Remote work has been studied extensively for decades and the findings overwhelmingly show that remote workers, when provided the right tools and support, are significantly more productive. Demanding people commute to an office was never about productivity.

You appear to be conflating Capitalism with the concept of free markets. They are wholly different and distinct concepts, regardless of what Capitalism’s propagandists would like everyone to believe.

Capitalism, being an economic dogma that worships private ownership and relentless pursuit and hoarding of wealth, actively incentivizes behavior that destroys free markets: trusts, monopolies, oligopolies, regulatory capture, sabotage, patents, union busting, mergers and acquisitions, financialization, and more, gradually eroding any free market until it no longer meaningfully exists.

Right now, what little money I can spare goes to World Central Kitchen. Money is just too tight these days. I’d consider contributing to the project, but only if the repositories were moved somewhere other than Github/Microsoft.

The only thing this does is punish everyone and implement more surveillance.

Tories: Precisely.

I am white and I support this message.

This is just my opinion, but if a game doesn’t work on Linux/SteamOS then it was never worth playing to begin with.

The first season is one of the best adaptations of a novel ever done. But everything after follows a steepening downward bell curve.

Like a punchline is to a joke, the ending is the most important part of a story. The conclusion gives the journey meaning. Blowing the ending can - and often does - retroactively ruin an entire narrative. This comic is akin to saying “a bad punchline doesn’t ruin a whole joke.” It does. In the same way, a bad or missing conclusion undermines the narrative as a whole.

They know exactly what their limits are supposed to be and they do care. They care about dismantling those limits and seizing permanent, unbridled power.

I don’t think you should be allowed to access your cars engine unless the manufacturer wants you in there.

You don’t buy a hamburger and add remove the pickles or add extra ketchup.

I voted for everything you are doing.

To hit the nail so perfectly on the head and still not get it…

Back spasms and kidney stones.

The problem is that ignorance is a decision more often than not. If someone is already at an inflection point and open to making changes - and to your input specifically - then it’s best to try to help them expand their experience. Information alone often isn’t enough, they need lived experience. If you are in such a position with your family member, you are in a better position than most. But if they are already compartmentalizing then you may have to accept that you have very little sway. A person always makes up their own mind, one way or another.

You can’t. A person must choose to value objective truth. Likewise, they must choose to change their minds.

The book The Authoritarians by Dr. Bob Altemeyer covers this topic well. Some people compartmentalize to support their preferred foregone conclusions, and will dismiss absolutely anything that conflicts with their desired conclusions. They cannot and will not compare the things they have compartmentalized if it threatens their outlook.

Dr. Altemeyer points out that you cannot get through to people like that, no matter what. The only way to reduce their compartmentalized and authoritarian tendencies is through direct and prolonged exposure to diversity. This does not change the compartmentalization or predisposition to force their will on others, violently if necessary, it simply curbs them slightly. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, as they say.

One of the tenants of capitalism is that you, the consumer, should demand more-for-less

Oh dear, that was never a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism has only one tenet: amass as much capital as possible at all costs. Literally anything goes, including and especially capturing and controlling markets by stifling competition.

$1,000,000 wouldn’t even buy you a home near a major US city these days. Especially not after accounting for taxes. Investors have bought all the stock and turned them into permanent rentals, removing them from the market. At the same time, new home construction has ground to a halt due to increased costs and bureaucracy.

Freedom is Slavery…

Self-hosting a search engine is unfortunately not feasible given the amount of data and power required for it. Not to mention access to the data (crawling yourself or using another index).

For privacy and customization there is Kagi, which is amazing and very customizable, but requires a paid subscription. You are a customer rather than the product, though.