You ask a lot of legitimate questions there, causes that you and I could come to an agreement over. I would erase the starting point though. Pride movements and workers movements might both look like similar demonstrations. They are borne out of very different motivations. People might look down on manual laborers but you wouldn’t have to fear for your safety in certain parts of your city for being one. LGBTQ+ folks can’t say the same. Pride movements bring awareness that we have discriminated or are still discriminating against whole swaths of the population - mostly for silly reasons. That’s different from a disagreement about how exploitative capitalism should be permitted to be.

Another negative connotation is that this “why are there LGBTQ+ pride parades but not …?” is the leading question of people who think straight people need to have a pride parade as well. Like you couldn’t live a heteronormative life every day without fear of retribution. And I’m hoping that you don’t think along those lines and therefore would not want to be this close to that argumentative train of thought.

I’m not sure I agree with narcissism being on par with flanderization. One is a personality trait, if not a defect, and the other is lazy script writing. I sort of see where you are going with this but I’m not really onboard. Not all parents are narcissists, either.

The other thing is time. We all get set in our ways as we hurl around the sun time and time again. Everybody thinks they are enlightened enough to not become the stubborn weirdo, like mom or dad or the drunk uncle from Thanksgiving dinner. And everybody is wrong. You will too become a predictably dogmatic or a quirky person in one way or another. People will adapt around you. That’s neither narcism nor flanderization. That’s just life.

It is true that narcicists and abusers create an atmosphere, where their outrageous behavior gets ignored or swept under the carpet. I think it’s fair to say though that that involves more manipulation and strategic thinking on behalf of the a-hole. If somebody dismisses the abusive behavior as “that’s just Karen/Bob, they’re like that, you know” than that may present as flanderization on the surface but it’s not from a lack of script being written. The narcicist has succeeded in pulling the wool over their eyes. I guess that’s why bringing these terms together like this rubs me the wrong way.

Extinction of the human race.

The absolute worst airports to navigate are all in the US. Fort Worth, Atlanta, just to shame two.

Most other airports are easy to navigate, even on your first trip. It’s basically walking to a door with a number following huge signs with arrows and numbers. If you need help, you just ask staff working there. The Lufthansa people will be delighted to take a biz class passenger by the hand. Make sure your suitcase gets sent to Korea directly, pick a seat you like (aisle is better if you ask me), and don’t forget your passport. You’ll be fine!

I don’t have much to say about the points you’re making here. I have a feeling after we sit down and discuss this over coffee/a beer we will find out that we’re pretty much on the same page.

The only thing I want to point out though it that the term “enshitification” was coined for online platforms. It describes a business catering full hog to the needs of the users to create a following, then sell access to that following to other businesses, until both followers and b2b customers are locked in and get milked for every cent possible. From the user POV that’s when the service enshitifies DVD and the b2b customers are between a rock and a hard place. Your cable example follows a similar mechanic but since it is not online it is technically not enshitification as dumped into the world as a term by Corey Doctorow.

That’s just minor pedantry that you’re naturally free to ignore as well. As I said before, I don’t see us disagreeing on the overall point you’re making. Very eloquently, I might add.

Edited typo

Dictionary definition to run over:

1 : to go over, examine, repeat, or rehearse quickly 2 : to collide with, knock down, and often drive over

IIRC “attack” used to be originally a charge by the cavalry. And now terrorists and air forces also attack. Meanings shift. The victim needn’t see the undercarriage in person to classify as being run over. Language is literally imprecise.

The scenario is a bit misleading. We didn’t arrive at everything being wrapped in single-use plastic overnight so we cannot switch the other way that quickly either.

Perishable or hygienic reasons must allow for continued use for some products. But there are plenty of things that don’t fall under that umbrella where waxed paper or single-use bamboo could make sense. You have correctly identified cost as an issue. The reason why everything is still wrapped in plastic like a corpse in Twin Peaks is it’s cheaper. Plastic packaging is also more resistant to damage on the way to the consumer. So the calculations need to change. We need to raise the cost on plastic and lower it on other more quickly biodegradable items. That’s a political decision, one that would be heavily lobbied against by the big boys in packaging. Yet another reason why overnight simply won’t work.

The question about resources also hinges on the time frame. If the switch had to occur today, the answer is probably no. There aren’t enough paper mills and bamboo nurseries in the world to meet demand. But there weren’t a gazillion plastic factories from the start, they grew over time in numbers. One should also not forget that paper mills aren’t without environmental impact. And neither would bamboo toothbrushes be. Also if we increase the amount of arable land to grow bamboo, are we decreasing land for food or animal feed? What are the effects of growing bamboo on the land without fellow periods? What fertilizer would be used? What toxic insect killer chemicals would need to be in use to guarantee sustainable levels of production? It’s not like one option is the perfect solution to fix the problems with the other option.

A holistic aporoach would also have to include us consumers changing our behavior. That’s definitely not happening overnight.

Everybody is different, I suppose. I’ve seen people blossoming post retirement and falling into a hole. The level of enjoyment you felt for the work you did probably is an indicator of which end of the sliding scale you end up on.

What are you, as in you personally, doing about you feel? Learning to live with it, looking for a hobby, volunteer cause, part-time job? It might be presumptuous of me but I’m reading between the lines that you maybe want to continue feeling useful.

I was listening to a podcast about a Danish murder investigation that included an interview by Danish police of a prisoner suspect in Finland in cooperation with the Finns. They went ahead with the interview without the lawyer present, which seemed normal to the Danes and wrong to their Finnish colleagues. It was one of the reasons why the content of the interview was inadmissible on court. That’s the first thing I thought about regarding a lawyer opt-out.

As a fan of the Nordic Noir genre of crime shows, it’s a great booster for extras. Whenever a person of interest has become an actual suspect, there will be a lawyer present in the show. In 99% of the cases it’s an extra without any lines. So there appears to be a legal requirement to have a lawyer present or the interview cannot or should not proceed.

I think in general it is a hard thing to operate under a system where a lawyer must be present for any interview. There may not be enough lawyers to man every police interview with opt-out rules. They require remuneration as well. This may explain why the rules are so fishy. Case law is caught between not hanstringing police investigations with an opt-out system on the one hand and preventing overreach and abuse by the cops on the other.

Just as a thought experiment: if you required a lawyer being present for any interview at the station, apart from finding a way to pay these poor lawyers you’d also have to come up with a system where enough lawyers are readily available to sit in. Kind of like not all Parisian bakers can go on holiday at the same time. What if there aren’t enough lawyers in your hamlet? Do we maybe need to create a hired function to satisfy the legal requirements? An office in the police station where a lawyer or a rotation of usual suspects of lawyers serve? Wouldn’t this create a proximity where lawyers and cops become too chummy and possibly collude? The interests of the interviewee are best served by cops and lawyers hating each other’s guts but working alongside they’ve become pals. I think there may be an unintended consequence that the course of justice gets more perverted by the opt-out systen than in the current fishy US system.

Thanks for the explanation.

You say data, and I say data. Let’s call the whole thing off.

We should all be using the name less. And I don’t mean Jesus, I mean the other one. Because as far as I know Christ wasn’t a raging, unapologetic pedophile.

Weather is expressed in different ways in different languages. The fact that English, like many other European languages, uses a mysterious “it” as a subject to say what’s going on is actually the outlier. More languages use a formula more like “rain falls, snow falls, sun shines, etc.”

So you tell him the “it” stands for “the weather” although that isn’t true. You could more truthfully say it’s a convention and English sentences need a subject. And then you add that “is raining” also transports the idea that it is in the process of happening right now. Don’t question it, accept it.

Learn a bit of Russian. That language is full of colorful images, irregularities, and inexplicable grammar. More so than English, probably. So you can put him in his place when he complains. Like, dude, y’all don’t even know what blue is!

None whatsoever.

In my opinion, you could clean up the design, make it a bit less like a human sketched it. I think the rays of the sun would look better with a white outline as well. These are just stylistic choices that I would make and you’re free to ignore.

What I would definitely like to ask you to reconsider is the name of this fictional place. “Oriental” has picked up a few negative connotations in English, crossing into racist abuse on occasion. I’m sure you don’t want that attached to your nice design.

I am afraid you are “fucked” if you think AJ is an example of independent media and that YT numbers are enough proof for media suppression. Most people on this planet do not watch YT. And the ones who do tend to be influenced by their algorithms that continuously change. That makes YT numbers as slippery as an eel in a lubricant factory. By which I mean unreliable to start a conspiracy theory about a poor, cash strapped, impeccably impartial artisan media outlet from Qatar. Slash s.

Some of the technical info flew right over my head in the first article. What I took from the piece is that he has valid points so far as I can see and understand it. I would say nevertheless the author was a bit biased as well. And it’s 3 years old. It may still be accurate, IDK.

I use F-Droid and have been for a while and I’m not aware of any issues this could’ve caused me. But I’m also not using it for essential systems. Not for browsers, VPN, etc. I have downloaded games, a couple of notes apps, that sort of thing. I would never recommend you get all your apps from there. It’s an addition to Google or your usual poison.

Security experts will never be happy; that’s their job. The author is also talking about your threat model. Are you okay with certain risks? The truth is also that somebody could screw you over on Google Play. It may be less likely comparatively but not impossible. So you try to jump from rock to rock hoping no alligator catches you. So far no alligator got me.

Most people who say that do so for dogmatic reasons, not because they arrived at this conclusion after careful analysis. It’s the political point of small government.

These are the same people who will probably be first in line shouting for government intervention when their drinking water is full of chemical waste.

You can try to reason with folks like that but you probably won’t change their mind. Just try not to shout at them.

But FSBhub is!

I would think the sandwiches would be delivered before any declaration of independence.