Honestly, there’s a point of enlightenment where somehow, this over and over is better than the alternative.

For instance, when I was a kid, my mother once tuned into one of Vegas-area FM radio stations, and they must have been having budget issues because the songs they played real “zingers” like some weird late 80s/early 90s version of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” with a robot announcer and “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”… sung by Elmo from Sesame Street.

1. Alpine is still a Linux distro, just a lighter one. Also, busybox is a set of standard utilities as an alternative to coreutils; I have no idea how it’s particularly relevant here.
2. The thing is, I’m not using only Docker. I also use native nginx as a reverse proxy, for which I like Debian’s defaults, as well as SyncThing, which are both well-maintained packages in Debian. Also I kind of prefer glibc distros. While glibc kind of sucks, so much stuff I like using prefers or requires it; for instance, last I saw, mDNS/Avahi resolution on BusyBox was kind of a pain in the rear.
3. Most of what I use Flatpak for isn’t network-facing or opening unverified files anyway; the most important applications I do run the native Debian version. Honestly, truth be told, you are correct that I do often prefer native versions and will run the native Debian package if possible (and considering the current age of stable, a lot of them really aren’t that old; Inkscape is basically still the latest version, for instance, while Firefox is always kept to the latest ESR); at some point, though, I do find a Debian package that is too behind to do what I do (though rare, TBH), and despite some issues with Flatpak, at the end of the day, I need to just get a piece of software installed and get on with my day. In that case, I just do a Benjamin Sisko:

Luckily, I know he’s probably fine because he literally just toured, although crazy non-health-related things can still happen; John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants was this close to getting taken out in a car crash back in 2022. He broke multiple ribs and their already-delayed-from-COVID tour got pushed into 2023; he’s doing better now (although I imagine still dealing with crap) - I saw TMBG in 2025, and am hoping to see them again in 2027.

Weird Al and the TMBG Johns are all about the same age, so I’m really worried they’ll all die at about the same time some time in the 2030s or 2040s and leave me devastated; mostly hoping that Al’s vegetarianism means he lives longer than TMBG so I don’t have to face it all at the same time.

I turned in my early ballot back on October 30th.

Mostly glad for the national results (holy frick, Texas!), although a few bad propositions passed in my state, and my congressional district stayed red where most of the rest of the state went more blue than usual. At least I kept an idiot out of the governor’s office.

I think I have a prototype of a browser extension somewhere on my computer whose only function is to hide the comments button on Phoronix.

Honestly, in the age of Flatpak and containerization (as well as Debian often being well-supported by upstream projects for script or package-based install), I feel like the age of Debian packages isn’t that annoying anymore; anything important gets security patches, and it’s easier than ever to use 3rd party software without breaking your system. I will add that Debian seems to be much better these days at making sure either a reasonably up-to-date version ships with a release (and can be kept secure during a stable cycle) or not shipping it at all as to allow the user to install it themselves.

I remember back in just 2021 when it took months after Firefox ESR 78 went EOL for them to update Bullseye to 91; recently, it only took them a few days after 140’s EOL to switch to 153 (and 91-115 and 115-140 happened without much note either), which isn’t perfect, but much better than it was.

If you need to install it on a new laptop, backports often has you covered. I ran a backports kernel for about a year on Debian Bookworm to get my laptop’s Wi-Fi modem working; I was able to quit using the backports kernel once Trixie came out.

No, not until 2027. I don’t really know why this meme was posted at this exact moment.

Eh. They’re actually pretty on top of security patches for pretty much any internet-exposed server software.

The OpenSSL incident was a long time ago at this point.

Will Riker is going to have a bad time, then.

Honestly, if we’re going to commit war crimes, let’s at least do it in style.

For Seven’s sake, too bad Jellico didn’t get stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

Gosh, I love that quote; just rewatched Generations last night as part of my memorial activities.

Indeed, the bermagot does slap.

I’m a recent ex-Mormon, so that’s why I’ve never had it before.

It took a couple tries to get it right (I didn’t let it steep long enough the first time), but I sure like the sensation of what feels like drinking an orange or lemon peel.

If Wil Wheaton was never in TNG for the youth appeal, my mom might have never watched The Next Generation as a tween/teen, and by proxy, I may have never watched watched it. Also, he was really fun in Star Trek: Prodigy.

https://startrek.website/post/12349474

Yes, finally, someone else who recognizes the meme potential of this frame!

You sure that’s not just Prepotente from Dungeon Crawler Carl?

1. Both characters are in uniform rather than their own fashion choice in the picture.
2. Klingons are also the race that read love poetry (granted, while having stuff chucked at them by their mate), so I don’t think looking a little snazzy is exactly un-Klingon. I mean, heck, Worf got someone pregnant on the holodeck while in uniform.

Wow. That’s absolutely nuts considering that’s about the cost of an entire series Blu-Ray box set now!

Were you having to import them or something? I was almost tempted to do a similar thing and import Doctor Who Blu-Rays from Germany for post-Tenant stuff at $120 a doctor since BBC America had only done very small runs of the doctor box sets stateside, but now they’re reissuing them here for $35 a doctor, for which my wallet is thankful.

I always find it really funny when they guess someone has only watched newer stuff and can’t fathom that they’ve seen almost everything.