grapheneOS isn’t security through obscurity, they make efforts to harden the phone’s privacy. You’re right that, if it was mainstream, Meta would target it directly though.

The solution is to remove the profit motive from acquiring, selling, and monetizing our data. Laws alone don’t stop big corps from doing things.

Joplin

How can i make my waybar like that? (Would pick a diff accent color though)

Alternative OSes for phones use the same carriers as everyone else. You can choose to use your phone on wifi only, without a carrier, to avoid using a carrier. You can also choose to use a VPN to make your data inaccessible to the carrier (although they’d be able to tell what cell towers you connect to).

In order to switch over, check the compatibility information for each of the OSes you’re looking at. If you don’t have a compatible phone, you’ll need to get one. Then you follow the install instructions for the chosen OS. GrapheneOS was very easy to install for me – I switched to it when my old phone broke.

Linux is super configurable! You’ll just need to try out a bunch of different window managers, taskbars, etc to see which one you like best, but maybe look for some videos to preview a couple first.

The unixporn Lemmy community also has examples

Don’t pick a whole distro based on the UI. The distro choice is about stability vs bleeding edge packages, package manager, minimal/maximal installs, security hardening vs convenience, use or avoidance of particular systems (e.g. systemd), and things like that.

The UI will come from your choice of desktop environment, window manager, compositor, etc. Those can be installed on most distros. You can also look at dotfiles for more theming. Ofc it’s silly to install a different UI on a particular flavor/version/spin of a distro built for a given desktop environment (like Kubuntu), though it’s still possible.

I’m enjoying Niri rn. It’s a scrolling & tiling window manager. I have it running on opensuse.

Dual boot

Check for new terms about ai use of your data

Mailbox.org is great

$10 says the cops got a budget increase though

If you buy “digital signage” or “commercial display” monitors, they won’t have built-in ad-tracking; some models have a recent version of Android built-in that makes it easy to load Jellyfin, Kodi, and other such apps; and they’ll be built to commercial specifications, meaning they’ll last longer. They can also have better screencasting features.

On the downside: they are more expensive, you’ll need to check their specs for things like bluetooth, wifi, HDMI, and other things you need; the built-in speakers are not good. The TV of course doesn’t stop any particular app from serving you ads on its own, unless you load in another app to block them.

I have a setup like this, connected to a seedbox with transcoding, and it works great.

Use a seedbox and the arrr suite instead of streaming services

I’ve been using it and it’s been a good experience. It runs smooth, has less flashy stuff (at least by default), and an easy to use config file.

Yes, it can become part of one’s culture to appreciate another’s culture

It’s possible, sure, but you’d have to do a study. As I mentioned, there are plenty of ways to interpret it.

I thought by adding “or whatever it’s called” would make it clear that I’m aware that the theory is a racist and antijewish lie, but I guess that was not enough. How should I have worded that differently?

Ah, OK! I think “if white people were defensive of their culture” is what threw me.

What would it mean to take the time and effort to learn to play the Erhu, understand its history and context, but somehow not show real respect for it?

To begin with, there can always be some jerk out there who gives you a hard time no matter what, or who has had so many bad experiences with ppl thoughtlessly appropriating culture that their mind is just closed and they react badly. You’d just have to defend it and let reasonable ppl see that that person is wrong to call you out. That aside, I think showing respect means that if an instrument is sacred for some reason (I have no idea if the Erhu is), you don’t play it in a profane or silly way. Outside of that, using an instrument as like a way to make fun of the culture would be bad (e.g. playing it whenever a stereotyped character appears on screen). Just my two cents.

If you see a number of people from Asian cultures playing classical music originating from Europe, does that mean it has become part of their culture? What if they are appreciating music from another culture? What if their families originate somewhere in Asia but they feel no connection to that place? Or what if there are more extracurricular opportunities for European-style orchestras than for other kinds of musical ensembles from other cultures?

The Great Replacement Theory is a racist and antijewish lie.

Edit: a white person who put in time and effort learning to play the Erhu, understood a reasonable amount of its history and context, and showed real respect for it would be fine.

Basically, your instincts are right and the question in the last line of your post is a good one. Here’s why:

“Whiteness” doesn’t come from biology or culture. It’s really just a way of describing a hierarchy that was set up by European empires and early corporations at the dawn of capitalism to justify the enslavement of people around the world, the colonization of their lands, and the exploitation of their natural resources for profit.

This hierarchy is used to steamroll over the huge number of ethnic and cultural backgrounds people have, in order to label some “white”, others “black”, others “asian”, and so on. There can be no “white” culture (even within one country), because the boundaries of who is accepted as “white” have shifted more than once in the past few hundred years and could easily shift again. For example, look up when and why Irish people and Italian people were accepted as fully white and look up the “contingent” whiteness that Jewish people have had in the US. See How the Irish Became White, for example.

Another reason there is no white culture is because, even for people accepted as white, whiteness has erased the cultures they brought to America when they immigrated by forcing them to conform to its rules. Think about how badly even light-skinned immigrants were treated by others whose families had been in America for generations. The immense pressure to look, sound, and act “American” and “white” to avoid being bullied at school, to be able to get good jobs, and to be seen as “respectable” in the neighborhood, meant for many people that they had to give up large parts of their culture to be accepted. This compounds over the generations, until we end up with people asking questions like the post you’ve made right here.

Racists proudly defend white (or “western” if they’re cowards) culture. They’re completely unable to see how whiteness has stolen big pieces of the cultures of everyone it touches. It has bleached them into a blander, more sterile version of what they once were.

Organic Maps is a good app that also lets you do some editing. I like the interface better than osmand

I would never trust a billionaire to do anything for us. If he doesn’t just carve out an exception for only people like himself at first, he’ll still lobby to have new restrictions on sharing if they threaten his business model.

It’ll end up being a back-and-forth between him and the IP companies, so if he has enough leverage, they’ll just find a way to give him what he wants without doing so for regular folks.

Very cool! For the user scores, are you using monthly active users, total registered users, or something else?

Thanks for this list! There are some fun suggestions here that’ll help me get into peertube, but Russel Brand is a conspiracy theorist and far-right pundit, recently charged with rape & sexual assault. Suggesting you delete him from this list.