Thanks for your story. I’m a misfit nerd also, so it resonates with me.

I’m sure its something we can fix at large scale with government-funded mental health care, social programs, funding for community centers, and integrating mental health and social science studies into education, amongst many possible solutions that would get us to a society where everyone can find somewhere to fit in, and everyone has better options than the snake-oil salesmen when they seek help or are angry at a personal situation.

Unfortunately we presently live in the era of the techofeudalists, and eyeballs on ads and keeping users consuming are pretty much all they care about - not only do they not care if the media they promote and put ads alongside happens to be divisive alt-right hate media, they also benefit from the conservative (anti-regulation, small government, anti-tax) parties being pushed to power by these groups. It’s a frustrating feedback loop that we need to break free of, and governments worldwide seem ill-prepared to broach it.

Ugh. For context, I’m currently trying to steer a younger family member out of the alt-right pipeline and angry about how hard it is to beat constant access to thousands of videos / talking points pushed into their feed daily, with the couple hours I see them a week to attempt to ‘deprogram’ them… without trying to come across preachy or put them off learning alternative viewpoints (evidence-based reality). Its a struggle.

Asking for sources is always welcome with me.

Here’s a deep dive from Ed Zitron into the whole AI/LLM industry that details the heavy investment from several key banks (Deutchebank being one), and the shrinking finance availability from traditional means (bank loans, hedge funds, managed funds). It’s long but it’s really worth a read if you have a spare hour or so.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshittifinancial-crisis/

A glaring tell that I don’t recall him highlighting is that the hyperscalers have largely outsourced the risk of AI investment to others. META, Google, and Microsoft are making small bets on AI comparitively - they’re using cash assets they have as profits from other business models, which are still significant (measured in low billions) but dont require them to take loans or leverage themselves. This means they are playing it very cautiously, all the while they’re shoving AI into all their products to try to make it seem like they’re all-in and it’s ‘the next big thing’, which is helping their stock prices in the investor frenzy. Most of the investment capital required for the AI boom is going into hardware, datacenters and direct investment in the software development - and that’s mostly being avoided by the big guys. This allows them to minimize risk and still having a decent win if it takes off. Conversely If/when the bubble bursts they’ll still take a hit, but they’ll also still be making money via other streams so it’ll be a bump in the road for them - compared to what will happen to OpenAI, Athropic, Stability, the datacenters and their financiers.
https://archive.is/WwJRg (NYTimes article).

Honestly wtf do we have to do with Israel and Palestine? We’re on the other side of the world and not involved in their politics at all, beyond as being a US/British ally. We had a minor terrorist shooting? It’s none of our business without Trump involved, and absolutely none with the way he’s planned it (each country pays a billion into a fund that Trump alone controls. Lolwhat).

The ‘Board of Peace’ just seems like a new ‘how do we make money for businesses rebuilding the Gaza strip to the whims of the Israelis’ Iraq-rebuild style plan, with a side-hustle of Trump skimming for himself to build new Trump Gaza Towers.

All this bullshit is for line go up. And its mostly working, so far.

However, the bankers heavily involved in financing AI datacenters have become nervous and started approaching insurance firms for coverage in case the projects fail… And the hedge funds have had low, 0 or negative ROI for the last ~4 years due to the prior failures of the Metaverse, NFTs, and now AI not paying off yet… So new funds are drying up on two fronts, and if they don’t magically become profitable in the next year then the line is gonna go down, hard.

I’m guessing this is mostly rhetorical… But my 2¢: They failed at everything since kindergarten: education, socialisation, relationships, career, finances; everything they’ve tried they failed or they feel like they failed.

They need therapy, but that costs vulnerability and money, and their parents or peers told them it was for the weak. So instead, they get angry, and look around and on the first page of Insta, YouTube, and Facebook they find people like Shapiro, Fuentes, Petersen, Crowder, Southern - all telling them that someone else is to blame, not them, and then pointing at immigrants illegals, blacks inner city youth, and Jews globalists.

So now they’re looking for that someone else to punch down on to soothe their extreme insecurities, shame, and anger at the world (and themselves), but they’re still that doughy, insecure ‘failure’ that they haven’t done anything to change.

That’s really cool, I didn’t know that.

Businesses/orgs that have smart leaders are already implementing (or have already completed implementing) post-quantum encryption algs/methods into their systems to protect them for when quantum computers and quantum programming mature, making their existing encryption defeatable. For most systems it’s just a matter of a software update and re-encrypting any data.

Eg: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/10/why-signals-post-quantum-makeover-is-an-amazing-engineering-achievement/

This is a problem for public proof-of-work systems that cannot change their encryption, eg: all crypto. Bitcoin cannot change how their coins are encrypted without redesigning and completely rebuilding their public blockchain - it would require concensus from all major bitcoin users and businesses (coin exchanges etc), and could potentially leave any prior-minted bitcoin vulnerable anyway. It will not happen anytime soon - and when it does happen, it may be too late.

Hence, its actually pretty high on the list of quantum targets, and will likely be attacked as soon as it’s available. Some people might be able to steal a bunch of Bitcoin and exchange it for other new (secure) coins or for cash, and get out before the Bitcoin public realize its been cracked. At which time the Bitcoin price will crash hard and may not recover (depending on what action they take to resolve the issue), so the cautious are getting out asap.

Nice work, Satan. Big fan of your music btw 🤘

Its worth adding that this proposed legislation has now been abandoned by Labor thanks to the Greens saying they would not support the bill in its current format without provisions for genuine protest - the Liberal party also said they’d not support it, for very different reasons. Either way, it’s dead.

From video description:

UPDATE: The Government has since announced that it is abandoning its proposed law about promoting and inciting racial hatred. As this analysis now only has educational, not practical relevance, the comments have been closed.

This video is about one part of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 (Cth) which will [was to] be introduced and debated in the Australian Parliament on 19 and 20 January 2026.

Not as far as I’m aware, and it wouldn’t be able to do it justice, because the original Xbox dash was fully rendered live in 3D. It’s more akin to playing a game than navigating a 2D themed app UI.

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oCtN498Sus

There is an actively developed theme that emulates the look of the Xbox 360 ‘blades’ menu though, called TetradUI.

OK well then that’s completely fucked, I’ve edited my original comment to reflect.

The legislation is now thankfully dead though, I dropped a comment at the top of the thread.

Israelis are not a race though, they’re just citizens of a country.

So it would not be able to be classified as ‘racial hatred’ and then they would have to pivot to charging that you’re inciting hatred against Jews, which would be much easier to defend. Protesting against Israel is not protesting against Jews - in fact there are a lot of Jews that protest against Israel.

Edit - the proposed new laws add ‘nationality’, so my suggested response would not be helpful to avoid arrest/charge.

I agree with others the wording of the proposed legislation is very bad for free speech, restricting or curtailing the ability to protest against the action of governments. Protesters would have to very carefully state their disagreements were against government and government officials and if they ever broadened their placards or slogans (as is very standard for protests) to something like “Against Russian aggression”, or “Stop Israel’s genocide” they could be charged with inciting hate against a nationality. They could fix this by adding ‘govt’ to their placards but the chilling effect will be real and the legislation is an overstep.

What a joke. Thankfully the legislation has now been scrapped.

Highly recommend using a certified arborist instead of a tree lopper. Tree loppers have exactly zero training and are usually just some guy who bought a chansaw. Arborists have training to know which branches can stay or go and give good advice about which trees will even drop branches, and which ones you neednt worry about. If you want to prune a branch that’s protecting other branches from wind for example, they’ll say that’s a bad idea. Tree loppers just cut everything off without a thought.

• a person who has seen many mature trees in his neighborhood killed by tree loppers.

Oh yeah my bad, i meant rutorrent. The site is in Russian but easy enough to navigate as it uses the same forum template as a lot of sites, band names are all in original language so searching is simple enough. I sometimes use a translation browser extension to help.

Friend it’s cat heaven, and the cats don’t want you there.

The pre-smartphone years. Where we could just be bored, and let our boredom drive creative thought

Another perspective:

1. You can own your own music in many more formats than just vinyl.
2. CDs are still being made, and cheap. Second hand CD trade is huge, and they are always cheaper than vinyl to buy and ship. Digital ownership is even cheaper (eg Bandcamp), and the same or higher quality.
3. RuTracker has an enormous collection of FLAC well-seeded, as do other sites (but they require invites). Soulseek has an enormous collection and requires no account.

Regarding equipment just get some good speakers and an amp, you’ll need that regardless of what format you end up getting your music in.

Vinyl is often a trap. Expensive, fragile, degrades, difficult to resell unless you live in a big city (postage & packing), and the quality is ultra subjective and varies wildly between pressings. Just look up a couple of popular albums you know on Discogs or rateyourmusic and browse the comments see what they cost and how many people bring up complaints on pressings.

I’m all CD and FLAC and loving it. Bandcamp is my first port of call, then CD (new or second-hand), torrent if rare or OOP or unavailable anywhere I frequent.

Something else that may help - if you really think vinyl will sound better, enormous FLAC rips (2GB+) of popular high quality pressings in 192kHz/24-48bit rips are not uncommon on torrent and Slsk - vinyl enthusiasts often make a high quality digital capture of their purchases while the vinyl is new, so that they have a near-new copy in case their vinyl ever degrades with wear - or simply so they can use digital for convenience, but keep the analog hiss and increased frequency range of vinyl pressings. Best of both worlds.

(Edit: rutracker, not rutorrent)

Anyone that can’t see the line connecting the demonising, vilification and persecution of trans people and the demonising, vilification and persecution of immigrants is a moron.

We provide equal legal protections to all, or we recieve legal protections for none (bar the billionaires).

“He’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting 😡”

Guarantee the lady that said that in 2019 voted for him again. Twice.

The Nobel Fell For It Again Prize would have just… so many contenders with red hats.

Thanks for the mental eyebleach