Paid from the coffee kitty, I guess?

You're getting tired. When you ride your bicycle, it always goes uphill, even when in fact you're going downhill. And the older you grow, the steeper it gets.

it has greater abilities than we humans do.

... It has greater abilities than their subordinates do. Not themselves; they are the greatest in everything, of course.

My wife of > 40 years and I; the only issue is that we have to adjust the seat and mirrors of our car when swapping drivers. Apart from that it's smooth sailing.

Closed/private Communities akin to Discord or Whatsapp, where you could have family channels or work groups, classes and the like.

we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees

What does "no indication" mean if they record every keystroke? Did they screw up their snooping program as usual, or are they lying as usual?

If it was me, I would not run Lemmy/Piefed in your situation. These things are designed to be fully open and visible to anyone who want to look at them. Probably not your use case.

I'd rather look at something like a Matrix instance, where you can have encryption and secrecy built in. Also, you say that you're a noob in these things. If you want to hide from the government, you really do need someone very experienced to help you with security, or else it won't end well.

All the best!

I use AI to my advantage, as long as it's still at the "free until you're addicted" stage. I found that it's particularly good as a language teacher - learning new languages is one of my hobbies.

However, i am over 70 and will not fall into the "let AI tell me what to think and then think it" trap; i can see through it. This ability should be taught first at school, before the kids can use the useful side of the tool. But most teachers themselves are used to make the kids think what they want them to think, so I doubt that it will work.

What's the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.

Snooker.

He's just announcing the next wave of layoffs for the Christmas holidays.

When i was young, we called them leeches.