Translation help from Fascist English to US English:

• "activist" = a non-politician whose free speech we don't like
• "allow all voices to be heard" / "free speech" = extremist/unconstitutional/propaganda speech which serves the interests of the current fascist regime must be allowed, while every other speech will be labelled as being activist/communist/un-American/...
• "defend [...] all Americans" = at least the part of Americans which we tolerate or haven't jailed yet (subject to change)

How to Wagon your Dragon

In other words: Users of proprietary OS like Windows have so little control over their own devices that it's newsworthy when the vendor allows you to uninstall 2-3 bundled things out of many more. But only in some countries! It's pathetic.

An over-fixation on "manliness" and "heroism" in the military is also standard fascism playbook. Everyone's made up to be a hero for their country, no matter if true or not. This sort of propaganda-fueled glorification of soldiers and war maybe helps recruitment of future soldiers for whatever future war the fascists are going to start. That's probably the only upside.

Just throw it on the already existing mountain of evidence that he should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Yeah, but a sizeable increase is still very important. These days, Mastodon, Lemmy and so on have decently sized communities everywhere so that you don't feel like just talking to yourself and a couple of friends anymore. And that's kind of a tipping point.

"Mass migrations" happen slowly, anyway. A lot of people are very hesitant to leave big social hubs just because of the value there is in having so many people around. But in the end, you have to. We can't stay on these proprietary social networks forever. Social networks and communication channels in general need to be non-proprietary, decentralized and open, without the ability of companies manipulating what you see and don't see. And without risk of losing everything when the one big company falls. It's a fundamental problem of all proprietary social networks.

• GUI: Thunderbird
• TUI: neomutt
• Android: K-9 (soon to be Thunderbird)

Just for reference, this is what the Google Play services app transmits roughly every 20 minutes to Google if it has network access:

Phone #
SIM #
IMEI (world-wide unique device ID)
S/N of your device
WIFI MAC address
Android ID
Mail Address of your logged in Google account
IP address

And that is when you have disabled ALL telemetry in ALL of the options, even the most hidden ones. So this is the minimum amount this app is always gathering from every Android user using the Google Play services app, no matter what you selected. Other Google apps (like the Play store app) could then contain additional telemetry on top, this is just the common base of all Google proprietary apps. Or the minimum amount of privacy violations you get when using proprietary Google apps on your phone, no matter what.

If you use GrapheneOS, I'd recommend not installing/using ANY Google apps at all (not even Play store or Play services). To get apps, you should use (roughly in this order of priority): 1.) GrapheneOS's app store for the built-in apps 2.) Accrescent app store (has several good open source apps, is intended to be more secure than F-Droid) 3.) Obtainium (for getting open source apps directly from their source repos) or if you really can't get into Obtainium, use F-Droid instead 4.) Aurora Store (for getting apps from the Google Play store without sending too much data to Google. Only do this if there is no open source app available for doing the same thing).

To fully mitigate the removal of the Play services app, you also should probably install/configure a UnifiedPush client like ntfy to get battery efficient push notifications and ideally use apps which also make use of that, e.g. the Molly fork instead of Signal. It's quite easy to do, just something to be aware of. Then you're also independent from Google's push notification infrastructure (which is called "Firebase Cloud Messaging" (FCM)). But you need a UnifiedPush server to go along with it, either self-hosted or use a public one. There are some privacy friendly ones public ones out there. If you don't use Google's FCM and also no alternative like UnifiedPush, then app notifications will most of the time still work but will put an additional strain on your battery.

Well it should be, because anyone who votes for Trump is voting to regress the country into an eventually authoritarian, fascist regime. It shouldn't be a close race. It should be the majority voting to prevent that.

Basically yes. The alternatives passively become better simply because of the mainstream option becoming worse over time. I think it's still going too slowly in general but I'm not complaining, better slow than not at all.

The main source of this recent trending fascism, anti-scientific thinking and so on is social media or the web in general. To resist or refute the mass of false information and find out what's likely true and what's not, requires education, literacy, media competency, things like that. I guess current generations are lacking this so they fall easy prey to "funny" fascist memes, fakes and rhetoric, then vote for rightwing extremists, destabilizing their own country as a result, not realizing that this leads to big disadvantages for everyone including themselves. We failed to protect these younger generations from misinformation, and now they are turning the world into what they are misled to believe is true.

We used to have relatively high living standards in the Western democracies. This will soon all crumble and we (most people who aren't rich) will suffer from it, regardless of who you voted for. And on top of that, climate change will finish us all off, because battling that isn't even on the radar for those fascists because they don't even believe in it. So instead of doing too little, we'll do literally zero and even accelerate the problem, meaning it'll affect us all much sooner already and with higher intensity.

So enjoy your still existing relatively privileged life while it still lasts. It's ging to get much, MUCH worse before it's going to be better again. Buckle up and prepare yourselves.

Yes. Unfortunately, these systems are also a great gift for any upcoming fascist regime (like the Trump junta currently) which will not only happily continue using the existing infrastructure but also extend it like mad.

Maybe humanity's greatest weaknesses overall: the lack of foresight and the lack of wisdom learned from historic precedents (e.g. Nazi Germany? Forgotten by now). Everything's always about short-term goals, ignoring any long-term disadvantages. See also: climate disaster.

Use Aegis.

The MS Authenticator contains analytics & telemetry & way too many permissions and should not be used: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.azure.authenticator/latest/ (it looks more like a scam than legitimate, but that's exactly what Microslop is in 2026...)

For comparison, Aegis is a legitimate app that only does what it should do: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.beemdevelopment.aegis/latest/#permissions

Any other authenticator also works with any MS service so there's no reason at all to use the MS Authenticator unless you like handing over more data to MS for no reason. EDIT: According to comments, your company might have the option to enforce usage of MS Authenticator only. But this doesn't seem to be the default, at least in Germany where I've heard from 2 sources that they can use any authenticator app for M365 for example.

By the way, Graphene OS is NOT rooted, but what does truth or sane app behavior even mean anymore for Microslop in 2026... Just stop using that garbage.

Probably because Google is actively and frequently banning many Piped or Invidious hosts, and is generally currently at war with "alternative frontends" to YouTube in an effort to make users browse YouTube directly and consume ads there, or buy YouTube Premium. This is in line with their current fight for more ad revenues across their products and services. You probably have to either search for another public instance which isn't banned (yet) from accessing YouTube, or host your own instance.

German here. These are some cultural and day-to-day differences compared to the US:

• Sundays are officially a day of rest and so most shops and businesses are closed that day, with several exceptions like high priority stuff, restaurants, tourism/event-related stuff and so on. But you can't go to a regular supermarket or expect a package delivery on a Sunday. Although some sundays are also different, it's like an "event" where regular shops open sometimes. But that's rare.
• Cash is still very widely used (and you also should generally use it even if it's less convenient because it's probably the most privacy-preserving payment option), but other payment options are also available almost everywhere
• There are tiny fees of around 1 € you probably need to pay when e.g. going to a public toilet or using a shopping cart (but for the cart, you get it back when returning the cart). You also need to pay extra for bags, or bring your own.
• Tip culture is very different, Germans usually pay very small tips compared to the US and no one expects you to, but in restaurants it's common to tip something like 2 € for a bill of 25 € for example. Or you simply round up the number to avoid the hassle of small coins.
• Prices always include taxes already
• Water isn't free and usually you can't order tap water, although tap water is drinkable generally
• You can drink alcohol with fully visible labels/bottles in public
• For bottles and cans, there's a "Pfand" which is like an extra deposit. So a bottle of water usually costs slightly more, but when it's empty you can return it to get the extra deposit value back. It's to encourage recycling.
• Germans are more reserved in public and might do less small talk, and are usually more direct, but that doesn't mean they're unfriendly. This also applies to customer service! Personally I like this more than obviously fake and exaggerated politeness.
• You should be more quiet in or near residential areas between like 10pm and 7am
• Punctuality is highly valued, this is actually not exaggerated or a myth. Public transport might not wait for you if you're 1-2min late. People will assume that something's wrong when you're a couple of minutes late to an appointment. Although there is one well-known exception: trains aren't always punctual or reliable. But other public transport usually is.
• Highways have no speed limits in parts but you still probably shouldn't drive much faster than 130 km/h. Pass other cars only on the left lanes, never on the right lanes. Also don't drive on bike lanes.
• Basically all streets or public spaces are safe to walk around. Also children don't need supervision.
• Most Germans have very good English skills, except maybe very old generations

Just remember that correlation is not causation. Yes, such things distract from the Epstein case and that's a welcome effect for the US dictator. But he's not thinking "hmm I really would like to have a distraction from that so that's why I'll just commit another war crime or atrocity so they'll all be distracted". He commits new atrocities anyway, and it just so happens that new atrocities automatically distract from older ones. He is causing way more problems than we are capable of mentally tracking.

It's important though to not fall into the trap of creating false balance, i.e. giving the same weight to a false or harmful statement than to a truthful or good statement, in the name of "fairness" or "objectivity". Also, conservatives tend to shift to the right currently.

All MS needs to do is cook their frogs (users) slowly, over years, and MS will be just fine and can add whatever they want. As long as they do it slowly, incrementally. Postponing Recall after the first public backlash was also smart, because the audience tends to forget over time and now it's psychologically not such a big deal anymore already.

I'm sure users will find some convenient excuse this time as well, maybe "yeah sure it's spyware but at least I can turn it off until the next update", not realizing that Windows in the past had no spyware included at all and that the amount of spyware that you need to turn off and also ensure it's off after each update has grown significantly over the years. In fact I'd even guess that without 3rd party anti-spyware-tools or well-configured group policies it's impossible for the common Windows user to find and plug all the holes which leak data. And even then, future updates might introduce new data leaks or re-open old holes.

As long as this situation doesn't change, as long as there's no really simple way to turn off everything from one convenient place, this company is just screwing you around. Remember that Microsoft is, at least since Nadella is CEO, not in the "we sell you a decent OS and that's it" business anymore. They're in the data business. They're in the "we sell or gift you a somewhat usable OS with minimum maintenance from our side and in return we get more and more data from you. Also please use our online services so that we get even more data" business. And now they're also in the AI business, which means they want not just more data from you but they want to feed their bots literally everything you're doing, and that is only possible by having constant screen sharing with Microsoft active.

The biggest problem of all this is that if you want to have a secure or private communication with a Windows user, you'd first need to check whether they don't have this stuff running in the background, because this gets data from all sorts of applications, including any open chat windows, and it also gets input from your microphone. It's like every Windows user will have a Microsoft camera behind them pointed at the screen at all times and one has to hope that this camera isn't actually on. If it is on at any point, it will undermine the security and privacy of any applications the user has open, because it can see and hear everything in clear text/voice. Or in other words: it's becoming increasingly more difficult to ensure that you can still have a private chat (voice or text) with a Windows user...

• No good operating system preinstalled by default
• No headphone jack anymore

Already did. Purged all my Reddit bookmarks and account.

Generally: You have to be the change you want to see in the world. If you want to change others, change yourself first. I don't think the mindset "I need to reach that big number of people over there so I'll just be over there as well to teach them" works, or leads to the goal you want. Even though it seems reasonable at first glance. This mindset just leads to you giving the other people AND yourself more reason to never leave from there. Which is contrary to what you want. If you want others to switch to better alternatives, move yourself first, help grow the alternatives, and they will sooner or later also become interested in joining. Things like the latest Reddit and Twitter fiascos also show that no huge proprietary social media platform rules forever. The time to change to better alternatives has never been better than now.