Previously: Part Zero, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI.
Part VII: Social Media
At the outset, I should warn the reader that I am not a user of modern social media. Outside of any privacy concerns, I just don’t enjoy that mode of communication and interaction. If I had my druthers, forums/BBS, blogs and newsletters would be the only forms of social media, but there’s no un-skinning that cat now. The upshot is that I will be recommending alternative services I do not use to replace mainstream services that I also do not use, so it would be a good idea to consider this nothing more than a jumping off point for your own research and decide if any of these alternatives might work for you.
The conundrum in trying to create alternative social media platforms is how to overcome network effects. The entire premise of social media requires a large base of users with which to socialize. Even if a fantastic, technologically superior alternative to a mainstream platform or service reaches the market, odds are good that few people will be using it initially, paradoxically making it difficult to attract new users (and advertisers, and capital, if the alternative is a commercial venture). So be aware when adopting an alternative social media platform that you will probably be the voice of one calling in the wilderness. If your goal in using social media is to maintain connections with a small circle of friends, your odds of success using a smaller, alternative platform are greater than if your goal is to reach millions of people with your message or your ads.
As with YouTube in Part V, the major social media sites are so entrenched that it may be difficult to avoid them entirely. Twitter, in particular, is nearly inescapable for news junkies, since even outside-the-mainstream commentators and news sites frequently link to tweets and publish commentary centered around the Twitter-verse. Just as there are alternative, more-privacy-respecting front-ends for YouTube, there also exist similar alternative front-ends for some social media sites. Nitter provides just such an alternative front-end to Twitter. The official instance can be accessed at nitter.net, or you can choose another instance. Nitter allows you to access Twitter without ads or Javascript, prevents Twitter from tracking your IP address or JS fingerprint and allows you to bypass the “sensitive content” warnings that the official Twitter web front-end displays on flagged tweets when one is not logged in. However, Nitter only works for consuming Twitter content. If you want to log in and post, you will have to use the official Twitter web front-end or app. Teddit is to Reddit as Nitter is to Twitter. The official instance can be accessed at teddit.net, or you can choose another instance. Teddit allows you to access Reddit without ads or Javascript, prevents Reddit from tracking your IP address or JS fingerprint and allows you to access content that may be restricted on the official web front-end, but does not allow you to post or log in to your Reddit account. Additionally, Teddit restores the old Reddit layout, which a lot of old-school users preferred. ProxiTok is an alternative front-end for TikTok that allows you to view user feeds, tags and the “Trending” and “Discovery” tabs, or view videos by ID, with all requests handled server-side to protect your privacy. You can find a list of instances here. Extensions are available for Firefox and chromium/Chrome to automatically redirect to these alternative front-ends. The LibRedirect extension works on these and several other websites, with configurable instances. If you would rather set up your own redirect rules manually, the Redirector extension might be a better fit. You can also use the stand-alone Twitter to Nitter Redirect and Teddit Redirect Firefox extensions, or the Nitter Redirect and Teddit Please chromium/Chrome extensions.
Of course, the ideal is not just to find better ways of accessing the Big Tech social media platforms, but to actually escape the centralized, ad-laden, privacy-disrespecting platforms altogether. To that end, there are several potential decentralized and/or more-privacy-respecting alternatives for your consideration, and we will examine a few that are designed to more or less replicate the features of the Big Tech platforms. Many of these platforms use federation to allow decentralized instances of a service to communicate with one another, and with other services using the same protocol. The so-called “Fediverse” describes different programs and services that use interoperable, open standards to communicate with each other using federation. An old, familiar example of a federated service is email. Using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), any two email servers can deliver messages to and from each other despite being operated independently. For example, GMail users can send emails to Yahoo Mail users. Fediverse services work the same way. By contrast, you cannot post messages to Facebook from a Twitter account. One major advantage of the fediverse is that your account on any given fediverse service will allow you to access every other service in the fediverse that uses the same protocol, so you do not need to create multiple accounts on multiple platforms (although you certainly can if you would prefer to maintain different identities on different services). If you get booted from an instance of a particular service, or your home instance shuts down, or you wish to change accounts for any other reason, you can simply create a new one and migrate all of your old friends/contacts/followers.
Mastodon is the most popular federated free and open source microblogging answer to Twitter. As discussed previously, you can join any independent Mastodon instance, or host your own, and access other Mastodon instances through federation. This allows for a diversity of rules and standards, such that even if you are banned or censored on any one server, you can continue using the service on another, or your own. But it also allows for a diversity of privacy and security practices. With any federated service, it is up to you to choose a server/instance (or host your own) with good privacy and security practices. It should be noted that Mastodon was not created with an anything goes free speech ethos in mind. Quite the opposite, it was intended to allow for the creation of online communities with more speech policing and censorship than Twitter, and most of its servers/instances are left wing echo chambers. But because it is decentralized and self-hostable, there is no central authority to prevent anyone from hosting their own communities with whatever rules they like. This was highlighted rather amusingly when Gab, in a bid to avoid being deplatformed yet again, relaunched as a Mastodon fork. While most Mastodon instances blacklisted Gab’s instance, Mastodon’s founder nicely summarized the situation when called upon to do more: “You have to understand it’s not actually possible to do anything platform-wide because it’s decentralized. I don’t have the control.” You can find a searchable list of Mastodon instances here. Pleroma and Misskey are two more fediverse microblogging platforms that overlap with Mastodon in functionality, and are able to federate with Mastodon as well as each other. Something tells me this Pleroma instance might appeal to some portion of this audience, but a list of more featured instances can be found here. A list of Misskey instances can be found here.
As Mastodon is to Twitter, so diaspora* is to Facebook. Diaspora* is one of the oldest alternative social media platforms, dating back to 2010. You can use it without sharing any personally identifiable information, and you get fairly granular control over what content you share, and with whom. Like other federated services, you can choose from any number of instances – called pods – or host your own. You can find a list of pods here, or visit the diaspora* wiki to be automatically directed to an active pod. Diaspora* uses its own federation protocol that is less widely supported by other fediverse software, but does federate with a smaller number of other services, including another Facebook alternative: Friendica. Like the rest of the fediverse, Friendica can be self-hosted, or you can join any instance. Friendica supports multiple federation protocols, including the aforementioned diaspora* as well as the more widely used ActivityPub, so if you’re already using another fediverse service, it is easy to get started. Outside of the fediverse, Minds provides another Facebook alternative. Minds is a blockchain-based service, similar to LBRY or Dtube, discussed in Part V. Like Facebook, and unlike its fediverse counterparts, Minds is a commercial service. It has a larger user base, and has raised venture capital as well as equity crowdfunding. Participating on the site can earn you MINDS tokens – a shitcoin which can be used on the site to purchase ads, boost content, tip other users or upgrade your account to unlock more features. Registration requires no personally identifiable information besides an email address. Minds takes a light touch on content moderation, and features a novel jury system for appealing warnings and bans, but it is not an anything goes platform. Since Minds is not federated or self-hostable, it is not entirely censorship-resistant. For now it is quite free speech-accommodating, but venture capital has a tendency to lead to more heavy handed moderation. For more information, refer to their introductory guide or whitepaper.
If Reddit is your poison, Aether is a P2P platform that allows users to create their own communities, similar to a subreddit. While Reddit is notorious for power tripping moderators and shadow banning, Aether allows communities to elect and impeach their own mods, and all moderation actions are public and visible to the users. Aether is ephemeral – posts disappear after 6 months, so you’re less likely to be cyber stalked, harassed or doxed, which are not uncommon occurrences on Reddit.
Of course, there are also proprietary, centralized alternatives to the Big Tech social media platforms, such as MeWe and Parler, but since they are proprietary and centralized, they would not make my cut. They may be less censorious than their mainstream competitors, and in that regard may be useful to some users, but if you’re already venturing outside the mainstream services, why not choose something meaningfully different?
TL;DR: Using alternative front-ends like Nitter, Teddit and ProxiTok can allow you to access major social media sites more privately. You can use web browser extensions like LibRedirect or Redirector to redirect Twitter, Reddit and TikTok URLs to those alternatives automatically. On the path to breaking away from major social media sites entirely, consider joining the Fediverse and using decentralized alternative services, such as Mastodon, Pleroma or Misskey in place of Twitter; and diaspora* or Friendica in place of Facebook. Outside the fediverse, consider alternatives like Minds in place of Facebook, or Aether in place of Reddit.
Thus concludes this series. Stay noided.
Addendum: When I wrote this over 2 months ago, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter had yet to be consummated, and was looking shaky at best. In the intervening period of time, the deal went through and Musk’s modest corporate reforms have sent the whinging class into fits of apoplexy. “Moving to Mastodon” has become the new “moving to Canada,” and the fediverse has received more mainstream coverage in the span of a few weeks than it had cumulatively in its entire history prior. Those of you who follow the news are likely more savvy about the fediverse than I. Thus brings a rather anticlimactic conclusion to this series, but such is the unpredictable nature of things. As such, there will be some privacy schizo bonus material in the comments.
And now, your privacy schizo bonus chapter:
If I told you that there was an antiquated OS with ring 0 CPU access, full memory address space access, a full network stack, and no security features running on your computer even when the CPU is in an idle state, would you think I meant Windows? What I’ve just described is actually the Intel Management Engine – an itty bitty computer-within-a-computer that lives on your Intel motherboard chipset and runs the MINIX operating system. MINIX primarily served as a university computer science teaching aid – like many computer science students, Linus Torvalds studied MINIX in university and used it as his inspiration to write the Linux kernel. In 1992, MINIX’s creator, Andrew S. Tannenbaum, and Linus Torvalds engaged in one of the most legendary Usenet
flamewarsdebates of all time, wherein Tannenbaum suggested that monolithic kernels were inherently inferior and that Linux was obsolete-on-arrival, predicting a future dominated by SPARC CPUs and microkernels. Aside from Dick Rowe’s rejection of The Beatles with the famous proclamation that “Guitar groups are on their way out,” there may not be a single person in the last century who has stuck so large a foot so far into his own mouth. But in the end, Tannenbaum has the last laugh: his teaching OS now ships on more devices than Windows. Thankfully, the market always provides an alternative. If you don’t like the idea of Intel’s embedded SoC running MINIX even when you believe your computer to be “off”, you can switch over to AMD… and their Platform Security Processor. The AMD PSP performs nearly identical functions as the Intel Management Engine, and is actually embedded into the CPU itself rather than the motherboard chipset. But credit where it is due: instead of repurposing acuck licensedBSD licensed OS like Intel did, AMD relied on an in-house team of expert developers to write their PSP OS from scratch. In this way, they were able to introduce security holes directly instead of relying on 30 year old code to do it for them. Help me RISC-V, you’re my only hope!Imagine, if you will, a techno-dystopian future where your own household appliances dime you out to the police. Well, thanks to Amazon Ring doorbells, the future is now:
It all started innocently enough, of course. Opt-in. Voluntary. The Ring network program merely allowed law enforcement and emergency services agencies to ask users for video footage from their Ring devices:
But as ever, private surveillance rarely remains private, and voluntary requests quickly become compulsory demands. Expect the number of “emergency” situations in which Amazon forks over data to law enforcement without a warrant or user permission to increase dramatically.
That’s the reason I got rid of my Ring doorbell. F*ck the police.
Amazon just shipped me a broken toilet seat.
Fuck Amazon.
I buy stuff from Amazon. They often have the best deals on things. Also, try finding a brick and mortar that sells books or DVD’s.
Anyway, how the fuck do you break a toilet seat?
The screws crack?
Yeah, one of the plastic latch thingies was broken, in such a way that I have to return it.
These things happen.
Seems odd that the thing was packed with the latches sticking out but I’m no industrial fungineer so WTF do I know.
I wonder if the replacement will survive the tender mercies of being thrown all the place.
If it makes you feel any better I ordered a bog standard toilet seat from Walmart.
After about two months of, “it’s delayed, but it’s coming” messages, they finally wrote “welp, fuck it, we don’t have it” and cancelled my order.
Then I got the same exact thing from Home Depot in one day.
At least they didn’t send you a bedpan.
What Fourth Amendment?
It’s broken, just like Rhywun’s toilet seat.
If you don’t host it and didn’t encrypt it …
Speaking of creepy home appliances that make for easy tools of the surveillance state, your next wireless router will likely have the ability to detect any movement or object anywhere in your home. The 802.11bf standard includes “WiFi Sensing” to detect motion and objects within a WiFi coverage area, such as your home.
In the 2001 case Kyllo v. United States, in which infrared thermal imaging was used without a warrant to detect the presence of illegal marijuana growing, a narrowly-divided 5-4 Supreme Court ruled that:
Note that the surveillance device being “Not in general public use” is required by this legal standard. 802.11bf is expected to be offically approved by the IEEE in 2024. As the new industry standard, this technology will be widely deployed – voluntarily – in both commercial and residential settings. It is unlikely any 4th Amendment protections will apply under current precedent. Even if 4th Amendment protections did apply, since the majority of people use a wireless router supplied by their internet service provider, it would be trivially easy to bypass those protections by simply obtaining the data from the ISP through a subpoena or national security letter.
I’m looking forward to walking around in a Faraday cage.
JFC.
I guess I’m never buying another wireless router. I hope the one I have lasts another 20 or 30 years.
I’ll be interested to see if you can disable the WiFi Sensing capabilities within the chipsets via software. If so, third party router firmware or building your own router would be potential workarounds. There’s a lot of ax, ac, and older hardware still in circulation as well, so unless you have a very specific need for something provided by bf, those will continue to work, and there’s nothing saying some intrepid, privacy-respecting niche manufacturer couldn’t continue to make and sell them either.
“Sir! We just detected rapid movement in suspect R.J’s house!”
“Describe this motion, Agent Rimlapper! Is it suspicious?”
“He appears to be making a rapid up and down motion in the master bathroom sir!”
So it’s like radar? What is the point of that? It sounds like something expensive to implement without much benefit.
Theoretically it could replace or enhance services like LifeAlert, building alarms, contactless sleep study devices, utility company usage monitoring, etc. But building the capability into the standard itself is rife with potential for abuse.
That seems awfully fucking theoretical.
Absolutely. Like maybe the NSA had a role in writing the standards.
A video of our best scientists discovering the concept
And with that, we close our privacy schizo bonus chapter with a song to stay noided by
Death Grips.
Nice.
Never heard it before. Good song and funny comments.
lol
“Nitter provides just such an alternative front-end to Twitter.”
Nitter, please.
“and allows you to bypass the “sensitive content” warnings that the official Twitter web front-end displays on flagged tweets when one is not logged in”
Does it pass age restricted content?
I believe so, yes.
OK, then it might be worth it.
Worth mentioning: As it does not use JS by default, you need to enable HLS playback for embedded videos. You can enable it in the settings panel of whichever instance you are using, or just click “Enable HLS Playback” when prompted.
“https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-to-nitter-redirect/
Last updated
2 years ago (Sep 5, 2020)”
Seems kind of dead.
It’s such a simple extension that it likely doesn’t require much in the way of maintenance as long as the underlying browser still has support for whatever API it’s using, but LibRedirect sees more github activity, so that might be a better way to go.
OK 🙂
I’m so paranoid right now from my encounter with Bro The Second…I feel like there are seconds in the water that could turn the Firsters gay. Or even second.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8vzIRQLLM
forums/BBS, blogs and newsletters would be the only forms of social media
I miss BBS days.
This is my social network. I have no other.
Ditto
You’re not on any hobby related forums or mailing lists? I know, those aren’t social media.
Hell, I miss USENET
Thank state AGs for claiming people were using it to post child porn.
It’s still around.
Now it’s run by the FBI.
Oh, did you mean Usenet?
Yes, I meant Usenet. What’s run by the FBI?
The darkweb
Glibs
CP servers.
And maintains a collection of CP to use for matching by social media and other companies.
I am active on a few hobby forums, but other than this place and substack, which is mainly to support the journaists, no social media for me.
I’m on MeWe for a few things. Its GUI is not that great. MeWe gets the job done for what I need, but otherwise I wouldn’t use it.
Thanks for the series Pat!
And thank you all for indulging my ravings these past 8 weeks.
I really enjoyed it.
#metoo
thumbs up!
I dont want to join a club that would have me
Agreed. We are both here though.
Lol at the both of you.
Cheers!
Sometimes people really are talking about you.
Still slightly buzzed. Had another great steak [Monday] night at Ice House brewery.
Quick question – for a 12 oz (or 10) pour of a 10% abv beer…is that equivalent to 2 x 12oz (or 10) 5% abv pours – or are there other factors in place?
2 x 12oz (or 10) 5% abv pours are slower and will make you piss more.
Pat has given me more nightmare fuel. Yay…?
I do tend to have that effect on people…
Insanity
https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2022/12/oregon-bans-sales-of-new-gas-powered-cars-by-2035.html
And all of the parasite voting for it or implementing it face zero personal consequences for their actions and act accordingly.
A lot of people question climate science overall, but why is it that no one questions bullshit metrics like carbon emissions in the first place? Why the fuck would I trust any government, let alone a state government, to accurately measure the amount of carbon that is being emitted within its borders?
not arguing with your general posture
but a baseline constructed from generation fuels (natural gas and coal) and vehicle fuels (gasoline and diesel) is pretty quick work and probably covers 90% of it; I can’t figure it down to a few percent or calculate Y/Y with significance, but I can get a lot closer than order of magnitude in less than, say, two hours’ research
Good thing the collapse happens in 2032.
Damn. I am getting increasingly routed by these states to retire in Wyoming. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Wyoming but last night when it hit the lower 70’s I had to get up and find a blanket because I was shivering. Can I survive a WY winter after a decade living in the Tropics?
MTFU.
Even Wyoming has the cancer of Jackson Hole growing in it.
MTFU?
Lower 70’s? Wyoming get below zero, but it’s not the cold there — it’s the wind.
Man The Fuck Up
Just put on a wind breaker, Lol.
Its amazingly sad how we have made that phrase bad. We being humanity. Each and everyone of us needs to recognize we are here cause someone in our lineage MTFU.
I like north central Idaho, east of Lewiston and towards Lolo Pass but I’m concerned about how long it will take for Boise to screw the rest of the state.
Yup. I was planning on moving but first the housing went to shit then the likelihood that the politics aren’t far behind.
Being from Boise it’s sad to see the state of the city
Somewhere between Orofino and Grangeville. I love that area. Need to visit again this summer.
My wife grew up in the tropics and moved to El Paso where I captured her. The last 35 years she has been a Golden Gopher and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s a little easier for her because she spends winters indoors. We used to take a month to TX-AZ but late winter, about Mar first, now we enjoy MN but looking out the window. She enjoys the summers and growing stuff.
You’ll quickly adapt and enjoy your environment, friends and activities make life a lot more enjoyable.
Y2k38 is approaching. This time it’s real.
I think I’m eligable to retire around the time that bug hits.
I hope it doesn’t mess with my pension.
It is interesting to see how quickly governments slide into incompetency.
I predict there still won’t be a statewide repeal of self serve gas ban before then either.
I remember my first trip to Oregon (Hoodoo Skibowl) and hopping out of my car in Redmond and starting to fill it up. The attendant walked out with a puzzled look on his face.
A few years ago I went to a gas station in Madras with my truck. The attendant and I just looked at each other for a while until she told me I could pump my own diesel. (Before latest changes)
I’ve been yelled at in Jersey for that.
He didn’t know what to say, I still laugh about the whole thing.
I got yelled at in Jersey for that too. And there I was, thinking “I left fuckin’ Oregon, and where do I end up? The one place you can’t pump your own gas other than that.”
Yup. Before the current travel plaza was built on the Umatilla rez, there was a semi run down gas station there. Didn’t realize it wasn’t subject to (or just ignoring) the state gas law until I realized no one was coming over. I’d stop there on the way to and from Boise from then on.
I’m done with pretending about the self serve ban. If the attendant isn’t running over to fill or hang it up, I’ll do it myself. Half the state is no longer subject to it, diesel and card lock never was, couple more counties are free after 6pm, and the Gov unilaterally suspends these purportedly necessary safety measures first for COVID and then because it was hot out. If they won’t pretend, why should I?
And there’s a perfectly good example of the insanity. You can pump your own in Madras (Jefferson County) now, but still can’t in Redmond (Deschutes).
Not even. You don’t pass that shit just with elites; you have to have a gigantic chunk of clueless Dem voters also “supporting” it.
Portland.
Say no more.
In 13 years, the wife will be 62, and we are done.
California has done the same. Unless Oregon’s grid is much better and has a large surplus of electrical power generation, it isn’t going to happen. Thr law will cause all kind of trouble along the way but it will be pushed back.
California had a day or two last summer when people were told not charge their cars. EVs are a single digit percent of all cars in CA right now. By the time we get to about 10%, our grid will have trouble by early summer.
No one will put up with it.
That’s the one consolation I see with all these pipe dreams – they are so spectacularly far-fetched that they will be quietly forgotten long before the hammer comes down.
Oregon’s grid isn’t fucked yet but it will be. Nuclear removed thirty years ago, coal plants turned down recently, NG next, hydro power being chipped away. And that’s before California grabs more that it already does. But don’t worry. Offshore wave energy will fill the gaps.
It’s kind of hard to find a specific needle in a needle stack.
Imagine it’s a cock. It won’t make it easier, but it’ll give you extra motivation.
Burn down the haystack, and shift through the ashes.
No problem.
I’m torn. Mask my online footprint or realize that between military and federal service I am not an unknown entity.
It’s impossible to live off the grid if you’re still in the matrix.
I’ve eschewed all social media (except Glibs!) because I am not social.
I’ve been trying to find construction people who will work at my remote location. I’ve asked my friend for recommendations and he always said, “Facebook”. So, reluctantly, I set up a Facebook account. I was able to download a list of local workers before I got the email that my account was disabled due to “content”. I never posted a single thing and read the blog for our local neighborhood. Now I’m banned. Thus endeth my foray into social media.
One and done.
ditto
He keeps telling me it is his wife that won’t let him have lunch with me.
I’ll leave her behind next time.
Murphy to gun owners, fuck you!
https://www.nj.com/politics/2022/12/controversial-nj-concealed-carry-gun-bill-passes-despite-republican-outcry-its-now-up-to-murphy.html
NJ sucks. News at eleven.
If I didn’t say this already, thanks for writing all this, Pat! 🙂
2nd that!
My pleasure, I’m glad some people enjoyed it.
This has been a great series, Pat.
I’m a tech guy, but a busy tech guy, so I get lazy in some areas. You pulling this all together is extremely helpful.
I wonder what happened with this:
https://www.inrupt.com/solid
And white supremacist fascist hate.
That’s what happened to it.
People don’t want “open”.
Correct. People want defined rules to live their lives by. They want that daddy figure over them wagging their fingers to keep them in line and bear their consequences and failures.
Is that what actually happened?
No idea. Just guessing based on current year.
The seconding version of me that I encountered in the Firstiverse left with a chilling message that tells me just how twisted a version of me that he truly is.
He told me that you are wrong – Mike Tomlin has never had a losing season. He’s a great head coach. It was the mark of the beast, and lo and behold, he has inserted this foolishness into timeline to mock me.
The history of sportsball is littered with mediocre coaches who were good enough to end the season with more wins than losses…and not much more.
Bonfire of the Vanities, Brooklyn edition.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/18/investment-banker-jean-francois-coste-arrested-after-punching-mta-worker/
Guy is completely unsympathetic, but he’s white and works for an asset manager. He is screwed. He’s already been disowned by his firm, naturally.
Shrug. I’m not shedding any tears. Violent drunks are the worst and get what they deserve.
He completely did this to himself. I’m having trouble sympathizing with the ahole.
With all due respect to any Frenchies around here the name Jean Francois and the wine drinking screams douchebag, I’m not surprised he’s an asshole.
It’s jarring how different the commercials are on MNF versus all the old-people channels I usually watch.
Instead of Medicare and Shriners I get… whatever this shit that young people seem to be interested in these days.
/LOL they just showed a commercial for Tik Tok
I’m not watching MNF right now, but football usually has a lot of beer and truck commercials.
And the beer and truck commercials are woke AF.
Pat, is there a phone app that could torch the entire contents of my cell phone if I failed to log in to it in 3 days or so?
I would like for some if it to disappear if I become incapacitated suddenly.
I was curious so was doing a little quick search. One said complete mobile phone wipe with cloud integration….I was…lost
You see, it’s deleted on your physical phone so the cops don’t have access to it there so they can instead have access to it on the cloud.
Well it’s not your personal effects at that point so it’s all good.
I just want a “dead man’s switch” kind of deal on my phone.
Wasted should work for that scenario. You can also set up other trigger events for it to auto-destruct.
You da bomb.
Apple version?
Interesting and sorta asked my question from earlier today on what changed from thinking what the FBI was asking of them as potentially illegal to cozy relationship. Access and power.
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604890603468120064
Asked=answered
I see Yoel Roth was worked over like an asset.
I don’t know if it was really power, per se. Maybe it felt like a sort of power to the sort of psychopaths who look to be censors on major social media platform. But you have to remember these people are dyed in the wool progressives who worship at the altar of the state. The idea of being important people doing important things to protect the sanctity of the government was problem a high that they’ll never experience again in the entirety of their pathetic little lives. They will never First, so I know nothing else will be able to compete for them.
The FBI made them feel like they mattered and were part of a major governmental operation doing the good.
Also, was just reading the morning links. Someone mentioned that it was revealed the NSA was spying on us all and that the FBI probably felt left out. Nah, the FBI was getting all of that information and using it to illegally construct cases against suspects through parallel construction. They were all in on it.
But the overall point was accurate enough – intelligence agencies were caught doing blatantly unconstitutional things on a scale that would make the Soviets blush or the Nazis jealous, and nothing else happened.
That was me and yeah, they are all in on the game but the NSA really flexed and said “l “whatcha gonna do?” And the people answered like this
Parallel construction is pretty fucking easy when you know what the end result should be.
Of everything Snowden leaked, that was always what I considered the most damning. It was proof positive they were collecting shit and using it against American citizens. There are people in jail right now probably all the way up the latter who were convicted with evidence gathered illegally and no one batted an eye.
If you have nothing to hide
Only criminals plead the 5th
Only the guilty ask for a lawyer
Just cooperate
Police just want to go home at the end of the day
On and on…
Anyone who’s ever been dicked over by the clearance process or missed job opportunities due to it must be loving how they can be handed out like comp tickets.
And then cheer as they pin documents on the ultimate arbitrator of security clearance…astounding.
Speaking of morning links, Pie posted some proggy’s tweet about transphobes and xenophobes and I was shocked. She actually tweeted something that made me laugh, though to be fair…any reference to Mel Gibson’s drunken rants tends to make me laugh. I’m easy like that.
A lot of confused, angry people are out there clinging to an image of themselves as Mel Gibson in Braveheart: taking a stand for freedom.
This helps them avoid the embarrassing truth that they’re far more like Mel Gibson in real life: hollering bigoted nonsense into voicemail.
How did Republican voters respond to Liz Cheney and why did Kinzinger meekly refuse to even run for re-election?
I would have much respect if they started using unipartisan
Hahaha. What the fuck? This reminds me of this liberal local reporter we have who serially describes a group of Trumpy state legislators as “ultra conservative”. 🤡🌎
To be fair, I don’t know anything from that pair other than their visceral hatred of Trump.
I mean, they COULD be “deeply conservative”… right?
*honk honk*
How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?
Who needs a light bulb when you have 8 candles?
Happy Hanukkah.
Well shit.
Turns out the reason Mark Steyn has been “Ill” and substituted with guest hosts lately is that he’s had a couple of heart attacks.
https://www.gbnews.uk/news/mark-steyn-speaks-out-on-suffering-two-heart-attacks-as-gb-news-host-reveals-he-was-15-minutes-from-death/409720
Prayers up for Mark!!
Brilliant guy, I was wondering what had happened to him. Bummer…the guy’s only in his early 60s.
Yikes! Hope he’s recovering well!
Morning y’all.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/12/unlucky-year-or-really-really-reckless-driving-fatal-hit-and-runs-hit-all-time-high-in-philly.html
PSA: “Don’t stop in Philly.”
Stop. I don’t go near Philly.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/harvey-weinstein-verdict/
Five years for a trial. 5.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/wrongfully-convicted-man-who-spent-29-years-in-prison-shot-to-death-in-philadelphia/3455091/
Bad luck?
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/man-charged-after-chase-shootout-with-police-in-king-of-prussia-mall-parking-lot/3454814/
“Wiley told detectives he went to the King of Prussia Mall to shop because “he was depressed and he likes to shop when he’s depressed,” the criminal complaint reads. He said when he got into the crash, he panicked because he doesn’t have insurance.”
insurance is racist. Not guilty. 🙄
Insurance should be free for the oppressed. No, insurers should pay the oppressed.
Shopping when depressed sounds like a disastrous maladaptive behavior. I’d rather have a gambling problem than that.
Retail therapy – it’s not just for chicks anymore!
I don’t have the money to do that.
Neither do a lot of the chicks who engage in it.
But if I spend money I don’t have, I’ll be in a worse state mentally than when I started.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams warns city may slash public services to shoulder $1 BILLION cost of helping 1,000 migrants a week expected to flood into Big Apple after Title 42 ends
Mayor Eric Adams has warned the city may be forced to cut public services to fund migrant assistance programs
…
These are not choices we want to make, but they may become necessary, and I refuse to be forced to choose new arrivals over current New Yorkers
So he supports border enforcement?
Of course. He just wants others to carry the burden of his policy preferences.
Public service is frustrating when the public won’t serve you.
I find the implication that the cities are not part of, or distinct from, ‘America’. “All of this should be other people’s problem” he screeched.
I’ll just go into the sewer right off the bat like they’re wont to do and say Eric Adams is viciously bigoted against Hispanic people. A quasiNazi really, albeit a melinated one.
It is a mystery why they are amassing at the southern border.
A thousand a week, to a city with more people than Arizona, or and 3 or 4 times as many people as NM. States that see more than a thousand a week cross their borders. Poor little NYC. Tragic.
I hope he does start to “slash public services”. Maybe it will wake up a voter or two.
LOL. Look at this optimist over here…
SOP: Cut the services that hurt the most so the people will demand more funding. Go full Obama. Close public places and pay staff to keep people out.
Morning, Glibs.
Last day of school in 2022. Kids will be disturbing work until the 5th. It’s an odd school calendar.
Good morning, U, Roat, Sean, Stinky, and (maybe still?) hayek!
Hell Month Lite is kinda starting to kick in at work – yesterday afternoon, my boss sent me his salary budget spreadsheet with everyone’s new pay rate to carefully compare the starting pay to what’s in the payroll system now AND to compare to the new rates sent back by all the supervisors. Luckily, they don’t have to get plugged into the system until the SECOND January pay (the first one that covers days worked in January.)
Close of the year is the quiet time for my group at work, unless something breaks. So people take vacations, and it gets quieter for those of us who are still working.
Lucky! At least we’ve eliminated almost all the “use it by year end or lose it” rules for paid time off. People still take off for the holidays, but it’s no longer everyone scrambling to get their time in by 12/31.
Our leave use it or lose it date is 4/1. We get to carry up to 300 hours of vacation. Some people still lose hours. I don’t get it.
We can accrue hours until we max out – 240 hours for vacation, 80 hours (soon to be 120) for PTO (essentially sick leave.) Then you just don’t accrue any more until you use some to bring the balance down. I maxed out on PTO weeks (maybe months?) ago. (::knocks wood carefully::)
Our sick leave is uncapped, and if you’ve got something like 1200 hours at retirement, you can stay on the health insurance plan for either free or almost nothing. It also only accrues at 3.75 hours a pay period.
Wow! That means one wouldn’t necessarily have to keep working until one is eligible for Medicare. ***SIGH!!!***
Yeah, but I can only be sick for a cumulative 40 days over the next sixteen years.
Having a separate sick leave pool leads to either people coming to work when sick (uncapped) or people getting sick on schedule (capped).
Well, we now have the third option of working remote when sick – which is the current policy for certain symptoms.
That means one wouldn’t necessarily have to keep working until one is eligible for Medicare.
Health insurance is only one hurdle. My 401k needs to recover from the Biden market first.
No kidding! I haven’t had the nerve to look at my balance lately.
I haven’t looked at my deferred comp (I’m in the wrong job category for 401k, but I forget the law category I’m under) But my brokerage account is now up to 75% of starting funds.
Only down 12% over the year. Thanks be to Brandon.
I’m losing a day. I miscalculated big-time* and had to scramble even more than everyone else which means I don’t go back until next Wednesday and I still get five extra days to use next year.
*The only thing I can figure is I had carry-over days from last year that I was unaware of.
“”Insane, Brave, Karen”: Stanford Drops New Woke List Of Verboten Language”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/insane-brave-karen-stanford-drops-new-woke-list-verboten-language
Note to self: Don’t hire anyone from Stanford University for any reason, not even to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floors.
“died by suicide” instead of “committed suicide”
So the “no passive language” thing is over?
The institutionalized racism section says to avoid using words like “black hat,” “black mark” and “black sheep” because of “negative connotations to the color black.”
That’s hat/mark/sheep of color.
“immigrant” with “a person who has immigrated,” “prisoner” with “a person who is/was incarcerated” and “homeless person” with “a person without housing.”
Hoorah, no more homeless or prisoners!
Say the not-racist people.
“Sean Penn: Unvaccinated People Are ‘Criminal’ – ‘It’s a Cowardice of Conviction’”
https://slaynews.com/news/sean-penn-unvaccinated-people-criminal-cowardice-of-conviction/
Is he hanging out with Gene Simmons now? Get a room you two!
Fuck off, commie.
He must go to his bunk with every report of Chinese COVID tyranny.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Three day work week. This is good.
https://www.theintell.com/story/opinion/2022/12/20/why-wawa-should-stop-selling-cigarettes/69736221007/
Wawa should stop selling cigarettes.
LOL. Quite the opinion piece.
Judgy Mc Judgerton doesn’t seem to realize how irritating he sounds. Also I guessed the writer was a Karen until I checked the byline.