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Joined 10 days ago
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Cake day: October 18th, 2025

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  • Nah, he’s a cool guy. Everyone around enjoys his company. A little bit of the philosopher of the town.

    He does not work, if that is what you mean by giving something in return. However he also does not use many things. We live in a rich country and things are plentiful. What he gets is either stuff that people throw away or that they are happy to give him.


  • Everyone gets free healthcare in Spain. No matter whether you do pay taxes or not, as long as you’re a resident. There’s places where they offer showers for free in town, however I believe he doesn’t use those places and just washes in the river. To survive the cold of the winter, he has the tent and blankets. To be fair, it doesn’t get too cold where I live. It never snows. The guy goes around in shorts and sandals all year round, doesn’t appear to suffer too much cold. In fact he often complains he has to leave the tent half opened because of heat.

    The place where he set up tent is private and owned by someone. It’s a small spot in the woods. Nobody could ever care less. Police can not kick him out because the place is private, and I guess the owner doesn’t give a damn and would rather have someone live there in peace rather than kick them out for no reason. He’s now been staying in that spot for over seven years. I’ve been in the place a few times as he invited me for lunch, it’s pretty nice.

    Now, I’m not romanticising anything. This is not a lifestyle I would conduct. I know this is possible and works out because I know people who live this way and they are happy.



  • I know many people who travel from place to place in a semi nomadic life and work in the fields here and there. Never really heard any of them complaining about their life. They sure have their problems, but that’s everyone.

    In many countries the concept of employment is very feeble and most people just do their things and sell them to other people. They live just fine.


  • I have a good friend of mine who may be related to this comic. He was a trucker and lost his job in the 2008 crisis. After that he decided he did not want to get a job anymore.

    He set up a tent in the woods and lives there. He goes down town to read books every day and people give him some money. He has food, he has his place full of books and with the money he gets he can buy some wine to enjoy the day. Cool guy to be around and have nice chats.

    He’s got a good life he enjoys. What should he plan for? If he ever gets sick (and with his lifestyle he really doesn’t get sick) he can go to the hospital and they’ll treat him for free. He’s got more clothes and stuff he may ever need as people just throw stuff away and he collects it. In fact he gifted me clothes, backpacks, pans and other stuff.

    I do not think he needs to plan much more to maintain his lifestyle. I mean, some planning is good. I know he took down a few trees as he’s planning to make a teepee to have a better kitchen area. But I don’t think much more planning than that would significantly improve his life.


  • Yes, the keyring is a pain, also because I like to manually check all the keys. But then what often happens is that lots of configuration options have changed and you have to go through bunch of software to find out which exact package is now misconfigured and makes your system not work as it should.


  • Would not advise Debian to a new user. Old packages and difficulties installing non free software may frustrate people.

    I did use Debian as my daily driver and I have it in a few servers, it is a very good system. But to the common user stability is not the priority which should prevail over everything else.









  • On the first part, do not worry; I understand the perspective. I just meant to show how a degree may not be as relevant as other things with my personal experience.

    If you want information regarding Spain, feel free to text me. I’m new in Lemmy and never had private messages, but I guess I should get a notification and figure it out.

    We clearly misunderstood each other, I did not mean to say in the majority of jobs you need a degree. I was initially just pointing out there is a significant amount of careers in which a degree is in fact required. We do indeed agree on all points as far as I can see.

    Now, regarding this supposed privatisation of job opportunities. I am very much aware of the problems with student debt in the US. It is something extremely sad. What is unclear to me is why would this be a privatisation?

    I’d rather imagine this leads to further division in social classes i.e. rich people who can afford degrees can access more “palatable” jobs. But I say this without really knowing much of how jobs work now in the US. I’d imagine this would lead to only a small percentage of the US population having a degree, but as far as I can see over 50% of US population has one. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment)

    As such I can imagine in the US as well the degree would be treated as something cheap and common. I’d imagine this would lead to many jobs in many sectors favouring people with a degree over people who do not have one. As such I can imagine that paying for education in the US could probably lead to better job opportunities. This would be regardless the fact that a degree is required for a certain job or not. It is unclear to me whether people who had to take debt for a degree and get an unspecialised job are able to pay back the debt.

    Now, it is a bit sad to talk about degrees and education only under the aspect of job seeking. A degree is a wonderful way to learn things and improve ones thinking skills. Free education is amazing because of this: we all benefit from everyone around being more informed and able to improve things. Widespread education does significantly improve the lives of everyone in a country, regardless of the fact that what one studies is actually useful for a job or not.


  • The discussion was about the importance of a degree into finding a job. I hire people to work in research to develop novel drugs. I generally do not care whether they have a degree or not, but the degree does generally come with a level of preparation on the subject and a level of reasoning skills which are not easy to develop without formal training/working in the field. I did some times favor people without a degree over people with a PhD because they felt better candidates to me. Sometimes this is not possible due to bureaucracy. If you prefer, I do not actually hire people; I select people that should be hired with grant money I obtained to conduct certain research jobs.

    I don’t know how it works in the US, but to get a job in sales or as a project manager a degree is not required where I live. Candidates with a degree may be favoured by a company, but there is no law enforcing the requirement for a degree. And I do know many people working those jobs without a degree.

    Regarding the fact that you don’t need to go to university in Europe. I’m not really sure if I understand, I guess you mean it is not compulsory to attend lectures. I studied in Italy, there this was the case: all lectures were absolutely discretionary and you could finish your degree without attending a single one. That is except experimental stuff, which indeed you’d need to attend. You could theoretically just study from the books and pass all the exams and get your degree. However, lectures are very good for understanding what you’re studying, most people were attending all lectures anyway. The fact that those are optional is useful if some days you can not attend for whatever reason, whether you’re working or busy in some other way. This, however, is not the case throughout Europe. I live in Spain now, where attendance of lectures is compulsory. You do not get a degree unless you attend a specified percentage of the lectures. Many other countries in Europe follow this system.

    In some countries in Europe you do not pay to attend university. In others you do have to pay, it’s generally a few thousand euros per year. In most countries you can get scholarships and not have to pay such fees or even get a salary for studying.

    I believe we’re just misunderstanding each other. I do agree, for many jobs a degree is not necessary. But for many other jobs it is, or at least some kind of technical training. I believe the amount of jobs who do require some kind of certificate, at least in Europe, is higher than 1%. An electrician will be required a certificate to handle home installations and to ensure he knows what the normative is. A lathe operator will require a certificate which ensures he will not harm himself. A nurse now requires a degree, it used to be just a specific formation. Many other jobs are available who do not require a degree.

    I’m not really sure to what you refer to as privatisation of job opportunities.