As the Stroop effect shows, automatic reading can even stop you from doing the thing you're trying to do (say the colour of the letters, in this case), and you have no way to turn it off! It was even proposed as a way to find Soviet spies by proving if someone could read Russian. The prison of literacy could have put you into a literal prison!

We've already got a Lower Canada.

Bedbugs tend to make lines of bites.

I'm no longer sure what point you're trying to make, but I don't think I'm disagreeing with you. As MrEff described, and as you quoted, an underprivileged person might choose to hold the bag even if they have all the information because it's the best chance they could get. And as I quoted, an underprivileged person might not have all the information. Both of these things can be true, and both show ways that whole classes of people can be mistreated.

From the linked Wikipedia article:

women executives are likelier than men to accept glass cliff positions because they do not have access to the high-quality information and support that would ordinarily warn executives away.

Sounds like it has similar goals to bcache (not bcachefs) and LVM caching, except that it operates in userspace instead of at the kernel level. Can you explain what the benefits are of keeping this out of the kernel?

What an odd thing to do. Does the gang genuinely think they can intimidate the Abbotsford police department? Did they consider that this would make police put more resources toward stopping them? Could they think themselves very clever and be using this to direct police resources away from other activities that they care about more?

I can't see what the gang had to gain by sending this letter. It's foolish to assume your enemies are foolish, but on the other hand, criminals are not known for their intelligence.

Okay, I didn't know those were things you were concerned about :).

On the lack of self-hosting and federation, I don't like it either, but it is a deliberate choice to allow faster evolution. That post, from ten years ago, contends that federated protocols ossify too easily, while centralized can grow and adapt (relevant quote: "So while it’s nice that I’m able to host my own email, that’s also the reason why my email isn’t end-to-end encrypted, and probably never will be"). This does give me concern that Signal will not last in the long-term, but for secure communication right now, it's hard to beat.

As for US hosting, that's another thing I don't like, but they are structured to mitigate that issue. Their protocol, which has been independently audited several times, ensures neither the Signal Foundation nor any intermediaries can see user activity. They have been subpoenaed before, and have only been able to provide the date a phone number was first registered, nothing more. And since the Signal Foundation is a non-profit, they have no incentive to enshittify to turn profitable. So even under US government threat, they can't see what you're doing and have no ability nor reason to change that.

Anyway, that's why I settled on using Signal, despite its imperfections. You may be happier with Matrix; I stayed away from that because it's more work and less secure (as I understand, group chats only have message content encrypted, with metadata like users and message times being unencrypted), but its federated nature may let it outlast Signal. And there are many Matrix clients in F-Droid that don't require Google Play Services.

Or more precisely, Signal will only use fallback notification services if Google Play Services is unavailable at the time Signal is installed.

I just wanted to clarify that it's not necessary to install Signal once with Play Services and again without. I've never had Play Services on any of my phones, but was able to start using Signal without issue.

Signal does not need Google Play Services to send notifications. I'm saying this from experience, as I use it without Play Services installed, and still get message notifications. I believe Signal will use Google's push notifications if Play Services is available, but has a fallback approach if it's not.

My kid learned about Stardew Valley from a friend, so we've been into that. The split screen co-op has turned it into a great family activity.

Another fun fact: official German spelling later changed "thal" to "tal" (both pronounced as a hard "t"), so now the valley is Neandertal, not "Neanderthal"