The thing is that he’s right

He’s not right. The national debt is way fuckin bigger than 3 trillion. He’s also wrong in presuming that an infusion of productivity (tax revenue) can “solve” intentional over-spending. He’s just a serial scammer spouting uninformed nonsense to stay relevant.

I tried Zulip for a small org. Used their hosted version since it’s quite generous for nonprofits. I personally liked it, but I was very much in the minority. Most of our people didn’t like it. I don’t think anyone articulated very well why they didn’t like it so it’s hard for me to characterize it other than people bitched about the UI a lot. I personally think it works fine, just be ready for some pushback.

We also tried Mattermost, and the uptake seemed a little easier. If you’re used to slack, discord, etc., most of them are pretty easy to transition to, but if you’re dealing with people that never used a real time chat platform, all of them (even slack) are like pushing a rock uphill because people can be impressively resistant to sensible change.

I remember reading a thread like this a while back and saw Home Assistant. I thought I don’t need that.

It’s probably the most used self hosted app we have.

Gradually, the migration to new platforms will take place

I’m not sure that will (or should) happen. Mainstream social media has an awful lot of shit that wouldn’t exist (or wouldn’t exist in the same way) on federated social media. For things that are purely commercial (which is a lot) the effort is higher and the payoff is smaller in a federated system. There’s a lot of social media that thrives only because it’s fundamentally commercial. That segment would never embrace federated social media willingly.

Then of course there’s the trigger-reward cycle you talk about. People might know it’s unhealthy, but they still do it. Not having that as part of the user experience a big adjustment coming to federated social media.

Test it. Seriously.

There are likely roadblocks you haven’t seen. For example, it is increasingly true that login & password aren’t good enough to access most commercial systems. So many businesses rely on active session cookies to determine identity, and if that’s missing, they’ll fallback to email or SMS based one-time passwords. And if they don’t have access to your laptop or phone, it might be impossible for them to gain access.

I do, and it’s probably the main reason I started self hosting.

Managing parents estate made me want to get my shit in order for my own kids in the event I die. There’s a good chance that if I die, my cell phone is gonna die with me. And commercial services from Apple, Google, banks, and other institutions are increasingly tied to a single cell phone as “identity.” If you try to login on a device with no session cookies, they treat it as hostile, and do all sorts of oddball stuff that almost always requires the cellphone to access. And if you don’t have that phone, it’s incredibly hard.

By self hosting, I can choose to make access to that most of that data much easier for my family if I die and my cellphone dies with me. I don’t expect them to continue self-hosting, but I do want them to have easy access to files so they can move them to some system they are comfortable with.

Exhibit 1: California, Ronald Reagan.

And neither party has taken their foot off the gas since.

Harris did pretty bad during the Primary back in 2020

Harris actually dropped out months before the primaries in 2020. She was something like 16th most popular candidate at the time she withdrew. She was a pretty unpopular AG in California at the time and likely would not have even won her own state primary.

couldn’t get my small group of gamer friends to switch

The hardest part of any change right there.

I’ve had pangolin running for a while, doing tunneling to some self hosted resources, and I’m confused by this announcement and update. It seems like they’re suggesting to use an Android/iOS client to connect to Pangolin protected resources, which seems like a shitload more work and overhead than just using wireguard to do the same thing. Am i missing something here?

Agreed. Wrong word choice. And its an important, major correction. Not a small one. :-)

+100. People forget, or chose not to pay attention to the fact that Google sensor vault data was key evidence in convicting the January 6 insurrectionists (who were exonerated to become ICE). Surveillance capitalism doesn’t care which side you are on.

You can get a reasonably priced .22lr and have a lot of fun with it. Even cheaper ones are fine. I bought my daughter a Savage Mk II bolt action a long time ago and we still have fun shooting it together. It’s accurate further out than my eyes are, and ammo is generally the limiting factor (ie some cheap ammo isn’t as accurate, but the flip side is it’s cheap ). If the used market is a thing in your area, I’d definitely consider it There are many great used .22’s out there. Most major brand guns are durable and most are more accurate than the people shooting them usually.

You definitely can shoot at 100m with iron sights if your eyes are good enough. A scope just magnifies more, and you will likely be more accurate with it if it’s zeroed properly. I like scopes. I like red dots, I like irons. There’s a time and place for everything. :-)

Be sure to get some training, and wear good ear protection!

Thoughts on calibers for longer distance shooting and hunting?

Starting with a 22 is the perfect way to defer that question while you gain knowledge. :-) You might have local/provincial restrictions on what calibers and metals you can use for hunting. What it is you prefer to hunt might influence the caliber choice. And the connotation of “all that’s going on,” might dictate an entirely different set of choices. In any case, one fun thing about the range is that if you chat people up, you and your wife will have an opportunity to shoot all sorts of different things.