InfiniteHench

I’m gonna report this community to the FBI y’all need to be stopped

snort

First time I’ve seen GAGA

A zip hoodie is the perfect article of clothing. Functional, comfortable, adaptable, expressive (optional)

Gotta wonder how long until he tries to fire the women from the Supreme Court

I feel like this kind of misses the point. To be clear: If someone absolutely cannot avoid installing slop apps and enabling notifications for everything, I can see their need for an ultra minimal device or other solution. But I also think that speaks to a larger, personal discussion about discipline and possibly addiction, but that’s outside the realm of this thread.

My point is we can choose which apps, notifications, features, and algorithms are allowed to get our attention. It’s easy to turn off all notifications or never even allow them in the first place—after all, apps have to ask for that permission in the first place.

But the choice is the point. If someone is traveling somewhere they probably want maps to tell them important information about the journey. Otherwise why turn on directions at all? That’s the entire point.

We even have the ability to disable all texting notifications but also choose to allow them from certain people if they’re important enough. These devices are simply tools and we have the power to choose how they operate. The device isn’t the problem, it’s our choices.

Pragmatically: It depends on the country’s laws for free speech and criticism, your location, and a country’s extradition relationship.

Personally: Yes, we should all have the right to criticize our own and others’ governments. But we should also take the responsibility and initiative to get educated while doing so.

Adding “destructive fines” to my list

I like Eddy. And at first I’ve liked this essay subject from other creators, but now I just find it shortsighted. The phone isn’t the problem, just like the television and radio weren’t the problem. It’s the content you put on it.

You can watch great TV shows—documentaries, masterpiece dramas, etc. Or you can watch slop.

You can do incredible stuff with your phone—get directions, listen to almost any song ever recorded, learn about the night sky, watch documentaries anywhere you are, write, create your own content, sky’s the limit. Or you can install slop and brain rot apps like Twitter.

You don’t have to pull a stunt like locking your phone away. Just delete the slop. Be more mindful of what an app and the company behind it are, and either limit your use of it or simply don’t install it at all.

Those penguins know what they did

Can I ask how you got Win11? And are we talking MS feature bloat or third party stuff? I had Micro Center build my PC so it didn’t come from a manufacturer. There doesn’t seem to be any third party bloat, besides the occasional fucking ad for an app in the Start menu.

I might get downvoted or whatever but Windows 11 is fine. I get it if your PC straight up can’t run it, that’s a tough spot. But as an OS it’s fine, even has a few handy features (besides all the AI crap shoehorned in). I actually like the File Explorer changes and the window snap stuff can work in the right setting.

For a little while I kinda split the difference. Early in my tech news writing career, I started pronouncing my last name as the French version.

I fenced in high school and we did well enough to go to a national competition, so they brought in fancy refs from France. For the first time in my suburban upbringing I heard an actual French person pronounce my last name over the auditorium speakers and it was the coolest frigign thing I’d ever heard.

So once I started doing interviews and getting on podcasts in the early days of my writing career, I pronounced my last name that way to try and distance myself from my family without going through a legal hullabaloo.

I eventually I realized it was a bit disingenuous since I hadn’t spent the time to learn anything about my French heritage, which I was already quite removed from anyway. I dropped it and went back to what was surely the Ellis Island pronunciation I grew up with.