special mention to Richard Herring, who I think has the longest-running daily updated blog on the Internet - he’s written every day for like… 15+ years now. The blog has moved to substack recently though

I like Ecosophia.net - an occultist writes about all kinds of stuff

craigmurray.org.uk - an ex ambassador explains domestic and international politics with an insiders view.

and the blog at disappointment.com - sadly he only posts once every couple of years nowadays, but it’s just… very silly, often very gay humour.

Ethically? If you would’ve bought it if you couldn’t pirate it, you should probably buy it.

Irrelevant, yeah, but I’ve never been wrong about anything. Purple monkey dishwasher.

This is it. If all my needs were met by the state, I’d happily pay 90% tax with 10% on luxuries, which is about what I spend anyhow

Ordered a pizza, it came with a garlic dip in a transparent tub. My sister tried to dip the crust in the dip about 4 times to no avail, each time my buddy saying “the lids on, Jess. The lids still on, Jess. The lids still on, Jess. The lid, Jess, is still on” until the words finally got to her brain. She and I collapsed in giggles for a solid minute. It was the perfect representation of “this is your brain on weed”.

I’d say the same about reddit, comparing 8 years ago when I joined to 2/3 years later. Again, political divisiveness partially to blame, but also, early adopters of tech tend to be more intelligent. The more it filters into the mainstream, the dumber the general discourse gets. Eventually, that has the effect of putting off the smart folk who were there first, even further lowering the tone.

Going to disagree with your second point. In the UK at least, there’s a lot of friendly “no, after you” type activity. If the road narrows due to an overhead railway bridge or parked cars etc. generally speaking one or both will pull over, flash their lights to signal the other one can go first, and get a friendly wave of thanks when they pass. Letting people in at junctions isn’t uncommon either, though tends to be more the exception than the rule.

There is anger too of course, but usually only aimed at people who aren’t following the rules of the road, have done something stupid/dangerous, or are hesitating for far too long.

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago; neighbor texted me to say all my car windows were open. I had to put the key in to wind them back up. Neighbor said he once had a car that kept doing that - some controller unit had somehow gotten water/moisture in, so he had the part replaced and that fixed it.

I wonder if it was actually a satellite rather than a plane? If, rather than speeding away, it actually halted its orbit, then what you saw was the earth’s rotation spinning away from it

No real need. They could just bury it at worst, dig it up again as soon as they can use a spade

I think it’s the book of Job, God says something like “you could not possibly fathom the purpose or meaning to the world, even if someone tells you”. I think in much the same way a Turing Machine simply cannot process certain tasks or achieve particular ends, our brains are limited to a certain subset of understanding. Still mightily impressive what we can imagine/devise/understand IMO. In Islam, this is more readily accepted dogma: you can’t even imagine or picture God, so even attempting it is doomed to failure (or delusion)

Cos I’ve done drugs, and experienced heightened states of love, being, appreciation for nature and humanity, states that feel magical yet real, even if only temporarily.

The very fact those states of mind are achievable at all gives me a certain emotional grounding and inner certainty that reality has purpose, or at least meaning. As opposed to just being a happy accident of atoms and energy arranging themselves in this miraculous way to create life. That’s just a logical explanation of how, not why.

We’re almost all driven to look for meaning in life. Even if it’s just to “find your own purpose”, that journey presupposes you have one to begin with.

I guess I feel a belief in god without having much idea of what god is, or even what they want. But I don’t believe at all that logic, science, reason etc. are things you have to choose instead of religious belief. They’re things you have as well. You can’t square the two - the Rubik’s cube of logic doesn’t twist that way.

Good good. Last time I tried installing a few years ago, it would only give that choice if I installed to the primary

When you install to a secondary, does BIOS automatically give you the choice of which OS to load, or do you need to change boot order each time?

Friendica is more like Mastodon tbh. A lot more functionality than Facebook, but honestly that’s a bad thing. Too confusing and too many options for the average user.

And boring shit too, but at least it was human-generated boring shit

Link if you can find it pls :D

Pretty much that entire blog was golden. Real shame it’s gone. I used to re-read pretty much everything once a year

I met three women on Twitter between 2010 and 2016. But really, almost all the people I know in my city I met via the one schoolfriend I actually knew when I moved here. I now have my own friends, but they’re basically all within 6 steps of separation away from him, even if he doesn’t know them himself