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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: February 27th, 2025

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  • If you have any way to check the key validity offline (for example, you subpoena the encrypted data) then it’s trivial to check and automate.

    Trivial to automate, yes. The rest is a question of how long it takes to compute, that’s the basic rules of cryptography:

    • good algorithms are computationally more expensive to solve in one direction than the other
    • the hardware of tomorrow will more easily solve the cryptography of today, making it important to rotate your bits into new algorithms as old ones become more solvable
    • big business and big government have more power to throw at the problem, but not infinitely so; where will you fall on their wait list?

    Lack of physical access to your files protects you against casual inquiries by businesses and local governments. If you’re a person of interest, they are breaking down your door and getting your bits unless they self destruct or are in a country they can’t bully.

    In summary:

    • Don’t be a person of interest if you can avoid it.
    • If you live somewhere that hurting a politician’s feelings (or having the wrong demographic) will make you a person of interest, assume they will get physical access to your bits unless those bits are in an unfriendly country. What country do you want them in?
    • Assume they will get their hands on your bits anyway. How easy are they to decrypt, and will the juice be worth the squeeze?



  • Trump is a narcissist who learned to play social media. At his core he’s a grifting and attention seeking slimeball. Everything else is sausage thumbs posting to social media and gauging what gets the best reactions.

    There’s no cynical intelligence to this, but something worse: chasing the worst of mankind who revel in his boorishness. The very act of remaking himself every second to seek that attention is what makes him who he is, and it’s why he’s so hard to replicate.

    Don’t believe it? Pay attention to his speeches when he’s talking about others. You can see him testing nicknames for opponents, watching the crowd to see how strong the reaction is. Watch for the satisfaction on his face when he finds the one that gets the reaction he’s looking for.




  • Ignoring the practicality of achieving it for a moment, acquiring Greenland and Canada gives an allied Russia and US near full control of the Arctic Ocean corridors. Most of us spend our time staring at 2D Mercator-esque maps, so I highly recommend taking a look at things from the top down to appreciate this:

    Also see: https://geology.com/world/arctic-ocean-map.shtml

    I think it’s best to consider that this is a long term play for control of the Arctic. Sea ice very much remains a factor, but the amount is shrinking every year due to global warming. Over time this opens up new seasonal routes, both for drilling and transport.

    Sure, it could just be Trump’s narcissism wanting him to add another state during his presidency. The thing to remember is that someone else is always the one giving him these ideas. (see: Project 2025) These imperialistic ambitions on Greenland and Canada of all places did not emerge from nowhere. It’s the motives of people who are giving him these ideas that you need to be concerned with.

    Svalbard is next.


  • Yes, yes. Fix our shit but don’t move away from the shit because it’s our fault for being born here. We’re statistically more likely to be right leaning than any Canadian because most of us don’t even know what the overton window is, let alone pay attention to world news. Those of us who consider ourselves left leaning don’t recognize that the rest of the world considers us conservative.

    I understand the logic you are pushing. It is perfectly reasoned, bargain basement NIMBY xenophobia. It’s grounded in a kernel of truth, self-convinced that it is completely divorced from racism, and completely ignorant of being an active participant in the shift to the right that it is so concerned with.

    You are not stupid. Unfortunately the slide to the right isn’t purely a function of stupidity.


  • Your reasons for being unhappy aren’t completely unfounded. We get that. It just doesn’t change the fact that you’re wallowing in a Canadian brand of conservatism in response to our even stupider conservatism. It isn’t going to stop folks from rolling their eyes at the tone deafness or finding amusement at your microcosm of our own bullshit.

    It’s clutching poo to your chest while complaining that we’re exporting our stinkier poo on your doorstep. Is ours stinkier? Sure, I’ll be the first to admit it and include our right leaning “liberal” party in that statement. It’s still poo.


  • It’s quantifiable and expected threat by a known entity, versus nebulous threat by a unknown entity.

    The records will be scrutinized. The FoIA requests will happen. The hack of their private infrastructure might not ever happen, and even if does, the foreign actors are not necessarily going to leak the records back to the US constituents: the real perceived threat.

    They’ll gladly risk operational security for less paper trail. Every. Fucking. Time.