voting is absolutely worth the squeeze when you do it. however voting also is heavily dependent on a voting base that is both highly engaged in the process and is knowledgeable about the issues.

so when you have elections where:

1. a third or more of all eligible voters do not vote
2. laws have been passed to make it harder to vote for some people
3. a majority of the people who do vote have only paid attention to campaign issues for at the most the two weeks directly before the end of voting and
4. voters are not given the facts about each candidate by a press that is more interested in manufacturing a close race for pure financial gain rather than accuracy in telling the truth about the candidates

voting completely defeats the purpose. because the end result is not one based on actual facts, it’s an outcome manufactured by vested interests with near infinite resources given the petina of legitimacy by playing on the fact that people were freely given a choice. more times than not there’s enough people who are paying attention to overcome that deficit in the ability to message. but the times when it does not it goes really wrong.

voting

i used the android app “reddit is fun”. i had stopped using reddit well before the api and public offering drama so i had absolutely no idea it was going on. i needed to get an answer to a question and the google search led to a reddit link. typically i normally chose web links, but this time i said, what the hell, and opened the link with rif. then i read the changelog of the app. that pointed to a lemmy instance for rif (which does not have a lemmy version btw) and that’s where i caught up on all the bullshit i missed during the intervening 3 years.

ps i also have a .ml account. it was the easiest one to create an account with at the time. if i could transfer all the stats and comments i made with this account and transfer it to one that allowed swearing (for instance you can’t use the word that describes selling one’s self for money or other favors that sounds similar to a garden tool called a hoe) i’d do it.

latin, a little bit. it was a required 7th grade class. it’s been 25(!!!) years and I’m neither a lawyer or a catholic clergy so my retention of it is almost non existent. the things I do still hang on to are from my exposure to spanish and french at work where I can remember a few base words.

any images I upload are either already found online or if they are images I took scrubbed of location information in the metadata plus I don’t put my face online. my face is on my fb page and a few pictures have my face in them but as far as I’m aware there’s less than 10 pictures of my face online.

my 2011 toyota camry.

it’s also the best car I’ve ever owned, probably because it’s the only car I’ve ever owned.

EVERYONE out pizzas the hut.

pizza hut is bad chain pizza.

this has been my opinion since the early 90s and nothing during that time has changed my opinion.

meanwhile domino’s has gotten markedly better since 2000. if I’m traveling and don’t want to think about what to eat, I’m getting domino’s because I know they’re everywhere. them or papa johns depending on what deal is going on at the time.

there’s so much different I’d almost consider them related and not an adaptation.

would you like to know more?

just about every christian I know sees other sects and offshoots as a separate religion. it’s very sneech-like.

believe it or not, the original best audiobook torrent site demonoid is still around. the variety isn’t as varied as it used to be but it’s probably one of the best public aduiobook torrent sites around.

+10 on graphicaudio. I’ll admit I liked them a little better when they were adapting pulp novels but everything they do is high quality.

www.graphicaudio.net if you are in the us.

I would and for the most part have used private trackers for either a specific type of thing or a specific kinda obscure or not very popular title. I find that the more not well known a thing is, the more likely it’s going to be found and (re)seeded on a private tracker.

I was able to ask for an invite on a public forum, and I was able to use my demonoid (remember demonoid?) stats as proof back when they were semi private.

if you can show that you are a good and consistent uploader someone usually will sling an invite your way.

I’m not really a fan because in a lot of cases it forces you to download stuff you might not want just to establish and maintain an acceptable ratio so eventually you can get the stuff you do want.

if I wanted something obscure and not really interested in the popular thing I’m either wasting bandwidth and/or server space starting out or searching for that thing on a public tracker.

the one private tracker I do use is extremely generous with upload credits for newbies and I was able to take advantage of that plus contribute something right away so I didn’t and still don’t have any issues but I know that’s not the case with some people.

would you like to know more?

ho, hoe, ho

I called clarence thomas a removed. it got filtered.

not really because you would be breaking the law driving unlicensed even if you were driving the speed limit. so long as there’s no reason to pull you over the law isn’t being enforced.

driving the speed limit creates a driving hazard, so in that case safety trumps the law.

technically speaking yes. but what really matters is if the enforcement agency decides whether or not it’s worth it to charge and prosecute you.

if everyone got charged for breaking any law, there is an entire generation of people who would be locked up because they never paid for winzip.