I looked up the Open Technology Fund on Wikipedia and it has no relation to the CIA. well, except that its parent agency (Radio Free Asia) is part of the US government like the CIA is. they don’t seem to work together at all, and they’re under the purview of two different branches of government

besides, as other commenters have said, they’re open source and they’ve been audited. anyone can build the client themselves (with any potential backdoors removed) and set up their own server. would the CIA allow for that?

nothing better than Signal

Signal was developed with financial backing by the CIA, so do with that information what you will.

source?

NPR News is probably what you’re looking for. sports and celebrity stuff is relegated to the Culture section, which is its own separate thing (although there are a couple of music stories that seem to have been misplaced). here is the RSS feed for the News section: https://feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml

true. gotta get one of those desks you see at schools, with the hole in the corner and the plastic cover

the setup actually isn’t bad at all. using a soundbar is a nice touch. i would do something about the clutter though; you want a nice clean desk for gaming sessions. too bad we can’t see the chair, you need something like an office chair for maximum comfort and not a gaming chair, as they actually aren’t very good for your back

to spite entropy

he absolutely carried Stargate Atlantis, it was weird to see him in Aquaman

Aquaman. the visual effects were ridiculous, the characters were one-dimensional, the soundtrack was…something, and the overall tone was that of a testosterone firehose to the face. i said the eight deadly words about halfway through, and i was thoroughly bored out of my mind despite action scene after action scene after action scene…the only reason why i didn’t just get up and leave was because i was watching with a group

anything but the metric system

get another joke

try $ sudo apt install akmod-nvidia. it’s gonna pull in some dependencies and a proprietary driver, and probably break Secure Boot if you have it set up, but that’s how i got it to work on Fedora (except i used dnf, of course)

tenure was created to prevent nazi interference with academic freedom. and here we see nazi interference with academic freedom thwarted by tenure

this was on purpose. the World Central Kitchen notified the IDF about their movement, and their vehicles were clearly marked. there is no way this was an accident. the IDF purposely killed aid workers delivering food to Gaza. if this isn’t an indicator of their genocidal intentions, i don’t know what is

the shit is posting

shit just went from 0 to 100 real fucking quick

for real though, if you ask an LLM how to make a bomb, it’s not the LLM that’s the problem

answering your questions as best I can (I’m a straight male too) in order:

1. if he/him seems right to you, then your pronouns are he/him. if other pronouns seem right to you, then your pronouns are those pronouns. pronouns don’t have to match up with your gender or presentation, go with whatever you vibe with
2. when meeting new people, I give my name and pronouns. “hi, my name is salarua and my pronouns are he/him.” of course, it’s nice to give your pronouns when asked, but other than that it’s up to you
3. just including your pronouns in your profile is good. some people put them in their nicks, some in their bio or about me. if you have a Mastodon, Akkoma, Misskey, or Firefish account you can put your pronouns in your custom fields
4. you can try and figure out other people’s pronouns from how other people refer to them. many people will also give their pronouns if you introduce yourself with your pronouns. it’s not a faux pas to not know someone’s pronouns beforehand, although I admit I don’t know a non-awkward way to ask someone their pronouns
5. a good bet is to refer to people whose pronouns you don’t know as they/them. if you mispronoun someone by mistake, quietly correct yourself and continue with whatever you’re saying. “so after arriving at the office, he- sorry, they went to go see their supervisor about the presentation…” as long as it’s not done out of malice, people don’t mind being mispronouned if you acknowledge the slip-up and move on
6. I haven’t met anyone irl with neopronouns either. presumably people with neopronouns would go by them if they were among people they felt safe with. unfortunately most of the world isn’t safe :(

i don’t have one on hand, but it’s a physical letter sent through the mail which basically says “delete the copyrighted data we think you downloaded or we’re shutting off your internet”

i live in the US. seeding and torrenting in general is relatively safe here, although sometimes you’ll get a nastygram from your ISP because a copyright industry plant on one of the torrents told on you. the easiest way by far to prevent that is by getting a VPN. go with something paid (free ones do shady stuff) and with a no-logging policy. i use NordVPN because i know someone who pays for it and is letting me use it, but another great option is Mullvad

for every person who leeches on mobile data and can’t afford to seed, there’s someone who has a freakishly powerful rig that seeds like 17 different torrents 24 hours a day. if you can’t afford to seed, don’t worry about it, because people who can afford to seed often do. things balance out in the end