In 1977, media prophet Marshall McLuhan discussed CIA and FBI surveillance, and then spun it into one of the most mind-bending comments on identity in the digital age I've ever heard. pic.twitter.com/gDWVJa4Anh

— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) May 10, 2023

Marshall McLuhan’s reputation is well-deserved. He saw much that was inevitable before it occurred and is still more correct and relevant than nearly all digital pundits today. That people still don’t comprehend what he was getting at, mostly, is too bad. Reading McLuhan and Baudrillard can get you 70% of the way to understanding what the hell is going on now and why — and that’s pretty impressive.

Woman asks man for a cigarette, when he refuses she lights his car on fire.

Mom? 😉

(That was still recoverable until he pulled out the nozzle. If he’d immediately taken his jacket off and thrown it over the flame and pressed a little, the fire would’ve gone out in a few seconds. Gasoline itself doesn’t burn — but the fumes do.)

Going thru surgery, physical therapy and basically never being able to do anything athletic ever again to be 6’0 is nuts man https://t.co/WLttpU9aXB

— Cook 💤 (@DLegacy12) May 10, 2023

I’d never do that, but it can be a logical decision when you realize how many women are totally obsessed with height. At 5’5″ going to 6’0″, it means your dating pool goes from 10-15% of women to 80%+. And that’s massive.

Can’t get over how many kids and adults who have only known a relatively filtered Internet – and who have never seen ultra graphic imagery before – are now seeing it for the time on Twitter thanks to that emerald-mining rat bastard.

— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) May 11, 2023

I came up on the internet where there were absolutely no filters of any kind, so in some ways it’s kinda refreshing.

Was just thinking about that absolute dipshit who said there are no real videos anywhere on the internet of people dying.

And then thinking about how I spent part of the afternoon on various Ukraine/Russian war subreddits where I saw, I don’t know, maybe 3-4 dozen people killed. I don’t enjoy those videos but I like to see what miltech is up to these days. And those drones are brutally effective. Damn. War has really changed.

Relatedly, another sign the war effort is not going well for the Russians, no matter what clown-ass motherfucker Ian Welsh claims: in two different videos after a Russian soldier is injured in the trenches, each soldier in question commits suicide — one with his own grenade, and one with some AK-47 variant.

They know no help is coming, medical or otherwise, so once they are injured badly enough not to be able to walk anymore, they just end it. This is not what a winning war effort looks like.

That has been a weird, recent shift. And it makes no goddamn sense because Kat is right — it’s often the very same people making both claims.

Great cover.

The destruction of this part of the social fabric is such a tragedy. Here’s a map of the collapse. (PS: if you reply suggesting this is due to something that started in past 50 years, you fail at basic math (1950 vs 1919) and I will probably block you to preserve quality of talk) https://t.co/znBouPnxI5 pic.twitter.com/jcl2tzxMZj

— Emmett Shear (@eshear) May 9, 2023

When I was eight, I routinely rode my bike to a convenience store three miles away. I also rode (and sometimes walked) to a friend’s house who lived also about three miles away in the other direction.

With that same friend, we’d sometimes wander miles and miles through fields and back roads to get to fishing spots. I guess the most we ever went was about 10 miles, but I don’t know.

None of this would be allowed today.

Google passkeys are a no-brainer. You’ve turned them on, right?

FUCK NO.

Because I am not a dumbass, and I do not do stuff that dumbasses do. This is all about stealing more data with the ability to lock you our of our own stuff at any time. It’s yet more fake “security” to help you “for your own good.”

I was very upfront with my boss, with whom I have a good relationship: if there were any RTO mandate enforced on me ever, I’d immediately quit. I made it clear that I didn’t mean in two weeks, or a week. No, my quitting would be on the spot.

He took it well as he already kind of knew that, but I wanted to make it extremely clear. I have not received and do not expect any negative repercussions from that (in fact, I got a large raise after).

Having a combination of rare skills certainly helps a lot. Otherwise I could not pull such shit off. I feel for those who do not.

This 100%. We obviously need more supports for poverty and behavioral health. But it’s frustrating to see people become negatively polarized into believing that anti-social behavior on transit is fine.

— Vishnu Reddy (@VishnuisReddy) May 6, 2023

It has been really fucking weird seeing liberals claim shit like, “Being screamed at and assaulted on transit daily is the cost of civilization! Nothing we can do! If you can’t understand that, you’re a fascist!”

Alrighty then. That’s going to keep a whole hell of a lot of people away from public transit, and more women than men. And it will (and does) keep me away too, because I don’t want to accidentally kill someone if they trigger my North Florida PTSD shit.

So sure, let the crazies roam free and terrorize everyone. See how much mass transit use there will be then.

Texas really trying to see how many massacres it can have in one day, yeah? Still got a few hours left, go crazy.

Windows 11: TPMs and Digital Sovereignty.

This is another area where people are eager to be conned in a comforting way.

So, why do I suddenly need a TPM 2.0 device on my machine, then you ask? Well, the answer is quite simple. It’s not about you; it’s about them.

You see, the PC (emphasis on personal here) is in a way the last bastion of digital freedom you have, and that door is slowly closing. You need to only look at highly locked and controlled systems like consoles and phones to see the disparity.

It’s long been the corporate dream to kill general purpose computing. They are getting very close now; soon it will be de facto illegal.

When a company tells you that you need something, and it’s “for your own good,” and hey, they’re just on a humanitarian aid mission to save you from yourself, one should be highly skeptical.

Exactly. Firefox killing customizability “for your own good” had fuck-all to do with helping you, but rather with serving their larger corporate masters. It was all lies.

You see these weird articles full of lies about nutrition pop up from time to time.

Let’s look just at the BS in the article about protein. What the article does not mention, of course, is the bioavailability of protein differs a whole hell of a lot between plant and animal sources.

For instance, to get the RDA of protein from plant sources (beans, peanuts, etc.) you’d need to eat around 4,000 calories per day. Unless you’re a Fat Acceptance loon, that’s not really a good thing. And for most people — and for anyone doing weight training — the protein RDA is actually very much too low. It’s about half of what it should be.

And that’s only one of the many lies in the article. I wonder what inspires these, what’s the reason for these deceitful exercises in clownishness? I’d guess it’s to protect the reputations of the people who’ve made absurd claims over the years but I don’t really know.

ISW concludes that Russia likely staged the supposed Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin. (I agree). https://t.co/9upMEyOU1Q

— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) May 4, 2023

Oh yeah, just like the Nordstream pipeline attack, Russia staged this. Nothing else makes any kind of sense logistically or logically.

Anyone who thinks anything else about either fake attack is loonier than a ergot-munching divot-pounder.