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FirstCircle

@ FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

Posts
88
Comments
312
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party

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  • I really like Fastmail's web client - just the right mix of 1990s web and "reactive" eye-candy web. The phone client is OK as far as I can tell, don't use it much. The service itself has always been great and I've been a subscriber for 10-15 years, long before Proton existed.

  • Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party

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  • Yes, it's a pro in my opinion, don't want all my eggs in one basket so to speak. And of course the providers want you to do just that, to use them for everything - mail, vpn, storage, passwords, aliases, docs, digital wallets (yeah proton has one now too!) - because that makes it very difficult to leave their service if their CEO turns out to be a Nazi or if you just find a better offering.

  • Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party

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  • I’m also annoyed with how they pile so much into the service that for some of us, they’re extras which aren’t needed.

    I agree, it's ever-more loaded up with crap that I won't use. I'm a free plan user and rarely use the service. Between the never-ending nagging to upgrade that I get on the website, the discount deals that end up being "one year only then full price" and their intentional crippling of the service (# of aliases, domain support, etc) that basically requires you to subscribe to one of their expensive plans just to get the functionality of other competing providers, there's no way I'd ever give them money. And now there's the kissing the Orange Diaper Baby butt on top of all that. It's going to be fun giving all these Nazi tech bro services the boot. mailbox.org is looking pretty good, unless they turn out to be AfD bootlickers.

  • Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party

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  • I just signed up for the cheapest paid Addy plan and so far I'm very impressed, especially since it seems to be a one-man show. The docs are good which has been a huge help, and the user dashboard website is easy to grok.

  • Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party

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  • You might want to have a look at this site to study-up on available/recommended tools: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ I use Mullvad VPN myself and am happy w/it. Ditto Bitwarden which works well and is cheap. I have a Tuta account but detest the UI and the fact that they don't support IMAP/SMTP clients, or PGP, so I do my own PGP encryption/decryption using Thunderbird Mail on desktop which has built-in support for it. Also I use Fastmail as a (paid) provider (no built in PGP but tons of other bells & whistles) though mailbox.org looks interesting and is well-priced. Finally I use addy.io for anonymous aliases/forwarding and they have good PGP support.

  • Amid Trump immigration actions, New Hampshire Republicans renew anti-sanctuary city bills

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  • New Hampshire, the Idaho of the east.

  • Convicted US Capitol rioter Pam Hemphill turns down Trump pardon

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  • Same. Imagine being her lawyer now, having to argue on her behalf in court that she is guilty and is entitled to prison time. That she has a right to that prison time and to a permanent criminal record.

  • US cities largely saw a drop in violent crime in 2024, yet many still feel unsafe

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  • Zuckerberg calls for "repopulation" of "cultural elite class"

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  • Fuck Zuck. And the Phillips Exeter horse he rode in on. This Rich Kid, Harvard College billionaire is not who I care to listen to for "elitism" advice. His orange-ass-kissing is pathetic and disgusting.

  • Health Insurers Limit Coverage of Prosthetic Limbs, Questioning Their Medical Necessity

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  • The money wants to be with the CEOs and thus have the chance to be spent on private jet rentals and lavish vacations in exotic places with influential people. It wants the chance to be spent on expensive tuition at old-money, name-brand universities and third and fourth homes in the country and on post-apocalypse survival compounds in expensive, English-speaking island nations. If you were a dollar, wouldn't you want this too? Or would you want to spend your days going in and out of tills at Walmart and Dollar General or forked over to some prole delivery driver as a tip, a driver who'll just spend you on fuel or fries at some greasy drive-up. Money wants to be free, free to live the good life, and to live it with the people who care about it more than anything else under the sun.

  • Health Insurers Limit Coverage of Prosthetic Limbs, Questioning Their Medical Necessity

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  • You'll need to get a Prior Authorization on that offing to show that it's Ethically Necessary. Fortunately you've come to the right place.

  • Health Insurers Limit Coverage of Prosthetic Limbs, Questioning Their Medical Necessity

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  • That was good enough for Ahab, and he was able to captain a commercial ship using his! Back in the good old days nobody expected insurance to cover ordinary everyday whale attacks. Those were "acts of God" just like everything else.

  • Mildly McInfuriating

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  • I haven't eaten "fast" "food" in basically forever. It's been decades. Unless 2010-ish Subway counts, and that was only consumed b/c I was driving cross-country and one whole sub was a day's eats that I could stash as-needed.

    These prices blow my mind. I can't believe that people are paying so much for so little, and for crappy fried heart-attack and diabetes fare too. I can eat for a day for the price of one of these "burgers" (or "meals" - just because there's more than one item in the bag doesn't make it a "meal" no matter how much the marketers use the term). For the price of a "quarter pounder" here, I can get at least three big cans of "chunky"-style soup, each of which is a meal in itself - all you need is a bowl and a microwave and a spoon and a few minutes to heat. For the price of that burger I can (and do) get 3-4 boxes of cereal at Walmart, each of which will, along with a little milk in a bowl, provide a week's-worth of breakfasts.

    Frozen veggies, basics from the Winco bulk aisles, a bit of dairy maybe, a little spice, and maybe a worn, curled recipe book you got from the used bookstore (or not, if you already have the intuition for cooking) and you can eat incredibly cheaply (and well, if you're careful) in the US. No need to fill your body with expensive McShit just because the ads tell you to and justify your doing it. Everything changes if you're already homeless of course, that's gonna cost you, but just be aware that McEating is going to get you to that state of being all the sooner.

    I think that people eating all this McShit and justifying it as some kind of necessity ("too busy shop and cook!") are just addicted to sugar/fat/salt/industrial-chemicals and who demand "treats" of such things each and every goddamn day (vs maybe once every few weeks 40 yrs ago) because that's what they "deserve". I understand, a treat is all you can aspire to, you're never going to buy a house or have a decent job, but blowing what little $ you have on ruining your health and mobility and sanity doesn't seem to me like it's going to help get more out of life. No more than a daily 12-pack of McBeer would, and for that you wouldn't have to wait in line.

  • Alleged Cybertruck bomber was ‘big’ Trump supporter: source

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  • Right, but I wasn't claiming that he wasn't seeking to spread terror for his cause, assuming that these are the facts. I'm remarking on the fact that the “big” Trump supporter and a highly trained Green Beret wasn't immediately branded a terrorist by the media just like the NO guy was, despite committing an act that was, as far as I can tell, an act of terrorism. Is it only "terrorism" if you're motivated by some kind of religious belief, and specifically, some kind of Islamic group's belief?

  • Alleged Cybertruck bomber was ‘big’ Trump supporter: source

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  • Correct, it's a common abbreviation used in the States. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

  • Alleged Cybertruck bomber was ‘big’ Trump supporter: source

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  • One thing I'm finding interesting: we've got the NO attack and this Trump/CT attack, happening in close temporal proximity and both hurting/killing innocents, but I'm only seeing the former labelled by the media as a "terrorist" attack. Could it, maybe, possibly, have something to do with the NO attacker potentially having an Islamic background? In contrast, a US military member, and a Trump supporter in particular, could never be awarded the "terrorist" badge by the press, "bomber" is the most he could hope to earn it seems.

  • 2 Oregon men die from exposure in a forest after they went out to look for Sasquatch

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  • Then why were they looking for him in the forests of Washington?

  • Churches close their doors as fewer Americans attend

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  • The Freemasons locally all invoke The Great (or Grand) Architect of the Universe as a way to avoid seeming to require that prospective members have any particular religious beliefs. The whole approach to religion seemed very "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and I was told, by Masons, while socializing w/them at the Lodge, that Freemasonry didn't dictate any particular religious beliefs and that they had among them Brothers with very non-mainstream supernatural beliefs.

    But ... while you could (I was told) hold pretty much any supernatural/superstitious beliefs you wanted to and still become a Freemason, having no superstitious beliefs at all was a hard disqualifier. No exceptions. This was a bunch of years ago, and I'm pretty sure I asked "why do you care about my supernatural beliefs if you care so little about their exact nature" and I got only "mumble mumble 'reasons' mumble" and something about needing superstitious beliefs to "understand" (or at least accept?) Masonic teachings &etc. Maybe what they're looking for is guys who are pre-screened (via organized religion) to be intellectually and morally pliable more than anything?

    Oh yeah, and you still can't be a chick and join, and yeah, they'll jump to tell you about the "auxiliary" groups that DO admit women, but just like having no religion, being a woman is a hard disqualifier for joining a mainline lodge. For reasons.

    Meanwhile, amidst all this gatekeeping, the Lodges (some w/beautiful historic buildings) are shutting down left and right, their premises invariably ending up repurposed as for-profit "event centers" that get little utilization or for restaurants and other commercial endeavors ... almost never for the kind of "community" space that people here are describing. The lodge back in my hometown, one that many of my family going back generations (just the men of course) have belonged to, is teetering on the brink of shutting down as the oldsters have died off. It's a shame, but they seem to have chosen "no change, no exceptions" as the hill to die on, so ...

  • Churches close their doors as fewer Americans attend

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  • That'll learn ya. I bet you'll never do it again. Not unless Jehovah 1 tells you to in a dream anyway. A substantial donation will get you on the schedule, don't delay.