Kind of a hard question to word, but is there anything in your life you have recommended to other people but no one’s ever gotten into?
I love podcasts and have friends who still thank me for getting them into this one or that one. But I’ve never gotten anyone to listen to My Brother, My Brother and Me. I don’t know if the name is unappealing or the concept but people seem to bounce off immediately.
So what can’t you get people into and why should we check it out?
Does Privacy count? I always I try to encourage people to treat themselves to better privacy, to step away from big corpo platforms and use more Foss services. Doesn’t stick with a lot of em. 😔
What is the practical, measurable impact on my life of big corpo knowing my info? Seems like a lot of ass ache for without any measurable benefits beyond some principles stand big corpo doesn’t care about. It’s not like Big Corpo isn’t getting your info. Using Chrome and a VPN on the Google spy drone in your pocket isn’t hiding anything from Google. If Big Corpo wants your data, they will get it. They are better at getting it than we are at hiding it. The only solution is legislative, not individual nerds putting up knee high fences and feeling morally superior about it.
What is the practical, measurable impact on my life of big corpo knowing my info?
Just off the top of my head: spam, scam calls, phishing emails, credit agency hacks, every data aggregator in the world having a psychological profile on you, malicious actors who want your money having access to enough information to have a chance at getting access to your bank account. But at least advertisements will more likely be things you want.
Oh and don’t forget it’s not just big corpo, it’s also several nations spying on you. Sure you might not be doing anything wrong now, but take it from a political refugee: if they ever want to control you, all they need to do is criminalize something you did in the past and then they already have all the evidence they need. Isn’t “justice” fun?
If Big Corpo wants your data, they will get it.
That’s a very silly assumption to make. Just because they have better data aggregation abilities than your average person doesn’t mean they’re omnipotent.
They are better at getting it than we are at hiding it.
This really sounds luke you’re devolving into an All Or Nothing stance. Just because my online presence necessarily leaves a data footprint doesn’t mean I should just give up and let them have everything they want.
The only solution is legislative, not individual nerds putting up knee high fences and feeling morally superior about it.
Excuse you, mine’s a chest high wall.
Ignoring the assumption that legislation would ever act against the will of capital… As we’ve seen with the Right to Repair movement: societal change stems from the sustained pressure applied by groups of dedicated individuals. Legislation doesn’t just pop into congress because one of the representatives was visited the night before by the three ghosts of privacy past, present and future in the middle of the night; it comes from representatives that either belonged to the movements or were successfully lobbied by them.
Also if someone suggesting you should care about your own privacy and/or well-being feels like an attack against your morals, you should start asking why and who taught you to feel that way about it. I don’t feel like a better person than you, I feel a lot less paranoid and stressed all the time and I would wish that for everyone
Esperanto. A made up language that is really easy to learn and spoken to some degree by about 2 million people all over the world. I got into it when I heard that if you speak it you can stay with Esperanto speakers that just want to practice with strangers, for free. I traveled all over the world for free and met so many awesome people.
When I try to get anyone to learn it, they just won’t. They hear about that criticism of the language or another, or plain get bored. You can just start the Esperanto course on Duolingo for free, but nobody I know goes through, despite the benefits.
The moment I got interested in Esperanto, I wanted better so I jumped down a rabbit hole of ever more obscure languages until I realized what I had gotten into and stopped.
Also, and this probably applied to others, if I’m language learning, there’s two other languages I really 'should* be learning, but am not, so that makes me feel guilty.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to get my friend to watch Stargate SG-1. They’re fellow nerds and love sci-fi, but the 10 season run is too daunting for them.
Discworld by Terry Pratchett. It’s got something for just about everyone and I have a few avid readers in my family but they keep putting it off.
Linux
I think the thigh high socks requirement scares people away 😓
The uniform used to be knee-high socks, cargo pants, scraggly beard and bald spot. It’s still evolving.
I refuse to update.
I have asked many a friend to play modded Minecraft with me.
Unfortunately, I am reminded time and time again that the Venn diagram of people I know who are interested in that and people with PCs who can run that is two circles.
Three separate times now someone’s invited me to a Create server and 2 hours later I’ve somehow instead ended up joining a 300+ mod modpack that takes roughly 45 minutes to load on my laptop, crashes and errors out every few hours, and dies within a week after someone uses some random mod to gain infinite diamonds or something.
Quake Champions. I consider it the best shooter I’ve ever played but, most people wanna play the popular games
oh yah, quake live was cool as hell too.
I tried to get warsaw to be a thing with my friends to similar effect.
Gormenghast, a series of novels which are “fantasy” but contain no magic. The setting is genuinely a fantasy setting, with massive, fantastical castles, all empty and decaying.
It’s the story of a royal family, and the heir to the throne, who does not wish to be an heir to the throne.
Also, that’s to say nothing of the third book, which sends you on a major twist and goes from fantasy to science fiction…
Underrated trilogy, Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
Also, Dead Man, a film by Jim Jarmusch. I’m not a big fan of Westerns, but this “acid western” is one of my favorite movies of all time. Somehow simultaneously a funny buddy movie and also a deep treatise on death and belief.
Gary Farmer gets to say his iconic line that I still love to hear to this day: “Stupid fucking white man.”
Farmer would go on to cameo in another Jarmusch film, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai to repeat the same line.
I still have never seen the movie, but Dead Man has a great soundtrack by Neil Young. Guitar Solo, No 5 is my favorite track if you just check out one:
Opera! It’s so very very good and it’s such an acquired taste.
Getting into Klaus Nomi has made me reconsider my stance on opera, but I have no idea where to begin
A good way to begin is to watch a popular classic favourite opera like La Traviata or La Boheme, with subtitles, and review the plot summary ahead of time
Here is a link to a pretty good one. https://youtu.be/WZywmSJkKYE?feature=shared
I’ve begun watching & falling in love with something very recently that I think will fall into this category for sure. An old adult swim cartoon called Home Movies.
Made by a lot of the same talent before Bob’s Burgers was a thing, the humour is actually insanely clever and progressive for it’s time & it still feels fresh to me watching it today. Definitely have already had a few laughing fits where I had to pause the episode for a while to catch my breath and I’m only 4 episodes in 😂
For being a simpler sort of design, it also has some good background gags too. Not to mention the comedian guest stars – Episode 3 had Emo Philips which was a delightful surprise, but episode 4 has freakin’ Mitch Hedberg in it! Took me by surprise for sure but it was also a nice little extra thing to hear him say some fresh lines.
That’s all I have to say about it for now, but every night now my partner & I look forward to watching a couple episodes before bed :) it’s a great time!
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Nobody in all my gamer friends play Starfield like I do. Thank God for online communities.
isn’t it a single player game? i talk to my friends about games we don’t both play all the time, that’s what friends are for.
the netrunner card game. All my MTG friends are so used to the idea of lootboxes and I’d rather not play anything than gamble.
