lobster @Lobster@qoto.org

Welcome to worldwide America-Europe-Israeli neo-Fascism & genocide, so also neo-Nazism

For decades, racist groups such as the Heritage Foundation in the U.S. have been working to undo the democratic gains of the 20thC.

They know that dictatorship, alone, will save their privilege.

eg, Nancy MacLean Democracy in chains (talk begins ~10 mins in): https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/scholar-to-scholar-talk-nancy-maclean-pre-history-likely-sequels-of-insurrection-us-capitol/

& Anne Nelson, Shadow network
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJFg5nTxgMk

#USPol #UKPol #EuroPol #Israel

A holiday tip for my #ActuallyAutistic comrades

You’re allowed to spend time by yourself in another room during family events.

You’re allowed to self regulate.

There is no shame in this.

@actuallyautistic

There comes a point where there is absolutely nothing more you can do to be sure about something.

Eventually, you have to let go of whatever you are worried about or you will just continue to worry with no resolution in sight.

The purpose of life is to live, not to live in fear.

The experience of a faultlessly operating device spontaneously updating itself with new firmware that introduces bugs and breaks functionality is almost uniquely frustrating, but also weirdly familiar on some deep archetypal level.

It's entirely as if human civilization, having grown up believing for most of its history in entirely imaginary demons, afrits and malevolent spirits, had to go and invent them the first chance it got.

If we're taking the effort to switch platforms, it may be time to move away from Centralized Messengers (like Signal/Telegram) and focus on Federated or Peer-To-Peer. (like Element/Delta-Chat) Removing any Corporate (vulnerable) control structure. Unfortunately, many of the decentralized alternatives are still overly techy 😉 However, they're getting easier 🙂

That being said Signal and Telegram are significantly more private and ethical than Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple; so it's very encouraging to see such a huge shift! 🙂

Centralized messengers are e.g. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Threema, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat: There is one provider and one application for the service. Everybody who communicates with somebody communicates via the servers of that provider. That doesn’t mean that those messengers are all the same: Some, like Discord and Instagram, are entirely unencrypted – the service provider (i.e. the company) can read and use everything you write. Some, like Telegram and Signal, publish the source code of the apps – that means that everyone can see and verify what the app does on their phone. Some, like Threema and Signal, are always end-to-end encrypted. Some collect more metadata – e.g. the data when with whom, how long, where you communicate – and some less. And so on and so on. Still, there are very privacy-friendly messengers among those – most popularly Signal and Threema, followed by messengers with a smaller user base such as Wire and Wickr. But if any of those messengers implement a feature you don’t like, you’re screwed. All of those messengers are app-reliant: You need to access the application of the service provider, otherwise, you’re excluded from messaging other people.

Federated Messengers
Federated messengers are messengers which rely on a fully open protocol (think of ‘protocol’ as ‘language’). The two existing protocols are XMPP and Matrix. Their main principle can be compared to email: You can register an account at any server (or host a server of your own), and communicate with any other account on any other server. Think of it like sending an email from your Gmail account to your friend’s Yahoo account: There are no limits as to how you can communicate, and if you dislike Gmail, you can just switch to any other email provider and send an email to your friend from your new address. Likewise, you are free to choose any app you like to use your account (people generally speak of apps as ‘clients’). Similar to how you can access a Hotmail email account from different clients (e.g. the Gmail app, Apple’s email app, Mozilla Thunderbird, …), you can access your XMPP or Matrix account through different clients or simply access your account from the web browser. There are people who prefer XMPP and people who prefer Matrix, I personally think that XMPP is the better protocol whilst Matrix offers an easier user experience for people who are new to federated messenger protocols.
An ideal choice for messaging may be Element which uses the Matrix protocol. Element is more organized than Telegram in that it supports a structure such as rooms and encrypted group calls like Discord.

Peer-to-Peer Messengers
Peer-to-peer messengers don’t rely on servers altogether – they just rely on one common protocol (‘language’). Briar, Jami, Tox, RetroShare are all examples of this. Among the three groups, they provide the most anonymity and security. However, this also means that you need to add your contacts manually – as your identity is protected, you can’t simply be identified by your phone number. On the other hand, they provide the comfort of not being able to fail. There is no server that can go offline and you don’t need to place your trust in the availability of the service on a specific provider. You will always be able to message your contacts – in some cases even without needing an internet connection. But pay attention: Not all peer-to-peer messengers support voice or video call functionality.

To be honest, I never stopped trusting books over the Internet, and, depending on the topic, older books over newer ones.

After all, before MGC, there was SEO, and before that there were stupid blog authors who wouldn't do proper research.

The only problem with books is that certain fields changed so quickly that they made books obsolete after a very short period of time. Also, editors got progressively worse at their job, to the point that I'm beginning to suspect they may no longer exist.

The things that “don’t matter” often do.

“All we have to do is x” is always followed by a bad idea.

The #answer to: how much do you love #Linux?

I hate dating apps but I think I convinced myself at some point that it was just enough effort to use them so I didn’t have to try irl but just hopeless enough that I’d never have to worry about actually getting into a relationship.

I went on a date recently that went really well and we’re going on another tomorrow

Its been about 8 years since my last serious relationship, and that only lasted a couple months. So I’m going to try and take these next steps slowly and carefully…

For convenience, I took a bus recently. I’m a fan.

The King Arthur Giant Cinnamon Roll, but gianter https://www.diningandcooking.com/1099932/the-king-arthur-giant-cinnamon-roll-but-gianter/

#Bread #homemade #HomemadeBread