Sorry, folks, another hit-and-run. For better or for worse, I don’t anticipate that I will be keeping up with the legendary Wall To End Walls About Walls anytime soon.

Quote from: El duderino_ on October 28, 2020, 02:11:52 PM

Stay above the 13 mark !

Wow, I have not been paying attention ! Go, Bitcoin...

Quote from: Last of the V8s on October 28, 2020, 02:23:25 PM

I just had to stop by and comment on this. It echoes something that I wrote for WO a few weeks ago, but didn’t post; it is symbolic, on so very many levels...

Meanwhile...

Quote from: Last of the V8s on October 28, 2020, 02:09:07 PM

https://twitter.com/JTasioulas/status/1321409453489606660

I didn’t read any accompanying article, which requires Javascript just to read (after I searched to avoid Twitter’s Javascript requirement); but the first thing that comes to mind is to me an obvious question. The sort of “obvious” question that nobody stops to think about.

How the fuck would the Thought Police catch illegal “conversations over the dinner table”!?

I see two major options, which are not mutually exclusive.

Option A: Turn your kids into little spies and snitches.

Brainwashing children to rat out their parents for political “crimes” is 100% pure, unadulterated Communism.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell fictionalized a scenario in which people were terrified of their own children. In reality, such things have actually happened in overtly Communist countries. And nowadays, in some various so-called “free”, very much democratic countries, children are being groomed (yes, groomed) to tell ~~indoctrination camp~~ “school” staff about everything from their parents’ political heresies to legal household gun ownership, under the rubric of “child safety” and “mental health”.

Option B: Telescreens.

Quote from: nullius on October 29, 2020, 04:20:11 AM

I myself used to argue that people who have “nothing to hide” should accept taking software-controlled network cameras and microphones in their bedrooms.

Then, I realized that they do just that—and they carry the same remote-eyes-and-ears-and-location-tracker at all times.

Of course, that is “voluntary”—for you—for now.

Today: China. Tomorrow: Your country.

Quote from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html

The app, which the Times examined, also allows police officers to flag people they believe have stopped using a smartphone,

Quote from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/technology/china-uighurs-hackers-malware-hackers-smartphones.html

The authorities dragged Uighurs off to detention camps for having two phones or an antiquated phone, arbitrarily dumping a phone, or not having a phone at all, according to testimonials and government documents.

If you don’t demand privacy now, then you will lose it altogether—forever.

Quote from: Last of the V8s on October 17, 2020, 08:56:50 PM

Now I was going to write a long essay on the perils and frankly idiocy of carrying a surveillance device with closed source hard and software forged in the heart of the Evil Empires (commie and very commie), replete with references back to my own extensive oeuvre, some classical nudes and abstruse words, jumping down someone's throat who once said something in passing, but you'd probably scroll on by like the unmitigated savages you all are.

Quote from: Last of the V8s on October 28, 2020, 02:09:07 PM

He looks like a nice chap. Wonder where he comes from. Originally. Ardfork or Ardgay no doubt one of those. oh I know must be Backside, Aberdeenshire.

What do you mean, laddie? He is purely and simply Scottish!

All Scots are equal, and he is twice as equal as any other Scot.

Your question has no place in the glorious current year, when we are finally conquering the prejudices that bedevilled them old-fashioned old folks in the Dark Ages, a half-century ago.

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Humza_Yousaf&oldid=986115801

Yousaf is the son of immigrants who arrived in the UK during the 1960s: his mother came from Kenya and his father from Pakistan.