Sir Arthur V Quackington

Actually a disturbing amount of those have basically come true.

Every transaction you make on your card is tracked and is sold to advertisers by your credit card company.

Your phone’s GPS is not mandatory to send to the government, but once again your OS reports that back and that data is then grouped and sold and then de-anonymized through identity brokers.

Walking is not illegal, but letting your children walk places is. You, honest to God, will run into trouble with police if you allow your small child of, let’s say, four to eight years old walk two blocks down the road to the park that you live near. And notoriously, pedestrians are absolutely second class citizens in the US.

They are attempting to make ID mandatory to vote, which is one of the rights you have in the United States from birth. Many states also have stop and identify laws that require you to turn this over to officers even if they have no reason to suspect you and you’ve committed no crime. This is inconsistent across the U.S. but has been ticking up.

And as for the gays getting married, the exact argument they used to fear-monger about the gays is the same argument they are using to fear-monger against trans people very successfully right now, and there is rampant talk of undoing gay marriage as part of the next year’s objectives for the GOP. But this one is not really like the other ones. This is an obvious red herring that was made in bad faith even at the time, not really founded on any of the behavior or history of the group in question like the other statements you made.

The sad part about most of this is not that there is a slippery slope, so to speak, but that rights and privacy are eroded so omniscientally through contracts and terms of service today that you may not think you’re giving up very much when you say yes to check out using Stripe or to manage something in cashapp. But the truth is that these services are then de-anonymized by industries whose entire job is to collect these profiles together, tie them back to the identifiable user metrics and IDs, and build a profile on you that can be sold, and the buyer can be the US government, which is a legal loophole that they technically did not spy on you, but just bought a complete dossier from an information broker.

This isn’t tin foil hatchet. Cops do this regularly now. And it is insanely unethical and should be illegal. But as of this date, it is not. And famously, this also applies to the private camera systems that run the license plate reading across state lines, and officers have clearly used these systems for other tracking purposes, including stalking exs and attempting to track down people for actions that may be a crime in their state but are not a crime in the state in which they live.

“If”

They will. Once the age check at an OS level is implemented, the next level is to enforce that this check then use a verification service. And then to make this information available to sites upon access.

So, by this logic, Post-War Japan was not a sovereign state.

How a country must operate during wartime versus peace is extremely different. And the UK in WWII also issued bonds and took debt. Were they no longer sovereign?

That part of your argument is ridiculous. Ukraine is an independent nation with its own sovereignty and territorial authority.

These kinds of questions are best discussed with a therapist if you can see one, but yes, you can improve, and it doesn’t mean you have to be solo to do it. But try not to let the relationship define you. You need to be a whole, complete person without the external validation. Taking pride in your appearance is good, but feeling like you cannot show your most intimate partner your bare face is some regressive thinking from older generations we should leave behind.

In time I hope you feel happier and more comfortable just being you, regardless of being with someone. Being able to find self worth solo makes you much, much more rounded as a person, healthier, and ultimately a better partner too. Good luck.

The comment above is a half serious joke, but you do seem rather desperate for the approval of your partner and their validation. This isn’t totally healthy, and on one hand can be suffocating potentially, but can also be abused by a bad actor if you happen to date one. And those kinds of partners can sense and prey on that part of you.

I hope you have some positive friendships and relationships to help offset whatever is driving this feeling in you. In a perfect world, I’d say speak with a therapist but who can afford healthcare nowadays.

This is a hard thing to just say, but I hope you can understand that some of your fear and jealousy here is probably stemming from a lack of self confidence.

I say this, because I hope you can reflect on that, and be aware that some partners will understand and exploit that if you are not careful. This guy doesn’t sound like that, but maybe your next relationship is.

As others have said, try to have open communication, and accept sometimes if your values are fundamentally different. Sometimes people just are. Some can have open relationships happily, some thing looking at porn is cheating. Without judgement, both can be valid as long as both partners communicate and agree on that.

My feeling is generally the more secure you are in yourself and your sexuality, the less jealous and the less concerned you will be come with these things, and the more confidence you will have to cut off shitty partners who violate the norms you set. If your relationship is okay with porn, but not dating apps, then fuck them of they are browsing Tinder, even “just to look”.

Communicate, but also value yourself. This guy may be perfect, but maybe he’s not perfect for you. And that’s okay. Your chances of meeting someone gold are far better than you think if you keep your head up and go in eyes wide open than try and ignore issues.

Anyways, I hope some of this is moderately helpful to you. I hope you and him can work out, but I also hope you don’t compare yourself to camgirls or porn, ever. Fantasies are just that, we all have them. And they should never hurt your self worth.

Be well.

Will check it out. Seems the dev is working on an update for Android 15 compatibility.

The TTS uses whisper and absolutely dominates. But it is garbage still as a swipe interface. It direly needs to catch up on that front before I can recommend it full-time to friends. I spend SO much time retyping things it gets wrong.

With Obsidian, you don’t have to use folders. I’m generally of the opinion that having a tool is better than not having access to it. Tags and Folders are just an option to use. Fundamentally Logseq and Obsidian otherwise can be very similar.

Interesting. I’ll have to give that one a shot later. Though I’m probably fine with Obsidian.

Yes, but the syntax and documentation on the queries is obtuse as hell in logseq. Like it is ridiculous how granular you have a to get of you want to return all links within a time period or something. If I need to write SQL to pull notes, I should just use a database, lol.

The nice thing about tags as a distinct entity is it offers the option you can utilize if you choose. It gives you two buckets you can sort into and connect between. And it does make creating “topic groups” easier than manually linking them all to a tag page in logseq, imo.

Conversely, I would massively prefer of Logseq abolished support for hashtags entirely if they are functionally identical to wikilinks. Or combine them so the hashtags auto-convert to wikilinks or vice versa. But supporting hashtags in any manner when they are frankly not a “real” feature is more frustrating. Making topic links in Logseq is harder because of this.

Also, the existence of tag pages themselves is a confusong abberation given the above…

Logseq is a great tool, but very different in terms of what it is best suited to handle. I think I will revisit it for if I do a lot of writing, but for disparate ideas or notation it is good but could be better.

I’ve tried logseq for the last 6 months (no commercial license) at work, but while it’s really good for outlining, it’s lack of a tag function is what feels like a critical weakness to me. I realize structurally it’s different in concept. But making everything into bullets doesn’t always suit the task.

I would love Logseq for journalling or writing though.

Holy shit this is huge. I can finally use obsidian at work! I was avoiding it due to the license and using Logseq. Which, to be fair, did admirably. But it’s much more and Outliner or journaling system than a knowledge base I feel.

Yea, I had like a 2nd or 3rd gen paperwhite and rooted it for this reason, but my partner’s wasn’t hackable until this moment. So now she can have it too.

Better Calibre integration.

Custom shelves and book collections on Kindle.

This is the way.

It’s trying and I paid for it. But the swiping accuracy is shit still, and it has limited language support.

CVS wants me to stop shopping with them.

I’ll just goto a fucking supermarket. It’s faster. Yes, even with the checkouts.

Ah yes. Our sworn enemy: Taiwan.

It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.