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Cake day: June 26th, 2025

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  • The “Fully Functional” is something that the most level headed adults that I know, men or otherwise, would refute on the spot. I don’t think I know anyone who feels like a fully functional person. Or an adult for that matter. As that is an elusive concept to begin with. Although, that doesn’t mean one can’t find ways to mature.

    I’m 40. And the thing that I’ll say is that kids and younger people have it harder these days. The world is in a state of unprecedented cacophony, in which the previous existential threats that loomed over the previous generations are all stacking up to form a massive sense of unease.

    Whichever adult, men, woman or other, that claims they have it all figured in the face of increasing calamity is lying. Possibly to themselves first.

    The men who feel the way(s) that you mentioned, are not wrong in feeling the way they do. They can only be wrong in how they act in response to it. Because from time to time, we’re all bound to feel like that at one point or another. And unfortunately in some circumstances and contexts that might be more persistent than others.

    The great failure of our time is not that men, young or not, are failing more, but that we are all failing more. Because we are all failing each other. Some more than others, obviously. But even so, we’re failing to reach one another at some point in a growing secluded world.

    You can eat your greens. Go to the gym. Earn income that allows you comfort. Find a partner. And even have a child…

    And still feel all the things that these “men” do.

    The point of maturity is to not make others pay for what burdens you.

    And the only escape out of that isolated space is not the “self-improvement” route that the fraudulent will try to coach others. As that is just maintenance.

    The way out of loneliness is in service of others. Which has always been the the case and will always be.

    Trying to find a way out of loneliness by trying to find a romantic partner to “fix that” is just offloading the burdening responsibility to another person. And regardless of sex or sexual orientation that will always lead to a toxic dependency and a relationship that never ends well.

    I’m a 40 year old dude. I have a home. I get to do what I’m passionate about. I have a partner that I live with and I love her. But if anyone comes knocking for advice, I tell them that if they’re looking for easy answers, they’re looking for lies to comfort them out of what they already know to be true… That life is complicated and none of us really know what we’re doing while we’re roaming this earth.

    But it sure is a whole lot easier when we’re kind to one another. And that is about the only certainty we’re gonna get before we die.

    Everything else is noise.


  • This year I had to euthanize a cat I had the pleasure to have in my life for almost 14 years. I saw her come into this world right out of her mum, and I was there when she died. Afterwards, we brought her from the veterinarian and buried her in my mother’s backyard.

    She had late stage cancer. I never knew when was the right moment to say “it’s time”. The fucked up part is that we can’t get verbal confirmation that “this is it” for them.

    She could barely walk or breathe by the end and I didn’t know if I was being selfish or if I was stealing time that she still wanted to have. It was brutal. Everyday was just one more day that I wanted to say goodbye.

    And then one day I saw her struggle so much to breathe and said “it’s time”. The meds didn’t work anymore and I couldn’t ease her suffering in any way anymore.

    That moment still sounds far off with your beloved friend. Treasure those cozy and snuggled naps they love to take and be kind to yourself as you navigate it all.






  • What do you mean? Of course it’s more possible on Samsung. I’m writing this comment on a degoogled Samsung A21S that is five years old and still lasts about 4 days worth of battery. Yes, it’s more ideal if you jailbreak, but whatever Samsung you own, just tinkering with settings and uninstalling the updates and deactivating the apps you don’t want in there will allow you more leverage than anything iOS will ever allow.

    And I’m not sucking up to Samsung, fuck’em for letting google piggybacking on the deal and spy on everyone throught them like so many other companies.

    I’m just saying that anything android will always be a better option in comparison to whatever Apple has, regarding Privacy, Costumization and further tinkering. And I’m not just talking about iPhones but the entire Apple catalog. Not to mention that f-droid is probably one of the best allies to have in one’s options.

    If you are not inclined to go with anything that will have either Graphene, Sailfish or /e/OS, then don’t. But you already own a better solution than iOS. So why spend so much money to get into the same problem you are trying to avoid as you are stating in your post?

    If you had a functioning iPhone and were looking for advice because you didn’t want to throw it out, your post would make a lot more sense to us in both communities you cross posted this on. As some from time to time have and nobody downvotes them and and some try to guide them to a more palatable or compromisable solution.

    If you want an iPhone for status or whatever reason, just do it. Don’t ask for permission. Nobody here cares. We know they sell well. But if you use these two communities to pimp Apple as some half-way house as a compromise to Google you are gonna get downvoted. And it’s earned in the sense you misinterpreted the mission statements of these communities. Which are all about consumer and citizen sovereignty in the end. Apple is not something that fits that. Not even remotely or closely. In fact is quite the opposite.

    I hope this didn’t come across as rude. Text doesn’t convey tone. But this is why you are getting downvoted. In both communities. But downvotes don’t clarify anything, so I thought I should state this.

    My opinion however is to always extend the life of whatever hardware one owns. But that’s just me.

    Regarding youtube, like others have mentioned always take the web version and not the app one. But to me that is true whenever there is a Web version, it’s always preferable to an app. Even in expanding the battery life this is the better option.

    I hope this helped in some way. If it didn’t, sorry for wasting your time.


  • Have an acount on both and use them to verify each other.

    I have a Proton mail account. While I’m ready to scold them for stop posting on Mastodon while still posting you know where!!.. I think the stupid tweet that Andy Yen posted got way too out of hand. It was one tweet. You should find the tweet and read it yourself. It’s just a dig at the “Left” in the vein of “wait, since when is a Republican defending small tech from Big Tech more than the Left?” It was tone deaf, and dumb and calls caution to the fact that this may be another dumb tech Bro who likes to tweet irresponsibly just as much as the idiots we know too well. But it wasn’t any form of endorsement at all. Just a tone deaf attempt to create social pressure for the supposed “Left” to do what it is supposed to do. And oh boy, did the tone deaf tweet backfire.

    But anyway, I belive, like many people here do, that one shouldn’t put all of one’s efforts to just one bet. That is how we got Google in the first place. You should also have a Tuta Mail as well, especially if you seem inclined to and don’t have an alternative mail to Proton. I’m always ready to jump at any time that I find something that displeases me. And that includes Proton.

    There’s also personal preferences at play. What works really well for one person, might not for another.

    We should try to spread our choice amongst all the villagers. Do not replace your entire Google suite for the Proton one. That’s how we get another powerful conglomerate.


  • We lost track of what money was supposed to be for… a representation of the resources and services in circulation. In which it was supposed to facilitate trade by creating tokens to facilitate transactions without the requirement of trust in the absence of a good, like when a farmer would need a tool from a blacksmith but the goods that the farmer has are only available when harvested in which the tool that the blacksmith has is required to retrieve them. In the presence of trust, the blacksmith was going to still trade and expect the goods when time was due. In the absence of trust, like in relation to a stranger, this trade wouldn’t go forward. Money as a representational token solved this sort of common issue. And this became a necessity when tribes went above the Dunbar’s number.

    Cut to now…

    What the hell is an economy even supposed to represent anymore? It is certainly not a representation of the resources and services in circulation, that’s for sure. 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries already breached all to ensure the survival of this abstraction. Some even call it Moloch as a reference to the pagan god which required human sacrifice. I thinks it’s worse, as it requires the sacrifice of everything, not just humans. But it is certainly a clever nod to something that was only real because people believed it to be.

    Back to your project. A FOSS Barter Facilitator. There’s nothing I don’t like about this. Just make sure the protocols remain open to federation of future FOSS Barter Facilitators and you have a slice of Utopia to challenge the dystopian hell we’re in.

    You have something here that can alleviate people’s lives in times of great need. Resource collapse is imminent now. If that is not at least partially avoided, that makes the collapse of the global economic system inevitable. What happens after that is a fool’s errand to even attempt to guess. We only know it’s not gonna be peaceful and nice given the stupidity in human nature. Scarcity always leads to the forming of new predation systems. That is how predation was formed in Nature. The incapacity for self-regulation led to animals to reproduce and consume more than the regenerative availability of their setting allowed, leading them to predate on each other. This is how violence emerged in Nature and still does to this day. When we lose track of self regulation we return to the scavenger’s rule of the wild.

    But this helps in giving people access to trade without the requirement of capital tokens. Huge spikes in inflation, unemployment and mass migrations are only going to increase in volume and in rate as resources continue to collapse worldwide. We’re in a feedback loop and war and A.I. will only accelerate the velocity of it.

    Or, you know, we could have more ideas like yours and reduce resource intake, increase individual resiliency and in doing so, lessening the panic in the common struggles.

    So…

    I’m certainly saving this post and link and share it with anyone who is inclined to listen.

    I’m not a coder, so I thank you for such a wonderful contribution to the world.


  • I’m not entirely clear as if you just meant that as a thought experiment… Because I wasn’t suggesting anything in that direction, actually. I was merely stating that the ratio of space required to grow food for the population in cities should match the vertical design of cities themselves. And even include these vertical farming structures within cities themselves. It all needs to match the design of efficiency in housing. Otherwise, it’s just a race to the bottom in how to run out of surface land and resources the fastest way.

    Also, I want to mention that this idea that the entire lives of people would have to be dedicated entirely to farming has always been greatly exaggerated as to scare off people from procuring sovereignty for themselves and their communities. My girlfriend and I grow some of our food. I would say even if I took the task alone with the intention of feeding us both entirely all year round, it would take me about less then 2 months worth of work spread out across two seasons. That out of an entire year leaves a lot of time to spare. Not to mention, that I could use the same time to grow more for more people. After you put what you need in the ground, setting an automatic irrigation system, the maintenance work is not that much of a hassle, especially using the syntropic method within a permaculture design. The early stages of setting this up are laborious indeed, but after that, not really, not really at all.

    This all to say that this is another one of those myths that capitalism has ingrained falsely in people as to keep the labour of the masses retained to the benefit of the few who gain the most from it. It’s about insuring the conditions where the elite can keep manufacturing the consent in others to exploit them. And insuring dependency is always the way to do it.

    Farming wise, and regarding our current food systems, I think that people in general should learn more about syntropy if we are to communicate better as to what needs to be achieved. As it will mean different approaches depending on geography. Not to mention Urban vs rural settings would also require different approaches as well.

    Then it would also be easier to gather support for innovations such as Precision Fermentation. Because using bacterial and microbial life to grow our sustenance is ingenious. The lower the trophic level we consume from, the lesser the destruction. And it would also be faster. Always.

    If we truly insure true efficiency, we truly minimise destruction. And maximise the potential for prosperity for all, including non-human animals, plants and all other organisms.

    Unfortunately the only efficiency that our current systems are designed for is to maximise profit. Which requires continuous growth, which is unsustainable and will ultimately lead to its own inevitable collapse. 6 of the 9 established planetary boundaries have already been breached. It’s only a matter of time now. As to how much time that will take and how much of the world will be taken with it, that is all tied to massive amounts of data for us to even fathom to process.

    And AI is currently accelerating all this race to depletion in all fronts.

    So, yeah, optimism right now, would be indeed for fools as you say.


  • Thank you for beating me to it. I 100% agree with you.

    But I have to say, in order to meet the nutrient density requirements, they would have to completely reform the agricultural sector. Which I would love, but we know how this goes with these people.

    And the fact that in 2025, we keep stacking people on top of each other to the point that more than half of the world’s population is living like this in cities, which is integrated in a vertical axis, but the energy consumption of the same people is still spreading elsewhere on an horizontal axis… that is foreboding the worst of outcomes in this regard.

    The permaculture philosophy and the syntropic method would have to be integrated. And with it, vertical indoor farming in cities as a necessary response. But this would mean the end of monocultures and pesticide use. No more plowing either. Terrible for the microorganisms in the soil, means terrible for everything else. Soil policy would have to be in place as a baseline… it’s a lot.

    But I keep saying this… Environmentalism, veganism, sustainability and ethics are all the same thing. The very same thing. It’s trying to insure that our lives as both the individual and the mass population causes the least destruction and suffering as possible. And that we can aspire to be net positive to all biological life on the planet. If the general population understood this, we could be heading somewhere. Unfortunately without understanding entropy and how the trophic balance is achieved, I doubt that one can understand syntropy or what the hell I’m even talking about right now.

    But yeah… Syntropy vs Entropy is hard to explain in a small paragraph to the ADHD crowd of our time, I guess.

    So… Optimism is just not in the cards. Not for me at least.





  • Thank you for being so considerate.

    I live in the south of Portugal. In the Algarve to be more precise (lots of Americans started moving here since covid by the way). It’s hot and humid because of the proximity with the ocean. Nights don’t cool off when it’s this bad and that is the shitty part.

    I can’t say that I’m not used to it. It happens every year. But I can’t say that I’ve ever gotten used to it either.

    It has gotten worse over the years, though. I’m entering my middle age now and when I was a kid the temperatures here would go up to maximum of 33 °C (91,4 °F), and now we get 40 °C (104 °F) and people think “it’s just another one of those days”. My girlfriend caught 43°C (109.4 °F) in the thermometer in her car this weekend.

    Anyway, I use most of your suggestions every year, and they’re all helpful to anyone who’s not used to this kind of heat.

    I would say my most unusual ones is to remain covered when I go outside, not only a hat, but long sleave overshirts and pants, both so that the sun doesn’t directly hit my skin, which both dehidrates us faster and raises our core temperature as well. Then when I get to the shade or indoors, I remove the shirt and the hat and let the cooling begin. It’s essentially the same idea that people did and still do traversing deserts. They’re all wrapped up to preserve humidity and keep their bodies from heating in shade. This works much better in dry climate than humid, but still does work. It’s not the most pleasant feeling though that’s for sure. The other one that everybody thinks I’m nuts is to never shock my temperature with too much cooling. That means no cold beverages or ice-creams. Or cold showers. Why? While they provide relief, I find that my body then doesn’t stop the craving effect, and it gets harder to sustain the periods in-between those “shock reliefs” as I call them.

    But yeah, salty snacks and drinking water continuously rather than too much at once would be my top suggestions.

    And keeping an eye on the elderly of our family and community too.




  • Meanwhile, cities have little solar panels to show for. Not in rooftops, not in parkinglots… No implementation or improvement of photovoltaic windows either.

    No no, let’s reduce light in lakes and especially the oceans, which produce 72% of the oxygen in the atmosphere and do the most carbon capture in the world. I swear this is just who has the stupidest idea now.

    Solar farms on land are stupid. Floating Solar farms on lakes and ocean zones are even more stupid. Asphalt dead zones such as cities, and natural deserts it’s where this technology belongs.