philosapphical truths

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.

Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.

I also made a PDF version!!

For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)

if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too

learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

Nemoy’s voice is PERFECT in this!

Stop assuming that everyone dislikes you by default. Do you automatically hate people before you’ve gotten to know them? I don’t. I’m open minded & generally feel neutral to positive about new people that I’m meeting. So why should I assume that other people intrinsically dislike me? That doesn’t make any sense.

Insecure people are annoying. This may sound counterintuitive given the previous point, so let me first say that being insecure ≠ having insecurities. Everyone has a few insecurities, but some people are fundamentally insecure. I used to feel bad about saying this, but it’s genuinely so exhausting to constantly have to reassure someone, to calm them down, about the same exact things over & over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love to support & care for my friends & we all have bad days, but I am not a mental health professional, there is only so much that I can say & do to help when the issue has the same root cause. At a certain point, you need to learn how to push past whatever makes you insecure on your own. Having to deal with insecure people forced me to improve my self confidence because I did not want others to drain others of their energy & their attention. I want to support my loved ones when they need it & be supported by them when I actually need it.

The only person who has to live with you, is you. I used to worry about what others would think of my choices, my lifestyle - anything & everything. One day, I was thinking about the people who (I assumed) were judging me. I realized that I don’t care about their choices or their lives - they don’t really impact me. So why should I care if they judge my life when it doesn’t even impact them? The only person who has to live my life & with the consequences of my actions is me. I worked to hard to build a life in which I can look around at all of my past decisions & actions & stand by them. If there’s something that I don’t like about my life or about myself then I address it, I fix it, I learn from it, & I move on. I can live with myself & that’s all that matters.