Orgs in my town have seen this first-hand. People are out here learning secure comm practices the hard way.

It doesn’t work like a centralized server for connecting contacts. You use a unique link per device to initiate the original connection with others at a distance or you can use QR codes in-person.

The link just tells briar where to route the messages and looks like:

briar://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (50 char alphanumeric key)

So there’s no way to impersonate someone directly. If you made two contacts and they use the same username, I suppose you could mistake them, but their contact connection keys will not be the same.

Hopefully that makes sense, if you look in the app or their site, it’s probably explained clearer.

Probably Briar. Encrypted, P2P, and doesn’t require anything but a username and password to sign up. Pretty sure that username doesn’t need to be unique, it’s just what people will see you as in messages.

Downside is it’s only Android, so many people are left out.

Unfortunately, this is a barbell of silence. Privacy won’t hold up to our expectations unless it is cone shaped.

Only due to collective interests and a shallow understanding of each. When you really get down to it, Marxism and anarchism are opposites.

• Historical materialism vs rejection of this (idealism)

• Society is built upon what came before vs society is built anew

• Centralization vs decentralization

• Organization at a large scale (collective ownership of the means of production organized across the whole economy) vs organization at a small scale (isolated, individual, and direct ownership of the means of production with collective collaboration)

Sure, both agree that they want a stateless society, but communists and anarchists don’t even agree on what the state is, meaning that while they can be strategic allies, their ultimate goals and approaches are completely different and opposed.

Advertising isn’t inherently negative

Advertising is capitalist propaganda meant to shape the way you think. How you think about things, your life, your community, your sense of self, and your worth. It is a form of manipulation meant to squeeze every penny out of you. It is meant to warp your mind into that of a consumer, to convince you that capitalism is the best way of organizing an economy and that if you don’t have the shiniest new toy, this is a personal and moral failure.

If you think, “that’s nonsense, they are just trying to sell me something,” consider this: if before every movie, show, and news broadcast there was an ad saying, “Our government in the best government. Be happy you live here. This is as good as it gets. Do not fret the bad parts of our society, just appreciate that you live in the best country in the world (or else),” would you consider this to be negative?

The central premise of most advertising is the deeply capitalist idea that your identity and worth as a person is primarily determined, not by who you are and what you do, but by what you own and by the commodities you buy. An inherent part of advertisement is a lack of respect for the audience. You and your time are viewed as commodities themselves!

Propaganda in itself is not negative, but it definitely can be. Advertisements are often composed of lying propaganda. They make false claims and normalize lies in our media, they normalize the acceptance of lies by numbing the population to these tactics. They make you look and feel foolish for calling out their lies and this extends throughout society.

Who are you going to believe, the boring science hippies who want you to read their papers or the suave, sexy commercial that promises to make your life better?

All of this ties into our society, culture, and how we behave as a people. If you don’t think it extends beyond taking our money from us, then how do you explain all the body dysmorphia that begins at a young age and extends throughout our lives? I’m too fat, too bald, too short, too sweaty, I’m too tan, my vitiligo is unattractive, my hair is too frizzy and too thin, my glasses are unattractive, I need to treat my wrinkles, fix my nose, remove the bags under my eyes, and cover up my unseemly stretch marks. These dysmorphic feelings all stem from you being treated like a commodity. They permeate our society and media.

Advertisements don’t just tell you how you should look, they also tell you what you should eat, what medications you should take, what car you should drive, how your home should look, where you should be traveling, what type of work you should be doing, how rich you should be, and more.

The reason Westerners are the most propagandized people in the world is not due to the decaying education systems, the misrepresentation of history, or the lies told by politicians, but because of how ingrained advertisements are within our societies.

But don’t take it from me alone, entire books have been written on this subject and it’s a problem with roots back to the beginning of the 1900s and the World Wars.

Instead of liking a post, you be able to ppb a post on FB.

Pretty sure it’s illegal for them to confirm that this has happened. Most of the spying is to manipulate your shopping patterns and learn how to make the most profit from you.

Think Las Vegas casino levels of manipulation and then some.

Do your body a favor and buy a baseball bat. You’ll feel 10 years younger!

You don’t have to cut a tree down to count the rings. A small, cylindrical core sample can be taken, similar to what we do for ice.

Or just taking a small core sample to do the same thing.

I’ve been using TizenTube since this issue came up and it’s gotten the job done. Not sure if it will be a good long term alternative.

Are you saying we should be tolerant of judgements placed upon large groups of people divided along arbitrary lines? Does the accuracy and universality of those judgements about each group hold up to the test of scrutiny and are they even based upon concrete evidence? If those judgements are accurate and universally true across those groups, should we be passing judgement upon each group for their differences? Is this a universal application of empathy?

Should we be tolerant of intolerance? I think not.

The US prefers to bomb people who struggle to fight back. They know China would pose a serious challenge and that’s too great a risk to take head-on. Just look at how quickly they gave up against Yemen, and they aren’t even close to the same level of military power as China.

Rather than engage with China directly, they will attempt to attack indirectly as they did with the Soviet Union. China can attack the US mainland, Venezuela would struggle to do so.

This is fake. I read he used a giant spoon. Stop spreading pRoPaGaNdA.

Democracy doesn’t work for you.

Please go engage with a leftist organization in real life. You’ll quickly see how wrong this is. Arguing on the Internet is rarely productive and it’s obvious you haven’t engaged with leftist literature. If you want to make these sweeping accusations, do yourself a favor and go see the reality of the situation.

Most of the people you are arguing against have been involved in both liberal and socialist organizations. They aren’t pulling their information from nowhere.

You might be getting closer with that, but this still doesn’t account for the deaths caused by the fallout of decisions under feudal or capitalist systems before switching to communism that took years to repair or deaths caused by imperialist meddling (sanctions, wars, coups).

I don’t even want promotions. Make it opt in rather than opt out. I buy things with the expectation that they will just quietly do their job.

Who needs a computer in their fridge anyway? Is the utility worth the materials and add complexity besides to advertisers?

Lets just add laws where if advertisers want something, we always do the opposite.

Diagnosing info:

I usually find this in YouTube videos or on auto forums, but every now and then they are written in the manuals.

If you feel a wobble (push in and out) on your brakes, then your drum is warped. If it feels mushy, then there is probably air in the fluid system that needs to be bled.

The manuals and third-party books mentioned are great resources, but YouTube videos and old auto forums are also very helpful. There’s nothing quite like watching someone do the process on video.

Another resource that’s helpful is online auto part wholesale stores like rockauto.com where you can often get parts cheaper. The problem with fixing your own car isn’t usually the parts, but the tools. They are a big up front coat, but pay off in the long run. I like AutoZone tools because they have a lifetime warranty, but they aren’t always the best.

For your squeaky brakes, you can probably fix everything for less than $100 in parts (maybe less than 50 if it’s just the pads that need to be replaced). To do this, you’ll need the following.

Tools (none of these are suggestions, they are random links I grabbed as examples):

• a Jack/lift, a hydraulic trolley jack works well

• jack stands and wheel chocks (for safety)

• a socket wrench and appropriately sized sockets or one of these. One that rachets and extends is nice. Do not get universal sockets, they are garbage. Get 1/2 inch or thicker connections or they will break.

• a breaker bar (long connector for sockets). Optional, but very helpful in turning very tight nuts on the wheels.

• a big c-clamp to compress the caliper piston (you can get a piston compression clamp, but this is much cheaper)

• gloves

• calipers (if you want to measure brake drums to see if they need to be replaced)

Parts:

• brake pads and hardware (usually some included metal clips) example

• drums (rarely need to be replaced, based on thickness measurement)

• brake cleaner (only if replacing drums)

• if you get into changing the brake fluid, you will need fluid and potentially hoses/attachment parts as those wear down. You don’t usually need anything fancy to bleed them, I use a piece of silicone tubing and a plastic bottle.

Start small and work up in complexity. It sounds like your pads need to be replaced. There is a piece of metal on the pad that starts grinding on the drum when the pads get low, this means just the pad and pad hardware need replaced unless you ignored it for too long. If you ignored it, the drums may need to be replaced too. It’s typical for the brakes to squeak a bit (different sound than the low-pad scraping) after you put new pads and hardware on. There are tricks to fix this if it even happens, but it’s more annoying than harmful and will go away on its own. I won’t tell them here, because it involves grease and I don’t want you to accidentally grease your brakes so they don’t work.

Normal brake service cost from 15 years ago before I started doing it myself: $300-400. Cost from doing it on my own: $30-50 and ~15-30 minutes.

Cost to replace my broken radiator at a shop: $600. At home: $80 and 1 hour outside in frigid winter weather.

Long-term, I think it’s worth learning to do the service yourself, but I’d stay away from more dangerous work like changing your suspension (springs under tension).

General brake pad changing procedure:

1. put on parking brake, emergency brake/handle brake

2. put chucks behind tires on opposite side of where you will be lifting. Kick them into the tire so they are snug.

3. loosen wheel nuts

4. lift car and place on jack stands (look up how to do this properly)

5. remove wheel nuts, remove wheel and set aside

6. loosen caliper nut, lift so it sits out of way (caliper is on a hinge)

7. remove old brake pad, replace with new pad and hardware

8. inspect drum and replace if necessary (new drums are greased, you will need brake cleaner to remove this if you are replacing drums)

9. open hood, unscrew cap to brake fluid reservoir

10. use c-clamp to depress caliper piston, retighten cap to brake fluid reservoir

11. reassemble in reverse. When you put the wheel on, get the nuts finger-tight, then lower the car.

12. right wheel nuts. This needs to be done in a star pattern like you are drawing a five-point star. Do not tighten one and then the one next to it, tighten one, then skip a nut and tighten every other nut. Continue until all are tight while the wheel is on the ground (or it will rotate)