The stripped log and the wood are fine, but the regular birch log is almost impossible to use in builds. It just looks bad in almost any context.

The stripped log and the wood are fine, but the regular birch log is almost impossible to use in builds. It just looks bad in almost any context.

Huh. I just looked it up and apparently birch was added just about a year before I started playing. Crazy how we assume everything that was in there when we started has “been there forever.”

Lol. Birch trees are the most despised tree by most Minecraft players.

Fifty years ago, it would be because a trial takes time. A trial this big, with repercussions this big and a defendant list this large, will take months or even years to play out.

Fifteen years ago, it would be because, with people this rich who have this much money to pay the best lawyers, the pre-trial work needed to get the prosecution started takes a huge amount of time to do right, because any attempt to speed it up in a way that isn’t very, very careful, with every i dotted and every t crossed, could end up in a mistrial and the person walking free.

Five years ago, it would be because the DOJ was absolutely mortified by the fear of being “politically motivated.”

But right now, it’s because the DOJ is explicitly no longer independent, and the guy in charge of it doesn’t want anyone listed in the files to be prosecuted because he’s in there, and if anyone gets prosecuted, he has to be.

That’s a good one. I was thinking, stop trying to make it seem like you’re helping agents improve, and just go with something like “HOLD THE LINE.”

I mean, it’s an odious slogan for an odious government org, but at least it’s better than suggesting the opposite of their stated mission.

Wait-- their slogan is “go beyond?” That’s so parodic I can’t believe it’s true…

… WHAT.

NOPE, IT’S TRUE.

How is this government so completely and entirely inept?

Sorry, I left out the part where most RSS fetchers are not hosted by the user. Of course it is self-hostable, but that’s by far the less common use case.

Images and CSS aren’t natively a part of RSS, though (and in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen an RSS feed or reader that tries to do any CSS rendering at all). Assuming you have a third party downloading your RSS XML, all of the tracking capabilities are outside of the RSS spec itself, and dependent on you clicking on a link or something after you get the RSS feed.

If you want news and articles from the sites you appreciate to come to you directly and not be filtered through social media first, RSS is what you want. You get every link, and often the full text of every post, and you aren’t at the whim of an algorithm.

Spam-free? It’s literally only what you’ve specifically asked it to deliver you. If a site starts spamming its RSS feed, you just unsubscribe from the site.

Tracker-free? There’s literally no way anyone could track you through RSS. It’s just an XML file and can’t run any arbitrary code.

I use it for everything I can: news sites, blogs, YouTube channels, social media feeds for people whose content I don’t want to miss. There are even services that will let you subscribe to an email newsletter through one of their inboxes, and they’ll convert it to an RSS feed for you to follow so it doesn’t clog up your actual inbox. I especially like reading webcomics through it; it makes sure I get everything, and I don’t lose my place, get spoiled by a later post, or have to rely on the whims of social media.

I love RSS.

Yep, I’ve done that. Hardware changes are more effective than software changes, though. Every time.

I mean, it’s probably fine. I’ve just had a Pixel for long enough that my standards are too high. I have kids, and we just moved across the world, so I take a lot of photos.

Yeah, that one too.

hmm. That’s true. And dangerous, lol.

I don’t really want that much control removed, though. I just want to have a little bit more friction between my serotonin-starved brain and the cortisol river on Facebook.

I think the main purpose is probably to provide a more-usable “dumbphone” experience. I know a lot of people (myself included) who would love to doomscroll less, but need a more full-fat version of Android for work or family. Using Digital Wellbeing and the like gets part of the way there, but not the whole way. With this, the weird aspect ratio means that pretty much all video is going to be letterboxed to a crazy extent, which could be enough to make bypassing those controls feel pointless. And then they used that extra space for a physical keyboard, which is genius. If this thing had a better camera, I’d be all in.

“sigh No, I’m Terence Shrewsbury-McEllen-Smith-Harper-Thomas-Capote. You’re looking for Terence Shrewsbury-McEllen-Harper-Thomas-Capote-Smith.”

“No, we’re not related.”

It’s called Live Plus.

If you’ve never heard of Live Plus before, it’s a feature on LG smart TVs that uses ACR (automatic content recognition) to analyze what’s displayed on your screen (via The Markup). LG then uses that data to offer “personalized services,” including content recommendations and advertisements.

[…]

On Samsung smart TVs, for example, you can disable targeted ads by going to Privacy Choices, selecting Terms and Conditions, and toggling off Viewing Information Services and Internet-Based Advertisement Services. On Roku TVs, ACR can be turned off by disabling Use info from TV inputs, which is tucked away in the settings menu under Smart TV Experience.

Saved you a click.

I’ve been ad-free for long enough at this point that I feel physically assaulted when I see one (at a friend’s house or whatever). It’s insane that we ever thought that was ok, and it’s become worse.

At this point, adblock is a survival measure. Piracy is self-defense. The first presidential candidate who campaigns on legalizing graffiti on billboards and mandating their eventual removal gets my vote. Burn it all.

I already talked you through it in the linked comment, and honestly if you don’t get it I don’t think I can make it any simpler.

In any case, I’m not taking homework from you. I know how I arrived at this conclusion, and you’re free to believe me or not. Have a good night.

But how does including sources make that world? How does it move from point A to point B?

I addressed that very objection at the beginning of the conversation.

You haven’t thought of that at all. You’re applying reasoning to positions you hold, not reasoning to reach positions.

That’s particularly hilarious since the comment I’m talking about was from fifteen hours ago.

I’ve been thinking about media literacy for decades at this point. I’m not naive enough to be certain that this is some foolproof magic bullet, but I think it’ll help, and it’s definitely not going to hurt public discourse.