In the US, that would require either dramatically simplifying the tax code or attaching your social security number to a hell of a lot more transactions. Medical expenses over 7.5% of income are deductible, so the IRS would need to know every time you buy aspirin, and CVS or Kroger or wherever you buy that needs to log your social security number. Educators are allowed to deduct the cost of school supplies, so the IRS would have to know every time they buy crayons (and whether those crayons are personal or classroom). Certain home improvements, so Lowes needs your SSN. If the guy you sold your PS3 to on Facebook is trading them as a business, then IRS probably needs you to report that transaction.

Hateful branding is always easier than inclusive branding. Just think about how many different words Americans have historically used for black people: all “they” have to do to turn a positive term into a slur is to say it with a sneer.

Nothing says, “ICE is a legitimate government agency serving an unfortunate but necessary purpose,” like “answer this survey or answer to ICE.”

This is what frustrates me about the people saying that posting memes on social media is bullshit and waving signs won’t change anything. Waving signs and parades were fundamental tactics of the Civil Rights movement. Those iconic photos from the Edmund Pettis Bridge? Just a bunch of people marching to the voter registration office. The Freedom Riders? Just people, including a bunch of privileged, white college students on a bus tour. Most of the marches, protests, etc we never even hear about formed the foundation, and it’s only when those boring, “useless” protests met ridiculous opposition that stirred MLK’s “white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice” to attention.

That doesn’t mean that going to peaceful protests & remaining peaceful while the fascists fash is the only valid action. But it is the most accessible to the most people, and it is the one easiest to scale as more of those moderates get motivated. Resistance looks boring, until it suddenly isn’t.

Use the launcher to install, then just run the exe. Point is you don’t need to interact with the launcher, its ads, and its bugs every time you want to play.

Nothing from GoG requires their launcher.

Just think how many people started making sourdough bread during covid lockdowns. That may not have been intentional advertising, just a few people starting a thing & then it was everywhere, and so many people who’d never cooked a day in their life became obsessed with sourdough bread. Advertising fills in the blank when you say, “Fuck it, let’s just _____”

In the old days, university IT put essentially no access controls on their networks, so students’ dorm computers were completely exposed to the internet. Any service you started was immediately, globally accessible. Some big sites, including slashdot and facebook, got their start in some kid’s dorm room. I feel like access controls really got going in the early 00’s - first for residential, then for broader campus.

Check with your IT people - they may have policy or conditions under which they will expose ports on your personal computer to the internet. Otherwise, your best bet is probably free-tier AWS or Oracle.

Not free, but there are some ‘KVM VPS’ providers out there that will rent you a small, internet exposed computer pretty cheap. They can be a good platform for experimenting with self-hosting services, without exposing your personal equipment or home network. eg: 1CPU/1GB RAM/24GB SSD $12/year https://my.racknerd.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=903

If there’s a protest with 200 people openly armed and standing in ranks, I imagine it would keep the 50 ICE clerks far enough back that they couldn’t kick old ladies or shove photographers. I also imagine they would quickly call it an illegal demonstration and bust out the tear gas.

If there’s a protest with 200 people scattered through the crowd with concealed handguns, it’s not going to change ICE tactics at all.

Remember, Trump is the one who said, “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” Way back in 2018.

The anti-fascist having a gun doesn’t seem to have helped him in any way. Just giving the fascists a talking point for demonizing him after the fact.

The problem with putting everyone on the domestic terrorist list is that everyone is on the list. Eventually it becomes more suspicious to be not on the list, because it means you’re intentionally hiding yourself.

She has a 48 minute video explaining in great detail why she doesn’t shop at Target. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPVSj9rcK-E

So, these scientists were asked to evaluate a political question, “Is there a link between immigration and welfare support?” using a large survey dataset. Not like they were asked whether temperature data supported anthropogenic climate change. The 158 scientists were in 71 teams and did, collectively, of 1200 statistical tests.

An overwhelming majority of all analyses found no link between immigration policies and support for welfare programs, regardless of investigator ideology. A handful of outlier models, where an effect could be found, show effects that correlated with the team’s politics, but it’s hard for me to look at the mountain of “no effect” conclusions and agree with the statement “politics predicted the results.” “Politics predicted the outliers,” OK.

Actual study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz7173

I started using https://purelymail.com/ because they’re $10/year. Been happy with them, but I don’t use/need any fancy features. Hosted on AWS, if you care about that. Their domain instructions are https://purelymail.com/docs/domainDocs

More cosmetic than functional. Like a charcuterie board for presenting/serving meats & cheeses.

You left out the best part

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate…

Super excited to see this, from out of state. It sounds real. If it gets coverage, it’ll be inspirational across the country.

I know there were some walkouts “Free America” yesterday, but here (Atlanta), it was just a handful of schools and some sign-carriers. Not disruptive enough to push the weekend’s snow forecast out of the news.

I think his handlers are starting to think there’s a real opportunity to dissolve NATO, or at least get the US to leave/kicked out. Think how liberating that could be for…certain people. How hard it would be for the US MIC to lose all of those exports.

Are you suggesting that Obama is one of the Nobel Laureates negotiating to gift his medal to Trump? What do you think a former President wants from the current President?