Is at least in a feudalistic society. The farmers would own the their own land and there’s not much the big corporations would be able to do about that.

Sadly, in the feudal age peasants and serfs did not own the land. They worked the land and paid rent to their lord, who actually owned it.

The land is the “means of production”, and the landlords exist solely to extract value from it.

In the modern era, the digital ecosystem is a new means of production. We are the digital tenants, and they are the digital landlords. Nothing has changed, although for a brief period of time in the 90’s and early 2000’s the wall street capitalists didn’t think the internet was anything more than a fad and things were good, but e-commerce was just too lucrative for them to ignore forever.

Nothing will change until they fear for their lives.

Just like the OP, except then my dog vomits on the floor and leaves again.

Likewise. I used to get 3-4 cold DMs or connection requests from recruiters per week just a couple years ago. Now I maybe get 1 per month.

It’s nice for me specifically, but definitely a symptom of the times and worrysome for anybody trying to find a job in this economy now while also having to compete with fucking AI slop generators doing all the menial and entry level work.

My technique is come in at a sharp angle, aim for the porcelain and not the water/drain/cake. 98.5% of the time this results in no discernible splashback, for me at least. If there is splashback, it’s usually due to the design of the fixture itself and I quickly adjust to compensate - some are more shallow or rounded, others are awkwardly curved or angled, and the height at which it’s mounted matters as well.

You might just be unlucky and have a super powerful stream or something. If that’s the case, you’re probably better off just sitting to pee.

I learned a while ago that the opposite of ambidextrous is ambisinister. The “left” origin of the word sinister gives a bit more context, as if describing someone who had two left hands!

What I meant by that is the ability to access the entire world interconnectivity - obviously cutting those cables would not affect domestic internet access but people who live elsewhere would not be able to access content hosted overseas in gulf states.

I don’t think Iran cares if their citizens can access the internet or not. I presume their military uses satellites for that sort of thing so they won’t be negatively affected by it.

The rest of the world, on the other hand, gets their access to worldwide connectivity held hostage.

Good read, but I think the author touched on something that is way more troubling. Sure, you can get reliable information from regular people who are living in other parts of the world, but spreading that information with any kind of veracity is almost impossible due to the collapse in public trust of mainstream media.

If I say something with any degree of authority or confidence, someone in the comments will inevitably chant the ancestral magic spell “Source?!” and suddenly my evidence of a conversation with a stranger on the internet is reduced to merely anecdotal at best. Able to be dismissed outright without thought or care.

However, if I post a link to some legacy media rag, existing in the modern day as a mere husk being puppeteered by corporate oligarchs, wearing the skin of a legitimate and trustworthy news source, the credibility of the information is then called into question by anybody reasonable - knowing full well that right-wing governments have managed to capture most of the remaining independent reporting, or at least have threatened them with who-knows-what in an attempt to influence their press releases that would otherwise paint the government or any of their cronies in a negative light. If someone decides that the provided source doesn’t line up with their narrative, it’s hilariously easy to attack the reporting itself as being “fake news”.

The brain shuts off, and information gets siloed. Objective reality is no longer shared. We are still living in a state of simply believing whatever we want to believe and the few people who are able to break out of that are not going to be influential enough to have an effect on anything. We can pat ourselves on the back for not being a group of people concerned with being brand-builders, I guess, but in the end it’s a meaningless victory.

I would not buy one. I would not use one if my current phone exploded into tiny pieces and the only convenient replacement was a free OpenAI phone - I’d much rather inconvenience myself.

Stressing out about it right now won’t do you or anyone else any good. Just keep an ear to the ground for news updates. If they still have hantavirus under control and quarantined on the ship, it’s a good sign that it will stay contained there.

I don’t think we have another global pandemic on our hands, but you should take precautions now just in case - especially if it makes you feel less anxious about it. Wearing a mask in public costs you very little in terms of effort and is far more socially acceptable post-Covid.

Right now I think it’s a three way tie between mainstream social media, online gambling, and right-wing influencers.

Not really, although I can see how what I wrote might come off as that.

Learning how to interact socially with other people isn’t masking. It’s a practiced skill just like anything else. For some people, it comes quite naturally. For others, like myself, it was challenging. I’m happier now because I fit in better with others socially.

I do not believe in the idea that aspects of one’s personality are immutable and unchangeable. I think that most people would look back on themselves as a young adult and see an entirely different person that who they are now. The same is true for me.

I had someone tell it to me straight - that the reason I was getting side-eyes and laughter behind my back and why girls wanted nothing to do with me was because I was an awkward dweeb.

At first it kind of hurt my feelings, but it kind of woke me up to the reality of the situation and I began to not only notice how other people saw me, but I started examining myself and my own actions in a more critical light.

Most of the time it was me behaving inappropriately in the given situation. Everyone else walking to their next class? There’s me Naruto running down the hall. You get the idea.

I had to learn to identify the behaviors that people were critical of or found off-putting, and learn the appropriate behavior to emulate. Eventually, after I learned the correct response to any particular social situation, it was less about knowledge and more about confidence. I was lucky to make some well-adjusted and confident friends in high school who helped me learn what it was all about. I didn’t fret about talking to random people anymore, I could carry on a normal conversation for at least five minutes, I developed “normal” hobbies and interests (but crucially I kept my old ones as well, they were just not the first things I would lead with when talking to people), and in general I just mellowed out a little and developed the skill to be able to read a room and know how to deal with certain people.

tl;dr - someone talked to me and told me I was an awkward kid, but they also did their best to help me identify and fix the things that made me weird and unlikable.

You already have some great answers in the thread, but i just want to add that if you or anyone else reading this is trying marijuana for the first time, do an edible, as low strength as you can get it, and see if you like it first before experimenting with the other ingestion methods.

Smoking it will be an unpleasant feeling and you will cough and sputter and your throat will get hella dry.

Vaping or using a bong will probably get you too high too quickly and you might have a bad trip.

For my first time I did a 2.5mg gummy and it was not quite enough. I could feel it working but it was too low dose to have an inebriating effect on me. Then I bumped it up to 5mg and it was great, gave me a nice head high without completely disabling me, i could still carry on a conversation and play videogames and such without any kind of impairment. I went up to 10mg and that was the sweet spot for feeling high for hours but not really being able to do much other than binge watch YouTube videos and eat junk food. I’m not really going to be productive or coherent in that state. 20mg gummy gave me a bad high both times that I tried it so that’s pretty much my limit.

Just be careful and give them time to kick in. The “these edibles ain’t shit” mentality is real and will get you into trouble fast. Can sometimes take 2+ hours to ramp up to the full effect and will last for 8-10 hours afterwards.

Every time I see this image I swear his eyes get smaller every time.