Like making love in a canoe…

This guy couldn’t sound more fascist if he broke into German 1930s marching songs. This video should be used in education.

It’s an exaggeration at least, but it’s true that the regime friendly billionaire class has a lot of influence over some extremely popular media channels. The firings and changes made in Washington Post and more recently CBS are interesting case studies.

And of course many newsrooms make questionable decisions even if they are not fascist. I have little to no respect left for the New York Times, but I still believe they’re independent enough and have enough talented staff to produce important journalism.

ProPublica is the bees knees.

I think this is getting to the core of how Trump has been so successful. Every important story is drowned out by an endless flood of shit. Good journalism still exists, but it has gotten almost impossible to find as news channels rush to cover the latest distraction Trump is up to. The real stories drown in the bullshit.

Long story short I think it’s possible to pay attention and nevertheless miss out on important stories, due to the fundamental flaws of the information ecosystem. It’s really only necessary to write one story about something like this, but whatever Trump is up to gets a new story every hour.

I had no idea - that’s really cool!

Germans also seem to be privacy oriented people, I can imagine this combined with recent developments could have a real impact.

0 to 1 percent: 22 years
1 to 2 percent: 8 years
2 to 3 percent: 2 years
3 to 4 percent: more unstable, but between 1 and 3 years

I would say it’s an encouraging trend.

When I started using Linux in 2009 it had around 0.6 percent market share on desktop. Windows had 95%.

Today Windows is measured below 68%, and Linux has been measured above 4% by statcounter.com.

These things move faster the more people make the change. Linux only reached 1% in 2013, 2% in 2021, 3% in 2023, and 4% was somehow first measured already in 2024. For every single person making the switch it becomes easier for others to do the same, and companies consider Linux support to be a little bit more important. One can only wonder at which percentage of market share it will be offered as a mainstream alternative when buying a new computer, but it seems pretty clear that we’re getting there.

I guess my point is that we all won when you ditched Windows. Thanks for that.

I’m a fan of the concept, but I the form factor seems a bit off-putting. Had it been the size and form factor of a regular keyboard, but with a tiny e-ink screen that could be raised up from it at an angle, I would have been tempted. I would also want to be sure I could synchronise it with Nextcloud, which doesn’t seem to be a given right now.

Brave is developed by a complete bigot, Proton praises Trump in the name of political neutrality or whatever the fuck.

I think neither of them should be recommended as an alternative by anyone anywhere. They do not represent an alternative, they are the same shit in new wrapping.

Turns out their all just scratching tools.

I guess we’re used to hearing “this was not an accident” as meaning “this was rigged”, but for scientists it translates more to something like “thank god, it’s a real finding and not just one of those weird things that happen every now and then”.

Just doodle it yourself in a sketchbook like creeps have been doing for centuries

Well yes of course! If we don’t track the identity of every single person on the internet, how can we possibly prevent children from accessting these child pornography generators?!

Imagine the horror if twelve-year-olds were exposed to seeing the pornographic pictures Grok generates of them. They are way too young to see that kind of content!

Ideally women and children should be banned from the internet entirely, so that brave pioneering men like Musk and co can be left to pornographize them in peace.

Turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts

Interesting contrast to the church itself, which has the capacity of turning people into passive consumers of thoughts that have been painstakingly processed for centuries.

Mojeek is the only usable engine I know of that’s European and truly independent at the moment. But the results are not nearly as good as in Qwant.

SearXNG also runs on Google and Bing in the backend, and I can never seem to find an instance that works reliably.

I think the Qwant/Ecosia index focuses primarily on the French (and German?) speaking web to begin with, but I’m hopefull it will get good in all languages eventually.

Yeah, “from a guy with a dead worm in his brain” would make for a better question.

What an incredibly absurd and unpredictable situation. It’s hard to say who is in the more precarious position, her or Trump.

Go back to the original European name - Vinland/Vineland/Wineland. Though that might have been in Canada, technically.

Better yet, find some pre-Columbian name for the land that was used by the actual locals. I’m sure there’s plenty of alternatives, and some of the most beautiful state names in the US came about that way. Maybe some Native American name for the Mississippi river could be a good starting point.

A piece of American optimism:

America has been awful since the start, in one way or another. It was never going to change because the majority population was either comfortable enough, or scared enough of the minorities that they would accept a certain discomfort as long as their fellow man had it somehow worse.

Right now nobody is having a good time over there. We’re approaching a breaking point. And that’s scary, but it’s also an opportunity to build a better world on the ashes of the old. We are on the verge of huge changes.

Change is no guarantee for improvement. Americans should not only protest the regime, but start preparing to rebuild. Get smart. Read your own history, especially the parts you’re not proud of. If you don’t know or fully understand those parts you will never manage to build wide alliances. Read postwar history, read about the French revolution and it’s messy aftermath. Read Arendt, read Rawls, read Steinbeck and Locke. Prepare yourself to grasp this historic moment. You have an opportunity unlike anything since the 18th century to change America for the better. Don’t waste it doomscrolling. Don’t think you know enough already. Prepare yourself to be the kind of person who is needed once the regime falls.

You’re not powerless—on the contrary, it’s an historic opportunity. And in power there is hope.

European optimism:

After the events of the last few weeks I think a lot more people are fed up with this fascist bullshit, and it seems even Eurosceptics now believe we need to stand together in solidarity across the continent. It’s a new European moment, and the American hegemony has been broken. I’m feeling genuinely optimistic.

The protests in Minnesota also fill me with joy.* I sincerely believe things are beginning to crack. Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu are all in extremely fragile positions, and dictators have famously poor life expectancy. Change is gradual, then sudden, and the destinies of these despots are intertwined. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

* I wrote this before they ended in more killings. It’s hard to see joy in it now, but I see equal amounts of hope.

Right! Man, I’m slow today. But that makes sense, sometimes to operate some old expensive piece of equipment you’ll need both the software and the driver. Thanks for spoon feeding me haha.