Like the other reply said, when you go to a bar you’re just showing your birthdate to some guy at the front for a few seconds.

Now, if the bar demanded to make a scan of my ID and uploaded it to some server, and reported my entry to said bar to the government or some privatized authority, then handed that data to some algorithm to cross reference everywhere else I’ve been to build a profile on my behavior, then established various metrics based on who I was seen hanging around…then probably sold all of that to a bunch of marketing firms…

And on and on. Now imagine it’s been doing this since you were like 16.

If this sounds far fetched and overblown, I invite you to look at how US law enforcement uses dragnet surveillance like “stingray towers” to hand information to ICE, then make a decision as to whether “The Good Guys” or anybody else should be allowed to follow your footsteps across the Web.

Edit: quick side tangent:

The hilarious part is how the parties pushing for this “fOr ThE ChiLdReN” surveillance capitalism will also be the first to cry “Leftist Nanny State tho! Muh personal responsibility!” When people want something like universal healthcare.

In a lot of modern guides on dungeon design, they stress thinking this stuff out. Yeah you should definitely have some idea why the inhabitants are here and not elsewhere, where their supplies come from, and how they interact with whatever else calls this place home.

They should have a place to sleep, eat, maybe recreation even. While the PCs poke around, the dungeon denizens shouldn’t just be waiting around in preset rooms, fully ready to fight like MMO mobs. They could be on patrol, raiding their neighbors, sleeping, arguing, partying, whatever.

There’s even fun things you can do with this like inter-faction conflicts between floors or other regions. Do the Orcs fear the dragon at the bottom of the dungeon?

Do the bandits have an uneasy non-aggression pact with a lich? Or are they constantly embattled with seemingly limitless undead because they’re struggling for a legendary artifact?

Somebody’s gotta reset all those traps, too.

Players should definitely feel like trespassers in a living place. Few people enjoy that ancient style of dungeon delving anymore, where you slay a band of kobolds, answer a sphinx’s riddle, then bust in on a vampire who’s as confused about why they’re there as you are!

Where are the toilets?

Maybe the hallway but the local gelatinous cube roombas it up. (Eeeeeww) … Or a room has holes dug dropping into an underground river. Or just a really deep pit, or a convenient portal to the Abyss LOL.

You can have fun with this stuff.

Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.

Bingo.

It’s never about “the children.” It’s a way to normalize handing over biometrics and anonymity to an assumed authority to use the internet.

It’s always about control, control, control. It’s about tying real identities to online activity, then it’s about wholesale harvesting your secrets you didn’t even know you were keeping.

Then it’s yet another instrument to make sure you shut up and don’t step out of line or else.

First they take us away from our kids by necessitating that entire households need full time careers to survive.

Then as a substitute for education and actual parenting we’re so eager to offer up our childrens’ futures in the name of “protecting” them from the inevitable consequences of parentless households.

As a millennial I honestly just miss how something like MySpace was basically a micro blog, and otherwise, we just chatted with friends-only programs like Yahoo! Messenger / MSN / ICQ/ whatever. There wasn’t really some motive to “connect” you to a million “randos” and make you slavishly compete for their fickle approval.

Growing up in a weird kinda rural/suburb hybrid area, the Internet was my gateway to the world outside of school.

It definitely had its problems and drama, but mostly we chatted with people we actually knew (Yahoo chatrooms notwithstanding. Yikes lol) and didn’t care about what was “trending” across the world. Algorithms didn’t control and force perception of our reality then.

It was literally just about enabling communication.

Outside of that, there was also a much better culture of maintaining privacy and anonymity online, and that everything you see online is BS until proven otherwise.

Of course, this was before techbros decided we should use our real identity everywhere for all to see.

Nowadays it seems like every service is about using your friends as bait to connect you to some hivemind of toxic manipulation to farm you for ads. It encourages creating cults and scams and brainrot bullshit because it’s all about harvesting people’s already-strained attention for profit, instead of just being a communication platform.

TL;DR: I remember the Internet as a place to log in and hang out, then log off, when meeting with friends outside of school was a logistical nightmare reserved for things like birthday parties if you were lucky.

A lot of damage is already done, but I think if we obliterated the Facebooks and Instagrams and TikToks of “social media” and instead it focused on augmenting existing relationships rather than siloing people as a billion lonely socially-starved individuals in a crowd, we’d see it much differently…

This. I feel so bad for teenagers.

They’re at a time in their lives where community and free association are vital to them, and yet since they’re not necessarily a profitable demographic, they’re kicked out and shunned by everywhere that’s not home or school, because all that’s left is “commercial spaces.”

People then wonder why teenagers flip off society and get up to no good, and then maybe wonder why we all turned out to be lonely adults with like maybe one long term friend if we’re lucky…

Yeah, the sheer insanity here is that $120M is like, losing a comparative 12¢ to him.

Wikipedia puts the worthless cur’s “worth” at ~470B.

I’m no mathematician but…

470,000,000,000

−120,000,000

=469,880,000,000

OoOOOoo way to go. You go make sure he pays that huuuge fine. I’m sure he’ll lose sleep over this one!

Fine him 12% of his net worth and THAT would at least be an actual penalty.

Maybe this’ll strengthen the worldwide film industry.

Maybe I should finally see if Who Killed Captain Alex lives up to the hype. 🤔

I mean, the Vegas Strip has always been disgusting…but the fact that (more than?) half of it is owned by Amazon now is absolutely insane to me. . .

Netflix crap never comes to DVD.

I dunno if it’s a thing exclusive to libraries or not, but at my public library I’ve seen some Netflix movies, and things like Stranger Things and Castlevania come through.

Not sure if those discs hit traditional media shelves or not.

“add me on stoat!”

“Yeah bro I’m so stoakt!” Huh, that’s almost a better name LOL.

First Riot chat, now Revolt.

Funny how rebelliously flavored chat alternatives that challenge the centralized status quo keep getting put down!

Overall I think the weakest part of luggage is its unusually high liklihood of attack by state adversaries. :p

detonate a dirty bomb on their own soil for… checks notes international sympathy?

I suppose at face value I was thinking maybe more like

“Shit, missed.”

“Whoops!”

“Those damn Russians!!!”

But yeah sounds like a bit of BS because Russia simply didn’t admit to it.

he was legit jotting down PH material on a notebook.

Somewhere a professor is getting an APA citation that’s like

Lustful, Lucy. (2023, April 15). Sexy Coed Horny Cheerleader Stepsis with Big Titties Can’t Get Enough!. PHub. (www dot phub dot com)

Upvoting for hope. 👍

Rebellions are built on hope.

Banning the griefer’s Minecraft account would save countless lives.

Our ancestors didn’t defy kings, battle their own wayward countrymen, charge trenches, and rush fortified beaches headlong into the jaws of death. . .

. . .for. This. Whatever the disgraceful hell this is.

About now, every real patriot for what’s good about this country should feel a profound and gnawing agony at every passing day these monsters aren’t held to account and rendered incapable of further harm to humanity, whatever form that would take.

We need to make it loud and clear that if “the other team” in places of power doesn’t use every single tool at their disposal to end this threat IMMEDIATELY, they are complicit fools and will be held accountable as accomplices to whatever untold horrors would await us, should we refuse to hold the line.

Positively whimsical. I guarantee you I’d have laughed like an idiot way longer than necessary. XD

Oh definitely! If there’s one thing I’m done with, it’s people calling on speakerphone while their phone is like, seemingly, in their gym bag in the trunk LOL.

Like bro, you’re not Jack Bauer and I’m not your handler, it can wait until you’re done going 75 on the freeway.

Maybe my work’s phone network service is just awful, even landline to landline, but yeah, for how much faster data connections have gotten, I feel like I got clearer voice quality on my cordless Vtech in 2004 LOL.

Maybe it’s me and I should get my hearing checked. 😅

HOW WAS I THINKING THIS EXACT SAME THING.

The standardized NATO phonetic alphabet

…for when you need to read alpha numeric codes or clarify spellings.

Especially with, how, inexplicably, phone connections seem to have gotten more garbly in recent years.

This code was invented to be reasonably understood as much as possible in less-than-ideal communication conditions.

As time goes on, civilian life is full of situations where you’ll need to read off serial numbers, codes, or even spelling your own name, to somebody seemingly connected to you from a million miles away via coconuts and twine.

So, learn it, and you never need to go “M as in…uh…'Mancy”'? ever again! Your IT department might thank you.

…and let’s be honest, it sounds kinda cool. :)