Trump: “I’m gonna do [blank].”

Me: “He’s gonna do [blank].”

Redcaps: “He’s not gonna do [blank], idiot!”

Trump: “We have done [blank] and are committed to accelerating the [blank] policy.”

Redcaps: "omg, we had no idea that he would actually do [blank]! This is horrible!

Me: “Okay, so are you gonna denounce that at all? Maybe think twice about whether you support a thing that he tells you he’s gonna do going forward?”

Redcaps: “What? Why? It’s actually good and smart that he did [blank], and you’re an idiot loser for still thinking about that. Also everything in my life is bad and getting worse, and it’s the fault of the party that currently wields no power. The party currently in power which is famous for staunchly opposing change will be the key to changing the trajectory of my life.”

How are these people not developing an ounce of critical thinking skill? I didn’t think you needed to be a genius to display basic pattern recognition. A dog can do that effortlessly.

It’s almost like he’s a lying narcissist or something. He’ll say whatever will get him closer to his goals with absolutely zero intent on keeping his word, and by the time even 20% of the country has caught on, he’s already several grifts and/or scandals downstream. If anybody does manage to confront him on it and demand an explanation, he just lies and changes the subject.

Promises made, promises delivered.

I truly don’t understand how he isn’t running out of rubes. He’s been very publicly exposed as the con man he is for over a decade now. His marks keep getting fucked over and are complaining about it. How are so many people still falling for his bullshit?

Well, LLMs can’t drag corporate media through long, expensive, public, legal battles over slander/libel and defamation.

Yet.

privacy and security

I’m not really sure how much my OS affects that though. If I remove that avenue, cool, but I’m still signed in on my browser and YouTube and various other apps, so to really protect my privacy and security, wouldn’t I need a whole slew of other changes to actually be effective? Credit bureaus, which I never even asked to have involved, can’t even keep a lid on my shit. How secure and private can I really expect to feel just from changing my phone OS, and is that warm fuzzy really good enough to justify moving from something that is working exactly as I want and expect to something that is, in a word, uncertain?

Not trying to attack you or anybody with these questions, just kinda frustrated that any time I’ve tried to look into it, all I find is a vague statement about privacy without any real elaboration, or worse, a bunch of speculation that the guy running it is unstable or something. Idk, it just feels a little like the wave of people screaming the praises of crypto.

I used to loudly support Google Fi when I switched to them from Verizon. My coverage wasn’t as good, but my bill was a small fraction of what it had been, and I’m usually on wifi so the pay for what you use model was great for me. I also really enjoyed taking it with me to Mexico on vacation. Sweet deal since my average data use was like 1GB/month.

Then like a year ago, I did some digging and found that I could have a very similar experience with Mint, except unlimited data for about the same price. Plus the price was locked in because you pay for it up front. It took maybe an hour to swap our phones over, and we kept our phone numbers. There was a little bit of hassle getting voicemail to work properly, but that got figured out.

My favorite thing about these types of services are that you can buy a pretty cheap, unlocked phone, use eSIM, and you’re not locked into your service provider. I am a fan of the Pixel a series of phones since they’ve got plenty good capability at half the price of flagship phones, but with good support. Others love the option to dump Android for Graphene OS but I really haven’t seen a compelling argument for why I personally should go to the trouble since I don’t see enough of a benefit for my use case. But that’s neither here nor there. I just like unlocked phones, and my 8a and my wife’s 6a were cheap and they were easy to transition to another provider; look into unlocked phones the next time you’re shopping for one so you can have that kind of freedom.

And they’re terrified of all the childless cat ladies opting to not produce their next generation of laborer/consumer brood to be said replacement. Hence the crackdown on abortions and contraception and people who pair up in ways that cannot yield children. You can’t have the infinite growth that capitalism demands if the number of producers and consumers goes down.

“No. Fuck you. Pay me. Now pay me more. Now enjoy ads. Pay me again. We’re now introducing fees associated with the privilege of paying me. So pay that while paying me.”

– approximately everything

What’s the best alternative software to gear up to transition to? I’m pretty pissed because they finally got decent integration for PS5. I was playing Space Marines with a couple friends, one of whom is playing on PC, so we’ve been able to crossplay with voice chat.