Google does not automatically mean bad

Yes it does.

Google does everything with an angle, and that angle is putting you under surveillance and collecting monetizable data on you.

Google has (or had, maybe?) fantastic products. They’re truly great! The translator, the map, Youtube… But they’re great for exactly the purpose of luring you into using them, so they can abuse your privacy with them.

Google products are trojan horses: they’re irresistible but their true purpose is nefarious.

He who cares about privacy even a little bit and uses Google DNS servers doesn’t really care about privacy.

I hate the hospital for the same reason. Nothing like the mixed smells of chlorhexidine and death in a cancer ward.

But as a human, I can at least rationalize being there on an intellectual level

My parents have a small bussiness here, and like, we can’t just thanos snap and move everything.

Remember that many jews said the same thing in Germany before the war, until they realized it really was time to get out of Dodge and they couldn’t.

Curious, what country did you go to

I lived in many countries. The one I went to when I left the US was the UK. But it was in Europe back then. I would never move there now.

Because AFIAK, there only a few ways

You missed mine 🙂 I had dual citizenship. I simply gave one up. I had to pay the extortion racket but other than that, that’s all I had to do.

Also, if you’re trans or not male or female (some people are born with extra X and Y chromosomes, which flies in the face of the administration’s idiotic male / female classification), you’ve basically become a non-person in the US. As such, I’m fairly sure you could make a convincing case for asylum in many European countries.

If I was still an American (I gave up my citizenship after Dubya shat the USA Patriot Act) and part of an at-risk group - and there are many - I would seriously consider emigrating at this point.

Don’t do like the jews who stayed in Germany after 1933 thinking it can’t get any worse: it will get worse and you don’t want to be stuck in the US when it’s too late to leave.

Most people have money in the SP500 through their 401(k), sadly.

https://www.hhs.gov/

You must be a barrel of laughs at parties…

I try to learn the following sentences in the language of a country I go to if I don’t know anything at all about that language:

• Hello, as polite as possible
• Goodbye, as polite as possible
• A beer please
• I’m sorry I don’t speak <language>: do you speak English?

I find this quite enough to strike up a conversation in most of the world. When people don’t automatically switch to English - perhaps because they don’t know it well enough - then I try another “universal” language like Spanish or French (universal mostly because of past colonialism, sadly). That implies speaking those languages of course.

If the locals won’t speak English because of a prejudice against English (mostly French-speaking regions) I don’t even bother with the “I’m sorry…” bit. I just let them figure out by themselves that conversation is going to be difficult.

If the locals are anti-Americans - very common, and getting more and more common - I affect a British accent. I wouldn’t fool a Brit for a New York minute but I’m convincing enough for a non-native English speaker to avoid being associated with the US.

Everybody loves an underdog who fights against someone everybody hates.

And Zelensky just went up 1000 karma points for the same reason: everybody hates the US now.

It’s worse: unlike Molotov, Zelensky didn’t even bring the cocktails.

Is it a problem?

I’m from yesterday. When I was a kid in the 70’s, my tomorrow was the triumph of science, an evermore interconnected world of evermore educated people, the rule of individual rights and freedoms, the retreat of religion and magical thinking, fewer and fewer wars and the gradual end of poverty.

I’m very bitter today because somebody stole my future. But you can also argue that I, a man of yesterday, failed to shape the world of today too. We all failed, those of my generation.

If you’re a person of today, you need to work towards a better tomorrow right now. Because if you don’t, you’ll end up regretting not doing it later in life like I do.

Because the American culture has indocrinated Americans to put themselves first. Whoever has “me first” hard-coded in their personality tends to view everybody else as inferior, and tends to have an unwavering confidence in their own greatness.

Yeah DDG has been serving up AI slop lately, it’s really annoying.

Ducky see, ducky do. It’s kind of pathetic…

It’s not “his” company

I meant “his” the same way I say “my” company: it’s not mine, but it’s where I work and who I work for.

Here is the tweet - if that’s not the most flagrant Trump bootlicking, I don’t know what is:

https://tildes.net/~society/1ldg/proton_ceo_tweets_support_for_donald_trumps_department_of_justice_pick_and_the_us_republican_party

And here is the backpedal:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/

Believe what you will. I believe what I read.

Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).

The only thing Yen should have done to be credible is shut the fuck up and not take any side, or express any political opinion. I expect no less from the CEO of a company that pretends to sell me privacy from a neutral country.

I’m not saying Yen is a raging magat. I’m saying the moment he opened his trap about US politics, he tainted his company and damaged its credibility.

I’ve been a Runbox customer for many years. Never had any problem with them. They’re located in privacy-friendly Norway.