It’d probably be easier if there wasn’t a radical right wing government there.

Yeah I’m okay with the basic navigation options. The primary point is that man pages do look like they had written by someone who does not do technical writing. Whether that’s someone coming from a law background, programming, or whatever.

It’s not written for an end user who wants to know how to use the tools they have available. It will tell you what a command “does”, sometimes, but it doesn’t explain itself. It presumes a certain amount of pre-existing knowledge, or familiarity with the syntax of man writers.

For another example, the man for ls repeatedly lists options referencing “implied” entries without ever explaining what “implied” means in this context. It presupposes that the reader knows what that term means. I know what an implication is in an English class, and the antonym for “implied” is “explicit”, but in a man page? No clue. Not like there’s reference to or examples of “explicit” entries to contrast with “implied” entries. You just have to know what it means in context, or figure it out some other way.

I don’t think you get what I mean.

I don’t mean that man itself isn’t functional, I mean the way most man pages are written isn’t clear enough to communicate how to use the programs they refer to.

I’d include the man page for man in that, and I’d encourage anyone else to look at it from the eyes of someone who can follow written instructions and ask “How does this manual/help file compare to others I have read?”.

So, for example, in the examples, it says:

man -a intro Display, in succession, all of the available intro manual pages contained within the manual. It is possible to quit between successive displays or skip any of them.

Those two lines are the only place within man’s man page (at least the one you get from man man) that use the string “intro”. What is an intro in this context? Guess you got to run it to find out.

What is -a for? About 200+ lines down there is a two sentence explanation.

The first sentence tells you how man normally behaves, saying: “By default, man will exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it finds.” This sentence is unclear (“When does man exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it finds? When I run man ls I see the manual for ls on my screen until I press ‘q’ to ‘quit’ out of it.”) and not immediately connected to the purpose of the flag/option.

The second sentence says: “Using this option forces man to display all the manual pages with names that match the search criteria.” This is a lot clearer, and my only complaint about it can be that it’s not the first sentence in the explanation.

Tbf, most man files are not easy to understand. Between man, tldr, ArchWiki, and an occasional O’Reilly book I can usually get things done, but documentation on Linux still has a lot of room for improvement.

Because people don’t realize that there are restrictions on eggs, and they’re cheaper in neighboring nations.

Gay people often have straight sex when they are unsure about their sexuality. As society becomes less homophobic I’d expect more straight guys to experiment with other guys.

I have met some that I think are just mentally healthy idiots.

The guy in this article for example.

The NPC meme was always projection.

The Balfour Declaration?

God bless you and your ability to give such a gracious answer.

How does forgiving debt help rich people? They aren’t the ones burdened by it.

The appeal is that you get to go to college. “Why not go to a cheaper school?” “Why don’t you just get a job?” “Just buy a starter home.” "Why don’t they eat cake instead?’

They’ve basically removed all forgiveness options. Were you on year 9 of 10 working towards PSLF? Did you plan your life around it? Whelp. Enjoy the rug pull.

What if was socialism, but for a nation? What could go wrong? /s

When I first heard of TDS I thought it was about his deranged stans and I thought that made sense.

Then I was told it was about all the people who lost their minds because of his election and defined themselves purely oppositionally to him, and I thought that made sense.

Then I observed that it’s really just used as a slur against anyone who doesn’t like him or his policies, and that makes sense too because that’s the ultimate death of every social critique that ends up promulgated by conservatives.

Any particular trick? Pulling a fuse or antenna or just declining requests to go online?

On the one hand you’re getting someone else to make full payments on your mortgage. On the other hand, it’s your sole property and the only way you could maintain ownership of it. You weren’t profiting over cost, or collecting money from the renters that would go to maintenance (the only actual service/labor that landlords perform). Your choices were practical, not profitable. At least less profitable than you might think. Profitable to the minimum that the system required for you to keep your one home. Short of a revolution where all mortgages are zeroed out, it sounds like you did the best you could.

To be fair, at this late date, the tubes analogy isn’t that bad. I forget what point he was trying to make though.