Literacy has played a large factor in advancements in societies and more important liberation of oppressed peoples. The fascists and greedy rich people have been doing everything to fuck with education for decades. And US citizens have been more or less taking pride in being stupid. The working and poor need to be doing everything possible to take pride in learning to combat this degeneration for our survival.
Sending US troops in any capacity seems to me that US hawks are wanting to increase the chances of US troops being killed. Which then means that the US can then justify sending everyone in that they want.
Use the excuse of "they attacked 'Merica" and do the same shit that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq (just with Israel "inviting" them in and as a "supporting" army). Which will of course ignore all of the US citizens that have been murdered by Israel.
They want so badly to bring back the "hero" trappings that WW2 had, but they will be siding with the fascists this time around. And would have "perfect" excuses to attack China and Iran via false flag shit (again using Nazi tactics). Hell, they might even pull-off something with Russia that can be used for the death spiral that NATO Article 5 promises. Be like all the shit that made sure WW1 would happen if literally anything popped off.
It would be nice if they at least allowed for even being able to donate to the browser itself. All the options that I am aware of are either the paid extra stuff they have, or to the overall company. Which is annoying since I imagine that the current "donation" option means that the money is being used mostly for the upper execs and routed to the extra shit that already has options for paying subs.
I also went completely to FF on my phone the moment it had uBlock Origin and some other extensions. Now that I learned how to force other ones, it has been game over for other browsers aside from just seeing how they are every now and then (I work with general public and need to be aware of how they work). The only thing I would really really advise in addition to FF on a non-rooted device is setting the Mullvad ad-blocking/tracking blocking DNS for the device.
It helps even if I need to use a different browser (not as good as also having uBO), and has really good chances of blocking ads in many apps. For example, I kind of treat the Microsoft Solitaire app since it keeps games and stats from my PC. However they have lots of video ads that play after a couple of games. With the DNS it just kind of glitches when an ad should run and just goes on to the next round instead. The only odd thing I see with other apps is that it can cause my bank app to take a little longer to load when signing in (I am guessing due to tracking it is trying to do). But after like ten seconds it goes through like normal.
This is the DNS address to add if you want:
https://base.dns.mullvad.net/dns-query
And here is the main site for all their options and tester to make sure whichever one you pick is working:
Probably a good move for them to make tbh. I like how CrowdStrike's name already sounds like it should be the name of a big malware/virus/zeroday. So we should have seen it coming.
ability to reach engaged customers
Not sure that being stuck to a spot in a tube you can't just escape (and easily live) from is the same as "engaged".
I flip US flags because fuck imperialism.
They flip US flags because they are babies that bootlick.
We are not the same.
Very true. I was a freshmen in high school when the clusterfuck that was the W v Gore election. Which was basically the first election I kind of followed with the new interest of someone that would be able to vote the next time. And of course 9/11 and Iraq were very big moments to see happening. They were the points in my youth where picking a side kind of mattered. Seeing the massive shift from blind support (which hit lots of us) to the massive condemnations of what the results were. Seeing the very people that were so "USA USA #1!!!" tripping over themselves to send people to die, then turn into smug fucks about how stupid the Republicans are and getting photo-ops to be seen as "anti-war."
Then 2008 shit really hit hard. The system was beginning to show even more of us in my age range the grift it was. Seeing so many peoples' lives fucked up, and seeing how just getting gas with my part-time minimum wage jobs would take so much while in school (I am forever grateful and lucky that I have the family help I had even though my parents were working class). But even after the massive protests over the wars and the financial crash, the same assholes just let the ones that created and directly aided the rich fucks that made it happen were let off. We have so many people that get life or even the death penalty for so much less harm. But these rich fucks and their paid for politicians just don't even try anymore. And we are groomed to just give up after maybe some large marches and speeches. To not push farther with demands, and if we start to they do a full push to present only out of the way and per-approved "peaceful protests" as "valid" and "correct."
Every election since the 2000 elections has been presented as life and death. It is always "too important a cycle" to be "allowed" to voice support of third parties. Abortion was always on the line. Civil rights movements from the past had their guts removed and whitewashed to fit the narrative of liberalism and even super right of centre conservatives. And yet the liberals/centrists after gaslighting about how "important" the shit was, then immediately won't shut the fuck up about how "important" bipartisan shit is and why they aren't putting any fight to protect those same things they yelled at us about. So are the conservatives/Republicans fascists that WILL take away all our freedoms? Or are they "really nice people" that make bipartisanship so fucking "important?"
Now that abortion and the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ folks were not protected, AND we are seeing more and more kids in cages along with a fucking genocide. We are STILL being told that the Blue Team is somehow the "good guys" and that the Republicans are the ones that WILL do all those same fucking things...but worse. It is infuriating that they are still trying to push the voters to just STFU and go with it instead of doing what voters are demanding. They act like the election is next week or something without time to change course. We are already being called "Trump supporters" for speaking our minds when there is literally so much fucking time to win votes. They only know how to be the "victims" and fake concerns for media spots, and are furious it isn't just working. Fuck all of them!
I only ever used the lite version of FB Messenger. Shit was much better than the full version, especially without all the bloated "features" that I didn't use at best and being annoying/battery drains at worst. Was noticeably snappier on both my old and new phones. Fortunately most of my friends started using Discord and/or Signal with better features (and one less Meta app to have running).
I think that the idea of having smaller and less demanding versions of lots of apps is a good idea. As so many apps are just not optimized and bloated. Just being coded to rely on higher specs to make up for said lack of effort in cleaning up stuff. The ads on ads on ads being part of the issue as well. Which is only getting worse with the close buttons not loading unless shit has been however many seconds. Seems that the "hit box" for the close buttons is getting smaller and smaller to guaranty the ads are clicked on and then open another app or a browser. Though optimizations and better coding won't fix dirty underhanded grifts.
The US is constantly and historically the ones propping up dictators all over the world. AND we have done it while people of those nations have either legitimately voted for the opposite, and/or were fighting for their freedom from colonial powers/dictators. We actively fund and create false narratives inside nations that we don't like to start color revolutions. We force other nations into backing brutal sanctions if they don't want us to go after them and to be allowed to trade with us. Our military is literally installed all over the globe, but we claim nations like China are somehow being "aggressive" for even patrolling their own areas. We create and groom evil and gaslight the world that we are somehow just allowed to police the globe. Fuck yourself.
I am really going to miss the old settings when they finally remove what is left of Control Panel. So far they have removed things or moved shit to force the Settings app. But they keep failing to make the new things have anywhere near the level of control. The power settings from Control Panel still matter way more than Settings and seem to actually stick when applied. And I just really have no idea how they have made stuff like resetting networking/connection issues worse over time. Fucking right-clicking on the networking icon on the taskbar and picking "repair" would actually get shit working again 8 times out of 10. But just seems to be a placebo at this point. There are still so many times that using different resets in Internet Options fixes more stuff I see regularly than the resets in Settings->Networking.
And the newer Troubleshooting options never fix any of the Windows Update issues I come across. Just a glorified verification of the failures I already know are happening. I never thought I would so badly miss being able to tell Windows Update to ignore updates if they were bugging out (not to avoid them all together but at least stop the OS from just constantly going through the motions of installing and failing during each reboot/shutdown). So many of the updates that used to give me issues were really either down to them trying to install out of order or due to a fuck-up on MS's end that pushed bad updates.
The push to so deeply embed these AI models into everything so fast is really pissing me off. Shit is known to have issues with just outright making shit up. Which is IMO reason enough to not be adding them to end-products (especially since the end-products are also still not finished with removing old versions of things). One thing that really worries me in my job with fixing people's PCs is the AI and search that pushes web content (and the now inescapable placement of ads) above local resources/programs/settings/etc. The main issues people have aren't actual viruses like in the past. It is the massive levels of scams and fake alerts followed by fake "repair techs." If the average person is so easy to trick when it is people scamming them. AI is going to blow shit up waaaaaaaay worse and will be able to do it so much faster and completely. Average people are still under the impression that these AI chats are giving completely real and accurate information (reminds me of how people used to believe that if something was said on TV that it was real).
Shit is fucked and going to get much worse at a dramatically faster rate due to rushing things in order to make as much money as fast as possible. Even Microsoft used to ship things in a more complete state. But gaming has made shipping broken products completely normal. So no reason to care about keeping any level of quality.
They are beginning the "face turn" for Gaza just like they did for Iraq. They fully support and do everything to paint the protesters and anyone against the wars/invasions as "extremists" or doing the bidding of another nation. But the moment that they take a large enough L, they start loudly acting like it is they who have been on the "front lines" fighting against the shit they helped spread. They will go for the cheap "pops" and use the language of leftists and the people that have been actually in the shit. Just like they did with civil rights and women's rights by painting those brave souls as libs/centrists and remove all leftist bits out.
I am almost convinced that the Dems actually wanted to lose badly. As they tend to get more blind voter support while playing the "underdog" role. But the moment they get control again, we only hear about how they "can't do x because bipartisanship (or whatever fake reasons)."