That’s quite remarkable considering the kind of crowd usually found at tennis matches.

So you think I’m a Curiosity Stream shill and my comment is an elaborate way to plug their name here do you? 🙂

I dump on NordVPN because I think they’re shite and I praise Curiosity Stream because I think they’re not. It goes both ways: not everything positive is suspicious - although I understand where your cynicism is coming from, in this age of falseness, con artistry, psyops and manufacturing of consent on a grand scale.

Yeah you’re right. I forgot about those. That’s cool.

But there aren’t many Youtubers who do that.

Sponsorblock doesn’t catch sponsored segments, viewers do that.

I’m aware of that. It was just a turn of phrase.

I will say this about regular sponsorship - and if you’re a company bribing Youtubers to shill your shit, take heed:

Whenever a Youtuber interrupts their content to sell me garbage I don’t want (and SponsorBlock doesn’t catch it), I take note of the company and it goes in the very long shit-list of companies I try to avoid patronizing.

The more Youtubers that company bribes, the higher it rises in my shit-list.

The more the Youtuber tries to seamlessly weave the plug into their narrative, to sneakily make me watch it by not realizing they’ve switched to the plug, the higher the company they shill for rises in my shit-list - and this one annoys me no end, so the companies that pay Youtubers to make clever seamless transitions to the plugs go very quickly to the top. If you’re going to waste my time with your fucking shill job, at least be honest about it.

When a company is on my shit-list, I will go the extra mile and then some to never buy anything from it, even if it sells the best and only product I really want. Fortunately, they rarely do: it’s always shit.

Examples of companies at the very top of my shit-list:

NordVPN (or any VPN supplier I hear about on Youtube really)
BetterHelp
Brilliant
…

They can all fuck right off.

I do make an exception for those Youtubers who shill for quality content platforms that are alternatives to Youtube, for documentary and science videos and such, like Curiosity Stream. Not because I like the shilling, but because they advertise a service that competes with Google and that always gets my vote.

I believe that’s what Louis Rossmann does on a regular basis on his channel.

Wow… That’s awesome. J.R.R. would be proud.

“‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning,’” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

And somehow this shit doesn’t get him impeached…

Can you imagine if even this fascist-adjacent turd Dubya had said this? He would have had his ass dragged out of the White House in a New York minute. But somehow this is now acceptable for a sitting President to say. And all the other things…

Hey no sweat 🙂 I just happen to be old enough to have known / read about / heard about RMS for decades. Given enough time, if you’re at all interested in the free software movement, his less-than-savory traits naturally end up coming to your attention.

Thanks. Sorry I should have linked to it. I kind of assumed it was common knowledge.

Could we perhaps not drag RMS out of whatever dark place we’re blessed not to hear about him from now?

We have enough pedo shit going on with the POTUS at the moment.

Also, LibreOffice saves in .docx format, if you want to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic.

You know, as a younger man priding myself in having a fair and balanced political opinion based on facts and logic, I used to think that if people can strike it rich, it’s okay as long as they don’t ruin the lives of others doing so.

Not anymore. As I aged, I realized the motherfuckers were either born rich, or became rich on the backs of others - and more often than not, both.

I still have nothing against honest rich men. But what that means is, close to retirement in 2025, I increasingly want all rich men dead.

Because the truth is, in our society, there is no honest rich man. If you’re rich today, somebody else is struggling in life so you can have it good. That’s just how it is today.

The backdoors have been there for years without dinners.

Yes of course. Corruption and sucking up to the powers that be is nothing new.

What’s new - at least in the United States - is the willingness of those ultra-rich sycophants to perform the Dear Leader song-and-dance publicly without any shame. It’s really quite nauseating to watch.

Trump cozies up to Big Tech specifically because their corporate surveillance network can be co-opted to turbocharge the fascist dictatorship he’s putting in place, and also because he needs their resources for his crypto scams.

That doesn’t mean it’s not sickening.

Also, fucking Bill Gates isn’t running a company. He’s just there because he likes being around disgusting psychopathic billionaires. They’re his kind, he’s among peers.

“The bar was so low it was practically a tripping hazard in Hell, yet here’s Trump, limbo dancing with the devil.”

I don’t know where I read that one but I liked it.

Well yeah, but if your argument is that the DoD needed a name that better describes its role, Trump should have renamed it the Department of Pork.

Because that’s mostly what it does: feed the military-industrial complex.

I don’t much like Trump, but for once he’s right: the US Department of Defense is mostly doing war in the world, and very little defense. When was the last time the US armed forces defended the country?

Trump is such an unfunny bore… What a missed opportunity to rename it the Hexagon and troll the hell out of everybody.

I watched the trailer to make sure it wasn’t just the text summary that described an awful cliche-filled unfunny movie, and it didn’t disappoint.