I wouldn’t say art is subject to facts in this way. Some of us enjoy art that is produced through skill and intention rather than some idiot shitting in a jar. The meta debate is just one incredibly lame branch of art that incompetent snobs manically jerk off to while outbidding each other for a fucking banana.

Of course, context matters for interpretation. Guernica is a more meaningful piece with the background of civil war; dadaism only makes sense in opposition to fascism. But both depend on skill and intent to become impressive, not merely the meta context of positioning in art history.

I hate this discussion and I hate that by interacting with it some idiot in a beret will tell me “AHA! So it did provoke you!!”, as if they were making a point or ever had an original thought in their lives.

Opposition to this bullshit is not a problem of the “tech world”, it’s a problem of the art world having obsessed over the same idiotic joke for a hundred years because it’s harder to appreciate something that contains genuine intent and talent than it is to pretend like you understand the genius of stapling a piece of crap to the wall of a gallery.

Yeah, if they need you, but maintaining friendships is hard enough work if one doesn’t actively exclude oneself.

I have a bunch of friends from most corners of Europe, most highly educated, all of them use WhatsApp. I use Signal with those who are on there, but 90% are only on WhatsApp, so I am too.

Worse yet, my friends and family in my home country are almost all only on Facebook Messenger. I stopped using that entirely, and clumsily reach out on SMS whenever necessary. It has absolutely made it harder to stay in touch with people I care about.

I also avoid a lot of other social networks that would have been nice in order to keep in touch with my friends in other parts of the world, which is pretty much all of them as I travel. Pixelfed is nice, but my friends are still on Instagram. Or even Snapchat, even though I’m in my 30s.

Not all my friends are privacy nerds, and I wouldn’t want them to be either. So I just gently push for Signal whenever I can while I hold my nose and continue to run WhatsApp.

That’s part of enshittification I’d say. It’s all about squeezing your users for as much money as you can, and surveillance is part of that.

Oh yeah. This is not an attack on mediocre white men—I’m one of them. We just have to learn to get over ourselves.

Whatever it takes to keep hiring mediocre white men, I guess.

I hate the debate over “what is art”. Honestly I think the best answer I could give to the question is “something that was ruined by a bunch of idiots asking ‘what is art’”.

That said, and not wanting to go into that discussion, calling this guy an “artist” seems like a mockery. He’s not an artist, he’s just some idiot with double sided tape.

Well, yeah, they’re run by a corporation, which I guess means they need to show infinite growth to return value to stockholders. If so they can keep growing on subscriptions for a while, but eventually they’ll turn on their customers. So fair enough.

I think that’s part of my problem with them honestly. They seem to always want to grow and do more, but I would rather have seen them focus on search and make the subscription more affordable. But as they need growth I guess that’s not possible.

Yeah, this is not the case as they run on a subscription based model.

I used Kagi for a while. I stopped because it’s prohibitively expensive, and rather than prioritizing lowering prices they kept giving me AI features I did not want at all - hell, it’s the kind of shit I was paying to get away from. Mix direct support for Russian companies into the mix, and you have an expensive AI fueled multi-purpose web monstrosity that supports war crimes. No thanks. I just wanted a search engine.

Their search results were good though. I wouldn’t mind supporting a subscription based model, but I’m sick and tired of tech bros and their bullshit.

There are some user friendly Android based alternatives out there, since it’s based on open source. Personally I’m running a device with /e/OS, which you can either install yourself or buy a phone with it pre-installed. There are also some other user friendly options out there such as the Volla Phone.

But yeah, iOS is probably a better bet than stock Android, as Apple has a history of being abusive towards their customers in other ways than by selling their data. But crucially both Google and Apple are American companies, so you should avoid depending on their cloud services to whatever degree possible. There’s no such thing as safe data if it is stored by an American company.

If these assholes get bailed out by American tax payers when this shit crashes and burns I’m gonna get real mad.

Well, I’m pretty angry about everything happening in the US already, come to think of it. Oh well. I guess it’ll all just crash and burn.

Historically death camps tend to start out as mere camps, but then suddenly they are full of people who are deemed unwanted anyway and keeping them alive is expensive and difficult so why bother.

On its current trajectory there’s no US camp that shouldn’t be expected to turn into a death camp. And as others have pointed out, thousands “missing” from a huge, poorly managed camp in the middle of a swamp is worrying to say the least.

Americans today are like Germans in the 30s, watching the trains roll by.

The reporting goes pretty hard:

‘No restrictions’ and a secret ‘wink’: Inside Israel’s deal with Google, Amazon
To secure the lucrative Project Nimbus contract, the tech giants agreed to disregard their own terms of service and sidestep legal orders by tipping Israel off if a foreign court demands its data, a joint investigation reveals.

May this be a reminder to degoogle your phone and boycott amazon. It’s not hard, and there are thousands of people on here eager to help. :)

“The SS doesn’t necessarily have to be abolished; we do need to enforce purity laws. But it will have to be completely remade.”

White Americans and whining about immigration controls. Name a more ironic duo.

I’d say the Clash were simultaneously highly mainstream and true to the spirit of punk. Dead Kennedys as well, albeit slightly less mainstream.

Honestly I’d say there’s a lot of punk bands that enjoyed something close to mainstream success without being sellouts.

I’d say he’s imitating the 60s more than the 70s, but he writes some good tunes nevertheless. :)

The agency doesn’t necessarily have to be abolished; we do need to enforce immigration laws. But it will have to be completely remade. And it’s not too early to start preparing.

Counterargument: It needs to be abolished. There might be elements of the American state worth salvaging the remains of. ICE is not one of them.

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Yup, the nightly builds are already getting pretty good. Obviously not ready for any serious use yet, but it’s a great project.