https://devices.droidian.org/#/devices/oneplus3 lists the #Oneplus3 as a #Droidian community-supported device. I spent hours downloading and going through the steps for a Droidian install. I tried both the rootfs image installed via recovery, and the alternate image which I flashed manually with #fastboot. Neither one boots. And after all that, I can find no formal place to report that it does not work / don't waste your time. No e-mail list, no issue list on github, just (what I regard as) a hand-wave to go complain on Telegram. This Brave New World of ephemeral forums and chat groups does not work. I feel like I am wasting my time even trying to interact with a community that operates in this manner, and am probably near the end of my rope with respect to #Linux on Mobile, as this sad frustrating state seems to be the norm here.

Book Review: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard This is mainly the story of the deeply ethnic and amazingly persistent roots of the various waves of immigration and settlement across N.America. Most of these threads are still alive and well today, despite centuries of evolution and some very large events such as the Civil War along the way. In addition to all the bits of interesting knowledge gained from any good history book, there is also here much useful context for certain patterns in recent events in N.America. The author's very strong Yankee bias comes out later in the book, and that is the only place where my progress bogged down. Outside of that short section, this is a history book that does not want to be set aside. There is also some comfort to be found here, as apparently indigenous cultures are really not easily dislodged even by massive immigration. #review #bookreview #history #Americana

But not available on Fdroid, apparently....

#bookreview: The War of the Worlds (WoW) by #hgwells I had read some of Wells' novels many years ago, before I learned about his reputation as a very famous #eugenicist (very common at the end of the 19th Century) and misanthrope. I got a very similar vibe with all the Wells' novels I have read, this one included: very well and gracefully written, but also very dark and somewhat forgettable. The "main" characters are cardboard figures just marching through the story. Wells never even gave us a name for the main character / narrator of WoW, as a matter of fact I am remembering now most people met along the way in the story do not get names either. Decades later, now I can put my finger on what is wrong with Wells writing: he is actually not a novelist at all. He is a pure #propagandist. He has decided in advance the talking points he wants to make (that humans are actually just animals, etc.) and he uses the text of the book to drive those points home, over and over again, reworded in a dozen different ways. The story is just a vehicle, and the every-man characters in the story, beyond their utility as educational tools, are literally unimportant and disposable in the eyes of the writer. Great read if you want to study at the feet of a master propagandist. Otherwise, I would say don't bother. #review #sf #sciencefiction

A new version dropped from FDroid. Now it boots, but the Lightning wallet in Settings fails to initialize, with a meaningless and ambiguous error message, I paraphrase: "something broke"

This in today's announcement email at this years #Debian (#Linux) Conference (commonly referred to as #Debconf) in Brest, France: "=== Anti-COVID-19 measures === Some hand sanitizers are available in common areas, especially on the food tables. Please, use them. Face masks and some tests are also available at the front desk. Please, remember to help everybody to check the air quality of the room where you are." This continuing #woke #covid foolishness is a symptom of why our family no longer runs Debian OS on any of our devices.