I was. Started out really shy until something clicked in the sixth grade and I became a lot outgoing. Might also have to do with being appointed to deliver the morning announcements for a year. At the end of each morning’s announcements, we’d call students up to the office if it was their birthday so I and the office staff could sing happy birthday to them and give a birthday gift (usually a pencil, sticker, or mini candy bar).

For some reason, I did maintain the popularity despite how little I socialized outside of school hours and official extracurriculars. Many students would greet me by name and it was awkward when I didn’t know their names. By the nature of taking AP classes, my usual friend group consisted mostly of well-off and somewhat nerdy students.

Writing this made me realize how much being socially connected brought to my morale and well-being. It was a privilege and I most certainly enjoyed it.

They’ve worked fine for me, unless the issue of file permissions starts to rear its ugly head.

A couple so far. I have a local copy of Stable Diffusion. It’s handy for upscaling some kinds of images. I’ll also use it to flesh out my worldbuilding project with landscapes and scenes.

Less often, I’ll consult ChatGPT, without logging in. For the times when a search engine doesn’t cut it but a forum post would be too much. I’m usually skeptical of AI summaries, but I find it justified for boiling down poorly-written stuff that I have to read, but isn’t worth my time in long form.

Since I’m not in a good position to leave the States, I’m keeping my “human antivirus” performant and updated:

• Eating and living healthy, and exercising (or trying to)
• Vaccines, masks, preventative care
• Making a personal threat model for privacy and security and revisiting it frequently
• Staying in the loop on new security vulnerabilities
• Locking doors and keeping valuables out of sight
• Investing in a good dashcam and non-spying vehicle
• Being in the company of good people, knowing when to cut ties with bad ones, and having my community when stuff happens

Also keeping and rotating through a well-documented stock of emergency supplies. Wouldn’t rule out buying a gun, but I’d want to have some more training on the matter first.Problem with having weapons is, the powers that be probably won’t send someone out to get you in the middle of the night, they’ll instead send lawyers after you.

I think you fanned the flames with your edit

Crappy DIY “ASICs”

Don’t follow any of em, but if I did, anyone kissing up to Charlie Kirk ought to know:

I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.

– Charlie Kirk

Cash is pretty accessible where I live, but I’m always in for a surprise when I gravitate towards self-checkout and realize that it’s a card-only machine.

Prepaid cards used to be my go-to online, but it seems that fewer and fewer payment processors are letting them through their “security” checks. They were also next to impossible to obtain when I was in Europe. For a lack of better options on hand, I went with privacy.com’s virtual cards, which doesn’t really anonymize things in the eyes of MasterCard, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

The only other thing I could think of is signing up for eBay or Amazon with a pseudonym, paying with gift cards purchased at a store with cash, and shipping to a PO box or Amazon pick-up location.

Ideally Monero, but it’s not as straightforward to obtain and there’s a very limited selection of vendors that accept it.

Building a threat model helped me figure out what was worth my energy and what can be put off to be done later at my leisure. This should be your first step.

What kind of phone and OS do you use? You can contain the spying a bit if you set up a work profile with Insular or Shelter, install your proprietary apps there, set a schedule for checking those, and turn off the profile otherwise. I realize that it’s not the easiest, but if you can find people to talk to in real life regularly, frequent access to messages / social media need not be a prerequisite to a healthy social life.

Getting hacked through the BIOS/Intel ME, while possible, is statistically highly unlikely, activist or not. If there’s a piece of technology I have to use, but don’t trust, I just keep it at my desk, fine as long as it can’t actively track me moving around. Don’t let perfection get in the way of your bigger goals.

While we’re at it, have you considered libreboot on the T480? A few tiny scraps of the Intel ME do have to be left in place, but realistically they’re not going to see an exploit anytime soon. And you’ll still have most of the satisfaction of liberating your computer.

I credit a good part of my success bringing friends and family over to Signal to the fact that it emulates what ordinary people are used to: a centralized service where people’s identities are associated with phone numbers. No need to teach them anything new, just download it, punch in your number, and then punch in my number. I think Signal is targeting exactly that and putting more anonymous and decentralized models way on the back burner. Concepts as simple to us as ‘instances’ are surprisingly difficult to explain to newcomers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if accounts not associated with phone numbers pose a discoverability issue.

This all might be sidestepping the question a bit since I haven’t dug deep into the issue, but my thinking is that Signal, in its current state, should be seen as a transitional solution until things like SimpleX become more mature and widespread.

Halite is a boring answer, but Potassium chloride (“No Salt”) is a fun rock to taste. Ice prepared with heavy water is the only sweet-tasting mineral that comes to mind.

Sal ammoniac is another fine-tasting rock. Copper ore might be the worst of the options here, I hate the taste of copper in drinking fountains.

Can confirm, to a lesser extent. Each query takes a few seconds to resolve, which isn’t a huge deal, except when browsing, so I set Adguard DNS within the browser.

• XMPP
• Signal
• SMS (contacts only)
• E-Mail (only a handful of important contacts, forwarded to an inbox specifically for my phone)
• Voice calls automatically dismissed with a missed call notification. Colleagues, friends, and family are aware that I’ll initiate the return call.
• Task reminders at one point, but later switched to paper planners.

Total: about 5 to 20 on any given day

Haven’t ever felt the need to get YT or other subscriber notifications and one of the first things I do when setting up a new browser is disabling all requests for notification permissions.

Personally a fan of XMPP, it’s about the only decentralized alternative to Signal that’s worked well and reliably “out of the box” for me. SimpleX is really nice in principle, but my messages end up stuck in limbo sometimes and it burns through my phone’s battery.

Haven’t used Briar much, was missing a couple features I wanted.

Just an ordinary rectangular pillow. Contrast with European square pillows, which are way too big. It’s served me well for the past 20+ years (yes, the same pillow) as a side sleeper.

Not a parent and I’ve honestly no idea what I’d do if the occasion arises.

I’d like to raise a family, but I’m also not sure how it would come to be. I haven’t quite understood the urge to have sex, at least not in the way many people seem to. Always had the door open, not at the command of my parents, but because I never felt any reason to close it. Might literally have to ask my children for their perspective.

Lol, I wish edible insects were more available for purchase in the states. They are delicious and chock-full of protein. Might have to farm my own.

Even without diving into ethics, lab meats avoid all the inefficiencies of a complete animal, while providing effectively the same product. Especially beef, no need to clear forests for pasture and worry about cow burps.

States like New York, California, etc. have been subsidizing states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, etc. for some time. If we split it up in perhaps the most likely way (along political groupings) the poorer states would not be in for a good time.

Addendum: if we were to do the split right now, we might also see the rise of a few virulently and openly fascist countries.

WiFi scanning itself does require location permissions, but I have no idea why a DNS app needs to also scan WiFi. Also, a closed-source app like that just doesn’t inspire confidence. Consider using Rethink DNS from F-Droid.

Makes me feel like I’m doing the best I reasonably can, even if it’s of limited effect. Also, built-in aliasing service.