Aww, don’t start being coy, tell us what happens next. Explain how our problems are solved after following your advice. I’ve given you the best possible setup I could, assuming a level of success unquestionably beyond what you’re able to achieve.

Unless you’re willing to give us even a token explanation of the second half of your plan, it really does look like “Republicans win the election” is where your plan ends.

Okay sure, let’s have this discussion.

The first massive favor I’ll do is give you the benefit of the doubt and accept you’re saying this in good faith and not as a right-wing sock puppet.

The next massive favor I’ll do is accept your (ostensible) plan is wildly successful, far beyond what you could reasonably hope for. Everybody is so moved by your comment that you convince 80% of Democrat voters to vote independent and every single one votes for the same independent party. Hell, I’ll even throw in 10% of Republican voters.

The only thing we won’t give you is the ranked choice voting needed to stop your idea being dumb as fuck. We’ll stick to reality for that one.

So tell us how the next 4 years play out in your head. Polls close, votes are counted. Democrats 9.8%, Toothfairy Party 44.1%, Republicans 45.9%.

Then what?

Most people who aren’t conservative psychopaths actually like their families and want to help them when they can.

You inherently claimed to be a victim by claiming that people were attacking you. You’ve done an embarrassingly bad job of damage control today.

“Said” is past tense. Yesterday, when you were pretending to be an authority on historic rocks, you said it wouldn’t wash off. I didn’t see that thread and immediately understood what they meant.

They weren’t being even slightly dishonest, but it’s clear you are. Would you have admitted you were wrong if you weren’t called out by name? My gut feeling is “not a chance”.

Because it’s made by volunteers, in their free time, who either don’t have the time or skill or goal to make it competitive

Didn’t stop Blender. Didn’t stop Firefox. Didn’t stop Linux itself.

If someone is not able or willing to learn their way around something new, that’s literally their problem

I’ve already covered in this comment chain. Krita and Affinity Photo do things differently and nobody complains because they can see actual value in the change. Being “different” isn’t the source of GIMPs reputation, being shit is.

Why would it need to be similar? If you want Photoshop, well then use Photoshop.

I moved to Affinity Photo over a year ago, despite it being different. I don’t even keep a token pirated version of Photoshop around for compatibility anymore.

Sometimes doing something different might also end up being the better idea. Won’t know until you tried.

I tried multiple times and it simply isn’t. That’s been their most common feedback for 20 years but people like you still refuse to acknowledge that people might have a point.

And yes, good software is good code. That’s just a fact.

Yet somehow, no matter how good the code might be, ugly software with shit UX just never seems to gain widespread popularity. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s not because “good software” is holistic, it’s because the entire world is wrong about GIMP except for you.

It is the next best completely free alternative.

And if that was how people actually presented it, I wouldn’t be objecting. Instead, people pretend it’s as good as Photoshop and anyone who disagrees is blamed for not programming it themselves and attacked for suggesting that commercial tools are far better.

How is that an argument? How do you get the idea that GIMP is basically required to be competitive, just because it’s old?

Looks like you’re more interested in defending Linux software than actually seeing my point.

So why isn’t it competitive? It’s not because it’s new and hasn’t had time to mature. It’s not because developers haven’t put time into it (despite the ridiculous “fix it yourself” bullshit that people keep pushing). It’s not because the problem it aimed to solve has been solved.

It’s because the people involved with GIMP have the usual Linux community resentment about what “good software” actually is. It’s fuck ugly, but they don’t think that should matter, so it doesn’t get addressed. It doesn’t follow patterns that similar software follows, because they’re used to it, so everyone else should be too.

It’s the same pervasive “good software is good code and nothing else” mentality the plagues the OSS community.

But who cares? Use your shit software. Defend it to your dying breath. It’s not going to fix systemic problems with the project nor fool anyone who actually tries it.

Nobody is acting shocked. Least the people who learned to use GIMP.

So the people who learn GIMP are fully aware why it gets zero industry use? Thanks, that was my point.

The problem is people like you who are outraged, when asking for a free Photoshop alternative, that the next best thing is not to their likening.

I’m not outraged in the slightest, nor am I asking for a free Photoshop alternative. But I’ve seen people claiming GIMP is a viable alternative to Photoshop for 20 years and for anything past the most basic use cases, it isn’t. You may as well be telling people to use Nano instead of Visual Studio and when they complain about the experience, tell them to code the features themselves.

GIMP has had literally decades of development and even with Photoshop in the worst state it’s ever been in, it isn’t competitive. There are clearly systemic issues with the project and I’m certain this “head in the sand” mentality is at least partly to blame.

No, but “fix it yourself” is apparently a completely acceptable response if someone criticizes GIMP.

Anyway, I don’t care how bad the tools you use are, but it’s time to stop acting shocked when industry professionals have no interest in GIMP and don’t take anyone who advocates it as a Photoshop alternative seriously.

To add to this, it’s not like other apps have just blindly copied Photoshop. Affinity Photo has shape tools that are far less convoluted than Photoshop but they still feel instantly familiar.

Even when they couldn’t stick to common patterns (such as the eyedropper tool) they still manage to communicate how the feature works just by designing intelligently, no Googling required.

But every time I’ve used gimp, common tasks feels like a collection of workarounds for missing features. Someone elsewhere in this thread asked how to place an ellipse and got told that wasn’t something commonly needed but to make a selection and fill it using the paint bucket tool (and a modifier key).

That solution is jankier than MS Paint, which at least offers you an actual tool and a short period where you can make non-destructive modifications to the stroke, fill, size and position.

But since you’ve technically got the circle you asked for, it’s treated as “people who don’t like GIMP are just haters” rather than “people don’t want to use bad tools for their job”

Have you thought about applying for a job at Adobe and fixing it?

GIMP is bad. If the problem was simply that it was “different to PS” then other apps like Krita and Affinity Photo would have the same reputation.

If a user goes looking for a tool or feature and it’s not in the first place they look, that’s a problem of “didn’t really practice that much”. If experienced people need to look up how to do basic operations and their reaction is “that’s fucking stupid”, then the software is bad.

To then say “well why don’t you help the Dev team then” is insane. I’m not spending hundreds of hours digging GIMP out of bad design decisions when I could just use better software and I haven’t seen any evidence that my PR would even be accepted.

Nobody needs excuses and apologism, they need Blender for image editing and GIMP just isn’t that.

Charismatic, intelligent people don’t need fascism nearly as much as dumbfucks do but even for the few who get sucked in anyway, there’s easier and more self-serving ways to express it than a grueling, always-on position in the Republican party.

But ultimately the answer to both “why don’t they run someone actually good” questions is “because it would be a threat to neoliberals and their record profits”.

Bad news sells

So do lies and propaganda. That’s why pro-gun groups rely on imaginary threats, bullshit statistics and unverifiable anecdotes to justify a multi-billion dollar industry.

Drop the bullshit. You’re using short people and lone women as human shields for your hobby.

Are we really supposed to believe your dogshit gun laws are an act of feminism? You’ve put 100% of American women in more danger by arming criminals, rapists and domestic abusers and you want to claim it’s all worth it because the less than 20% of women who want to carry guns are possibly safer.

Which of course they’re not anyway. The moment they know a man is a “brandish your gun” level threat is when that man grabs them or pulls a weapon on them.

And you know what happens next don’t you Mr Action Hero? If the man is already in grappling distance, she gets disarmed and then probably killed with her own weapon. If the man has already pulled his gun, she gets shot before she can aim and fire her gun.

The best thing women can do to keep themselves safe is to avoid men who are walking red flags, like gun-owners that throw women under the bus for their own self-interest and awkwardly brag about martial arts training and being immune to stun guns.

While “find the worst photo of them for the article” is definitely a thing that happens, are you sure it’s happening here? He just looks like a normal person in a normal pose. It’s what people look like without makeup and studio lighting.

The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental civil right in the US

The pro-gun community has wasted the last 20 years demonstrating that they’re unwilling or incapable of addressing gun violence and they use the second amendment to prevent others from addressing it.

Eventually, the people you’ve sold out will have no other choice but to repeal it. Pro-gun groups will throw an almighty tantrum but so what? They have no room left to escalate because we already have to listen to them endlessly bleat about guns, we already have to constantly fight them politically and we already live under the threat of being murdered by a far-right extremist with a gun.

access to the means of self-protection is a human right

Sure, if you can prove you’re not what we need protection from because you’ve been sold a gun. Nobody is opposing legitimate self-defense – that’s why they’re not banning door locks, burglar alarms and MMA classes.

But just because a weapon could be used in self-defense, doesn’t mean it should be sold in corner stores to anyone who wants one. Landmines could be used in self-defense but we all know they’d be used 1000 times for terrorism, arming cartels and killing the family members of reactionary idiots for every 1 “noble” use.

I think that correcting the underlying issues that lead to gang activity would have more benefits overall than trying to ban a constitutional right

Let’s take you at your extremely dishonest word and say that gun violence is 95% social problems and 5% access to firearms.

Well the overwhelming majority of the actual people you’ve grouped as “enemies” support both gun-control and social policies designed to combat inequality, which addresses 100% of the problem. It’s literally the progressive platform.

For you to actual have an argument, they would need to support gun-control but oppose progressive social policies – and those people simply don’t exist in significant numbers outside your imagination.

But what about your “allies”? Well the majority of them support neither gun-control nor progressive social policies, for a grand total of 0% of the problem fixed. This tracks with the last 20+ years of them not solving any of these problems. It’s literally the Republican platform.

However you’re happy to be dishonest so you pretend they all belong to a group that only opposes gun-control while still supporting social reforms. Sure, people like that do exist, but not only are they a clear minority of the pro-gun community, they’re still only fixing 95% of the problem

While gang activity exists in all countries, countries with fewer social problems and lower economic inequality have far less of a problem with gang activity.

All of them also have restrictive gun laws, making them far more closely aligned with gun-control advocates than pro-gun groups. They didn’t have to endlessly argue over exactly how much gun access, culture, poverty, mental health services and the media contributed to violence.

They just did it all and by your own admission, it worked.

You take your magic wand and make all guns disappear, people who want to harm others will turn to knives.

Which would instantly be a massive improvement. Americas crime rates are functionally identical to other wealthy countries, only with a massively inflated homicide rate thanks to sick, stupid and desperate people being able to buy all the guns they want.

When people try to raise money for cancer research, do you spit in their face and tell them “you’ll never cure all cancer and even if you do people will still have heart attacks and if you cure those too they’ll just die in car crashes”?

You don’t think it will ever be your life it saves, so you don’t give a shit.

Doctors treat symptoms while they treat the problem, they don’t just offer you thoughts and prayers. Even if the problem isn’t treatable, they still do everything in their power to control your symptoms.

Imagine you turned up to a doctor with every bone in your hand broken, only to have them claim “Sorry, we refuse to give you painkillers because the pain is just a symptom. If someone just spends 12 months reconstructing your hand, the symptoms should be mostly gone. I won’t do it (and I’ll staunchly oppose anyone that tries), but that’s the real solution”.

They wouldn’t just be considered a dogshit doctor, they’d be considered a genuinely evil person.

So stop with the apologist bullshit. No gun control advocates are stopping you from building your violence-free utopia that you insist will solve everything. The society we have today is fucked up and you need to stop selling them guns.

They wouldn’t wear a paper mask to save their own family. They’re not going to drop 100 pounds and die for their asshole king.