Maybe I should stop eating my tub of salty, buttered, popped-in-bacon-grease popcorn.

I'll save it for a once-a-year Christmas Eve treat.

Dr. Berry, obviously popcorn (literally home grown and stove popped) is not on the list of good things.

BUT, I wondered if adding plenty of real melted butter on it makes it less bad. Does the fat in the butter reduce the glycemic index of the popcorn?

You would think they would never have a dirty thought for the rest of their lives -- considering all the brain washing they've been through.

I also use Syncthing for my Logseq, as I did with Obsidian.

I've used many of them. Then I was very intrigued by Obsidian. But after that, I've found the best one for MY purposes -- and that's Logseq.

Logseq is very much like Obsidian, but I like that it is fully open source. I also especially like outline structure of the notes, to go along with the default journal entry dates. It serves me well for what I need it to do (including taking notes on podcasts and sermons, recording ideas, and outlining my thoughts for writing blog posts).

I feel your pain, man. I think all privacy nuts go through this.

Fortunately, I have my wife and brother on XMPP, and my mom on Signal. And about three friends on Signal. That's it. Most ignore my suggestions and requests to use something else.

It's frustrating when there is a choice, and people deliberately choose non-privacy. That's so weird -- but they think I'm the weird one.

I don't see why they can't just SMS text everyone else, but still also have Signal or the like available. Who doesn't have more apps than they absolutely need? My phone (and computer) has Signal, SimpleX, Session, XMPP, and Element (Matrix). It's not a problem, so why can't someone else have one extra app?

My wife really doesn't care. She texts and posts on Facebook, but she accommodates my wishes when communicating with me while I'm away at work. (Besides, you can't beat XMPP for lightweight speed. That's helpful in my case because I get very poor data reception where I work.)

Maybe other people think using tools that feature privacy is a way to be "sneaky," or something only bad-guy creepos would use. And I've heard many say "I have nothing to hide" or "I'm afraid my conversation aren't that interesting to anyone else."

Yet none of them let me have the passwords for their phone, computer, or email account! Go figure.

Would you welcome any police officer or government official to come into your home anytime, unannounced, to see the receipts of things you’ve purchased? Maybe to search through your old shoebox of letters and pictures you received from your wife or your parents? Or perhaps to go through your calendar, your to-do lists, or communications to and from your church or political party?

If not, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE?

But if you do value that kind of #privacy, why do you not…

* use encrypted messengers, like Signal, SimpleX, Session, or XMPP-based messengers?

* ditch Gmail and replace it with an encrypted email provider (if you must use email), such as the easy-to-use Protonmail?

* store your digital photos on local drives, or on encrypted cloud services like Proton Drive, PCloud, or other cloud solutions like using Cryptomator?

* ditch popular social media like Facebook, and replace it (if you must) with privacy respecting social media, such as Mastodon, Nostr, Bastyon, or even Gab, Bluesky, or MeWe?

* stop using Office 365 and use the free LibreOffice suite?

* get rid of Instagram and share pics on Pixelfed?

* try using free and open-source Linux on the desktop instead of the ad-infested spyware called Microsoft Windows?

There are so many better choices you can make for your digital activities.

Start taking baby steps toward discovering freedom. Small changes are painless, and you’ll never miss out or look back.

The very best things you can do is go have fun with your friends in person, and go read a book.

Touch some grass and pray.

I was sure this was a fake account -- but I just now saw your post on Twitter/X.

So glad you're here. Welcome!

I miss listening to Rush Limbaugh.

I read a blog post in which the atheist writer said, "Basically I think after you die, nothing else happens. You do just turn into dust."

That leads me to ask, How can thoughts turn into dust? What about your love, your intelligence, your reason, your will? Our spiritual realities can't become physical dust. If they didn't come from dust, they can't return to dust.

I want to like Nostr best, but so far I've found the best discussions on Mastodon.

Many Nostr folks have a one-track mind, talking only about Bitcoin and Nostr itself.

Oooh, yes. I hadn't considered that.

How does Bastyon compare to Nostr?

I think I would be OK if only male heads of households were able to vote.

Interesting. I'll look into it when I get home from work.

Thank you for the tip!

I'm happy with Debian Linux and the Gnome desktop.

It just works. Stable and simple.

I can't imagine using Windows regularly at home. The thought makes me shudder.

ENCRYPTED MESSENGERS AND THE EAR SHOOTER

A U.S. government task force member said of Trump's ear shooter,

"Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health care aide need encrypted [messaging accounts] not even based in the United States, but based abroad, where most terrorist organizations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into? That’s a question I’ve had since day one."

I have the answer: By default, our private conversations should be private; we should not accept mass surveillance by our own government who admittedly wants to indiscriminately spy on us all.

More effective than tracking and recording the communications of all humanity is old-fashioned police work and security procedure.

In the ear shooter's case, the problem was not the use of certain chat apps, but the gross incompetency (if not worse) of the secret service.

It was no secret that a suspicious weirdo was scoping out the place ahead of time and then climbed on top of a roof carrying a rifle. That's all the information they needed, and they had plenty of time to respond had they chosen to.

Don't let government propaganda and fear tactics make you hand over basic rights.

They want us to hand over our conversations, our guns, and our religion. All these things get in the way of what they want, which is complete submission -- "emperor worship."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-shooter-multiple-encrypted-accounts-overseas-germany-rep-waltz

I've been out of the loop for awhile. I used to buy on LocalMonero.

What's the best way now for someone who has no other kind of crypto and doesn't want to do KYC?

I don't like how "encrypted accounts" (messengers) are getting a bad rap lately.

Big Brother snooping through personal digital communications is more suspicious to me than people simply using encrypted communication.

I see that most corporate marketing teams are behaving today so far online. In this economy, who can afford to pull a "Bud Light"?