ExtremeDullard

You should write to your reps that banking apps be mandated to support multiple operating systems outside the duopoly.

Yeah... Good luck with that. This is beyond naive.

Your rep doesn't give a shit about monopolies or duopolies (if they did, Google and Apple would have had their collective ass Sherman'ed into a million itty bitty pieces a long time ago) and they don't care about your privacy and how you feel about it.

All your rep cares about - if you're lucky - is more mainstream topics like taxes, employment, housing, education etc. And more likely, all they care about is lining their pockets and winning the next election to line their pockets some more.

Food pedants aren't gullible. They know full well water isn't worth anything like the price it's sold when it's bottled. But they're pedants: it's their job to look sophisticated. They literally make a living out of talking bullcrap about food.

That's why I said: if they want to pay silly money for water, they're welcome to. What I oppose if ordinary people listening to them and getting taken for a ride next time they go out for dinner.

But I think reasonable people won't fall for that one. It's just too stupid on its face. And people who are too dumb to know water is just water, well... a fool and his money...

That's a blatant scam for self-appointed restaurant critics and other food pedants.

Let them be scammed. Why not... I have nothing against taking money from fools, so long as they don't convince reasonable people to do the same.

Just wait until he discovers that the truck has a battery and can charge the phone with the engine turned off. It's gonna blow his mind.

What a terrible, terrible country...

But I thought Trump could declassify things just by thinking about it? His words, not mine.

That's where you've been had. Trump doesn't think. He says any old shit that goes through his deranged mind at any given moment, even if it makes no sense or contradicts what he said 5 minutes earlier.

Coherent thinking is done for him by other people - namely the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Those particular sonsabitches never wanted a pedo president, nor do they want anything declassified. But Trump is the best fascist racehorse they could find in 50 years, so they put up with his shenanigans.

I can tell you as much without any microphone. It's so obvious that it takes a Republican congresscritter or a MAGA dumdum to ignore it.

You don't become a billionaire by playing by the rules.

Actually you're wrong about that.

These guys do play by the rule: they obey the law to a tee. But... they obey the LETTER of the law, not the spirit. That's why nobody can't stop them and throw them in the slammer for tax evasion.

What you need to be a billionaire is to be psychopathic enough to think you're the only person whose interests matter, and have enough money to pay for equally psychopathic tax lawyers to establish some legal constructs for you that enable you to pay almost zero taxes legally. Once you're rich enough to pay the lawyers, you get exponentially richer.

It's legal, but they're still psychopathic sonsabitches.

And that's news?

I'm old enough to remember spotting Michael Jackson's first album in an obscure record store in SF and wondering if this guy was any good, and I've always knows rich people pay less taxes than working stiffs. In fact, I'm almost certain that's where the idiom to get stiffed comes from.

I also don't remember a time when I haven't thought the next time I come across a rich prick, if he's enough of a prick, I might just slit his throat for the sheer satisfaction of doing it.

I'm tempted to try Ubuntu Touch. But I want to buy a second-hand Fairphone 4 to try it on, and other OSes possibly - because I don't want to waste the CalyxOS install that's running fine on mine right now - and I haven't found a good second-hand one yet.

If you went through school without learning anything, it means you're a normal person.

Don't worry too much. What you need from your school is a degree, not an education. You do your own education. The degree doesn't mean you know anything: it only tells your employer you were patient and dogged enough to sit through boring classes and terrible teachers all the way through.

That's the real value for your future boss: they like someone who can withstand and survive the idiocy of the workplace. You getting your degree is reasonable proof that you won't be a snowflake and leave them hanging when the going gets a little tough.

But make no mistake: you know nothing out of school. Nobody does. All employers know that. The best you can hope to get out of school is the ability to learn all the rest quickly after you're hired.

The way Google is actively on the war path against deGoogled ROMs and sideloading lately, I expect to have to install some sort of mobile Linux OS on my Fairphone at some point to do my regular smartphoning while preserving my privacy, while having to buy an ultra-cheap, small smartphone on the side with vanilla Google spyware just for my banking apps. In other words, carry two cellphones for nothing. Because Google.

I guess now that fascism rules the land, Google isn't worried about being getting broken up for being a monopoly anymore. That emboldens then to finally do what they've always wanted to do: lock down the Android ecosystem.

Fuck Google.