Thanks for clarifying, as a German I did not know and was confused by this. Now I know but am still confused.

If laws and the constitution are not or can not be enforced, they are mere “optional guidelines” for these people to ignore. Either you take action against blatantly illegal actions, or you might just as well welcome your next dictator with some presents, right now already actually, because it won’t get any better when they already start ignoring laws/constitution right now. It’s a pure downward spiral from there, and it sends a clear signal to the administration and all of its allies that laws are optional right now. Also, regular people would already be fined/jailed/shot for doing 0.000001% of the wrongdoings of this administration. If there is such a thing like an actual justice system and a system of checks and balances in the US, then wake it the fuck up or it dies in its sleep. Much sooner than later.

BNC Feed-Through Adapters (with Terminators if needed)

I’m kidding, I’m kidding!

For anyone too young, this was how you made gaming LAN parties in the early 90s when there was Doom, Doom 2, Duke3D and Quake 1 to play. It’s a switch- and hub-less network connection where every PC is literally connected to all others in one line which is fed through each PC. Making your connection extremely sh!tty if you were on one end or someone between you and the other guy had a terrible PC or had to reboot. Well, actually it was generally sh!tty. This problem went away completely when switches (even just hubs) became commonly available / cheap for consumers.

I do miss LAN parties though. Online gaming is also great but it’s just not the same.

It’s the other way around.

The mental illness is not “paranoia about Trump’s doings”, paranoia about Trump is normal when you’re a decent human being who is thinking clearly and fact-based, because then you should absolutely be paranoid about an unhinged, mentally unstable, dangerous fascist taking power in the US. If that doesn’t bother you, I’m sorry, but you’re probably simply uneducated. See old Nazi Germany for “prior art” on this one.

What could be considered a “mental illness” is what causes people to believe or support Trump, or the current Republicans, or the MAGA movement, or the current right-wing extremism in general. This is likely an issue of either low education, low intelligence or naive belief in various forms of internet propaganda. Or multiple of those issues combined. So it’s not really “illness” but rather a misinformed and/or radicalized person. Similar to what cultists become in real cults. Fascism is very cult-like in general. There’s usually a supreme leader and a doctrine (usually based on falsehoods) to live by, and everyone who doesn’t do that is considered an “enemy” or at least inferior. What you read on the internet and especially social media or “alternative news sites” is already often weaponized and might be able to radicalize you or lead you away from the fact-based truth. There’s TONS of disinformation, sometimes harmless, sometimes funny, but sometimes not. Sometimes it’s dangerous, especially if you’re not able to spot what’s likely true or not. If you aren’t able to filter out disinformation, propaganda, lies, half-truths, weird memes, i.e. if you are unable to stick to reputable sources, peer-reviewed science, and so on, then you WILL fall for at least some amounts of misinformation and you MIGHT even become part of a cult (e.g. MAGA movement, conspiracy believers, anti-vaxxers, QAnon, radical right-wing extremism, …). And again, it’s all weaponized and that is useful for various involved parties for various reasons. For example, Putin wants misinformation on social media because with it he can destabilize Western democracies, because common citizens fall for this stuff and lose faith in their own governments. The end result helps Russia, because Western democracies will then do less and be less united against Russian attacks. Billionaires like Musk or Zuckerberg want misinformation on social media because with it they can better control the narrative and extract more money from the users because polarizing and extreme content gives them more interactions and thus money. Billionaires also want less governmental regulation, which is why Musk already demolished several regulating bodies in the US. Autocratic fascists like Trump also want misinformation on social media because with it they can control the narrative better. What these involved parties all don’t want is the actual truth, so they are usually anti-science, anti-education, anti independent journalism, and so on. It’s better for them if the common people are uneducated and uninformed, and follow the newly created doctrine. It’s easy to tell that they want to create their own fake version of the truth, and control the narrative in that way.

The real test against fascism is whether or not the justice system and executive powers can stand firm against these fascist onslaughts (i.e., by effectively enforcing laws/constitution, which usually have safeguards against fascists written in them) or whether they can’t and so the new autocratic leader is allowed to basically do what he wants.

Haven’t read anything bad about Tuta so I guess it’s fine. Other good ones are Proton, mailbox.org or posteo.de. Anything that’s not by Google, Microsoft, and so on.

Basically yes. The alternatives passively become better simply because of the mainstream option becoming worse over time. I think it’s still going too slowly in general but I’m not complaining, better slow than not at all.

• Cult of the Lamb
• Vampire Survivors
• Halls of Torment

I use several, depending on use case:

• Tor Browser for general and anonymous web browsing (e.g. reading news, looking up stuff, and so on)
• Mullvad Browser as a clear web alternative for general use
• Librewolf for generally logging into sites with personally identifiable accounts (e.g. to buy stuff)
• Ungoogled Chromium for those few sites which only work with a Chromium-based browser, or other specific cases
• On Android (GrapheneOS): Tor Browser and Vanadium

All regular browsers have some hardening applied and uBlock Origin installed.

Since you only mentioned 25% gaming, I’d recommend against a gaming-centric distro like Bazzite. Instead, use a generalist desktop distro.

Since you mentioned that you’re rather new-ish, I’d recommend against Arch-based distros like CachyOS. Instead, check out e.g. Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE. (Probably in that order of priority)

These aren’t hard recommendations, so you can do whatever and probably be fine either way, but it still doesn’t fit that well.

There are lots of great live bands but maybe these were most memorable for various reasons: Magma (just hypnotic), Lazuli (very entertaining live band every single time), The Pineapple Thief (great prog rock with incredible drummer), The Musical Box (playing and re-acting old Genesis. Too young to see the originals but just in time to see the remakes), Le Silo (super high energy duo or trio, don’t even remember, but man that was wild), Aranis (they don’t exist anymore unfortunately)

I don’t view it as badly. He’s probably overly defensive and paranoid and interprets some forms of criticism as attacks. But I do not see this as an argument against his competence or contributions to the project, or against using GrapheneOS altogether, at all. In fact, I even kind of like having someone paranoid as the head of a security-focused OS. Seems like a useful synergy to me. Also, AFAIK the GrapheneOS project now also has others posting about the project, not just him alone. I think this was also a result of his “miscommunication” in the past. Furthermore, the project is too important (there are almost zero high-security and high-privacy mobile OSes!) to escalate this into a problem. And furthermore again, there might also be parties involved who are ACTUALLY interested in attacking GrapheneOS and weakening its popularity, for their own gains. And so when your successful and also high-quality project is under regular attacks from various angles, you might get more paranoid and misinterpret some valid criticism as a result. Combine that with Rossman’s over-dramatic nature and high reach, and someone paranoid like Daniel might take it the wrong way. And then communication spirals out of control into various escalations. At least that’s how I interpret it.

Around 2.5-3 days. On a LAN party in 2003 or so. 2 nights without sleep. Lots of caffeine. It was fun at first but really started feeling terrible after the 2nd night.

He’s mostly correct about lots of things, but not about everything (for example, he hated on everything GrapheneOS just because its lead dev is a bit socially awkward). Plus he’s overly dramatic and verbose which can be annoying. Sometimes you must be to get abstract or complicated points across better, but I still feel he’s too aggressive in that regard. I also like what he’s trying to achieve with FUTO in general. Overall, he’s a great and valuable activist who has almost all of his eggs in the right baskets.

Basically yes. There is nothing really new or different from the modern right-wing extremist ideology to the old Nazi ideology. The fundamentals are the same, always. They always go after minorities (first demonizing them, then jailing, deporting or killing them), they always strive for authoritarian leadership, they always combat science and education because science/education (or rather the universally accepted truth/facts) is kind of fundamentally incompatible with right-wing extremist beliefs (which are based on fear, feeling, outdated traditionalist values, fundamentalist Christian religious values, and a big load of plain bullsh!t). And of course they’re going after everything that’s inclusive or social because all they know is fear, hate, division and destruction. It’s basically a cult which eventually wages war on everyone who thinks differently. They will always start with the ones who can defend themselves the least well and then move on to bigger targets (e.g. first illegal immigrants, then all immigrants, then people of color, then religious minorities, then political minorities, and so on). Eventually, they will demonize everyone who doesn’t think their exact way or is in the political opposition etc…, in an effort to divide people.

It’s like a cult and it needs to be stopped. Don’t fall for the trap that it’s somehow different today. The only thing different is that they now have the internet to rapidly spread propaganda and misinformation everywhere (and all lesser educated or young parts of the population are likely to at least partially fall for this stuff), and that Western countries have stronger constitutions which will not crumble as easily as e.g. the Weimar Republic before Nazi Germany happened, because that constitution had a big loophole to exploit. But they might still find exploits or fill enough key positions with loyal fascists that they might be able to effectively sidestep the constitution, in effect installing a fascist, authoritarian government that can do what it wants, hunt who it wants, and be immune to legal repercussions. Don’t underestimate them, they are very good at manipulation, lies, division and in general causing mayhem. They thrive from chaos, because from chaos they can then also create a powerful executive force to “restore law and order”. Also they do not care about what you think about them or their actions. They will move quickly and mercilessly to achieve their goals, and so any opposition to them must also be quick, decisive and resolute, and not hesitate.

They also currently gather immense wealth behind them currently because super-rich people/companies like riding on that bandwagon because it will grant them even more power and influence in the short to medium term (this was also true in old Nazi Germany btw), because there are no pesky or costly regulations limiting them anymore, so they will gain short-term economic benefits from siding with the extremists, and as we all know, in capitalism, money is everything, and morals don’t matter. Elon Musk in particular is particularly clever and ruthless because he essentially managed to buy parts of the government, meaning he will make the government favor his own companies and plans. It’s kind of unprecedented corruption I think, but of course it’s a dream for any super-rich commercial entity. No regulations, no fines, do what they want, even direct taxpayer money into their own pocket. As much as you can, stop using, buying from or otherwise supporting big companies who openly side with fascists. You can vote with your wallet. In capitalism, voting with your wallet (what you buy, where you buy from and most importantly what you don’t buy and where you don’t buy from) is a very effective secondary vote option. Also stop using Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, and so on. In those platforms, you are the product, and when you use them less, they can generate less money from your data, behavior and interactions.

Long-term, Nazi ideology always leads to societal division, hate, crimes, bad living conditions, lots of deaths, and eventually wars. Because once they’ve taken control of the inner political systems, and jailed or killed enough minorities they think are “harmful”, they will always look for the next minority, and then the next, and the next, and then they’ll be after you. And there will be very few if any legal ways of stopping them. After that (or even before), they will turn on their neighboring countries and start wars with them. Because they always need a new common enemy to hunt, they live based on the belief that they’re more superior than others and that kind of grants them the right to take what they want and oppress those they deem “inferior” (Nazi ideology in a nutshell). When they don’t have any easy targets anymore, they will look at other countries to invade. Any neighboring country in particular needs to be constantly aware of that.

Slightly longer term, if the USA fall to the right-wing extremism, it will lead to its weakening and downfall (allies will also turn away), and China will become the undisputed global super power in the world.

Longer term still, climate change will cause massive mayhem planet-wide. Since fascists are anti-science and pro-economy, and economy is pro environmental exploitation, they are accelerating the problem even further. They will deny the problem exists until it hits everyone, including them, in the face. Hard.

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a way to save us from climate change regardless, unless the whole economic system drastically changes, which will probably not happen until the catastrophe is there, but we can absolutely fight fascism and extremism, and in doing so this will also delay climate change slightly, granting us a few more years of “quality” time on this planet, before it all goes to universal sh!t.

“Infamous” just refers to newbies who sometimes call if statements “if loops”. I’ve heard this quite a bit.

Well, it’ll get much worse on many levels. You should stop expecting things to work out as usual when critical jobs are being dismantled or idiots put into charge. It means that things you took for granted will change for the worse. It means that basic things will stop functioning.

Musk is dismantling lots of government functions without understanding them, like he did with Twitter, only this time it’ll have much more severe consequences when things break. And Trump is putting idiots and loyal fascists into critical job roles and blames any negative consequences on his favorite enemies (e.g. migrants, democrats, the disabled, or former administrations). And once this has caused enough chaos, they will have an excuse to cut civil liberties even further in an effort to “restore law and order”, because fascists love that and an omnipotent executive power that’s fully loyal to the supreme leader. It’s 193x Germany history, remixed and remastered, and now available in the US. (sorry)

In theory, the law applies to everyone. In practice, it doesn’t apply to rich entities.

It’s nice to see a significant portion of people (probably still not enough though) leave proprietary social media. Unfortunately, it took them extremely long to realize why that’s a bad thing to use.

So that’s one step in the right direction I guess.

On the other hand, there generally isn’t much hope for humanity left because we haven’t learned from past mistakes, haven’t listened to science, and haven’t ensured ourselves a decent future on this planet.

I use Aegis for personal and work stuff. Works great, is open source and initiates no network connections anywhere.