In my neighborhood the grocery stores stopped requiring a coin to get them during COVID-19 lockdowns. They kept it that way, and people put the carts back in the parking lot (although most people walk to the shops).

Fun fact: Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr., and Trump were all born in the same year.

For me it’s the opposite.

My preference is itch.io, then GOG, then Steam.

The article, by Anonymous, does not mention posting, does it? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

Well that’s disappointing to hear. Although it makes me glad that I am too cheap to buy one. 😅

I mean, there are Purism phones. Super expensive, but they keep selling out so I guess they are reasonable.

I am a seasoned traveller and that would scare me.

I wonder how the comparison would look if you compared years lost per type of death?

That is, old people die of heart disease and cancer. Young people die of accidents and violence.

I can think of two. Are there more?

Letting supply and demand set prices does not mean you have to then use profits to concentrate capital, right?

My point is that there is an actual difference. It’s not just a repackaged web app, and has actual drawbacks.

My personal plan is to move as much of my day to day stuff to a Mecha Comet, and also carry my Fairphone running Android for whatever proprietary crap that the world wants me to run. It’s two devices, but hopefully will minimize exposure to big tech.

My bank requires using a card reader for ID if you use a web browser. It can be done but it means carrying three physical things (phone, bank card, bank card reader) instead of one (phone).

Or it’s another tool to divide the working class.

You have more in common with normal people from other generations than you do with the wealthy!

Keep in mind that the book is very old, published in 1931. DNA hadn’t been mapped, information technology was limited, and so on.

In the book, people are born in factories. Working class people are born in from split cells, as quintuples if I remember correctly. Your role in life is largely determined by your genes - workers don’t have the psychology for anything but labor.

In spite of that, it’s not an especially oppressive society. There is a “perfect” drug, soma, which is sort of like a non-addictive, non-physically harmful heroin that can be delivered by gas. When there is unrest, security forces come in and get everyone high until they chill the fuck out.

Sex is open and easy, but always completely voluntary by everyone involved. When people are turned down they are sometimes surprised but never upset or aggressive.

Entertainment is presented as vacuous, but the people seem to enjoy it. There are movies, TV, and so on. Sports are engineered to require people take trains out of town to stadiums, and require deliberately-complicated equipment to play, in order to create demand for production.

So… is that a dystopia? There is no discussion of environmental damage, but overall it seems sustainable, not predicated on infinite growth. People are stuck in the role they were born to, but it seems like there are no artificial barriers to advancement… just that not everyone can be good at everything.

Definitely. A world where people are happy and healthy and live basically fulfilling lives. There are a few fanatics who opt out, and they’re unhappy. Go figure.

I don’t find Brave New World to be especially dystopian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Or ask your work to give you a phone?

My company insists on spyware for my phone, so I insist they give me a phone for work stuff. I leave it off in a drawer at home when I’m not on call.

If you’re relying on Cloudflare are you even self-hosting?

Can you link to a source for this?

I’m not aware of any historical examples or even theoretical models for this approach.