don't count on that. There is a—I might actually come across a MacBook one or two. I forget what it is. And possibly you can install Libreboot on those things. But that would be the closest thing I do. Have you taken the bog pill yet? Man, bog posting is like so not even funny. But whatever. I mean, thank you for liking the answer. I don't remember what answer you were talking about.
Will you become fit? Yeah, I need to look at how not fit I am. I mean, I'm not fat, but I'm a little too skinny. ZFSB, I don't whatever. It doesn't matter. This turned into a Paul room. Lol. Are there any stickers on my ThinkPads? No. Although Trip Code sent me a couple of stickers and I actually put one of them. I put a MediaGoblin sticker on my laptop, just to remind me to start a MediaGoblin server. Are you a manlet? In fit terms, yes, because I'm 5'11", but of course in the normal world I'm normal height, slightly above average. But yeah, I'm a manlet on fit. That's actually the meme in our department. A lot of the guys are really tall. They're like 6'2" or something. And since I'm just barely over average height, I'm like the shortest guy. So it's just a meme. Actually, no, I'm not the shortest guy, but I just sort of ignore people shorter than me. That sounds bad.
Ever heard of Murdoch? Yes. Don't think they're on YouTube anymore, but I've watched some of their stuff. They're the ones with the beast black guy and a couple other top-tier memes. What's your opinion on Mastodon? A lot of people want to make FLOSS alternatives to social media sites, and in the abstract that's fine. But I just don't like social media sites. I think the whole concept of formalizing social relations is peak bugman. It's like Minecraft for your social life. Why'd you go without internet at home for a long time? Was it a conscious choice or was it the result of not having access? Sort of both. I moved to a place and I ordered internet and they didn't show up, and I was like, well, am I going to order it again? I didn't have many choices. I had like two internet service providers to choose from and they didn't show up. They didn't actually get the internet going, and I was like, what the hell is all this? So I actually just thought maybe I'll just go without internet, and that was it.
Did you get to do the Emacs videos? No, I haven't done another Emacs video. I think I mentioned it before, but yeah, I'll talk about it again. I'm not going to use Emacs. I'll probably do a video talking about it again. YouTube isn't social media. It's not bi-directional in the way that social media is. I mean, well, it sort of is in that obviously I'm doing a stream with my subscribers right now, but YouTube is more like individual people put up content and people come to consume it. It has a social media aspect, but it's not really a social media site in the same way. Can I share my meme folder? That's a big—I don't know how big my meme folder is. Give me a second. My meme folder is about four gigs, which is a lot, but damn European style socialists. If only we knew where they were. What does he mean by this, guys?
Thoughts on Dugan? I don't know enough about his works to have a strong opinion. How do I fix my GNU/Linux depression? Depression is a meme. Not in the sense that it doesn't exist, but depression is just caused by you being in a shitty situation in your life and you have to physically separate yourself from that situation. That's the cure to any kind of depression really. Even maybe a month or so ago, I was a little depressed. It's something that happens. But you just got to be like, okay, what am I doing in my daily life that is not giving me feedback for achieving stuff? That's what it has to be. So you just have to put yourself in a different situation.
I had to choose—I had two service providers to choose from—is against net neutrality. Really makes you think. Net neutrality was in place back when I had two service providers. I mean, the red pill on net neutrality ultimately is it doesn't make a difference either way. But there are good reasons to think if anything, especially at the margins of society, not having net neutrality is a lot better. You can refer to my other video on that, but whatever. It's not a people don't even talk about it anymore because all these disaster scenarios just didn't happen. So it's like, oh, well, never mind. Would you share your wallpaper folder? I have my wallpaper folder on GitHub. You can check that out. What do I think about Nasim Agdam? Oh, that's funny. Would a video on your origins in the GNU/Linux expertise be a possibility? Something about what made you abandon Windows, prefer free software, and so on. Windows 10 came out. That was one of the last shoving points I guess.
Thoughts on Jews? We can't talk about Jews. It's YouTube. Am I furry? No, I don't know. Actually, speaking of which, I'm a little cold. Might get a little fuzzy now. University is cancer. That's true. GNU/IFF. You can talk about the G's. Just say what you like about them. Duh. What do I like about Jews? I'll have to think about that. You're not likely to be robbed by Jewish people. That's a good thing about Jews. That's one nice thing. Are you going to upload the stream? Are you going to pull a Lunduke? I have nothing to hide. So the stream should upload automatically after this is done. If not, I hope this is—oh, I don't know if I'm recording this on my computer, but whatever. Virgin sip versus the Chad Gulp. Yeah, that's right. One of the things about having my beard, I don't know what exactly it is, but it's really the mustache. I think it's impossible for me to drink from something like this without spilling it everywhere.
The 4 GB of meme folder isn't the problem. It's what the content of the meme folder is, which might be questionable. So I'm not going to do that while I'm employed by the University of Arizona or something like that. Would you support the idea of Facebook being bought by a FOS company? It's not an issue of me supporting it or not. Would it happen? I don't think so. What are you going to do when you finish linguistics? Have a cabin in the woods, be self-sufficient, stuff like that. Literally full g four gigs of happy merchants. How big is your degenerate content folder? I don't have a degenerate content folder. I used to have a folder in my meme folder of attractive girls, just because if you post something on 4chan and if you want people to actually read it, you have to post a picture of a thick girl or something. But even that I was like, "Oh, that's too degenerate. I can't even—" I mean, they weren't even nude. But they were just attractive women. But I was eventually like, "Oh no, it's too degenerate to even have that. So I shouldn't even." So I deleted it.
How big is my dock folder? Good meme. Attractive girls are a meme. That's not what—oh jeez. Are the attractive girls 2D? No, of course not. It's not porn. It's just, you know, tummy pics. No. Will you keep uploading once you have a cabin in the woods? Yeah, of course. It'll probably be I record a video where maybe me configuring i3 or maybe me building a chicken coop, and then I'll take my bike down to the public library and use internet there and upload it. It's not porn, just so you know. How do you get a cabin in the woods? You go build one. You got to get land, which costs money, but you can save up. Depending on where it is, it could be several thousand dollars, and get the materials for a cabin. That could be a couple thousand. But ultimately, I think you could basically have a basic self-sufficient house out in the middle of nowhere for the equivalent of how much it costs to go to school for a year at some university.
Tiny house or cabin? I hate the term tiny house. It's just such a meme. I mean, I'll have some kind of shelter. It doesn't really matter. Why wait to finish linguistics if your endgame is in a wood? Because might as well. What I'm probably going to do is write my dissertation in the middle of nowhere. I already own 22 acres of land and I'm 18. Congratulations. That's good. That's more than most bug people will have in their entire life. Do other people's political views make you feel sad? The worst is sort of cringe, I guess. The people I cringe at are either liberals who everyone hates or people who sound like I used to sound 10 years ago, and I was like, oh man, that's sort of cringey.
Do I like Tolkien? Not especially. I read Lord of the Rings when I was a kid but didn't have a huge influence on me. But I think as a cultural artifact, Tolkien is really hard to supersede in a lot of ways. Which work can you even do with linguistics besides teaching at a university? Not very much. My concerns were mostly theoretical at the time, and my concern back then was just teaching at a university. But I think that's going to be a huge pain, so I'd rather not do that. My dissertation is going to be a lot more philosophical. That sounds stupid, but it's going to be a lot more general, like a more general philosophy of science. I'll maybe do a video on it as I'm actually writing this. What's my PDF reader of choice? MuPDF. That's what I mean. Moo PDF. Never actually thought about how to pronounce it. MuPDF. Whatever.
He's an ancap now. I'm not really an ancap. I don't really disagree with ancaps on much of anything in the sense of specific policy things, but I don't really view myself as one of them. There's a lot of people who are ancaps I just don't necessarily think are on a good wavelength. I recommend people be familiar with their works. Reading Rothbard is good, but I don't really consider myself an ancap myself. What's its appeal of linguistics to you, the study of the concept of language or languages themselves? I don't really think of there as being a difference. I think people who do are questionable, in the sense that there are some people who are into linguistics just because they're pseudo philosophers and they want to have big pronouncements about the world. For whatever reason they glom on to linguistics. But yeah, I don't really think of them as being different.
How often do you get recognized in public? Not that often. I got recognized last week or something like that. It's not something too common. You have to think about it like how many people actually watch my channel at my university. I just have no gauge of that. But every once in a while someone will be like, "Oh, I know you," or say hello or something. And I'm sure there are lots of people who don't even say hello, but they recognize me.
Thoughts on Christianity. Oh, that's a long thing. It depends on what perspective that is. I can't answer that in a live stream. I'm not even want to say I'm not against it, but whatever. MuPDF is the way to pronounce it. Will you come back to Lookout Mountain? Didn't get a chance to say, "Oh, yeah. I'll probably be around Lookout Mountain at some point." Don't fall for capitalism. Yeah. No, I don't—I think ANCAPs get a lot of the stuff right, like they get the core principles right, but I think they—this is too much for a live stream, too. I don't really endorse the phrase capitalism. I think of myself as being anti-capitalist. And of course anti-communist, you know, the dichotomy. Communism and capitalism are basically the same in that they both degrade holistic values and they're all about materialism. I object to both of those, but a lot of ancaps and people who are right libertarians—I can't really say this about left libertarians—but a lot of people who are right libertarians, I think, are on the right track.
Rothbard has a bunch of hang-ups, but I think he's fine. Hayek, I think people think of him as being sort of moderate, and that's true in the context. He was sort of, well as Ho puts it, he's a moderate social democrat, which is just memeing. But Hayek, if you look at his works, a lot of his works are a lot more reactionary than people understand. He really got at the core. The concept of spontaneous order, I think when you take it to its logical conclusion, is pretty substantial. I was going to answer this one: language. What languages are most interesting to you? Have you studied others in depth outside of Latin? Yes. After I studied Latin, I did languages descended from Latin, Romance languages and stuff like that. I also studied Greek, a little bit of Sanskrit. I don't really know even Greek. My Greek isn't as good anymore, but I also know Chinese. That was part of my major in college. Of course, I didn't learn anything in school; I taught it to myself.
Why am I using a coat? Well, it's not a coat. It's actually just a throw. I have the AC on, and that's just because whenever I'm recording, I turn the AC on so if my roommate comes home, he doesn't get bothered. So I'm literally just using the AC to create noise so he doesn't overhear, even though he's probably watching this eventually, but whatever. Also 28 degrees Celsius. He fell for the Celsius meme. Do a vid on my political views. It might take more than a vid. I think I'm a lot more likely to write something on my political views just because it requires a little bit more than that. How much of Eve have you read? Actually, none. I've never read anything by Eve. Americans especially have confused the market economy with capitalism. I think that's fair. I believe in a decentralized market economy and localism, but capitalism is just bad branding and it puts the emphasis at the wrong place.
Is there any more brain position than I object to both communism and capitalism? I agree with you in that I do object to them, but for different reasons than other people who say that do. Now if I have to choose, I'm going to choose capitalism because there's less stuff in it. People on the right, like right libertarians, are immunized to a bunch of stupidity. They're very much against social engineering in a way that left libertarians aren't necessarily. I was going somewhere with that, but too much scrolling. Lil Rothbard when you own your—yeah, Rothbard. So there's of course the owning your children thing, which is Rothbard just trying to apply his philosophy. What I don't like about right libertarians is the praxeology stuff where you autistically derive an entire worldview. That's not what's important for me. The other thing about Rothbard is his Austrian business cycle theory. Because it existed, he had to say some funny things like fractional reserve banking is just inherently exploitative and you can't do it even when people consent to it because it basically caused depressions in the Austrian business cycle theory. So Rothbard has his own problems, but I think Rothbard is definitely worth reading for people who are interested.
Given that global warming is real, how would localized markets deal with the problem? Well, actually now that I'm thinking about Rothbard, I'd refer you to people like him on it in that really if you have a good understanding of something like property rights or private property rights, back in the day when people polluted or did something potentially dangerous like contribute to global warming, it was understood that that was a violation of someone else's property and that's something that's legally actionable. Rothbard, again, I'm not necessarily endorsing him, but this is just one possible explanation. Rothbard had the idea that really we should view pollution as a kind of violation of property and of an assault on other people. Do I speak Spanish? Yeah, I do. The right libertarian is immunized against all dancers. Don't fall for the lisp meme. Have you watched red Milton Friedman? Yeah. He's a little milktoast, but does soy milk give you titties? Well, it doesn't give me titties because I don't drink it. Jordan Peterson is a pseudo-pseudo intellectual. Well, technically speaking he is an intellectual because he's a professor, but yeah, I agree sort of. Have I read Proudhon? Yeah. Thoughts on fractional reserve banking? I don't have anything against it because I'm not Rothbard and I don't have some autistic ideology that needs to think that it's the cause of all problems.
One of the things about right libertarians is I think there is such a thing as effective demand, what the Keynesians call effective demand, and a lot of right libertarian economic theory consists in denying this or at least theories of depression. That forces them to think that fractional reserve banking is total evil, even if you're totally honest about what you're doing. So anyway, I have nothing against fractional reserve banking. But I don't trust banking. I do have my money in a bank, but it's not a big thing. Is using arrow keys in Vim a sin? Yes, it is. Please do not do that. My room looks messy. Buy a $10 personality test so I can tell you to clean. Do you like Go as a language? I've never written anything in Go. Sorry if I'm a brainlet for that, but keep in mind I'm not really a programmer. No, I don't speak Lojban. And whichever of you is asking that question about Chinese and Japanese, say it in Chinese or English or something because I can't read that. All these deficient Japanese characters, they just don't make any sense.
I don't like having to switch out of insertion mode to move around with H. Well, make sure to map Escape to Caps Lock and you'll be fine. My professor uses arrow keys in Vim. Oh god. Vim is not a difficult thing to do, guys. I don't know why people get worried about it so much because it's not difficult. Just do Vimtutor, then Vimtutor again, then just play around. Thoughts about monism in what context? That could mean a lot of different things. Thoughts on semiotics? What kind of semiotics? People don't really do that in linguistics per se anymore. So is Trip Code half Chinese or half ch? I don't know. I have no clue what he is. He could be 56% for all I know. Bundle or pathogen? I don't have a strong opinion. I use pathogen. Oh man. There are people actually endorsing using the arrow keys. No, you should never use the arrow keys. Listen kids, this is why you don't use arrow keys, because you're doing your stuff over here. Why should I take my hand all the way off the keyboard, move all the way down here, and then go to the arrow keys, then do like one or two presses, then move all the way back? That's ridiculous. It doesn't even matter even if technically it saves you key presses, which of course it doesn't save you key presses. It shouldn't matter. What Vim plugins do you use? I don't even remember. I'm not really big on them. Most Vim plugins, the thing about Vim plugins is most of them are written by people who don't know how to use Vim, so they do things that Vim does by default.
Do you have issues with Ranger switching back from the Pywall color scheme after reboot? Well, now I don't because I don't really use Pywall anymore, but I don't think I had that problem when I was using URXVT. You got to make sure you're using the right terminal. How often do you have to Google a Vim command? Never really. For basic stuff, every once in a while I'll look up the more advanced commands, but the basic movement and stuff like how to perform an operation on a regular expression, I might look that up. Of course, not using Google, but using some less BS search engine. But yeah, I don't really need to search anything like that. Once you get into Vim, it's all muscle memory. Tea or coffee? I don't drink coffee. Sterner, never read his stuff. I don't know. He's a could-be meme. I mean, he definitely is a meme. Best search engine? I use duck.go now. I used to use Search, however you pronounce that.
Did you ever have issues with URXVT displaying Unicode? Yes, that is one thing it basically cannot do. That's one of the reasons I use ST now. There are reasons for it not being able to handle Unicode, but they're basically unfixable.
Google says XML, HTML, and CSS are programming languages. Lol. Oh jeez. How do you feel about this left-wing political propaganda? Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. My dad is actually a programmer. Keep in mind I'm not, but my dad actually is a programmer. And it wasn't until I really started getting into Linux that we started talking about computer stuff. But I mentioned to him that people nowadays write, like when you take Programming 101 you learn Python, and he was so confused. He was like, what, Python? This is a scripting language. I had to tell him that there are actually people who write programs in Python. Why would you do that? It's not, it's just an interpreted language. Why would you do something so ridiculous? And he's not wrong. You're going to have these extremely slow programs. Some of my favorite programs like Ranger and Cube Browser are written in Python, but they're visibly slower and more painful. Man, you guys are falling for memes. Just write in C or something. I don't even write in C anymore because I'm not really programming anything. It's all an issue of abstraction. If you want to pound something out to do something really simple, just write it in Python. But if you want to make a program that runs well and is for long-term use, it's closer to assembly code. It's less understandable to the human brain but more understandable to the computer. That's a very stupid way of putting it, but you get what I mean. Fun fact, C is worse than assembly. Well, fun fact, most languages have their place. But the idea of writing entire programs in Python is sort of a statement of where we are as a culture. Again, nothing against it, but it is sort of funny that that happens. Rangers in Python? Damn, I need to look. See, the thing is there's no good replacement for Ranger. It's such a fantastic program. There are things like Rover, which I think is written in C and it's way faster, but it doesn't have any of the functionality. It just has basic, you know, you can move from a different folder and do this.
How many languages do you know and what are some tips to learn a new one? I guess given the context you're talking about computer languages, in which case I don't really know that many. With computer languages, I don't really feel like you know or don't know languages. It's just like you have experience in doing this and that with them. And honestly, the computer language I'm probably most familiar with is actually Python, but that's just because I feel like a lot of people are. But again, I don't really program, so I'm not the best person to ask about specifics of them. R or Python? Depends on what you're doing. A lot of my colleagues insist on using NumPy for mathematical stuff. I prefer R, but Python's better for general-purpose programming language.
Some of my favorite programs are written in Python is like saying I have tons of black friends. Yeah, that's why I said it. It's a joke. Do you find a bunch of philosophers in your circle of contacts falling for the solipsism meme? Not really, to be honest. I don't know many people in the philosophy department. And a lot of people I know are maybe I don't want to say, well, okay, never mind. I'm still employed here. I shouldn't say anything. Thoughts on writing your own Ranger alternative in C? Well, that would take effort. If someone wants to do it, that's fantastic. But yeah, I don't know enough C to just go ahead and start pounding it out. I'm a proponent of computer elitism, or at least programming language elitism. I definitely think there's too much quantity and not enough quality in writing code and stuff like that. And that's one of the reasons I don't get into it, because I don't think the community needs just another programmer doing random stuff. I'd rather have less noise and a smaller set of people who focus on given projects and writing them for functionality's sake.
As someone who's in college and uses open source software, do you think it is easy to get by using alternatives? And would you recommend ThinkPads for students? Yes, I'd recommend ThinkPads. And yes, I think it's fine dealing with alternatives. There are two sides of that. One is if you have a class where you have a brainlet professor, which they shouldn't be doing this, but if they ask for a doc file, that's a pain. Of course, you can do that in LibreOffice or whatever, and do it fine. You just won't have the same font; otherwise it's going to be exactly the same. So I think it's totally fine. That's really the only point. Everything else runs on Linux that's going to or has a free equivalent that you're really going to need. And especially when you're at my level and when you're actually producing research or something like that, if you're still using Word, I've said this elsewhere: using Word to write a document is like using KidPix or something. You guys remember KidPix? It was this old Mac program where you could play around. That's what Microsoft Word is like. Nothing serious has ever been written in Microsoft Word. Everyone deals with LaTeX in academia, and there are some people who somehow are tenured professors and use Word, but it's like a disability that they neurotically insist on.
Yeah, it's a pain when people require particular fonts. There are a bunch of very close equivalents to most of the Microsoft fonts, but it's just a pain. In most situations, I think if you just email your professor and say, "I don't have this font. This is a proprietary font. In order to get this, I would have to buy it technically," if you just say that, they'll probably be like, "Okay, fine. Use an equivalent," because it's really just to make sure you don't use some ridiculous-looking font that doesn't take up a whole page or something like that. MLA or APA? I use LSA. That's the Linguistic Society of America because I'm in linguistics. But I actually think it's a really nice format. Aside from that, I'd rather use APA. LSA and APA are pretty similar. But of course I haven't written a reference in literally years because I just have LaTeX do them all.
Any advice on how to plan approach thesis papers or other projects on a three-month scale? Depends on your situation. Different people have different workflows. I'm the kind of person who thinks everything out for months on end without writing or doing anything special. Then at the very end I will, I mean that's how I did my thesis. I thought for a while on what I was going to write, and within a period of two weeks or so I just pounded the whole thing out right before it was due. That's just my work style, but different people are different. Can I use your Pywall TRS account? It's only 10 bucks a month. You can pay for it. I have it. Does it auto? Never mind.
What would you do if you were a girl? Do you think it would change your life in a meaningful way? Yeah, of course. Of course it would change my life in a meaningful way. I don't think I'd go to grad school if I were a girl. I probably would have just tried to get married pretty soon and start a life. FreeCAD is terrible. Yeah, I've never really used FreeCAD and I've never had to do anything on it. Thoughts on Git? I really hated it. I've sort of gotten used to Git. It's a very useful tool. I've started to use it not just for GitHub, but for other stuff.
Do you have anything positive to say about an Apple product? Not really. I can't really think of anything positive. It's not ringing any bells. What makes Apple products notable to me is the being boxed in and just doing basic stuff; they just make it frustrating. And this is aside from it being proprietary. Well, it actually really isn't, because the fact that they're proprietary makes it so they can have very boxed-in software and hardware and stuff. It's just always been a pain whenever I've used Apple stuff, even before I cared about free software. Apple has nice touchpads but terrible keyboard. See, okay, this touchpad meme. This is one thing I didn't know about until I made a video on Macs, and every Apple user is like, "But what about the touchpads?" It's like, I've used these devices. I think it's just a meme; people just convince themselves that they have nice touchpads. I've had plenty of students whose computers I've used and tried to figure out their touchpads, and I don't really get it. I use a trackpoint anyway, so it's hard enough for me to use a touchpad generally.
What do you have to say to people who think that Mac OS is a Linux distro because it's Unix-like? I've heard that a lot. Or more commonly people will say stuff like, "Oh, well you should try it just because it's a Unix system or something like that," and it's like, well that's just like a debilitated form of Linux for me. Using Linux with a bunch of proprietary software mixed into it where I can't change a bunch of stuff is just an annoyance. Oh yeah, they don't even have delete buttons nowadays. Apple is trying to become a big parody of themselves. They keep doing stuff that makes their stuff even worse, and I'm like, what the hell is going on? I like the idea of being innovative. You have to realize that most innovation is just going to be garbage and people are going to forget about it. But what about people who say that Macs can't get viruses because it's a Linux distro and Linux can't? I actually have this conversation a lot with Mac users. They'll try and have this conversation with you when they see you using Linux in public, and it'll go like this: they know that there's this thing called Unix, and they know that Mac is sort of Unix, and they might know that Linux is Unix-based or something like that, but I'll have people come up to me and say something like, "Oh, you're using Linux. I like Mac because I like Unix. I don't really like Linux. I like Unix." And it's like, what do you even think those words mean? Is Linux now the equivalent of Unix? Are you talking about the core utilities? Are you talking about the GNU utilities or something like that? That's not exactly equivalent. And yeah, it's a Unix-based distro, but you have these weird conversations with people that are just sort of like, what are you even talking about? You're just throwing out words that I don't really get. This actually happens a lot in an academic field. There are some people who get really far just using random buzzwords, and it's really funny when they try and make some kind of deep argument based on the buzzwords they know. It's sort of insulting because it implies that what you're talking about is just a bunch of like [unclear: \h__\h] and they're faking it and they think everyone else is faking it and they're just throwing out words, but it's sort of insulting.
What are your thoughts on the Librebooted computers sold by Minifree? I think this is less compared to Purism. At least for people who are fine with the older hardware, I think they're fine. Minifree overprices their stuff, because they say it goes to Librebooting more devices, which is probably fine, but I endorse getting everything from eBay.
What do you personally get out of free software? It's just an issue of not having to put up with BS mostly. You're in control of your own device. That's a weird question to get from someone on my channel, but you don't have to put up with [unclear: \h__\h]. It's like being the king of your own castle. And you don't even have the nagging view in the back of your mind of, "I'm being spied on when I do this." You still can be spied on, of course, when you use the internet and stuff, but it's a lot better than nothing. And it's definitely changed my perspective using it.
Why does no one make ThinkPad-style keyboards anymore? I don't know. I wish I knew. X60s on eBay are not cheap anymore. How much are they? I got mine for 35, but that was probably before I put up a video about getting one and then it rushed the market. I actually do check whenever I do a video on ThinkPads or something; I'll check the prices on eBay and see if they go up. I've never really noticed a big difference, but X60 doesn't have a SATA drive, right? Yeah, it has a SATA drive. I'm unless all my life is wrong. Nice palm trees. Yeah, it's weird. It looks dark in real life, but it looks like it's really light outside. Anyway, I don't want Maybe I shouldn't want you seeing outside. Well, doesn't matter. Even if you track me down to where I live, I don't really give that much of a [unclear: \h__\h].
Can you install proprietary programs like Discord on Parabola? Yeah, you can install proprietary stuff on any free software distro. But as I said in my video, Parabola has this package called your freedom, which automatically gives a message saying you have to uninstall your freedom if you try and install a proprietary thing. So you just have to uninstall that if you want. But that of course is a safeguard to prevent you from using any kind of proprietary stuff. But if you want to put some kind of proprietary software on it, you can. You have that right. Do I have a degoogled smartphone? No, I don't. I use a smartphone that I use just sort of as a home phone, I guess. I don't really take it around that much. I don't really condone using cell phones. I really just literally have it because I got it from my parents, you know what I mean? So I don't condone having one. And the only reason I have services is because I still have a family plan with them.
Oh man. Oh man, I think that is really hot. Yeah, I will say you shouldn't use Discord. Discord unapologetically doxes people who use it and publishes information. None of that stuff you put on Discord is private, not at all. So if you're doing anything, even if you're saying bad words or something, anything that could jeopardize your real life, you shouldn't put it on Discord. And I mean, it's like putting something on Facebook, basically. The thing about phones is I've thought about getting a dumb phone. But even that, it's the same as what I said about social media in that it'd be nice if there was free and open source social media, but also actually, I just hate social media. It's the same thing about cell phones. You don't need a phone all the time. You really don't. This whole meme of needing to carry the cell phone around is ridiculous. Is it the same with Skype? I would assume Skype has sort of said that it does spy on its users. I don't know if it's doxed people, but Discord definitely had channels where this would happen. They'll put up stuff and Discord or someone will publish the information or feed it to someone else. So yeah, don't do that.
This is what I will never agree with. Prohibiting yourself from using certain software because it doesn't conform to your views and calling it freedom makes no sense. Okay. That's not what people are talking about. I occasionally use proprietary software like for this or that. I've had Minecraft or something installed on this machine. The freedom we're talking about, I don't think that anyone shouldn't have the right to use proprietary software, but if they're going to use software it's always better for them to have genuinely free software. So that should be an overwhelming preference. Software is just software. It won't harm you in any meaningful way as long as you're not brain dead. That is not true. We live in the days of Windows 10, and there are a lot of people, especially people who live in Europe or something like that where they don't really have free speech rules, where a lot of what you said online in proprietary platforms can legitimately endanger your life. And even in places like this where we have the technicality of free speech, which keep in mind is just the technicality, when you use proprietary software that's logging everything you say, that's a huge liability. That stuff can easily get out, or they can have a change in privacy policy. You can't judge it by first off, there have been terrible things that have happened due to the privacy-violating aspects of proprietary software, but even if that weren't the case, you're setting yourself up for a huge liability using non-free software. So you should avoid it. I'm not telling you, "Oh, you can't use it. You're a terrible person if you do." A lot of the stuff RMS says sort of sounds like that, in that he almost sounds like he's [unclear: \h__\h] on people who use proprietary software, but I think it's really just an issue of the alternatives are there. I'll help you learn to use them if you want, but you should probably move to them.
Please don't talk about Europe without knowing what you're talking about. Not all Europe is like the UK. Whiter than you, Muhammad. That's true. I'm not speaking in generalities. But yeah, free speech for Americans is even in our 56% country. That's at least rhetorically something that people will go with hardcore. Whereas I don't really get that view of a lot of Europeans. It's not like every European country is going to dox you for your political beliefs, but yeah, the UK is an example of a terrible dystopia that I can't believe that's actually a country, if you can even call it a country.
A guy in Texas is facing 99 years in prison for tweeting a gif. Is that the guy, is that J Goldstein? Is that who you're talking about? Yeah, that is a real thing. But it's less a proprietary software thing and more just an insane litigious [unclear: \h__\h] where it's like, "Oh, you tweeted me a gif that didn't give him a seizure." What a bunch of [unclear: \h__\h]. But even if it did, it wouldn't matter.
Beam units. Yeah, I need to do my truth about the metric system video. It's going to have a thumbnail reminiscent of Stefan Molyneux: The truth about the metric system. What pisses me off about the metric system? No, but really, let's talk about the metric system actually, because why not? Because we're all autistic. We've been going for like an hour, so only the most autistic people are left, right? The thing about the metric system is the purposes of using metric for science makes total sense for reasons everyone knows. You can multiply things by 10, blah blah blah. Very convenient for dealing in domains where you're comparing centimeters with meters with kilometers with stuff like that. It makes a lot of sense. But this actually goes back to something we touched on before, and that's the sort of Hayekian notion of spontaneous order in the sense that most pre-metric units are basically calibrated to everyday tasks. Yeah, we can't multiply pounds into like kilo or something, but that's not necessarily something important. Think of something like feet and inches. There are 12 inches in a foot. Sounds arbitrary. But that's extremely useful when you have to divide something that is a foot into thirds or something like that. In a lot of these traditional measurements, they are supposed to be calibrated to dividing, multiplying things in a proper way or giving sort of rust, corresponding to the ideas of the human brain. There's an intuitive idea of how much a mile should be or something like this, whereas the metric system for doing things like it can do any of this stuff, but it's a little more, you know, it just sort of does it happen stancely. It's nice to be able to divide things by three. When it came up on my channel, we were talking about Fahrenheit and Celsius, which is an easy case where there's no advantage of using Celsius whatsoever. People say, "But it is logical because it is based on the freezing and boiling point of water," as if that matters at all. You could base it on any. My point in that video was that Fahrenheit, for whatever happens to be calibrated exactly to zero is basically as cold as it gets in a really cold place and 100 is basically as hot as it gets in a really hot place. Some leeway. So that range of 0 to 100 is the most useful area of temperature. Celsius doesn't work like that. In order to differentiate some important temperatures that are useful for daily life, you have to say things like 23.5 or 23.7 or something like that. So that was my argument. It's just the severe autism that people have about the metric system. I'm not even saying you should use pre-metric units. I'm just saying the idea that the metric system is superior for everything is [unclear: \h__\h]. It has its purpose for scientific measurements and being able to multiply and divide at huge scales or very small scales. But out of that, it doesn't really work very well as an intuitive measurement.
Okay. What are people talking about? I went on an autistic rant and I have no idea what everyone's talking about now. Fahrenheit is calibrated with horse blood. Who cares? Maybe I took a [unclear: \h__\h] and I calibrated Fahrenheit from that. It doesn't matter. My point is that area that is 100 happens to be that important part, the point at which is socially important for humans, like that happens to mean a really hot day. Now that might just be a coincidence. But my point is it's calibrated to daily life. Celsius is just not. There's no advantage for people who aren't ravingly autistic. I think they can see there's no advantage to saying, "Oh, you know what? I really wonder what the weather is like today compared to the boiling point of water." No one cares.
What is dividing by three good for? When you have to divide something in three parts. That's something you do every day. Growing up in Canada, it feels just as practical to me as you explained. Oh, well, maybe that is if you live in Canada. Do I ever rant IRL? No, I'd probably lose my job because of the stuff I'd rant about. There might be no advantage, but there's also no disadvantage. So wouldn't it be better to have one that's scientifically applicable? Yeah, we do. In America, we do. We have useful, socially useful imperial measurements that are used for their domain. And we also use a metric system where we're doing science. So yeah, we have both of those.
Okay. So, I think I'll probably stop the stream in a second. Just because how long have we been going? Oh jeez. Almost two hours is too much. Too much. I'll probably do another one. I think as I said before, these were part of a Patreon incentive. I think I promised to do two every month or so. So, I'll probably do one in two weeks or so. I don't know exactly what time. Might not be at exactly Wednesday night or wherever this is for you guys. Oh, great. Now the chat is getting really autistic. But anyway, I'll see you guys next time on the forum or on the comments section and hopefully tomorrow I'll have the video configuring Arch. It depends on, I'll probably have that done. So anyway, we'll see you guys next time.
How do I stop this thing? Okay, there we go.