Shut up, Wesley!

The byline for everyone around but not in the Trump administration right now.

Anders has entered the chat.

What’s uncertain? He’s solidifying income for the executive branch sans congress. And thus gutting congressional power over the executive branch before midterms.

They’re using Signal so nothing is recorded.

Basically there’s a government transparency mandate by We The People. It’s why info gets released to the press and eventually things like the JFK assassination are released years later. It’s why everything the president writes or says is recorded. Because, in theory, they work for We The People and have to answer to us. They can’t do that if no one knows what they’re up to.

Trump admin says, fuck that, fuck We The People, we will now use an end to end encrypted service that cannot be effectively subpoenaed. What we do is our secret, so no one knows what we are up to.

As a messaging service Signsl is as secure and private as the people using it. You want privacy you use WIRE or Signal. Your stuff isn’t recorded on a database like Facebook Messenger, for later subpoenas, it’s just poof, gone, as you delete it. You can even time delete it for everyone in chat after a few minutes, an hour, a week, etc.

As for the phones themselves, I don’t know. In general terms, out of the box, Apple is more secure than android but neither is private, unless the feds get a telemetry removal package or some such which would make sense. GrapheneOS on an Android device (strips all telemetry including that map app) is how we laymen do it.

There’s no such thing as always or never when it comes to people, except death.

Depends. That’s the issue though. DEMs is a giant bag of angry cats fighting amongst themselves, gatekeeping one another, and more or less telling one another how they should be while saying it’s all inclusive.

The infighting is real. I’ll give the repubs credit for unity, they’re strangely good at it, just look at Tesla. Ten years of hating Tesla and hazing Tesla drivers. Now, the same people are driving cars into protesters for daring to smear the company. That’s unity. Blind unity. But unity.

We can’t do anything even remotely close to that in party.

Therein lies the point of MAGA efforts. If you keep your base punching the left then they won’t remember they’re working class, not really being crushed by the left, and may start to punch up.

They’re already too scared to do in person town halls. Even so, this steered rage is intentional.

You’re not displaced by corporate, but by immigrants, DEI, and non-traditional women.

Just about everyone wants to see themselves in the main player character of an RPG. It’s one reason character creators exist. Why we can choose between male and female Shepard and then toggle their appearances. But why is it white men yell the loudest when they don’t see themselves in a fixed main character?

It’s a valid question. Sure there was an ask for female assassin play, but it wasn’t anything like this crude, angry, and off the rails epidemic we see far too often. Why is this population so loud and rage filled?

I happily play Witcher, and enjoy Geralt for who he is, including those tired sighs and the long hair that blows in a wind that’s not there. Geralt looks like he’s been torn off the cover of an old bodice ripper novel, which is a bit of an eye roll but adds to the humor. Even so. As a woman I had no problems with it or the game. I’ve played W3 through twice.

Enter Ciri as the main for the next game. Suddenly there’s a huge problem even though she’s the logical next Witcher. I’d like to know how she plays as a character outside the premade with gimped UI. The preview to 4 was nicely nuanced as well, a lot of detail packed into that clip apart from just simple spooky monster fighting. She clearly has a chip on her shoulder about life choices, and fair enough given her history.

Again, no raging outcry regarding Geralt or the way he looked for 3 installments. Now there’s outcry.

I’m not Japanese or Black and yet I’ll happily play this latest AC (but only after its old and goes on sale).

A large flip book, maybe. Flip it open and use it like a 15” tablet.

Heavy metals in artists’ oil paints.

You can always dig into true crime, see what methods are used to kill husbands.

Check out ChubbyEmu on YouTube. He’s a pharmacist who presents strange and interesting medical stories (with dramatic re-enactments) involving unusual chemical exposures that damage and sometimes kill people. Examples: soda, coconut water from a bad coconut, a fermented soup, ivermectin ordered online, lab chemicals stolen by a student and given to a disliked roommate, and so on. Maybe something there will inspire you. ChubbyEmu does a good job of breaking down complex medical into an easily digestible format.

The challenge side quests. I could not pursue them in full. Not that the speed runs didn’t have enjoyment, it was just too much. And the brother was both irrational and grating to deal with for that long.

The Mirage info is simultaneously reassuring and infuriating. The latter for money reasons given probable content expectations after Odyssey and Valhalla.

Loved Odyssey and Origins was quite good. Valhalla was too long, too much. Granted I’ve never been into the Thor/Odin pantheon like some people, Tom Middleton’s Loki being the exception. The sheer amount of game (completionist) made me not want to engage Mirage or Shadows.

Aside from that general opinion, AC games are usually spot on for people who can only ingest 2hrs at a time, like it’s their daily or bi-daily TV binge allotment.

Another one in the Steam library I’ve yet to play.

I’m chuckling a bit (in a negative way) at the abject perversion of this mentality, because of course this happened.

Isn’t this how we think of all pollution? Global warming? We don’t have to worry about this today, so we won’t. Maybe some nebulous, nonexistent white knight of a someone will figure it out before its an immediate problem…

This is always a personal choice.

Bear in mind you do yourself a disservice by believing rag headlines (common dreams, daily beast, new republic, etc) in an echo chamber. Talking to people who don’t agree with you will tell you more about present politics, in terms of what the “other guy” is thinking. It’s also an opportunity to pick things apart in chill discussions and find the point where you digress instead of assuming.

Flippant remarks are typically engaged in areas people haven’t spent time or mental resources on. They’re more likely to be verbal passcodes for a social group. You could find out. Where the jokes stop is usually the more viscerally believed area.

Or maybe that’s just me who has an interest in that sort of thing. That said, you can encounter people you start to sway with reasonable discussion based in listening to everything they want to say who then get angry, yell that they can’t talk to you any more, who then simply go away.

To be fair I have all the energy in the world for strangers because they’re often 1-4 encounters and done. In my personal life, I have the energy and wherewithal to maintain 1, and that is probably only because they’re my closest genetic link.

Another reason President Musk wanted to play with deregulation. Free reign, or rain, to chew through the ozone layer with his space garbage.

Texas measles has entered chat, followed by dismissive remarks from RFK Jr.

Call it conspiracy theory or good science, either way, as the ice melts I think it’s likely. Especially when we go poking around to see what’s what as it happens.

I still don’t understand the obsession with tamiflu. The data is such that the average reduction in illness time is 16 hours, if and only if you take it within the first 48hrs of showing symptoms.

And yet it’s both pushed and asked for well outside those parameters at great expense. It’s expensive, $75-150, depending, not always covered by insurance, and it’s not unusual for it to make people feel worse.

My running theory it’s the same impetus that has people screaming (sometimes literally) for antibiotics for colds, some of whom genuinely believe it helps. That and pharma selling a thing.