I know we’re meant to be discussing this from a privacy perspective, but my first thought whenever the topic of eliminating cash comes up is that, at least where I am in the US, it’s tantamount to euthanizing the homeless. The vast majority of unhoused folks I know (which is a lot, including myself for a terrible but thankfully short period of my life) get most of their necessities (particularly food) by buying them with cash they’ve earned through various means, rather than charities, food banks, soup kitchens, etc. And only a very small percentage of them has any sort of bank account and/or a device to manage digital currency.

But also privacy, yes. Cash is king.

Not a lawyer, but if you’ve already paid for something (i.e. “bought” an eBook on Amazon), then you’ve done your part to ensure the creator eats tonight. Pirating a digital copy of it that you can read/move/engage with wherever you want is no longer even slightly morally questionable at that point.

If you thought USians were stupid already, give it a few more years of AI usage! You can just see people’s eyes glassing over when you try to discuss anything of import.

Yuuuup. I’m an American, and I’m particularly scared for Gen Alpha. The amount of times I’ve seen my nieces and nephews stop mid-sentence, pull out their phone and have ChatGPT complete their thought is… Idk man. I’m a millennial, and a significant part of this is my generation’s fault, cuz we’re the “hand them an iPad so they’ll leave you alone” parents (though not me personally because I have zero interest in bearing any crotchfruit). But damn, it’s scary. And sad.

I do like videogames, including ones with NPCs, but the difference there is that an NPC isn’t pretending to be a person, it’s pretending to be a character in a fiction that was definitively written by a person. And even so, I very much don’t like hyper-realism in games, much prefer stylized and/or cartoony.

And yeah the fake person at a drive thru thing started up where I am in California sometime last year (or at least that I first noticed). The irritatingly realistic voice is bad enough, but it’s really the obsequious responses that bug me there. A lot of, “great choice! The orange chicken is really tasty”, like bitch you literally don’t have a mouth, please stop.

Yeah but see that freaks me tf out too. A few nights ago, the moon was shining through the leaves of the oak tree in my backyard in such a way that it vaguely looked like a little kid’s face, and I literally said out loud “absolutely not” and went back inside.

+1 for GrapheneOS. I wasn’t particularly privacy conscious when I installed it; I was just super bothered by the Google/Apple duopoly in mobile OSes and wanted literally anything else. Came across GrapheneOS and a few others, but Graphene looked the easiest to install (and it was!) so I went with that. Barely a year later, Google’s out here trying to lock Android down and harvest literally every piece of personal data they can find, and I feel like I dodged a bullet.

Not disagreeing but, um, I did need healthcare. So.

Bearing that in mind, I now have a new problem, which is that apparently none of my containers actually have internet access? I hadn’t noticed because I mostly just run local media servers, and I tend to clean up all the metadata before I upload anything (i.e. I usually clean up my ebooks in Calibre before I send them to BookLore, so I’ve never had to actually use BookLore to fetch anything from the web).

Only way I was able to get internet access in any of my containers was adding

network_mode: "host"

to the docker-compose.yml files, which, if I’m understanding correctly, negates the point of isolating network services, no? So something is broken somewhere but I have no idea what it is or how to fix it, so I guess my JF server is staying on bare metal for now lol

Ngl, I used an ansible playbook one time and I felt like a fourth grader trying to perform open heart surgery. Again, I am just so very very new and dumb lmao

Grounded. It initially felt impossible cuz early game practically every enemy one-shots you. Abandoned it for a while, then a friend played it and told me the secret is to learn all the movesets and perfect parry every single hit, and I was like “that sounds unreasonably difficult”, and then immediately played it for like nine hours straight.

Still waiting on the tragic romance version of Mulan, where they don’t get together at the end because falling in love with boy-Mulan helped Shang finally come to terms with being gay.

I’d also take the version where he ends up with Mulan’s horny grandma instead. Either or.

Nah I don’t buy it. Ain’t no way this mf is 6’4".

Sorry this observation hurt your feelings I guess?

Ah yes, “Deciphering Females”, the most enrolled course at Trust Me Bro University (accreditation pending).

Damn the incels turned OUT for this post lmao

Not disagreeing at all, but I think it’s important to note how effective wage slavery is in keeping people too exhausted to stay informed. I’m in California, where a studio apartment goes for about $1k/mo, landlords generally require you to earn 3x rent after taxes to qualify, and minimum wage is $17/hr. So, working 60 hours a week at minimum wage, you might just barely qualify, and that’s without even taking into account all other living expenses.

I agree that ignorance can be a byproduct of privilege, but it can also be a byproduct of poverty.

Buffy. Not exactly a kid show, but I was a kid when I watched it ¯_(ツ)_/¯