Anyone have troubles with their laptop's built-in mic on #Linux lately? Mine has straight up stopped working. Everything looks correct in configuration, it's set to duplex (tried other things just in case), nothing seems to work. The mic is detected, it just isn't receiving any input.

OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: VivoBook_ASUSLaptop X515MA_X515MA (1.0)
Kernel: Linux 6.14.4-zen1-2-zen

I know this sounds very "I'll take things that didn't happen for $500, Alex" but I have a client in a home for adults at risk of homelessness, usually with disabilities and addictions. This fellow is 68 years old and has schizophrenia and a learning disability.

Well, he brought me his laptop some months ago because it wasn't working and in all the years since it stopped working, he hasn't had anyone have a look at it. This thing is ancient, wouldn't run any safe version of Windows anymore, so I stuck #Linux Mint on it, since, well, this guy is 68 years old and is probably just going to be browsing the internet.

But this fellow has since absolutely taken to it. The next day, he came back to me asking about the fish shell and how he can get and use it. I put it on for him (since, well, it is easier to learn on than bash, and if he wants to learn...)

Now, a few months later, he tells me he's been watching Youtube videos about how to use the command line. He's been having printer issues and wants to figure out how to fix it himself. So I taught him today about how to find things like drivers on git, how to clone a git repository, and how to make an installation script executable. He did seem a little overwhelmed, of course, but was smiling and said that he thinks once he actually does it, he'll remember.

I think about him every time someone tells me Linux is too hard, too complicated. This dude is a senior citizen with a mental illness and learning disability, and he's using the terminal and having fun with it even though he really doesn't have to. He just wants to. And if this man can do all that, you can definitely use Linux to use the internet and play games.

Not to be alarmist...well, maybe, but a #famine will be incoming for the United States. Famines under capitalism tend to take the form of "there's food, we promise, it just happens to be too expensive for you to afford", so...you've technically been under famine conditions for a little while, but it's about to get a whole lot worse. Your latest administration has completely slashed agricultural subsidies, deported thousands of migrant agricultural workers, drained a reservoir in California, and levied tariffs on the three countries it imports the most food from. This is a good time to remember that many revolutions are preceded by famines, and it's time for you to start preparing and start organizing with anyone you can, before you're starving — which, again, I'm sorry to say, it's going to happen.

Talk openly about it; this is the time you can do it safely, and that window is going to be short. Find anyone, literally anyone, who is willing to talk back about the possibility of organizing together. It can be as simple as a mutual aid group, to try to afford bulk food more cheaply together when this happens, but we here, the people of the imperialized world, your fellow workers, are hoping that you will do more, and fight to end both famine and fascism in your country once and for all, no matter what it takes.

Red Paw Collective was a failure as a space because of the apathy that gradually settled into the community. Apathy breeds apathy, and, as one friend and ex-member put it to me, it self-selects: People who care in an otherwise apathetic space end up leaving for the sake of their own sanity.

I'm hoping to form another community on Matrix, with these lessons kept in mind. If you're viewing this post, you're invited.

This will be a community of anticapitalist solidarity, open and inclusive to all revolutionary anticapitalists in solidarity with the entirety of the working class without discrimination. This has been the three-point membership requirement for years, and it has been extremely effective, allowing Leninists, Maoists, anarchists, classical Marxists, and plenty of others to engage progressively with one another.

We will also retain our democracy. RPC's democracy was very successful and effective in empowering its members and creating a community that felt safe and appealed to people.

RPC was, as the community-chosen name implies, a fairly furry-heavy community, as that was also a focus of its founding members. This new community will eschew that focus. I would like to be more inclusive and less intimidating to people outside this subculture. I believe this secondary focus is also partly the cause of the apathy that would eventually lead to the community's downfall.

Finally, in correcting for those past mistakes, this new community would have the additional requirement that active members are also active in some form of organization within the space. This may be as simple as starting out with a reading club or mock debate, building our theoretical foundations, but as time goes on and hopefully we grow, we will branch into more depending on the interests and talents of our membership. For this reason, we will be on Matrix and only on Matrix, on a privately hosted server outside of the United States. Although we encourage relationship-building between comrades and may have rooms pertaining to shared interests, they will not be a focus, and if a member is engaging in only these secondary rooms without engaging in foundation-building or organization, they will be invited to self-criticize.

If you are interested in being a founding member of this space, leave a reply or send me a DM. There are a few of us already, and once we have a good small group going, I'll pull the trigger, and Workers of the World will have a new live space, ready to be built from the ground up.

#anticapitalism #communism #anarchism

New instance, new intro!

I'm a #Marxist #marten ( #furry ) here to talk about politics, #tabletop games, #Linux, and to help along my fellow anticapitalists.

My politics are probably a little more insane than yours, but that's okay; workersofthe.world is open to all revolutionary anticapitalists who stand by the entirety of the working class without discrimination.

Give my Youtube channel a look; you'll get to know me pretty quickly through my incredible #Blender skills and unabashed #socialism .