27 || xe/xem/xyr || jstor if you're reading this. hiiii sorry 💙💙 || side blog is @/adhdphilosopher because i wasn't clever enough to make the fandomy thing my main and the philosophy(ish) thing my side
If you need further clarification on what to do if you already own one of Microsoft’s games (like I did), here’s an excerpt from this article (emphasis mine):
“For those who already own the games or the console, the organizers said, the ideal move would be to stop playing, but the primary ask from organizers is to help deprive Microsoft of revenue. Therefore, players can be compliant with the boycott by avoiding future purchases of games or consoles and by avoiding transactions inside the games.”
you’ve all gotta stop acting like “overweight” is a gentle PC alternative for the word fat and not itself an assertion of the ontological wrongness of being large. Over What Weight Precisely
Hey, look at me. Look at me. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: you need to condition yourself to being okay with being inconvenienced by things. The first time I spoke about this I meant it in a mental health way- it is good to go out to the store and see people versus just ordering alone at home- but there is another more pressing societal issue you should be more concerned about as well.
Any service you rely on for convenience can be weaponized against you the moment you begin to rely on it. Streaming used to be a cheap and convenient way to see movies at home. It is now exorbitantly expensive, you need multiple accounts just to get what you want, and any of those movies can be taken from you at any time. And unless you have gotten used to going through the “inconvenience” of owning physical media, you can do nothing about it. Same goes for buying things on Amazon. Same goes for any service like DoorDash etc. These companies WANT you to be reliant on them for convenience so they can do whatever they want to you because, well, what else are you gonna do?
Same thing goes for the uptick in AI. If you train yourself to become reliant on AI for doing basic things, you will be taken advantage of. It is only a matter of a couple years before there are no free AI services. Not only that, but in the usage of AI’s case, it is robbing you of valuable skills that you need to curate that you will be helpless without the moment the AI companies drive in the knife the way they have done with streaming. Delivery. Cable. Internet. Etc. It will happen to AI too. And if you are not practicing skills such as. Writing. You are not only going to be at the mercy of AI companies in the digital world, but you are going to be extremely easy to take advantage of in real life too.
I am begging you to let go of learned helplessness. I am begging you to stop letting these companies TEACH you helplessness. Do something like learn to pirate. It is way more inconvenient at the beginning, but once you know how, it is one less way companies can take advantage of you. Garden. Go to the thrift store (older clothes hold up better anyway). These things take more time and effort, yes, but using time and effort are muscles you need to stretch to keep yourself from being flattened under the weight of our capitalist hellscape.
Inconvenience yourself. Please. Start with only the ways you are able. Do a little bit at a time. But do something.
I know it’s hard, but it’s worth it, I promise.
Oh my god please this!
Also paying for generative AI is already starting to happen!
Over the last 3 months I have had countless emails from various library vendors about each company’s new “AI assistant”. Many of them are at an additional cost to libraries. Other’s are “free”, for now. They are all problematic in an academic setting as generative AI tools can go against academic code of conduct policies.
Now, these AI assistants don’t give you a full essay and at least give you scholarly and peer reviewed citations but I know, I KNOW, students will use the paragraph summaries to write their papers and be done with it.
Generative AI searches are not research.
Generative AI searches provide you with what is the statistically most likely answer. NOT what the answer is.
Critical thinking is and extremely valuable skill, especially now. The ability to step back and evaluate information you are being told is a step towards not being duped by propaganda. None of us are immune to propaganda!
So please, please, do not rob yourself of the ability to think. Do not give others the keys to take advantage of you. Do not submit in advance!
You might be more than one. You might be different ones at different times. 🫶🏽🫶🏽 you might not be one of these. There are more roles 💪🏽 but this is an amazing intro.
You can’t just like the idea and envision yourself in one of these roles you have to figure out how to be about it ♥️🫶🏽
I think every computer user needs to read this because holy fucking shit this is fucking horrible.
So Windows has a new feature incoming called Recall where your computer will first, monitor everything you do with screenshots every couple of seconds and “process that” with an AI.
This AI is not going to be on your desktop, like all AI, it’s going to be done on another server, “in the cloud” to be precise, so all those data and screenshot? They’re going to go off to Microsoft. Microsoft are going to be monitoring what you do on your own computer.
And before someone goes “durrr, nuthin’ to fear, nuthin to hide”, let me remind you that you can be doing completely legal and righteous acts and still have the police on your arse. Are you an activist? Don’t even need to be a hackivist, you can just be very vocal about something concerning and have the fucking police on your arse. They did this with environmental protesters in the UK. The culture war against transgender people looks likely to be heading in a direction wherein people looking for information on transgender people or help transitioning will be tracked down too. You have plenty to hide from the government, including your opinions and ideas.
Again, look into backing up your shit and switching to Linux Mint or Ubuntu to get away from Microsoft doing this shit.
there are multiple options here depending on how comfortable you are digging into your computer’s registry. You can either simply disable it surface level through settings or excise it entirely from the system registry
reblogging again as a cautionary tale to please PLEASE fucking make a system restore point before you do anything. i consider myself tech savvy and still nearly bricked my computer. and make sure you know how to access safe mode
If you ever hear the phrase “fascism is aesthetics as politics,” that’s what this post is talking about.
It’s not about being tough on crime, because the absolute toughest most brutal measure you could take against “crime” as a social problem is to alleviate poverty, and increase access to education, healthcare and social mobility.
It’s about performing “tough on crime” as an aesthetic by enacting violence against a prop, i.e. minorities and the impoverished, who are fetishized and objectified to represent “crime.” They are brutalized as punishment for crime, but never with the purpose of alleviating the problem of crime.
This is why a lot of conservatives and other right wingers can get straight up angry when you suggest things like reform or social measures to reduce crime. They don’t want crime to be reduced, they want an eternal war against “crime” because it provides an arena for the righteous to demonstrate virtue by brutalizing their enemies.
ALT
