Oathbreaker’s Rheia is one of the most moving records I’ve ever heard, truly a masterpiece with no wasted moments, missteps, just basically flawless in my opinion. On the other side Deafheaven just hasn’t worked for me at all. Taste’s so fickle lol.

I’ll check out the third tho!

TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up

…so far :)

And the crazy part is I know of teens who say “I wish I could use my phone less”, and these aren’t even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit’s creek with the addiction too that they don’t even think to get involved.

This record, a few by Neurosis, and one or two by Cult of Luna were such a vibe. We knew some knuckleheads who even started a joke ish band called Cult of Neurisis lol

Buddy, “Appalachian atmospheric black metal” is a weird combination of words I’ve never seen before and I’m stoked to give it a whirl. Praise Satan for keeping metal interesting.

Lol yeah, name became a wee bit unfortunate thanks to those angry rascals

Oh snap thanks for pointing this out! Been a long time and I haven’t kept up with ISIS, but their Panopticon was damn near genre-defining for me at the time.

Heard anything about Mullvad’s browser? You seem knowledgeable about the topic. I use their VPN already, still using Firefox for my browser though. I’m further behind the curve than you are, lol.

What are you using for your browser now?

Thanks for sharing this, hope ya continue 🤙

I think we’re on the same page :)

I’m mostly describing an idea where the contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted, and then legislation comes in to require it.

My country can’t even get some basic stuff done, though, so realistically I may as well be writing fan-fic, lol

I’m gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I’m bummed by the downvotes.

I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad “types”. And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that’s, frankly, smart and “aware” enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain’t cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

But there’s another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they’ll be rewarded! And hey, isn’t the fact that they’ve been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they’re doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I’ll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I’m on the way up, finally.

And then that person says “YEESH managing this store is really hard, I’ve gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn’t seem to think this should be a struggle…”

Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.

Oof, well, point taken and sorry for your loss lol. I hear where you’re coming from. And I’m sure we’d get a worst of both worlds situation here in the US where we spent a ton of time and money developing whatever standards and definitions, and then we make it an optional guideline like you’re saying and it never goes anywhere.

Dunno. The fundamental problem is tech is always able to move faster and smarter than legislation.

That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.

But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.

Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.

FWIW you’ve been level-headed throughout the thread and it does seem like a valid note to me. It’s not like, damning, as you’ve pointed out yourself, it doesn’t magically invalidate his work. But it does seem odd to me and I’m glad you pointed it out, and the response you’ve been getting seems weird and disproportionate.

That hasn’t been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don’t (can’t) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.

Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn’t my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.

Aww c’mon, I was gonna deliver this in a much more conspiratorial tone!

Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

Definitely not wrong! Especially once you’ve dialed in your routine of anti-malware utilities to run on pretty much everything. It’s like an antibiotic cocktail, lol. Or did you prefer the “back up and nuke on sight” approach?

Yep, I did similar around the time. Can’t blame people for being mad that the thing they bought is damn near unusable (and was destined to be, but they didn’t understand that part). If someone buys a new bike, even if it’s cheap, it shouldn’t roll like you’re on gravel after a couple weeks and become impossible to pedal within months. But damn, there were a lot of horrible machines sold in those days.

And then of course, the least fun part of that era, the guys who would bring their machines back weekly despite very stern warnings to stop visiting “those sites”.