and we’ve been trying for decades to reform our system for a better voting system. first past the post elections force strategic voting. that’s the kind of elections we get. the only place where vote shares matter is for distributing public campaign finance funds.

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

Oh for sure. The solution isn’t to raise the price of unfairly priced products, its to introduce the concept of accountability to the world

My thing is that there’s a minimum price for fairness, and then there’s products that present themselves as being marked up for fairness that don’t actually benefit the people a fair price should benefit. Your best bet is to do some research into what the minimum fair price something is, and then look for something that price from a local economy.

Unfortunately, this is next to impossible. The systems in place favor us never knowing where anything comes from, and the research tools we used to be able to use to find fair prices (internet search) have been broken for this purpose for nearly 10 years (not just AI bullshit, but all those SEO pay to play bullshit listicles that even infect real human driven testing processes like The Wirecutter and Gear Lab). I think there’s even an argument to be made that AI is an intentional device to steer us into a digital dark age where finding real trustworthy information is nearly impossible.

What?

Yeah. His parents went with Private Booty. He earned his position

Those aliens also display a core experience that we have anxiety about: being colonized. Interestingly, Stargate, a franchise partially created by the US Air Force very accidentally portrays what interacting with alien species who didn’t establish a system of colonization might look like. There are multiple cultures humanity encounters in that franchise who don’t have weapons but have farming implements we can’t even imagine. That franchise shows a universe where Humanity leaves earth and discovers we’re a bunch of violent weirdos who don’t fit in with the rest of the universe. There’s some other colonial powers we encounter, of course, when Earth needs to be the good guys. But like… Think about that. We might be so steeped in a system that’s been inflicted on us that our first contact with a non-earthbound culture might see that culture being like “so the workers produce all the value, and you beat them up? Why? This doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t they be rewarded for the value they provide?”

Its like truth social

Then stop being weird. We’re trying to bully you into getting right

They want protection from criticism. British hunting practices are… Horrific. Other countries have eliminated killing the fox as part of the event. Most of the world has shifted to you just ride around a field with some dogs and maybe you see the same fox you see every Thursday at 4pm and you go on the exact same chase with it you always do. In the UK? They murder that fox, and not humanely. By marking their “traditions” as ethnically derived, they become able to say criticizing them is a hate crime. Its… Really fucking stupid

Same with your contacts. There’s people I was in regular contact with that I’ve lost the ability to get in touch with.

On the other hand the three and a half years me and my ex fiance were together have also been wiped out. So that’s a load off my mind haha

Yeah and when people were like “hey, this decision sucks, can you not?” They were like “where was this feedback before, we’ve been discussing this on our forums for months” and its like… Obviously most people who use your app aren’t on your forums. The usage patterns of people with that much dedication to signal will be different from people who are just using the app to talk to their friends and family and treat it as a tool.

This situation to me is it seems like it’s a echo chamber bubble situation. The way Signal gets feedback for their app is kinda bullshit. It disproportionately values the input of their own developers and the very most evangelical signal users. They don’t request feedback from users at all before making changes. They push out notifications of upcoming changes through banners at the top of the app, but they never use this same mechanism to be like “Hey, doing a quick poll. Whatchu folks want?”

I don’t think it’s malice in this case. Just blind incompetence.

Their justification for that is so bullshit to me. They let perfect be the enemy of good

It’s true. They got that shit on lock down. And the thing is… If their goals were actually what they say they are they’d let more other services access that, but instead, no. It’s actually about locking you into their ecosystem

I’m using Quik SMS which is a continuation of QK SMS. I’ve found that the current state of SMS apps on Android kinda… Sucks. Fossify messenger is probs my second favorite

Yeah. The CEO class needs to be eliminated from the upper stratus of society. If you think monetary donations to Mozilla aren’t worth it as a result, I get it, and I’m right there with you. I don’t donate money. But also… In the browser space if money is what you want to donate, it might be the best route.

Some of it does. But currently a lot of it doesn’t because they can rely on the google funding. You can also donate volunteering time to Mozilla projects you want to support like Firefox or Thunderbird

Beehaw is my main instance. That number doesn’t sound right at all…