I am going to go all ~~Goodwin~~ Godwin (edited) here: I just yesterday heard a snippet of a voice recording of Hitler discussing the Finnish winter war with their PM. The recording wasn't supposed to happen, somebody forgot to hit stop on the recorder and then stashed it away. The man sounded like just another guy at the bar.

To varying degrees this probably applies to all heads of state and government. If they don't derive any advantage from being the bully in the interaction and they're reasonably sure only trusted ears are listening they talk normally.

I remember Obama being caught on a hot mic at a summit talking with then Russian president at the grace of Putin, Medvedev, saying something like: "I have the midterms coming up. Tell Vladimir that after that I can cut him some more leeway." That's the kind of horse trading we're not hearing about normally. But it happens, and in normal language.

Dictators may have a much smaller circle of trusted ears. So Putin and Kim probably don't go full locker room: "So, Vlad, my homie, you're really running a fucking meat grinder in the donbass, aren't you!" - "Fuck you, your starving dwarf soldiers are also ending up in the sausage, motherfucker." And then they laugh and pat each other on the back and order shots. But I'm sure they make fun of the orange.

He'll be found guilty in a civil lawsuit and then much later gets attested in Vegas while trying to get back some of his memorabilia at gunpoint. For which he will be getting an unusually high sentence. All the while he will write books claiming he will find the guy who really did it.

Merz is in his 70s. He is not the most gifted politician. One nickname given to him by a journalist is "the unavoidable" in reference to him having no good competition for leadership in his party after a perceived century of Angela Merkel in charge who had successfully sidelined him. For a reason, it seems.

He is very good at dropping shit like this in the media and then having it walked back or watered down. I do not see this idea getting a majority in the country where Google street view is useless because people rebelled against having the public facing side of their buildings photographed for easier navigation. And I can see a few arguments that would occupy the supreme court for a decade, were this to become law.

I appreciate the air of publicity this story brings.

You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised

In other headlines: water is surprisingly wet.

No one taught you this? Even if nobody sits you down for a lesson, you are taught by example by the people around you when you grow up.

Also, the tipping and keeping doors open for people behind you are not universally applicable. In large swaths of Asia you'll be met by ire or confusion respectively. So maybe this is missing a generated image for being culturally sensitive.

English and Swedish are common examples of where gender neutral pronouns have developed that sometimes meet ideological opposition from conservative thinkers but otherwise work largely fine in common parlance. They don't make a lot of people look up and wonder what was said. They and hon don't cause a fuzz because they are established to a sufficient degree. Now imagine that wasn't the case and in English we wanted to land on "shup" as a pronoun. I talked with Billy and shup didn't want to go fishing. You hear that and you're almost taken out of the conversation because it doesn't feel natural-in-the-language. Language being a cultural construct. (Don't misconstrue me here as saying members of the LGBTQ+ are not natural. Because they are perfectly natural.)

German is not only a three-gender grammatical clusterfuck but also a language where different neo-pronouns (similar to "shup" which I invented just to make this point) exist, none of them feeling as natural-in-the-language when in use, and none of them getting majority support from the relevant LGBTQ+ community. So the general suggestion is to use the name when known or to ask for the pronouns when required. In my very limited experience, German speakers who don't want to risk mis-pronouning people will sooner adapt their speech to avoid any use of third-person singular pronouns than to use "dey" or "sier." Which in itself might be an indication of where this road is going. German has a larger gap than English between societal progress and understanding and having that reflected in the language. German has embarked on a journey to get rid of a masculine-as-default mode since the 70s just to include the other majority gender in speech and visibility. And more than 50 years later the conventions around that are still subject to change and adherence to those still piss off conservative thinkers. So that gives you an idea of a timeframe until gender-neutral language can cement itself in the German language.

Another language that may have an easier time with gender-neutral speech is Japanese. People are more used to using the name of the person as a stand-in where an indoeuropean tongue screams for a pronoun. And most nouns that are titles to give to people, such as a professions, are never gender-neutral by default.

I think the abundance of tools available to block ads online hints at a movement in itself. We don't need a leader or a central committee.

The wrinkle I see here is that a generalized 'everybody' hates ads but 'everybody' is also aware of the fact that they finance a large swath of stuff that we would have to pay for otherwise.

Backpfeiffengesicht, a face you want to slap or is for various reasons in need of a slap

I think you can trust the operational side of it. I don't think they've had many detrimental oopsies, the services work. I used them for a year and then jumped ship. One reason is the favorable comments by their CEO about the 47 administration, which I didn't like. Another reason is the nitty gritty - they don't clearly advertize what's part of what package and I felt that was by design to get you to upgrade. And they definitely see themselves as a basket for all of your eggs. If you are moving there because you want to degoogle your life you end up just protonizing it. It's better to spread around your stuff so you're not dependent on one provider. If you just want a good VPN and don't care about the rest of their services and the politics, you could make worse choices.

This is not the behavior of a friend.

Will this drive the first wrongfully accused person to suicide or will it just somehow, magically, target all brown and black people? Stay tuned to see how much taxpayer money gets sunk into this tool.

If you have a general practitioner that you go to for your normal illnesses, start there. If the ER doc didn't tell you to make an appointment with a specialist, maybe start smaller.

Stop googling. You didn't study this stuff. And my guess is it won't help with anxiety either.