im tired of comprehending these horrors

Remember: The "'E" in email stands for evidence.

That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.

But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.

Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: "I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx" Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.

Me; That's illegal.

Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh...

Me: That's an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.

HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.

Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.

I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.

HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.

Me: You still haven't given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.

HR: Oh haha yes here you go.

The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.

"The future they want for you"

Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

An alternative app store: