I've seen that, and thought a fair bit about it. Thing is, there has to be balance. I could have kept running from one service to the next, seeking one that perfectly aligned with my values, but that's a lot of expense, both in time and finances. I wanted to pick one that met the majority of my needs, and let me sleep at night. I'm not one to make a knee-jerk decision based purely on emotion.

I decided to go with a high quality provider, and reviewed their responses to this individual's donations. I like how they dealt with the matter, and remained impartial, despite the fact that VPNs are very political, in general.

Is it the right decision? Not sure. Does it fit my threat model? It fits like a thrift store jacket that just happens to be the right size.

I'll second this. Here's my setup:

• E-mail - Fastmail
• Contacts - Fastmail
• Calendar - Selfhosted Radicale w/ custom notifications
• Storage - Home server with sftp access
• Document editing - Libreoffice
• VPN - Mullvad (general), OpenVPN (local network access)
• Mobile - GrapheneOS
• Browser - Firefox vanilla w/ uBlock Origin

My contacts and calendar are accessed via CalDav, with all calendars showing/editable on Fastmail.

Nice, slick, and Google-free.

From my ex-father-in-law

Trust not what the snake will do, but what it can do.

This comes to mind while driving

A bad driver never misses their turn

Finally, my daily motivator (on my lock screen)

This too shall pass

100% agree. It's easy to catch something and spread it unknowingly when you're lying to everyone around you. Being open (even in communication alone) dispels the stigma, and maintains everyone's decision making autonomy.

"If only they had a conversation..."

Giovanni Giorgio Moroder also made "music for kids" ("The Neverending Story" in 1984. Highly recommended).

There's also "music for adults, dogs, and I believe music for plants.

That being said, I'm glad you have the opinion that One Direction (Fool's Gold, 👌) is "music for kids". Kindly keep in mind that those "kids" may have a broader appreciation of music than you may assume. Cindy lou who did end up with the hit "Make Me Wanna Die", after all...

Direct link to the database mentioned in the article

https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/

Do it!

I'm all for any person practising whatever relationship style they want. What im against is using people to fulfill your needs/wants. Have fun, meet people, enjoy experiences, but please dont make people your experiments. You may enjoy "the chase", but the long term effects on those individuals may have further impacts.

I won't fully agree with all the other comments that OP is not a nice person for doing this. We all have our motivations, methods, and reasoning. That being said, considering the fact that other humans have feelings and desires helps to mitigate that main character syndrome.

I find it interesting that a majority of the top comments assume the image is referring to a female coworker. The gender neutrality of it leaves much room for interpretation. I haven't seen the latest Lemmy demographic stats, but this doesn't exactly paint a balanced perspective.

Why is there an outline of a chicken cutlet on Saturn?

Interesting. I had read something similar. Thing is, unless you host your own or give up conveniences, email will always be a means of surveillance. I try to do everything I can to keep my digital footprint small, but I also value my time. Going down a rabbit hole and hosting my own service, or never being satisfied with an email provider seemed like a waste of my time. I'll do the best I can, and focus on what I can control.

I've been using Fastmail for a while now, and I like it. Clean interface, good apps, and lots of support for CALDAV (including tasks!). Frankly a much better interface than many other providers. I was also tired of using Thunderbird with my hosting provider's email.

I spent quite a while looking for a good email provider as well. Proton didn't work for similar reasons, and I didn't like having to use the bridge on Linux. I settled on Fastmail as it's cheap, and does what I need (email, calendar, tasks).

I wasn't excited that they have servers in the US (they're an Australian company), but I had to make a compromise to degoogle. "Perfection is the enemy of progress" is a common phrase for me.

I'm interested to see what other opinions come up though.