I know we’re meant to be discussing this from a privacy perspective, but my first thought whenever the topic of eliminating cash comes up is that, at least where I am in the US, it’s tantamount to euthanizing the homeless. The vast majority of unhoused folks I know (which is a lot, including myself for a terrible but thankfully short period of my life) get most of their necessities (particularly food) by buying them with cash they’ve earned through various means, rather than charities, food banks, soup kitchens, etc. And only a very small percentage of them has any sort of bank account and/or a device to manage digital currency.

But also privacy, yes. Cash is king.

I think the appeal to companies is the control

This part. Rich people never stopped jerking off over the idea of owning slaves.

Not a lawyer, but if you’ve already paid for something (i.e. “bought” an eBook on Amazon), then you’ve done your part to ensure the creator eats tonight. Pirating a digital copy of it that you can read/move/engage with wherever you want is no longer even slightly morally questionable at that point.

If you thought USians were stupid already, give it a few more years of AI usage! You can just see people’s eyes glassing over when you try to discuss anything of import.

Yuuuup. I’m an American, and I’m particularly scared for Gen Alpha. The amount of times I’ve seen my nieces and nephews stop mid-sentence, pull out their phone and have ChatGPT complete their thought is… Idk man. I’m a millennial, and a significant part of this is my generation’s fault, cuz we’re the “hand them an iPad so they’ll leave you alone” parents (though not me personally because I have zero interest in bearing any crotchfruit). But damn, it’s scary. And sad.

I do like videogames, including ones with NPCs, but the difference there is that an NPC isn’t pretending to be a person, it’s pretending to be a character in a fiction that was definitively written by a person. And even so, I very much don’t like hyper-realism in games, much prefer stylized and/or cartoony.

And yeah the fake person at a drive thru thing started up where I am in California sometime last year (or at least that I first noticed). The irritatingly realistic voice is bad enough, but it’s really the obsequious responses that bug me there. A lot of, “great choice! The orange chicken is really tasty”, like bitch you literally don’t have a mouth, please stop.

Yeah but see that freaks me tf out too. A few nights ago, the moon was shining through the leaves of the oak tree in my backyard in such a way that it vaguely looked like a little kid’s face, and I literally said out loud “absolutely not” and went back inside.

Hanged. Ain’t no way this textbook case of overcompensating masculine fragility is hung, lbr.

+1 for GrapheneOS. I wasn’t particularly privacy conscious when I installed it; I was just super bothered by the Google/Apple duopoly in mobile OSes and wanted literally anything else. Came across GrapheneOS and a few others, but Graphene looked the easiest to install (and it was!) so I went with that. Barely a year later, Google’s out here trying to lock Android down and harvest literally every piece of personal data they can find, and I feel like I dodged a bullet.

Still waiting on the tragic romance version of Mulan, where they don’t get together at the end because falling in love with boy-Mulan helped Shang finally come to terms with being gay.

I’d also take the version where he ends up with Mulan’s horny grandma instead. Either or.

Nah I don’t buy it. Ain’t no way this mf is 6’4".

D you think they’ll stay that way?

Until we get robot cats. Or robot squirrels. Maybe a well-placed Furby.

Not disagreeing at all, but I think it’s important to note how effective wage slavery is in keeping people too exhausted to stay informed. I’m in California, where a studio apartment goes for about $1k/mo, landlords generally require you to earn 3x rent after taxes to qualify, and minimum wage is $17/hr. So, working 60 hours a week at minimum wage, you might just barely qualify, and that’s without even taking into account all other living expenses.

I agree that ignorance can be a byproduct of privilege, but it can also be a byproduct of poverty.

Lmao, but I’ve found it’s less about being cool and more about being firm. I’ve got three friends that I told very plainly “I will no longer be reachable via SMS, please use Signal”. Bear in mind that 1) these are people who love me a lot, more like family than friends, and 2) I didn’t try to shame them or demand they stop using SMS entirely. I just said “this is how you reach me now”. All three installed Signal, and one of them now uses it as their primary method of text communication like I do.

Not saying it’s easy necessarily, and I doubt this method would work for acquaintances rather than family or close friends. But every little helps, and it’s a place to start.

Seems like a bunch of lawsuits waiting to happen. You know one of these toolbags is gonna point at a cis woman with a double mastectomy and baldness from chemo and be like “that’s a man!” Seems like she’d have a good case.

This absolutely is the average experience for young women on social media, and moreover it’s the intended experience. Making girls feel like shit about themselves has gotten powerful men money, sex, and more power for a very very long time.

My high school didn’t have lockers. I assume mine isn’t the only one.

They’ve signed with an OEM (still secret atm, but the best guess seems to be Motorola?) who will produce the first flagship GrapheneOS device sometime this or next year iirc. Supposed to be revealing the manufacturer next month. That’ll at least take some of the Google dependency by having to use Pixels.

Buffy. Not exactly a kid show, but I was a kid when I watched it ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Quick upvote without reading whilst I continue mindlessly scrolling.