GenAI image generation is OK at text for half a year now, hence thousands of sloppy/unimaginative comics in your feeds. Not sure this in particular is AI because the text is well-aligned and matches with the background, and in general everything is kind of coherent, but it possibly could be.

While I agree that discipline is required, you can get much further with discipline and a gun (one good example is the historical context of MLK's achievements).

It means they can find out where it was purchased and by whom.

How? Do the e-waste centers keep track of the shit you take from there? Not where I live, they can sometimes give you stuff for free. Or you can just pick it up on ebay/craigslist/garage sale, that works too. Good luck tracking that.

All of them. Again, this is required by Android ToS.

I strongly doubt that because on my two last phones (OnePlus 5 & POCO M5) I didn't have to log in to a Google account with the default ROM, there was an obvious "Skip" button in the lower left corner when prompted to log in. Can you point me towards that ToS or a screenshot of an unskippable "Sign in to Google" screen on a consumer smartphone?

That burner phone can still be traced back to you.

Depending on what that means, sure. Most likely scenario is that you get apprehended, can't discard the phone for whatever reason, and the cops search it. In that case yeah sure it can be traced back to you.

If you are careful and only use it for (careful) photography and maps (as OP requested), then I feel like it can't really be traced back to you if you discard it or give it to someone else etc, except maybe fingerprints and DNA (but cops likely won't have the resources to do that for everyone in the entire protest). And for situations like this it a digital camera or a paper map could be traced all the same.

All “feature phones” are running some form of Android

I'm not talking about "feature phones". Just a regular old midrange smartphone. E.g. the original Samsung Galaxy A-series.

That burner phone is likely going to require you to sign into a Google account with a phone number before it will do absolutely anything

Some of them will, sure. Check before buying (or just make a new Google account without linking it to a phone number - might require a VPN to somewhere else but doable). I've had plenty of smartphones where you can just skip it. You won't have access to Google Play and such but that might be a bonus :)

Android requires this in their ToS

I'm too lazy to check but I highly doubt it - Google is not available in China at all and yet there are plenty of Android smartphones sold there. Also Android is mostly open-source and different vendors can and do build different versions of it.

As others said, you can reuse burner phones, and they can be really really cheap. You can get a 10-year-old midrange phone from an e-waste place for free or close to that, replace the battery (which tends to be much easier on old phones), and it will do everything you need just fine. I think it's the sweet-spot between convenience (e.g. navigation is really useful if the crowd carries you to part of the city you don't know, taking photos/videos, etc) and safety (even if you get caught, and are forced to unlock the phone, there's virtually nothing on it that cops can rummage through). Just make sure to pre-download maps and other resources you may need (for maps on a cheap old device I would recommend this: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.comaps.fdroid), but don't log in to any accounts. Unless you really need to communicate with others over the phone, keep the airplane mode on. If you're savvy enough, while replacing the battery you can also physically disconnect the antennae from the modem too for extra peace of mind.

Oh, also, I don't know about your country but in some places you can still get "anonymous" pre-paid SIMs from sellers in shady underpasses for cash. If you really must communicate with others via cellular/need mobile internet, that's also an option to put in your burner phone. But once again, avoid logging in to any accounts or calling anyone you know unless absolutely necessary.

I was more talking about (+ a b) and such.

Eh, reads pretty naturally to me. That said, (like I lisp)

Don't forget the cop and the brown-children-bomber. Although maybe austerity cuts will make that one job as well.

Not in the field, but I think it depends. It's for sure more dangerous on average if we consider the entire world, but I feel like that's mostly because of certain areas (US w/ toothless FAA and ATC shortage, Russia with the war&part shortages etc, ...) and new Boeing aircraft.

Flying is still the safest mode of travel per km, and if you're flying Airbus/Embraer/COMAC/pre-2010 Boeing it's likely as safe as it was a decade ago. However it kinda sucks due to all the greenhouse gas emissions.

First, I sympathize with you feeling dizzy, the feelings of guilt, etc. Don't be too harsh on yourself; that just causes mental anguish with no benefit. This is a tradition that everyone around you follows and you were under tremendous social pressure to do so; the suffering you've caused to those animals is horrible and irreversible but it is also commonplace in the world we live in right now, and probably way less than that caused by an average westerner over the course of the year.

I don’t think I will repeat it next year, but what am I even meant to do?

Not repeating it sounds like a good first step. This tradition is violent and unethical, and it's best to learn from your experience and not make this mistake again. Choosing vegan options is also a good step individually. You might also want to join local vegan groups, if there are any, to organize with others against animal exploitation. Speaking with like-minded people may also help you process the feelings that you have, and help prevent more animal suffering in the future.

More generally though, and I'm sorry to say this, the teachings of Abrahamic religions are not compatible with equality or real liberty, not for humans, definitely not for animals. You will (eventually) have to choose what is more important to you: god or humanity.

Are you sure you understand how PGP works?

Are you sure you understand how PGP works?

If you're talking about git config --global gpg.format ssh && git config --global user.signingKey ~/.ssh/your_key and then signing your commit with git commit --sign then yeah, in modern times it's very similar to PGP signing. There are a couple minor differences which make PGP a bit better:

1. PGP has keyservers which, in theory, allow you to upload your PGP key there, and your friends could sign it, so that others (who trust your friends through a chain of trust) know you're you. This is highly unlikely to work in practice because PGP keyservers are kinda dead and the trust network is weak (i.e. you and the person wanting to confirm it's your key are highly unlikely to have a chain of trust between you). Uploading your key to multiple keyservers at least distributes the trust a bit, compared to just uploading your ssh key to GitHub, as people can check multiple servers.
2. PGP signing allows you to store the key on a hardware key, reducing the attack surface. I don't think ssh signing allows that but I'm not 100% sure.

If you're talking about using ssh for authentication to the git server, than it's a different story. First of all, most git servers will actually accept it if you push commits committed by someone else (e.g. see this: https://github.com/jayphelps/git-blame-someone-else). (there's a tangent about Author: vs Committer: that can be had, but in any case e.g. GitHub does not do any checks on either of those fields when you push commits there). And so, someone can just "pretend to be you" and push commits somewhere as though they have been created by you. There are of course some other mechanisms around that (e.g. access control to repositories) but it's still a problem. PGP/SSH signing (as opposed to ssh authentication) is the most effective solution to that. If some commit has been signed by you, and everyone knows your public key, they can verify for themselves that you are the committer. GitHub has a way to (semi)-enforce that: if you add your GPG/SSH key as a signing key and enable "Vigilant mode" (" Flag unsigned commits as unverified "), all commits that have you as Committer which aren't signed by your signing key will get marked as "Unverified" in their web interface and raise suspicion almost immediately.

Of course this mechanism relies on GitHub (i.e. Microsoft) as the keyserver - they could in theory covertly replace your key with something else and most people would be none the wiser. Even if someone wanted to check themselves, for a project hosted on GitHub the most obvious way to find the persons PGP/SSH key is to request it from there (You can actually do that by going to https://github.com/<username>.gpg and https://github.com/<username>.ssh - e.g. here's my PGP public key: https://github.com/balsoft.gpg), so you have to trust them not to replace it. It's better than nothing but not great. If you're serious about key signing, publish your key on your own website, with as much of it controlled by you as possible (ideally on your own hardware), and advertise it widely. E.g. my key is available at https://balsoft.ru/key.