That’s pretty much my thought every time I see someone doing something dodgy on an ebike. Like yeah, they’re being a bit of a dick; but even with their dickish behaviour they are often still less dangerous and cause less traffic compared to having another car on the road - especially a car with a dickish driver. (Obviously there are limits to this reasoning.)

I don’t think it is “unforgivable”. I reckon it might be unforgivable if Labor had preferred One Nation over the Greens; but to just not give any preference at all is… not really that bad in my opinion.

On the one hand, I think voters should never use how-to-vote cards at all. Voters should build their own understanding of which parties align with their values, and vote accordingly. And so Labor not suggesting any preferences seem fair enough to me.

But on the other hand, a party’s listed preference is a strong indicator of how that party sees itself in the political landscape. Its an indicate of how their values align with the values of others, and hence an indicate of the parties values and priorities. So although I don’t think voters should follow the how-to-vote cards, they can be useful sources of information. And in that sense, Labor saying “we have no preference regarding the other parties” is effectively a way of saying they agree with One Nation just as much as they agree with the Greens. And that could be seen as unforgivable if interpreted in that way.

Google deliberately intertwine all their stuff so that they can pull junk like this. Maybe there’s one product you really want; and probably that product was easily accessible and unencumbered when it was new. But now if you want to keep using it, you gotta let Google have their way with you - body and mind, you must submit or they’ll take away the ‘gift’ that they originally gave freely.

Of course we shouldn’t submit to threats like that. Giving in to that just makes them stronger, and us weaker - and so it gets worse.

Good.

Uber has been able to force their way into a dominant industry position by basically ignoring laws and regulations. It’s long overdue that it catches up with them.

Maybe it’s not the way. But that’s not a reason for a company, who engage in their own censorship and surveillance, to shirk our laws.

Does anyone here use Posteo? They sound pretty good to me, and so I’m curious to hear people’s experiences with using it.

I’ve heard quite a lot about Tuta; but about not many other alternatives. (I think it’s healthy to check out a few options.)

What are you trying to say here? That we shouldn’t bother changing to a better service because Proton’s marketing is so good? That some people won’t hear the message, and so the message doesn’t matter? That Proton will survive - and therefore no one should bother discussing its failings or alternatives?

Yeah, I’ve heard before that Tuta is a problem in Finnish. (I wouldn’t know.) So that sucks.

I don’t think the keemail thing would be such a problem though. Maybe it’s different for you, but I’m never asked to speak my email address. It is always written (usually typed). So mishearing it is a complete non-issue. Also, it’s keemail.me, not keemail.com. Not sure if that’s better or worse… but from my point of view, it doesn’t make much difference. It’s just an address; like a street name or something. And for me, no one else is ever typing in my email address. So there won’t be any confusion about that.

Can’t save anything by cutting climate funding. It is by far the most important issue facing the world. Even if ‘cost of living’ is consider the biggest problem, climate change raising insurance costs is very expensive to everyone, and that’s just one of the many indirect problems we’re facing.

And thing is, a lot of spending for climate related stuff has direct benefits even aside from the climate problems - such as improving energy security, improving air quality and health; and in some cases even creating direct financial profits even aside from all the physical benefits.

So yeah, cutting climate funding is a losing strategy. No one should vote for a party that wants to do that.

There has been focused emphasis on STEM teaching and research (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) for years now. And its easy to see why: STEM is what makes modern tech possible. New inventions, new ways of building and using old inventions, better understanding of the physical laws of the universe; and so on. At face value, it sounds like pretty good stuff. Imagine what amazing tech will come next…

But I think we’ve missed something. In particular, we’ve sidelined the philosophical / human study of what is the goal? There has been this implicit assumption that more is better. More tech. More stuff. Faster stuff. Bigger stuff. Stronger / lighter / more connected stuff… So we focus on creating all that stuff. But perhaps that never should have been the goal in the first place. The good life does not necessarily need all that, and in fact, I think soon we’re going to have to come to terms with the idea that a lot of it might actually be detrimental. We could end up less happy, less sustainable, less engaged in our community, less wise, less motivated to do anything at all. Apathetic, and pathetic.

I think we overshot with STEM. I’ve worked professionally as a scientist, and a programmer, and a mathematician. But I now reckon we need art and philosophy more than we need technology. We need to work out what is actually good; and I don’t believe the answer is “more”.

This is so true. And just to further the point, productivity has gone up. Many jobs are faster & easier & take less time and fewer people to do. So more stuff is getting done per work hour. And yet, as you say, its somehow harder to afford cost of living on the pay of those work hours. So where is all that extra productivity going?

A lot of it goes to waste, possibly ‘undervalued’ by market distortions. (For example, tech like phones and laptops and TVs, take huge amounts of work to create - but are somehow relatively cheap. A low-cost wireless mouse costs about as much as buying lunch. That’s pretty weird considering what’s involved. The churn of using and replacing that stuff is sucking up a lot of productivity behind the scenes.) But yeah, the bigger effect is growing inequality. Ultra wealthy people and company sucking up all the profits from our productivity; and spending it on… well, a lot of stuff. One example that comes to mind is the enormous amount of resources going into building and running data centres at the moment. Land, water, raw materials, basic labour, skilled labour… and some promise that it is all going to be worth it, but right now its essentially just our collective wealth getting poured into machines that are currently doing more harm than good. It’s a level of resource tradeoff that no normal person would make. But at the ultra-wealthy top, the cost doesn’t matter so much to them, and the benefits including locking people into a cycle of dependency - so that the owners can say at the top unchallenged. It’s not hard to see how that’s a good deal for them, but not for anyone else.

I totally agree. Actually I think pretty much everyone agrees. It’s just a bit tricky, because it is not what most people are use to in their daily lives.

I mean, in most cases people seek out the highest quality products at the lowest prices. Lower cost is basically always what people aim for, as long as the quality is high enough. But with FOSS and other free services, you get the product for free… so that’s a win right? Zero cost. What are you paying for? It needs a totally different mindset. We need to think of ourselves as part of a community working together and sharing resources - not a bunch of independent people only making trades for our own self-interest. For that, I think transparency about what funding is needed and where it is going is very helpful.

Yeah. Shlee is a bit of an expert on fundraising for community projects. He has taken on the funding and maintenance of a few smaller mastodon servers after their original admins were no longer able; and he is the chief fundraising guy for pixelfed, the fediverse alternative to instagram. I’m on aus.social, and I’ve donated to the Posters Union a couple of times. (Although I think it might be renaming to Posters Guild, due to some minor legal pushback when registering it as an official charity or something.) And as you (Gorgritch) point out, he is a real-life person who also does various charity fundraising in the physical world amongst real people outside of the internet.

So yeah, probably it would be worth contacting him for ideas and suggestions.

Obviously all those examples are preferable to ads. So I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. They are asking for donations, yes, but they are surviving without having paid promotion of external products, and that’s the point.