The Quuuuuill

Not about being in the us specifically. But about keeping your manufacturing near your entire supply chain.

But the uncertainty of what will come soon for tariffs is

From a business perspective: more control over the manufacturing process and less risk of getting hit by tariffs

Which would be fine if we wasn’t such a weirdo about men who aren’t him wearing makeup

I stopped buying keyboard phones when the manufacturers stopped selling them to me. They don’t actually care what the market demands, they care about what the market will accept with the highest profit margins. A mid-spec phone with a keyboard coming in under the price of a flagship should actually be a feasible product, but by creating that product, you’re reducing your profit/unit just that little bit…

The modern flat icons are actually… A little insidious in their conception. They’re based on industrial psychology and mid-century modern propaganda. They make your phone just that bit more addictive. It’s not someone convincing management it’s a recreation of the Mona Lisa, it’s management coming down to the graphics department and saying “You need to make it more addictive”

Rest area payphones. Its why most rest areas have a huge blown up atlas map these days

edit: and as a note, the death of the rest area payphone is a huge problem some places. you ever look at a coverage map for west virginia? you break down or get lost out there and you’re totally fucked

The location of the target sends Russia and hopefully some of the Russian populace two messages:

1. Ukraine has the technical capability to hit Moscow
2. Ukraine chooses their targets based on tactical strategic value, not based on instilling terror

The main concern is going to be hardware reliability from wear and tear. That’s the value of buying refurbished, for which there are several reputable retailers online (some of which selling degoogled phones with their own OSes). On the software side, since I’m presuming the focus of this discussion is installing grapheneos, its not really a concern since you’re going to be reflashing the device

BRICS is more about resisting european hegemony to establish a new hegemony than anything. As a unit, sometimes they’ll say something real as hell, but generally speaking 90% of what they do is the same evil backstabbing shit we always talk about the US doing to influence global economics and sustain power. When BRICS is taken into consideration with the G-7 what we actually see is a two party system of global torture that more than anything wants to maintain the basic status quo, they just want to shift slightly who’s on top

India the I

South Africa the S

Go cheap, and go second hand if possible

Proton, Tuta, Mailbox.org, Posteo

All are equal in terms of their overall quality of service, just different in what advantages they offer (except for Mailbox.org and Posteo. They’re just offering standards compliant email servers without any bullshit and let you roll your own encryption)

Buncha dark pattern bullshit

In a word: enshittification

A single corporate entity wanting to gatekeep our collective knowledge of the things we love is intrinsically a bad thing. It was easy to ignore back when its functionality was basic and the ads minimal. These days the website is bloated with third party cookies and scripts, and it is one of the worst offenders outside Big Tech / FAANG when it comes to implementing surveilance capitalism.

I think a Tribe Called Quests Excursions. Someone else mentioned that it’s a shame losing all memories of a piece of music because we as a species associate music with our most precious memories. Here’s the thing: Excursions is timeless and woven throughout my life. I’ve relistened to it so many times and got more from it as I’ve matured. I wonder how revolutionary and fresh it would feel to hear it today with my adult understanding of the world

I think people just want the emotional satisfaction of submitting a vote that says “this is my preferred person”

Literally any voting system other than the one we use is an improvement.

I was digging LMDE until my 8GB of ram simply couldn’t handle the load and I’m in AntiX now. Honestly, I’ve watched Mint go from being immature and insecure to security leaders without losing their accessibility. Solid and incredibly important distro if you ask me

Hopefully you’ve tried another distro by now, and also know to avoid big corporate distros best you can

They’ve never given me the vibe that that reversal of course was permanent, or that other things they do aren’t similarly anti-user