Idk? The reason why couches look under their beds before they go to sleep?

“What do you think about pedophilia?”

“If a rich, incompetent wretch of a man falls, which way does he fall?”

“What’s the last thing you had up your fascist butts?”

So many better captions were right there.

Everything is a dildo - if you’re brave enough.

Thanks for the Quobuz suggestion, which has come up in another posting here. I’ll make sure to check it out!

3. listen primarily to indie artists who have fan donations set up (albeit this is more work on your part due to decentralization) is to pirate the music, figure out how much you’d have paid on the music platform, and then directly donate to the artist, giving them (basically) all the money.

Good call! I’ve considered that route, but I couldn’t find (m)any donation opportunities for the bands I’m interested in, and if so, it’s mostly American platforms again (Patreon…).

A man of culture, I see! I’ve been an avid CD ripper all the way through the 2000s and 2010s. Yet, times are a-changing, and I want to try and forego the extra step physical media, which will only be opened once anyway and then just take up space (either in my house or somewhere else). Donating to a library is a good idea theoretically. I just have my doubts they’ll be prepared to reserve ever increasing amounts of shelf space for obscure extreme metal albums…

Never used it.

Started self-hosting Navidrome.

Never gonna use it.

IllegalArgumentException: expected random number, got Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

I’m not defending or glorifying either of them. They’ve done tons of damage to the U.S. by spreading lies and division. What I’m saying is that they might prove useful idiots for a change, fracturing the MAGA cult just enough to allow the less brainwashed to come to their senses.

Not on this side of the great information rift, no. But think of the people imprisoned inside the MAGA echo chamber. For them this may be news, and MJT and Rogan do have the potential to pierce the walls of their “conservative” media rubber rooms just enough for some fresh air to come through.

And… probably avoid or significantly alter the concept if anybody is allergic to nuts.

Ain’t nobody allergic to DEEZ NUTS!

“Apple News underrepresents made-up “news”, according to - checks notes - this study we’ve made up.”

Let’s flip this argument on its head: family is potentially the best place for political discussions, as it’s one of the few places in life where bonds should be tightest, respect should be mutual and all actors should act in good faith. It should be the safest of spaces and, if intact, should be able to easily withstand disagreements on things outside the family, such as politics. If it doesn’t - like in this case, apparently-, doesn’t that tell us more about the family in question, and/or the state of political debate in our country?

A jury of many beers

…or be prepared to get shot…?

You picked the worst possible place for this kind of advice, mate!

IRL Sir Norman Fry testimony. Just not funny.

I will admit that YouTube is the strongest vice in my life, I just can’t get enough of it.

Well, do it like everyone trying to shake off a vice: if you feel you can’t go cold turkey, switch to a less harmful surrogate. Ditch the YouTube app and switch to something like Newpipe or FreeTube that both give you access to YouTube’s content, but at the same time comes with more functionality (background playback, downloads), protects your privacy (accountless subscriptions and playlists) and also fucks with Google’s bottom line by blocking ads.

Google’s got my data by the balls. I think it’s a bit too late for me.

I get this post-privacy fatalism a lot, but luckily for you, it’s patently false.

Big tech’s business model - at least for now - is to profile you and sell this image of you off to advertisers and other businesses for personalised targeting (and possibly other shenanigans, but let’s not get into that). In order to be valuable to them, this profile must be accurate and up-to-date.

Now, luckily, people aren’t static beings. We change as we grow, not just older, but as human beings. We change jobs and even careers, social circles and places of residence. We change our marital status (hopefully only once ;), the number of people in our family (hopefully only incrementally ;) and the people we want to spend most time with. We change contact details and bank accounts, brand preferences and spending habits. We change our beliefs and habits, political convictions, our outlooks on and goals in life. Just try to picture the person you were ten years ago, and, I hope for you, you’ll see a Venn diagram that may have some overlap, but also some pronounced areas of difference. As time goes on, these differences will become larger and larger, until the profile of ‘old you’ is entirely worthless to any advertiser because it gives them little to no idea who ‘present you’ is and how to target them.

You may be right that the best point in time to untether yourself was yesterday. But the next best is today.

I am aware of that, hence the ""s. But you’re correct, that’s where the analogy breaks. Personally, I prefer to liken them to parrots, mindlessly reciting patterns they’ve found in somebody else’s speech.

A talk on LLMs I was listening to recently put it this way:

If we hear the words of a five-year-old, we assume the knowledge of a five-year-old behind those words, and treat the content with due caution.

We’re not adapted to something with the “mind” of a five-year-old speaking to us in the words of a fifty-year-old, and thus are more likely to assume competence just based on language.

I suppose they’re still working out the details of Fascism as a Service (FaaS), i.e. the monthly subscription fees, tier names (Trump > Mussolini > Franco > Hitler > Thiel), and so on…

That’s my next stop probably. Been on degoogled Android for many years and loved it. But vendors have started locking down their bootloaders (fuck you, Samsung!), Google has made moves to make life harder in Android for custom ROM devs and sidesloaders alike, so it’s only a matter of time until they’ll go full Hitler on it. So: Go, penguin, go!