vandemic

vandemic wrote (edited )

I used to date a woman in her 30s who got into GHB. A middle class woman with a career. Well, it was making her black out in public and generally act super fucked up including but not limited to attempting to open the doors to random peoples houses at night for no reason.

Hurts me to tell the whole story, so I won't. But I'll say this: at some point she realized this shit was ruining everything and so she went to the dealer and his gf to return her stash (30$) and what did they do? Push on her and pressure her. Telling her everything was fine. That I didn't know "what he [I] was talking about". That GHB is completely harmless. That blacking out on GHB unexpectedly in public was nothing to be worried about, etc.

They weren't just dealers, they were pushers. Pushers who wouldn't fuck off even when their addict told them she wanted to quit.

If this is you? Fuck you. That's all I can say. Idk how else to convey that feeling through a screen without saying something that'll probably get the cops knocking at my door. But seriously if this is you, I wish you the worst that Life and Death can offer.

Be ethical, and don't push. That's all I can say.

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vandemic wrote

Reply to by !deleted23972

It should be considered a threat. They kneeled on a dudes throat ffs. Them kneeling should be like someone pointing "finger guns" at someone. A gesture intended to threaten.

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vandemic wrote

Man, I can't stand POC liberal pacifists. They're the worst in terms of toxic identity politics.

Me: mounts a solid argument in favor of bottom-up power against co-operating with police or placing our faith in the justice system, citing historical examples and typical abusive-relationship patterns mirrored in how our society relates to the police and the institutions of the state in general

Them: they play the identity card and dismiss my multiple paragraph-long argument supported by facts... with ONE fucking sentence labeling me some "pessimistic anarcho white boi", literally without addressing any single one of my points...

Fuck toxic idpol so hard.

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vandemic OP wrote

Reply to comment by mofongo in Is Riot safe(r) ? by vandemic

Right, but if I set all conversations to e2ee, then even if they, the Riot ppl, store my data on their servers, none of it is in plaintext or otherwise accessible to their engineers, so it's fine?

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vandemic OP wrote

Reply to comment by mofongo in Is Riot safe(r) ? by vandemic

If I configure an encrypted chat with a friend, do our comms remain e2ee as the default from that point forward or do I have to configure it every time? Also, does Riot store metadata as far as you know? One more thing, if I buy a smartphone off someone on CL without a SIM card, what's the procedure to download and install the app? I've noticed that it can be very difficult to work around needing a phone number to even access things like the iOS app store...

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vandemic OP wrote

Reply to comment by mofongo in Is Riot safe(r) ? by vandemic

Looking over their site, correct me if I'm wrong, but implementing encryption doesn't appear to be automatic the way it is with signal and whatsapp, but instead something that must be manually configured, PGP-email style?

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vandemic OP wrote

Oh damn, I just realized I can set up an account with Riot.im using a bogus email and connect from there to Telegram and WhatsApp! At least in theory, as I've only just now read about it and haven't tried to implement it yet. Too bad Signal isn't on their list of potential bridges.

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vandemic OP wrote

Supposedly, Session doesn't reveal metadata, unlike Signal, but I forget if they've been fully audited or tested at this point.

https://getsession.org/

Can you elaborate further on what you mean by "verification codes" ?? You'll have to excuse me, I haven't used a regular phone with a SIM card in so long that maybe it's a stupid question but I don't know exactly what you're talking about or how it could work.

Are you saying that someone could buy a SIM card in, say, Russia or Mexico or Pakistan, and then Signal/Session me wtv code is attached to it (I assume it works like a giftcard?) ...and then I write that up on the cell providers website and link it to my device somehow ?? But how can I run a phone like this if I don't actually possess the SIM card?

In my version, your friend gets you the SIM while they're in the country, that way you have the card and they go away so it's whatever. However in yours, you seem to be saying we can do the same thing but from a distance, perhaps implying that I might not need to physically have the SIM, but rather only some string of numbers if it's texted to me?

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vandemic OP wrote

I dunno. Maybe it's different for regular dumbphones, but I'm looking for an anonymous phone that was... you know... made sometime in the last fucking century lol like with capabilities for encrypted messaging.

It's annoying that we seem to be faced with either two options:

  1. get a smartphone (zero anonymity)

or

  1. get a dumbphone (zero security)

Is it too much to ask to have both?!

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vandemic wrote

A few days ago I could feel myself slipping into a downward spiral. Was starting to let myself go -- smoking too much weed and spending way too much time on the internet. It was bad. Went one day (oh fuck!) two days (oh fuck!) 3 days without working out, and also without showering or brushing my teeth, or anything. Old traumas flashing in my brain (can't look away). It's so insidious how it all creeps up on you... unexpected like Apophis from the blackness of space. Only this here isn't a blackness, but rather a smothering blanket sense of grey that attacks by suffocation. It is relentless. It is something I've been grappling with for a long time. Most of my strategies against it in the past have not worked. Another thing is that it's not something I can ever put to rest forever, but can only hold at bay. I know that if I ever ease up on it, it'll come back and gain the upper hand.

I find the best defense is a good offense. To be aggressive and get after it.

This morning I woke up and said to myself, "Today I'm going to fuck shit up and attack the day with fire in my eyes. I'm going to get back on point with my routine and prepare for what's next". Did 15 minutes of jumprope and some strength training. Now I fna have breakfast.

Feelz good man.

Hope y'all are havin a good day, yo. Pullin for ya.

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vandemic wrote

Reply to comment by Majrelende in Friday Free Talk! by An_Old_Big_Tree

Aight so...

During the last 30 years, we were basically living on our credit cards: shipping off our industry abroad and then using our debt-based money to pay others to do the work and sell us their stuff. At home, we built a system that imports everything from abroad or are service jobs like restaurants. This created a fragile prosperity that depended on always going further in debt and always having foreign countries accept our money.

The system overcame the 2008 crisis, which was due to a small portion of people not paying their mortgages, which set off a domino fall in everything. This occurred because people saw their houses as worth less money and stopped spending while banks saw losses on their loan collateral and stopped lending. The solution was to print enough money and buy up everything that was falling in value so people would spend and banks would lend again. It worked well because the 2008 problem required a solution that this system can easily provide.

This time tho, it's different. Now dollars are being printed at increasing rates, but less stuff is being made. The stuff that was made before the flu hysteria is being bought. More dollars are chasing less stuff. This means the value of the dollar is diluted. However, it doesn’t have an immediate effect because many newly printed dollars are just sitting in bank accounts and we still have stuff to sell in warehouses. Lots of companies and individuals have debts that must be paid in dollars, so there’s a demand for them despite all the printing. Also, prices are sticky because everyone expects a return to normalcy and people still expect to pay a certain amount for a certain thing. Later they’ll react when stuff gets harder and harder to find, and the only people still selling it are “price gouging”.

For these reasons, the dollar’s fall won’t be immediate and the dollar could even rise in value before plummeting.

But understand that this system was not designed for self-sufficiency. You know what I'm saying? There aren’t small farms everywhere for everyone to return to like it was back in the 1930s. The State must keep printing dollars to support people or there will be mass-disorder. However by printing dollars and showing weakness, they’re demonstrating to our overseas trading partners that they can just keep their stuff for themselves rather than sell it to us. As these foreign countries see the dollar losing value, they’ll unload their dollars as well, creating an avalanche.

At this point the dollar system will confront a crossroads: the Fed will have to offer dollar credit lines to all businesses in all the world, and all foreign political and business authorities will have to bow down to the US and become modern slaves or the dollar system will fragment and the purchasing power of it will collapse. The American empire will experience a loss of power faster and greater than the fall of the USSR and with much more human suffering.

So, again. Basically, look at your body, and consider that this is all that you are going to have this time next year. All of the property, the savings, the things you collected – will be gone. You are effectively going to be dumped naked into an entirely new world, where nothing that you built before will matter, save for the person you’ve built yourself into, along with your relationships.

As far as the USA is concerned, what you are going to have in the coming months is a totally and completely wrecked nation, with tens of millions of homeless, food shortages, martial law, government bunkbeds, government soup, FEMA camps, kill lists, riots and everything else you can think of from your favorite and least favorite science fiction dystopia films.

From there, things will progressively spiral, over a period of one to three years, I'm guessing, until parts of the country begin to break off, as areas become ungovernable, as the federal government loses the ability to maintain martial law in certain regions. Religious cults will be big, as will criminal gangs. Most other forms of social organization are going to fall away.

Over the next couple of months... a lot of people are going to tell you things will eventually "go back to normal", and you’ll have a certain desire to believe them. But you can't, because they're wrong. Nothing is going back to normal. Nothing is coming except chaos as the system collapses all around us. You need to use this time to start getting used to having nothing... except maybe those things that really mattered all along, like good health and good people.

My core piece of advice is this:

Get strong. Legally acquire some weapons; a good rifle and a sidearm. Consider putting a plan together to get out of the cities while the getting is still good. Think ahead about food security and start networking with other people as much as you possibly can.

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