We don’t just worship the dollar, we literally elevate thieves and conmen and praise them for suckering so many people. They’re just smart businessmen by fucking over the populace for their own gain.

This is so important. Even if Trump comes in and wrecks everything, the work is there, and the work will become less memory holed because of the prominence of the people presenting it. The information is already out there, and there will be those who will preserve it until their last breath to ensure it’s not forgotten.

We’ve got to stop allowing people to pretend that biology is in any way binary and this kind of important work helps that happen.

Anyway yeah this is pretty huge and honestly a bit unexpected. Admiral Rachel Levine, MD kicks so much ass for this.

GOG digitally signs their games and have no DRM, thus no need for cracks.

If you can get a hold of a GOG version, you can check its validity.

For games outside the GOG ecosystem, they are all unfortunately at risk.

I played Baldur’s Gate 3 via a pirated GOG version on release with friends until I was able to afford my own copy, then moved the saved game over to the legit copy.

I also did not like something Newton said at the end of a (paywalled) blog about what he learned from the reaction to his piece about AI skeptics. Newton said, and I quote, that he was “taking detailed notes on all bloggers writing ’financial analyses’ suggesting that OpenAI will go bankrupt soon because it’s not profitable yet.”

I do not like bullies, and I do not like threats. Suggesting one is “taking detailed notes on bloggers” is an attempt to intimidate people that are seriously evaluating the fact that OpenAI burns $5 billion a year and has no path to profitability. I don’t know if this is about me, nor do I particularly care.

Musk has also made weird veiled threats to keeping lists. I bet Zuckerberg is just smart enough to not tell people he keeps a list of people he keeps tabs on and uses his immense wealth to crush.

I mean, we know Monsanto had a “fusion center” that fought tooth and nail to have any negative coverage of Monsanto destroyed, intimidated, or flooded with negative reviews and responses.

We have had executives from eBay mailing critics dead animals.

If I were Zitron I’d be worried about way more than just another journalist who is stuck up powerful people’s asses, but that’s the price of speaking truth to power.

Shouldn’t have wished to live in more interesting times.

If only the times we lived in were actually interesting instead of boring, tedious, and deadly.

pRoSeCuTe fAuCi

What a bunch of fuckin rubes, we just put all the people who should be prosecuted in charge.

Donald Trump does coding.

Even moreso for apps, you can still retain some control through Firefox and others on mobile, but it’s still limited.

They want to push people to apps because you have no control over how you view the site, unlike on a traditional web browser where you can tweak such things and block advertiser connections.

I think it’s fine personally as well, but I can see it brushing up against these rules:

• Keep the conversation nice and light hearted

• Avoid controversial topics such as politics or societal debates

It’s a slightly contentious issue, so not as easy to keep it lighthearted when people want to complain about it, and technically it could be considered a “societal debate.”

I think it’s also that just significantly more people own a phone than a laptop.

It’s like those demographics maps that are really just population maps.

It’s all attempts at vendor lock-in because phones are more locked down than computers and more people only have just a phone.

It’s up there with how I think Youtube/Tiktok videos are an absolutely terrible way to explore deep problems.

If I have to watch a three hour video with only spoken references, I’m sorry, I’d way rather have a 300-page document with figures, graphs, and most fucking importantly god damned footnotes and endnotes.

Especially since this is the fucking internet that was built on hypertext which is like a footnote on steroids since you can directly link to the original document instead of just referencing it.

Videos are fine for lots of things, but not always long-form deep-dives into difficult and complex subjects. Often it makes sense to have a video in a lecture set up, if you’re actually trying to educate people and not just inform them, but otherwise text does fine for research.

Fuck apps and their spyware bullshit, fuck all knowledge being in videos you can’t footnote, fuck trying to turn the internet into a one-way-medium like cable TV.

The thing I always try to remind myself of is that most people are too deeply wrapped up in their own lives to really be thinking about me or anyone else all that much to begin with, so whatever I am worried about is at least likely to just be me overthinking it.

Me, to Google right now:

Scorpion King Approved.

Finally. We’ve let these fuckers operate as black boxes for far too long.

Get your ass algorithms out in the open so they can be regulated or close up fucking shop, assholes.

It’s not a fucking trade-secret, it’s hiding behind ideas like trade-secrets so they can operate with impunity to alter what people see in their feeds however they want and however benefits them most.

This is what the US should have been doing to Tiktok, but the reality is they need to be doing it to all social media.

Since this is obviously a gas station, it is quite likely the person who made this sign speaks english as a second language.

Even if its their first language, working at a gas station often implies they don’t have the education or work history to work elsewhere.

Can we stop punching down?

After 30 years of the international internet I am pretty fuck sick of making fun of people who don’t speak English well. (Especially when native English speakers would fare way worse if the situations were reversed)

It would be like going on RedNote and getting dogpiled for speaking Mandarin badly.

Next up on Sick Sad World…

This is tragic, but not unexpected. Michael Moore released Sicko in 2007 and medical debt continues to be the number one reason for bankruptcy in the US nearly 20 years later.

Like, my cancer isn’t considered severe enough for me to even bother with disability benefits because I’ll just be denied.

I am not working mostly because none of the jobs I qualify for make enough money or have good enough insurance to afford the medications that cost $18k a month out of pocket.

I’ve done the math and it makes more sense to fall apart in poverty and at least be able to have the medication covered.

When the Republicans repeal the ACA, I will probably die a preventable death from lack of coverage.

They’ve always had money for wars, but never had money to care for their citizens.

Over 200,000 innocent Iraqi’s were killed in the Iraq War because they don’t actually care about regular people anywhere in the world, not just the USA. They called us “human capital stock.” When they show you who they are, listen the first time. We’re just products to be used and discarded to these people.

The question is, do you know the real you?

According to the Writer in Stalker, we never know who we really are or what we really want.

WRITER: I don’t know. Maybe. Anyway – I’m sorry, but… You are so foolish! You don’t have an idea about what’s happening here! And how do you think, why did Porcupine hang himself?

STALKER: He came to the Zone with a selfish purpose and sacrificed his brother in the “meat grinder” because of the money…

WRITER: That I can understand. But why did he hang himself? Why did he decide not to return – absolutely not after the money this time, but after his brother? Ah? Why did he give up?

STALKER: He wanted to, he… I don’t know. In several days he hanged himself.

WRITER: He understood here, that not all dreams come true, but only the most precious ones! And you’re just shouting in vain!..

WRITER: That, what is in accordance with your nature, your essence, is what comes true here! That essence that you have no idea about, but it sits in you and rules you all your life! You understood nothing, Leather Stocking. Porcupine was not overcome by his greed. He crawled on his knees in this very puddle begging for his brother. And he got a lot of money, and couldn’t get anything else. Because a Porcupine gets everything what’s porcupine-like! And conscience, throes of the soul – it is invented, it‘s brain work. He understood that and hanged himself. I will not go into your Room! I do not want to spill all the trash that has accumulated inside me, on anybody’s head. Even on yours. And afterwards run my head into the noose like Porcupine. I’d rather drink myself to death quietly and peacefully in my stinky writer’s private residence. No, Big Serpent, you are bad in sorting people out, if you lead such ones like me into the Zone. And then afterwards … ah… How do you know, that this miracle really exists? Who told you, that dreams really come true here? Did you see anybody, who would have been made happy here? Ah? Maybe Porcupine? And actually, who told you about the Zone, about Porcupine, about this Room?

Similarly, from the Don Hertzfedlt film “Everything will be Okay”:

Bill dropped his keys on the counter and stood there staring at them, suddenly thinking about all the times he’d thrown his keys there before, and how many days of his life were wasted repeating the same tasks and and rituals in his apartment over and over again. But then he wondered if realistically this was his life and the unusual part was his time spent doing other things.

Some countries are easier to get into than others. Start researching which ones have a path that could work for you.

Most are pretty strict but some are more open. If I recall correctly the Nordic countries may be a little easier, but don’t quote me on that. It’s been a long time since I accepted that this country had successfully trapped me here.

Mario is really excited about this development.