Urine is already diluted by water, so you’re most of the way there.

Sam Harris had a video on free will, and in it, he asked the audience to think of something (a color, or something simple but spontaneous). Then he asked them to try and think when in their thought process did that choice make itself known and get picked? I don’t think it’s as simple as there being free will or not, but I think what we experience is a bit of both coming together to give a sense of choice and self, when actually some things are deterministic by who we are or have become through life and experience. The wiring in the brain and its software. We’re not so hard wired that we can be perfectly predicted every time, but we do have preferred pathways created over time that influence any actual choice that’s made at the core.

So in answer to the title, it’s yes and no. There are some things that are far more fixed in our personalities that we understand at least partially why we do what we do. Then there are others that we don’t or can’t, or take years of therapy to figure out. But it’s a mix.

It definitely is. But you know what’s worse? Returning a used lawnmower at the end of summer, expecting a refund. Regularly.

Speaking as a guy, not always true. I’ve lost some of the skill, but there was a time when I worked with paints mixing colors, and I was very good at finding the right shades for people who were lost (men and women). I understand that there are subtleties within every color.

My sarcasm would always come out though, when someone would bring in a piece of wood and ask to color match it. I’d ask “which brown”… but then would give them excellent service and figure out what worked for them. Hated and enjoyed that job.

The origin of the word meme, as well as the concepts before the coining of the term by Richard Dawkins, are all neutral to the subject or purpose. A meme can easily be hate speech if it’s spread as any meme is. It’s true that its use in popular culture now mainly means something that has spread on the internet (not just an image), but that’s only because the internet is the fastest way for anything to travel through large populations.

Default? I think the first thing I did once I settled down with my current setup was find a background of my own liking, not something curated. And it’s all mine; no one else has it.

For those that care, all zero of you, it’s a bunch of frames from a cool star field animation, timed to rotate to the next every few seconds or so. Because I could not find anything that would simply play a video as a background, I made something that worked. If that’s not Linux level, I don’t know what is.

“I’m all for trying new things and experimentation. But I also know to count on techniques that work.” ;)

One of my random Linux boot-up sounds is the WinXP boot theme.

When GIMP’s version 3 came out, it got a lot of great reviews. I can’t tell you what’s different or better, but in using it myself since then, it doesn’t “feel” as daunting. Very subjective, but definitely try it out again; it might work for you this time around.

Oh no…

“I’ll remember THAT, it’s such a trivial thing.”

I am indeed using Gnome. I had uninstalled the Snap LO and found the more current version because of some issues, and I want to say maybe the older one did have a floppy and that’s why it stood out. Or it could be theme-related. So many apps now don’t even have an icon, so I can’t say I’ve seen many that have a different icon than the old save version.

And laid. 3 dice!

I’m (un)fortunately old enough to remember the green screen terminals, mainly in the university library to look up books, new tech that would replace the still-existing card catalogs. Good breakdown of the wording. A bit parallel with the save icon, although some software has migrated from that, I noticed LibreOffice has a generic down arrow implying it is being downloaded to something, I guess.

I immediately thought, no, terminal. But apparently, console is correct depending on what it’s displaying/being used for?

WIndows will install it. Running it correctly… different story.

It works, but it’s a lot slower and clunkier. And looks worse. Probably could improve with some tweaking, but I don’t use its special features and addons that much, and gedit works quite well for me.

I’ve used VLC in WIndows forever, but it started giving me glitchy behavior in Ubuntu. Tried to upgrade to see if it was an old version/Snap thing, got frustrated with it not working. So I went through all the lists of Linux players, tried most of them. I like Audacious. It’s not perfect, but it works well, and I can deal with some of the minor things that are more preferences than problems. That’s all I wanted.

I barely remember WinMe…

As I installed over it with 98SE on a laptop. Didn’t even hear the screaming.

For better or worse, right? Keeper.