Just think about this case. I have zero idea of the details about this person. Let's assume he is "rich". Let's say, he's got assets worth 50 million euros. Let's say the kidnappers demanded 10,000 BTC from him. 10 million. How much does the State demand from him *every day and every year*? What happens to him if he refuses to pay? What happens to his assets? As I said, do not fall for the propaganda. The GIGN did not "rescue" him. They retrieved property, like the cattle slave masters in the cotton farms would retrieve a slave taken by another slave master, by force if necessary. View quoted note →

The fact of the matter though is that the criminal group that does the highest number of violent kidnappings, against we should all be the most concerned to get protection from, is the State. It's also the one with access to the most dangerous and powerful technology, and completely ruthless in using it against us. Do not get distracted with the anecdotal cases of non-State attacks. View quoted note →

This meme misses the other half: just by virtue of existing on a territory, under the jurisdiction of a State, you already "owe" a monetary "debt" to it. It's called "taxes". The modern socialist-fascist Corporate State regime prevalent in the West since the beginning of the 20th century did not do away with cattle slavery. It universalized it so it could be spread among the whole population and suppress the glaring difference between an explicitly enslaved underclass, and the non-slaves. When everybody is a slave, nobody is. View quoted note →

The thing is, "encryption" doesn't have backdoors. Otherwise it's not encrypted. What has backdoors is the apps and software that developers write to wrap around encryption. So as long as we continue to have FOSS, we're good. That should be the absolute focus of our collective efforts, to protect FOSS. The risk is not that they force Meta to break E2E encryption or Apple and Google to bypass it by spying directly on your screen and microphone. Those laws are 100% INEVITABLE. They're coming like it or not. The risk is that they continue to get away with indicting and sending to jail the Tornado Cash devs (even if in the US they seem to be safer, in Europe they won't be), so we stop having FOSS that circumvents their tyranny. The secondary risk is of course that 99% of the people don't give a shit and will continue to participate in the totalitarian experiment. That puts *us* at risk because vires in numeris, so the fewer we are, the easier it is to target us. But well, I can't force anybody to give up their "convenience" to protect me. To reiterate: there is no point in trying to prevent the regime from not doing what has long been decided it will do. It must necessarily do it. Asking it not to is like asking it to disband. Never gonna happen. Let's focus on building spaces outside of it, and on the limits, and let's move there as much as we can. View quoted note →

If you (the five or six I mostly interact with) wondered where I'm at these days since I'm not posting much -- working a bit, but also simply not "feeling like it" despite the Trump inauguration and all the comment-worthy events. I am spending an inordinate amount of time too every day watching the whole Start Trek saga in strict internal chronological order. I'm with S04 of Enterprise now, so it's going to be a long voyage to boldly go where so many have been before. OK later

How much did they donate to Kamala? View quoted note →

For the record - I'm a 100% in favor of an outright ban, not a forced sale, of TikTok. Since it's not a private company, but a CCP organ, it's a matter of Defense that has nothing to do with private property and speech rights. This is about not allowing an enemy terrorist organization to camp freely on your backyard in the first place, but also a matter of not FUNDING it with the money of the sale. Why would you allow any American company to send them hundreds of millions of dollars, so they can simply turn around and use that money to spin another TikTok immediately after? View quoted note →

Are people seriously so brainwashed with anti-Western and anti-Elon derangement syndrome propaganda that they're now migrating from TikTok to an even more blatant piece of CCP spyware, literally called THE LITTLE RED BOOK? This is really the most fucked up timeline.

Psychological therapy is a complete and utter scam insofar it's based on a pseudoscience ("psychology", especially "psychoanalysis"). Also, psychological therapy is not a scam at all insofar it's based on the simple fact that having people to talk shit out loud with is a basic human need for normal mental and psychological development and health. Just make some friends and stop wasting money (or even worse, getting drugged and dependent or the pharmaceutical industry).

Also to remark about this particular podcast: It took 51 minutes for Zuckerberg to begin to put aside the script Legal gave him and drop the first "fuck". Interestingly, it's when he's talking about how whenever he used to go on traditional media they would make him "look like a fucking idiot". The Rogan theory that you absolutely need these 2 or 3 hour long "conversations" to even begin to see through the façade all these billionaires and corporate types put up is once again fully validated, and that's Rogan's most important merit. View quoted note →

I've had the Zuck Rogan podcast running in the background for a while -- I never do that and I always focus on what I'm listening to/watching, but his droning and 90% fluff wording were simply unbearable. I did catch one point when he recognizes that the prevalent approach to censorship ("content moderation") is complete and absolute no-tolerance, and that the result of that is necessarily that innocent people will be punished unjustly. That's exactly where every single instance of "content moderation" ends up, especially if it's enacted by legal imperative through a desire to be "compliant". I was brought up in the liberal mindset that a morally just justice system is one that lets ten guilty criminals go, but never punishes an innocent. Those who insist on "zero tolerance" approaches, must also recognize that they're pushing for injustice. There is no way around it.