Uh oh, Suzerain coming to reality

Rare malazan reference in the wild

There is a very big difference between having restrictive laws which enable society to operate more freely, laws which have significant protections in place to prevent misuse, and laws which impede freedoms.

As well as the implementation of said laws by governments.

It’s certainly not a new thing, but the status quo has shifted drastically in the past 5 years especially.

For example, the laws which are being used to quell protest have been around for 20 years and longer, it’s just that last year was the first time they have been abused in that way. (As critics of, for example the terror act, suggested it would be)

My point isn’t that it’s the first time the UK has seen authoritarian skews in government. Churchill set the troops on the miners, Thatcher used secret police against the unions. The point is that the paradigm is shifting back to that, and eroding what has been slowly and painfully won.

I’m quite curious on this as well. Lived in Bloem from 2011-2013, everyone loves going on about how bad ZA is (“white genocide”…). Would love to hear from real folk there if it’s all hogwash or if there is some grain of truth

Unfortunately we are living in times where even the most sane countries are getting to the point where completely reasonable things may be seen as illegal, or used against you, in the future.

It’s not unreasonable to imagine that insurance companies/banks may soon (if not already) buy your internet traffic to get a profile of you. If that profile matches some risk factors, higher interest rates or premiums could be a thing.

Even the UK has started flexing authoritarian lately with the Palestine action proscription and suppression of protest. There is certainly a trend in modern politics to try to track people online, and they are starting with pornography to normalise it, using CSAM as an excuse to enact more extreme legislation.

Immigration and border authorities are also beginning to expand digital backgrounds for travellers or immigrants.

It’s not necessarily about what is illegal today, in your current location, but it’s about what might be considered illegal or “bad” in the future and weaponised against you.

Don’t assume that your current situation will always be the case. The right to privacy is not for people to do illegal things, the right to privacy is to protect you against authoritarian governments if/when they may intersect with your life.

Yeah i was also a bit shook 😅😅😅 but if you think about a device with Bluetooth, a decent chip for processing (they all will aim for high bitrates), touch screen, good quality DAC, youd maybe expect 200 ish.

Then when you factor in that these will be very low volume runs since not many people buy them, it makes a bit of sense.

However, I’m sure there are some decent more cut down options out there that they could have found.

https://www.whathifi.com/best-buys/portable/best-portable-music-players#section-best-budget-portable-music-player

The audiophile community keeps them kicking around! Whathifi usually have good reviews and recs. Let me find a link

For the record. Fuck olympiakos.

Very hard to see, but if he has in fact clipped his heel then it is a penalty. It’s very unfortunate and harsh, but I think when you are both holding his shirt and then also clip the heel it’s a pen.

If it’s just for the shoulder to shoulder/upper body contact and tiny shirt hold (that was released almost immediately) then it’s not.

Pain

So fucking vile I don’t have words. Any officer that listened to that recording and misrepresented it should just be executed.

Abuse of law enforcement should honestly be one of the only crimes that carries the death penalty.

https://european-alternatives.eu/

In general this is a great resource for finding alternatives, obviously with a European bias. But many are FOSS as well

I’ve been absolutely loving the new EUV soundtrack. They absolutely did justice to EUIV (also incredible soundtracks)

Rapist gets along with rapist

Imaglr is a relatively new one, part of the still attempting to migrate from the original Tumblr Exodus 😂

Interesting to see down vote swarms on a pretty simple and straightforward article from a reasonably respectable source (not unbiased, but certainly generally journalistically integral). I wonder why that might be 🤔🤔🤔

Approximately the duration of her PMship

Everton better fucking win this like.

In central Europe:

Alza is a great alternative for a reasonably wide range of products. Started as electronics and computer hardware so that’s the majority, but have hugely expanded over the years.

Nothing is marketplace so it’s all handled by them afaik. (Which is a huge plus imo). Which means they don’t have quite the insane variety.

I know them from when I was in CZ, but now they have expanded to Germany I use them here. I think they also do Austria and Slovakia.

Generally speaking, I strongly disagree with the idea of complete one stop shops. But for sort of generic household/adjacent consumer goods it’s fine.