Late teens, maybe early 20s.

How close am I?

We still kind of owe you for everything you guys did in the revolutionary war.

Tell you what: when the time comes to fight the fascists again we’ll send your resistance movement munitions if you send us dope “uniforms” for ours.

Various other things like leaves, rags, sponges, or leftover paper. Failing that a bare hand works: manners dictating you wash it after.

Some cultural hangups on the left hand being “unclean” stem from those cultures using that hand for hygienic reasons.

“I don’t have anything to hide because I think I’ve done something wrong: I have something to hide because question your judgement and motives.”

They’re fine giving you their info because they trust you. The problem is when the person seeking that information is untrustworthy – and some shithead(s) making their way into a company or government isn’t just possible, it’s likely.

Tell them to give all their sensitive personal information to someone that hates them. Credit card numbers, political beliefs, nudes, sexual preferences/fetishes, etc.

Bigots aside, I’m convinced most people are 100% fine with queer and gender non-conforming characters so long as they’re well written.

People like characters that act like actual people – not pandering, one dimensional, rainbow capitalistic tokens.

I’m a 7 minute drive from downtown and my options are satellite, cellular, or fixed wireless. Everyone around me has gigabit ethernet, but due to costs involved in running fiber and the fact my little community is mostly old folks (and thus likely not going to buy in) ISPs don’t want to “invest” in us.

“My pronouns might be they/them, but yours are about to be were/was.”

This message brought to you by Lockheed Martin: proudly supporting LGBTQ+ drone pilots worldwide.

Oh, is it because decades of incompetence and corruption weakened their already crumbling military? Their lack of a strong economy to support the war effort? Is it because they’re relying on Soviet leftovers instead of modern equipment? The fact their enemy is a motivated, supplied with actually decent munitions by modern/rich countries, and has a competent chain of command?

What do I win?

They’re not insane: everything they’ve done are things they sincerely thought they could get away with, and up until Ukraine Putin has been correct in that regard.

Pretending to be crazy is an effective strategy: ironically Nixon popularized it during the cold war.

Attacking targets in NATO countries (even if “justified”) is going to drastically increase the odds NATO gets directly involved in Ukraine – something Putin absolutely doesn’t want.

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Huh, they actually do:

And Matt Monson — who moved from the Dragon project to SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink — posted that Starlink uses a lot of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and that they too have a lot of experience with Linux. “For some level of scope on Starlink, each launch of 60 satellites contains more than 4,000 Linux computers. The constellation has more than 30,000 Linux nodes (and more than 6,000 microcontrollers) in space right now.

https://thenewstack.io/the-hardware-and-software-used-in-space/

He’s not a tankie: “tankie” only really applies to people that call themselves communists. The insult “tankie” was invented by communists calling out the hypocrisy of some of their self-proclaimed “fellow communists”.

Calling someone a tankie is saying “You’re a piece of shit not only because you support these atrocities, but you dare call yourself a communist while doing so.”

Communism: an economic theory where the stated goal is achieving socio-economic equality.

Social conservationism: a social theory based on returning to regressive “traditional values” and oppression of “deviants”.

Totally the same thing.

I don’t allow lunix in my house because it an illegal hacker operation system. I can’t believe an American hero like Elon would endorse something invented by the notorious Soviet computer hacker Linyos Torovoltos.

Appear strong where you are weak.

The value isn’t it’s (likely crap) utility, it’s being able to say “Look at us: we’re launching spy satellites just like technologically advanced countries! We’re advancing our offensive capabilities! You’d better take us seriously!”

One: you can be sued for anything regardless of if it’s true or not. Someone could find some sleazebag lawyer and sue you for drowning hundreds of puppies while laughing about it – does that make you a puppy killer?

Two: We have presidents that we know directly ordered genocides of native people … yet weren’t sued for it.

Yeah … good luck with that considering how entrenched AT&T is is.

For example after 9/11 it was decided the country needed an interoperable public safety broadband network: The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).

I’ll give you one guess as to which carrier got the contract to build and operate it.

You’re not wrong. Most “leftists” in stable, comfortable countries are notoriously useless at effecting actual change. You can get them to show up to a “feel good” protest, you can get them to sign petitions – but that’s about it. Between the infighting, disorganization, defeatism, complete lack of pragmatism, and just plain laziness they’re about as ineffective as can be.

It’s frustrating as fuck, especially if you’re that sort that’s willing to put in actual work for the cause.

They almost certainly have in house legal teams and those lawyers are salaried.