Some of us have no choice. If I don’t have social media, record labels won’t sign my music. I cannot afford to pay someone else to maintain it for me.

FR. These features are so easy to disable, when I updated Firefox recently it asked me on next load if I want the features or not… I chose not, no big deal!

‘AI’ is this generations Justin Bieber / Skrillex. There’s plenty to criticise but it’s becoming a bandwagon at this point.

Here in the UK, fortunately fentanyl is pretty rare. At the testing tent I mentioned above, it was stuff like: people who thought they had coke, had amphets; people who thought they had amphets, had research chems; people who thought they had ket, had meow; people who thought they had E, either had MDMA mixed with amphets, or other contaminants.

Thanks :)

Didn’t expect to have to learn this much

You have activated the Command & Conquer fanbase. Good luck haha

This is your friendly reminder to buy testing kits if you do drugs, so you know what’s in them.

The kits aren’t expensive or difficult to use :) when they had a drug testing tent at a UK festival recently, something like 2/3rd of the people didn’t have what they thought they had.

You’re not wrong!

If you do have something like a Pixel / Galaxy already, consider installing DuckDuckGo browser. It’s not just a browser… it also runs an onboard vpn, which has the side effect of blocking ad tracking requests. I was kinda horrified and surprised to see what kind of info most of the apps were taking, and how often they were making the requests. GPS (both coarse & fine), IMEI, post code, email address, all kinds of other identifiers.

You’ll have to manually let a few apps through (stuff like the wallet, maybe banking apps) but everything else is blocked on my phone.

If I was going to buy a new smartphone right now, I’d prob get a Fairphone:

Fairphone is a Dutch electronics manufacturer that designs and produces smartphones and headphones. It aims to minimise the ethical and environmental impact of its devices by using recycled, fairtrade and conflict-free materials, maintaining fair labour conditions throughout its workforce and suppliers, and enabling users to easily repair their devices through modular design and by providing replacement parts

any notion that there is method in his madness.

There IS method in his madness. Just, it’s mostly not his method, you’ve got to peek behind the curtain. You have to remember with Trump, all he cares about is money and the appearance of ‘winning’. A lot of his ‘confusing’ rhetoric is designed to pump 'n dump the market, so he and his close associates can make big bets for big profit.

For the darker intentions, you need to look to people like Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, Heritage Society. They’ve literally stated all their intentions in the P2025 documents.

Personally I’d love to see sanctions applied to USA for what they’ve done in Iran - though don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the Iranian regime either - BUT you really cannot compare Iran to Ukraine.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Ukraine hasn’t spent the last two decades funding terrorism and proxies to destabilise the European area? Let’s not pretend like Iranian gov is some helpless, innocent angel here. Many were clapping for regime change when it was being earned by the blood of innocent students. Perhaps many of our countries would’ve been involved in this conflict, if it was planned and executed sensibly (though I’d argue the conflict straight up wouldn’t have exploded to actual conflict if anyone but the stupid orange turd was at the helm)

You know why. Or you should at least be able to work it out.

While a lot of countries are rapidly losing patience as Trump becomes more unhinged, everyone is trying to soften the massive shock that is coming. It’s like 8 people sat around a Monopoly board, desperately trying to keep the rabid chimp calm who is player 9. We all suspect he’s going to flip the board and ruin the game for everyone at some point, so we’re all quietly hardening our stores, our connectivity etc so that it causes as little damage as possible.

We’re not going to prod the chimp into flipping the board when we’re still not ready to deal with the fallout.

It’s worse than that. Iirc everytime republicans gain 2 out of 3 of Congress / Senate / president, they rip up enough regulations to cause a global recession.

Thanks, America for taking a shit on the world. Again.

I also have bipolar II / autism. It can definitely be a grind. I’m v lucky that I am self employed in a creative field, where my oddness is valued.

The most difficult aspect of life for us is, imo, dating. Especially with the rise of ‘the ick’ phenomenon. Neurotypicsl people usually make a v quick internal judgement that we’re ‘weird’ or ‘unsuitable for friendship’ (very illuminating and sad study on this I read recently).

During the pandemic, I got heavily into stoic philosophy, along with some Buddhist learnings. Not mastered either but they’ve been a bigger help than medication I take.

Check out an audio book: ‘Derren Brown - Happy’. It will give you a bunch of very effective tools on how to manage external stressors. If you never used audible, they usually have a ‘one month free trial, keep one audiobook’ deal. Get the above book then cancel 😁

Crazy that I’ve been downvoted for offering factual help, while the comment which is provably incorrect is up voted

Is there a ‘remind me’ feature on lemmy? Cause you might be waiting a while, I’ve got a few disposables to get through first!

Yeah. People can avoid all this nonsense by installing one simple app… Duck duck go browser.

You don’t have to use the browser. It just sits in the background quietly blocking tracking requests from other apps.

It’s absolutely horrifying on first use to see how egregious tracking is.

Brilliant, thanks very much for the advice. I’ve still got a few disposables left but definitely switching over. No more USA razors.

Thanks for these links. As someone who’s stuck to the usual suspects bought from supermarket… Anything I need to be aware of switching to this? Like, will I need to shave more carefully, use different technique? Or just shave as normal?

I’m using Sync to write this comment :)

Same. I don’t agree with Starmer on everything (eg his cannabis policy), but it’s nice to have a grownup in charge again. Instead of a performing monkey desperate for a new sound bite so we forget last week’s disaster.