This will be fine. After all, a government that understands technology so well it implemented the genius tech regulations in the OSA coupled with a Police force with officers so intelligent they never get the law wrong or have a growing reputation for violence against women can easily be trusted to not take the UK down a dystopian path where the non-white and/or poor and/or disabled will be targetted simply by living in an area where a crime once happened.

“We need an excuse to carry on increasing the surveillance of our citizens.”
“Just say sex offenders and terrorism. If anyone protests we can then call them a sex-offending terrorist, thus winning the argument instantly.”
“Hmmm…we have used those excuses quite a lot over the last few years. Don’t we risk-”
“The phrases becoming essentially meaningless? Well, yes, but it doesn’t matter. By the time the populace finally realise that, we’ll have total control.”

The two examples the US uses - ‘chilling online free speech after the Southport attacks’ (translation: not giving credence to the lies Farage and the extreme right invented about the immigration status of the perpetrator in order to avoid people being burned to death in hotels) and ‘prohibitions around silent prayer outside abortion clinics’ (translation: stopping christofascists from trying to intimidate service users and providers) speak volumes about what fascist America sees as the only important free speech.

Again, I would have to check, but I think that might’ve been where Bruce got the idea.

I’d have to double check but I think it was a New 52 run. You’re right to say he has no set, specific plan but his best work-in-progress is using her own warrior tendencies against her by making her constantly fight an unbeatable opponent.

He has a few possibles for Diana, largely centred around trapping her in a virtual world with an unbeatable enemy she is forced to fight until she dies of exhaustion.

All the DC billionaires think Superman is dodgy. Lex is a xenophobe who wants to destroy anything more powerful than him, Bruce sees a potential threat to humanity but respects the man. Oliver just thinks he’s a pompous dick.

“This is a lesson in propaganda.”

Well, at least you’re honest up-front.

Lots of reasons.

1. They pay their artists an an absolute pittance with a model that vastly favours the big labels. New artists, those artists striving to establish themselves and/or independent artists are screwed over.

2. At the same time they pay hundreds of millions of dollars to pricks like Joe Rogan.

3. The ‘fake artists’ controversy where Spotify pay stock music production companies to produce pretty bland ‘playlist’ mood music, then created an internal team to seed these tracks on their uberhyped suggested playlists.

4. Getting caught heavily promoting AI Bands who have been trained on actual musicians work, without paying them for it, which in turn allows Spotify to pay out even less royalties to actual musicians.

5. Daniel Ek recently investing in 100m Euros into an AI weapons company, which has triggered an artist boycott.

6. You have zero ownership and zero access rights to the music you stream.

In short, if you care at all about music and the people who make it then streaming in general is not a good model for their future and Spotify is poison.

I don’t understand how that makes the writer delusional? Did you mean the translator who turned the book down?

Anglophone is not interchangeable with Western.

mailbox.org

Could be, sure. But the real question is, why did god make knowledge forbidden? I’ll quote Satan directly (via John Milton):

From their own mouths. All is not theirs it seems; One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge called, Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden! Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? can it be sin to know? Can it be death? and do they only stand By ignorance? is that their happy state, The proof of their obedience and their faith?

Adam: Hey Lilith, I’m in charge, god says so!
Lilith: Lol, no.
God: Actually, yes.
Lilith: Fuck that I’m gone.
Adam: Well, shit. Can you make me a more subservient breeder please Lord?
God: Yep.
Eve: Uhhh…
Adam: Hey Eve, I’m in charge, god says so!
Eve…right…
God: He is.
Eve…
Satan: Hey, Eve, you know the fruit on that tree that god told you would kill you if you ate it?
Eve: Yep.
Satan: It won’t. But what it will do is give you knowledge like science and the arts. But its totally your call if you choose to eat it.
Eve: Oh wow, nice!
Adam: WTF Eve!
Eve: Fine, don’t eat, stay dumb
Adam: OK, I’ll have some.
God: Even though I’m omniscient and omnipotent it somehow escaped me where you both were and what you were up to. Anyway, fruit = bad because knowledge like science and art is bad. Get out.

Christians - Satan is clearly the bad guy here.

Capitalist democracies all over the Westernised world are transforming. I don’t say collapsing, but transforming. We’ve all been force fed a steady diet of fake freedoms, culture wars and bullshit nationalism pretty much since the end of WW2 to spread uncertainty and fear. It’s all coming to a head now because populations are panicking (by design) and turning to fascist ‘strong man’ populist leaders like Trump, Farage, Meloni, Orban etc who are all financed and propped up by our next set of leaders - the billionaire’s who will operate a worldwide network of oligarchical fascism, whilst the herd are all distracted by manufactured outrage at trans people existing and what an actors politics are and how the immigrants are simultaneously taking all the jobs and draining us dry on the dole.

Neither is it terrorism by any rational definition of the word.

SchildiChat Next is a Matrix client for Android (on Play and F-Droid) that fully supports Element X. SchildiChat also has a desktop version for Win/Mac/Linux and a web version. Its honestly so much better than the ‘official’ Element clients.

Destiny is a GUI for a Magic Wormhole client. Its a way to transfer files between devices that are anywhere online. P2P, E2EE etc. Its cross platform (Android version also available on F-Droid).

Metadata Cleaner - works on images, PDF’s, docs etc. If the fact its currently unmaintained bothers you then there’s Mat2 which also has a web version.

Came here to say this. The Yellow Wallpaper is definitely unsettling.

Either that or any of Shirley Jackson’s short stories.