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Same here though I use Busuu. Used Duolingo in the past, to be fair there’s not that much difference between the two.

Been dreaming of a FOSS alternative, where people work together to make the best possible ever-improving courses, and all is free and customizable to your every need. That would be so awesome ! Surely some day some one will make this happen, right?

Been there in the past, but I actually have been doing all of the above past couple of years.

I recently read Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread on anarcho-communism, and am currently reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. I’ve been drawing geometric patterns, mostly based on the Islamic tradition of geometry, and after drawing the patterns I start painting to add some color. I throw them away after a while, but I just like the flow-experience of painting/drawing, don’t really care about the end-result. I’m studying French on a daily basis, mostly on Busuu, but also by watching French movies (most recently Le Proces Goldman) and reading French books (most recently Le Petit Prince). I watch on average 2 movies per week at my local cinema, got a subscription there, sometimes go with friends but I also often go alone. I enjoy going to museums and studying art history, so when I have the time I cross the country by train and make visits. I also take psychedelics (LSD and/or psilocybin) every 2 or 3 weeks. Psychedlics are a lot of fun, but I also actually believe they helped me grow as a person, from what the OP describes, to where I am now. Psychedelics aren’t for everyone, but still I’d highly recommend most people to try them out some time (responsibly of course).

Been playing some Xonotic recently. Good times with FOSS.

Maybe billionaires should be filmed and streamed continuously, since their behavior has such a big impact on the world. If they don’t like it maybe we shouldn’t allow them to control such incredible assets. I’m sure billionaires have nothing sketchy to hide, right? What we will see is probably how they are hard working people who are not at all detached from normal folks. Right?

That’s not limited to modern technologies. I have a lot of books laying around that are judging me by looking at me like ‘why the f are you still not reading me??’. Projection is my middle name

I learned that just now.

it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all

Could someone expand upon this? I’m don’t know much about tech, but the idea that FOSS decentralized platforms can’t be banned does seem to make sense right? Ban one, another one will pop up, etc. What am I not getting here?

recently been finding it a lot easier to find my stuff on Soulseek rather than torrent sites.

I just use RSS feeds to follow YT-channels. It’s doesn’t seem any less convenient than a YT account.

Can’t be that much work, can it?

This is wonderful, I’ve been struggling with piped for some time now, it’s always asking me to sign in to confirm that I’m not a bot. Also it’s showing me videos in very low quality and often it stops loading halfway through the video. With this I get to see good quality videos once more, without unwanted pauses and without financing yt in any way. Great!

But ads are not functioning, they are destructive. They are by no means cheap either, people are paying through being manipulated and we are paying collectively for the damage it’s doing to our world. We’d be much better of if we had only direct payments. Direct artist payments will always be the more effective and efficient financing structure because then we pay just for the creative output, not all the unrelated economic parasitic activities.

The solution is very simple and there is nothing that inflation can do about it: we don’t watch ads, we pay creators that we want to support, and if from these donations a creator doesn’t earn enough money he has two options: 1. One has an intrinsic drive to create and publish so he does so through other means, for instance by working a part time job. If this sounds unreasonable then let us not forget that already most of all human creativity is financed exactly like this, it is only the exception that is financially lucrative. 2. One chooses not to create (or in a less costly manner). You could think of this as a sad outcome, but you’d be better off concluding that this creative output wasn’t so important to anyone, not to the creator nor to the public. This means we’d be left with the better and more intrinsically motivated creative content.

So let’s not justify ads, but let’s reject them in the most radical ways we can.

Ads exist because people want to make money. So these bad actors go out and look for places where people like to spend their time, and they poison these places with their money-hungry practices. In the process they destroy the innocence of all these manifestations of human creativity, and manipulate people into buying shit they don’t actually need, effectively destroying the planet through overconsumption. That’s not even mentioning that ad-companies put us on a path towards a mass-surveillance society, just because big-data leads to more effective ads. I can’t help but see ads as a destructive force of evil in our world. I like human creativity in it’s many forms, and I’m all in favor of rewarding creators to a certain extent, but using ads seems to be the worst possible method of doing so.

(not intending to criticize your comments, just spreading the anti-ad gospel ;-)

I would love for this to become successful! I am assuming it’s not in any great state yet, but the decentralized future is waiting for us !

There’s a system in place for that. It’s called ‘verklaring omtrent gedrag’. For many jobs and positions you need this certificate of conduct in order to apply. The ministry of justice will not hand out the certificate if your crime is related to the position you apply for. This means he would probably never be allowed to work at a school for instance.

Formication is the sensation resembling that of small insects crawling on the skin, in the absence of actual insects.

Never asserted that notion. Of course you’re free to do so. I am just saying it’s self righteous and not helping any one.

I am not at all telling victims to shut up. You just made that up.

Dutch courts haven’t found him guilty of rape, but did find him guilty of having sex with a 12 year old. That itself is more than terrible but calling it rape despite this fact is in fact a misrepresentation of what happened. Sure it was terrible thing that he did and I am not defending his actions at all. I am defending his right to participate in sports events and pleading against trial by media/public outrage.

I’m not angry, just sharing my thoughts. How does it work? Like I said, I am against media-fueled public rage in cases like these.

He did serve his time, according to the Dutch rule. His initial sentence was longer because it was in the UK and over there they consider every sexual activity with a minor rape, where as in the Netherlands they differentiate between actual rape and misconduct.

It’s not at all about that and I never suggested it is.