I remember writing a comment about invasive advertising by Instagram. Just shared some anecdotes about how a few extremely specific conversation topics soon became the topic for the ads I was seeing on Instagram, and pointed out that if they were in fact using background conversation to target ads, it would be extremely easy to automate with the voice recognition technology available at the time, so why would they ignore the opportunity if targeted ads are their main source of revenue?

It became one of my most down voted comments at the time, and I had about twice as many replies as downvotes, claiming all kinds of wild or easily disproven shit to disprove the idea that Instagram used such tactics. Was very fishy

I can only imagine the feeling of having such a weight lifted off your shoulders and conscience. It must feel almost like a fresh start, because in a way it is. Or at least that’s how it sounds to me, being able to progress in a meaningful way without such major hindrances.

I’m glad to hear you got to see such a favourable outcome after such a long and turbulent period, and I’m genuinely happy for you and your church, that you get to make progress in making your community better for everyone. It sounds like you all have the best of things to look forward to already, but I wish you all the best anyway.

Good news has been a bit hard to come by lately, so it’s extraordinarily refreshing to hear some for a change. So cheers, and thanks again for sharing.

Wow. Yeah that sounds like a rough ride, I’m sorry you and so many others were dragged through the coals like that for so long. It sounds like things were at a point where a split like that was probably necessary unfortunately, maybe even entirely unavoidable from the sound of it.

Thanks for sharing your experience, and congratulations on a more unified (and moral) stance on these issues. I hope your church can finally and more easily move forward without the weight of the interference, pressure, and influence these fringe actors had been exercising in the past several years.

Good on you. It’s always refreshing to hear from Christian folks who have a strong enough moral compass to steer away from (let alone actively support direct opponents of) some of the more zealous or bigoted views which unfortunately seem to be growing stronger in the Christian community as of late.

I say this from the outside looking in, as I’ve never been associated with any church myself, so this viewpoint of mine may just be the result of an increasingly active vocal minority.

But I’m very curious to hear your experience as someone within the community; have you yourself seen growth in these types of zealous or bigoted views in the past several years within the Christian Community? Things like stronger, more vocal, or even unwavering support of anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ laws/practices?

Please tell me that’s not the real price for what is essentially a few small blades in a cup attached to an electric motor

I can practically guarantee that people who say they hate tea haven’t tried brewing any kind of loose leaf tea at the proper temp and time.

I got a 1kg brick of the cheapest loose-leaf black tea I could find for ~$3.50, and it’s delicious. I drink it almost every day, I bought it in June last year, and I’m just now running low. I brewed a bag lipton black tea at work recently, took one sip and I dumped it the fuck out. Absolutely foul, that stuff.

So I can see why people hate tea if they’ve only ever tried cheap bags with boiling water

God I miss Tidal. Their suggestions were so far above and beyond everything else I’ve tried, I just wish it was managed and maintained competently. Their Android and desktop apps are (were? It’s been a while) so chock-full of playback bugs and annoying little quirks, and their customer support is probably not even legally considered customer support at all, considering the fact that it seems to consist entirely of a single email bot that receives support tickets, waits 3 weeks, then closes that ticket.

I was particularly irritated with the fact that albums would become “unavailable” so incredibly often, while a new, identical version of the album was made available, for no apparent reason. Since these replacement albums weren’t automatically migrated into my library, I would have to remove and and re-add the albums individually in order to play them from my library, then update all my playlist containing any songs from that “disabled” version of the album by removing and re-adding each individual song. That shit got old, FAST.

I eventually had to swap to Spotify because of an absolutely baffling bug that acted like a virus and slowly “ate” my library (more info below if anyone’s curious), and Spotify’s music suggestions are just nothing short of horrendous.

My “discover weekly” last week for example was made up of approximately 60% songs either already in my library, or songs that I’ve listened to before and not liked much from artists in my library, plus 7 (!!) 20-30+ minute soundscapes, something I have NEVER listened to before, as well as 2 new Ariana Grande singles (sponsored? I’ve had to block her, those singles were popping up everywhere), and a few songs from totally out-there genres, including a country rap song which just so happens to be the one and only song I’ve ever actually disliked back before Spotify removed and re-introduced that feature, some background music from a random indie game’s soundtrack which was mostly just cave noises, a jazz-fusion album’s interlude, and something that I can only describe as bubblegum cyberpunk black glitch-metal dancecore. A positively psychotic selection of music.

Granted, that was the worst discover weekly I think I’ve ever had, but I still just wish that tidal worked for me, because I’ve never discovered more great music from any other platform’s suggestion algorithm, and nothing since has even come close.

About the weird bug if anyone’s curious:

The bug was pretty fucked up in that it behaved basically like a virus. At random points while listening, Tidal would fail to play a song at master quality, automatically downgrade playback by one level, then apply that inability to play master-quality permanently to each subsequent song I played in that session. These songs were now “infected”. Replaying these songs at a later date would further degrade the playback quality by an additional level, and also add a delay of ~20 seconds per playback quality level it had been downgraded to, as well as infecting any other songs I played after. When a song reached 96kbps (or 160? Whatever the lowest is, I forget) and could not degrade any more, it would either play at minimum quality after a ~60 second delay (which was unskippable because Tidal was unresponsive to playing a new song during the delay), or just fail to play entirely while loading infinitely, absolutely chugging my battery-life, and overheating my phone. I could only stop it by force-closing the app, which would crash my phone, every single time. There was about a 20% chance for one of these songs to fail playback, but if it did play, that chance to fail playback was now applied to each subsequent song played, no matter the song’s “infection level”. Though that at least didn’t seem to be permanently applied like the quality degradation, but I don’t know for sure.

The weirdest part is that the bug would persist, spread, and behave exactly the same way on an old phone that had never had tidal installed before, and also with the desktop app (though without the overheating, and it would throw and error message after some time if a song failed to play). So the bug seemed somehow account-bound?

I researched unsuccessfully for weeks looking for a fix, and I tried everything I could to fix it aside from making a new tidal account, because it was a lot of trouble to migrat. And support… Well, Tidal support apparently just doesn’t exist. I had sent 3 separate support tickets, all of which went unanswered, then marked as “resolved” and closed 2-3 weeks later. Only the 2nd ticket got an automated “thanks for your ticket, staff will help soon” response before being marked resolved and closed.

Eventually, so much of my library became infected (as well as a ton of random songs that would commonly end up playing after albums) that my ability to both listen to the music I loved and discover new music in the styles/genres I loved was crippled. Which obviously rendered the entire platform effectively useless. So after being repeatedly ignored by support with no explanation, and after several software updates that didn’t fix the problem while I was trying to contact support, or even just report the bug… I had to give up and switch to Spotify.

Lots of people still think that introverts hate social interactions, or feel better without any social interactions at all, but we do need to be social. Some people get dogs or cats and that helps them a lot. But lots of introverted people will tend to find some way to mask the loneliness by distracting themselves that requires a lot of attention, or occupying themselves with something that emulates social interaction. Playing a game while watching twitch streams of that game can fill both of those roles, listening to the streamer and reading chat periodically. That can work in a pinch, but it’s not a real solution. And I don’t have a real solution, aside from “find your balance”, but I know that’s not helpful.

I can suggest something that I found to be a more effective distraction, though. And it even could lead to the first steps to a solution to introvert loneliness if you’re lucky. You can try going to a local bar/pub on a slow day. It helps if you drink alcohol, but you really don’t have to. And of course if there’s a history of alcoholism in your family, you should definitely avoid the alcohol. Make sure to sit at the bar, because a lot of bartenders will start up conversation with lone patrons in their down-time, and the same goes for drunk people getting up to buy another drink, so you don’t have to initiate if you don’t want to. You can end up having a few interesting conversations in a night (or sometimes none at all), and go home either feeling good about going out on your own free will (I.E. Not being forced into a social situation), or exhausted from any overbearing social interactions and therefore a bit more content with going back to spending time by yourself for a while.

This helped me before I made a couple of friends (who I met at the pub) while living alone in a new city, after my distractions got stale. I say it’s worth a try, but everyone is different.

It was hard to initiate that first trip to the bar though, it felt very, very weird. But halfway through my second beer, I felt mostly content with even just listening passively to background conversation. By the time I ordered the 3rd, the bartender had initiated conversation, and before I knew it that feeling of loneliness was gone. It’s important to keep moderation in mind though, I could see that being very effective in catalysing a drinking problem. I did this 2-3 times per month, and that was just enough for me.

So ymmv, but it helped me a lot.

I still remember the first phishing website I ever accidentally visited, rnyspace.com

I'm certain it is. I sent an objection/data deletion request, and their "privacy info" pages are absolutely in violation of GDPR, because their forms are NOT reasonably accessible. I needed to use 3 separate mobile browsers and my desktop. When you finally get to the form, they ask some basic info, and the box where you're supposed to make a request ends by asking something like "what rights do you believe are being violated, and why?". The fucking gall on these cunts.

I planned on dropping some links, but they all have hard-coded non-functional redirects, which is intentional and absolutely infuriating. The redirects either just break like this one, which is suppose to be the one that contains a link to the form:

https://help.instagram.com/contact/117037592428568

Or they take you somewhere barely related, like this one which was the hidden start page for the form:

https://m.facebook.com/help/1221288724572426?wtsid=rdr_0bxiU4jakSVimlO8y

Or maybe it was this one? I can't remember, because it doesn't fucking take me to the page I saved the url for:

https://m.facebook.com/help/238318146535333?wtsid=rdr_0LKGtSJZTQyEH3R9N

Anyway, I'm mad if that's not obvious. If you happen to find the form, you can try opting out. I haven't heard back yet. Here's the thorough and crystal fucking clear message I wrote, feel free to copy/share it:

The rights granted to me as a resident of an EEA country and a citizen of an EU member state, which are outlined in the GDPR, would be violated if Meta is non-compliant to my requests and objections. I've noted the exact sections within the GDPR outlining my rights, just before each pertaining request/objection, to explain why I believe my rights and freedoms are impacted by the data processing (although, I should not need to explain why).

I am exercising my right to object outlined in GDPR Article 21 Sections 1, 2, and 6:

I object to the processing and collection of my personal data for direct marketing, and request that no further collection or processing of my personal data is carried out.

I am also exercising my right to erasure outlined in GDPR Article 17 Section 1 (b) and ©:

I request that all of my collected and/or processed personal data be erased.

I am also exercising my right of access outlined in GDPR Article 15 Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, and Section 4:

I request a full copy of my processed personal data, as well as any relevant details listed in each subsection of GDPR Article 15 Section 1.

If any of my personal data is stored under an email address other than the ones currently or previously associated with my account, then I will need the preceding requests and objections to be carried out for the personal data generated under each of the following: [all email addresses I've used anywhere in the past 20 years].