@joltrast Some options that may be worth checking out are posteo.de, runbox.com, mailbox.org, mail.de, disroot.org, eclipso.eu.

That said I live in Europe, so I mostly know of European options. Depending on where you live, maybe there are other good, local options.

@thingsofshane

I’m getting more and more emails like that. Even if I just wrote a single line asking for, say, the time an event will start. “We’re excited about your interest in this project and look forward to cooperating with you in the future…”

when all I wanted to hear was “we’ll begin at 5pm”

Really makes me want to give up my work sometimes.

@nellie_m

infuriating, isn't it?

i hate that "we're excited" shit -
excited people don't talk in soulless, brutally calibrated prose like that!

but that proton reply is in a tone that predates any llm, right? scripted, boilerplate, dismissive. what we call a fuck-off answer, in fact :)

honestly, it's no wonder there's so much anger out there. this world is maddening!

@thingsofshane

yes it is, and yes, it is!

@thingsofshane

But thank you for getting on their nerves 😂 at least they can see that not everybody appreciates it!

@nellie_m

funny you should say that :)
i have resolved to complain more.

i don't know what it's like where you are, but here there's a lingering cultural downer on complaining.

no-one wants to get a name as a person who complains all the time...

but i've started to think that that's not a valid modus vivendi in this world.

like, we can't complain that nobody is accountable if we don't hold their feet to the fire first, right?

@thingsofshane

eek, that’s an expression I’m not familiar with 🤣 sounds scaaary!

I’m not even sure what it’s like where I am - being autistic, I’m sure I keep breaking lots of unwritten laws of society. I say what I think and I comment on what I see and that doesn’t seem to be welcome a lot of the time. But what else can I do <smiling shrug emoji>

I’m a really good animal trainer. Let me communicate with a dog or a cat or a bird for a while and we’ll grow together as a team and happily work together. Non-human animals respond to kind, honest feedback. Humans? No. Tell them they did great and they don’t believe you. Tell them they made an error and they get mad at you, and keep doing it anyway. I’m mostly at a loss about how to handle this species.

@nellie_m

it just means "hold accountable"
but more dramatic :)

there are
SO MANY
unwritten laws...
...and most of them deserve breaking 😉

i wonder,
based on what you say,
if autistic people are not closer to
the spirit of Tao...
of Is-ness

homo sapiens is the only species that acts out of programming in addition to instinct

creatures of nature -
*animals* for fuck sake -
we deny nature

rational beings -
"this paragon of animals" -
who flee in terror from reason
into religious and fascistic fantasies...

"at a loss", yes. me too :)

@thingsofshane

as a species, I believe we took a wrong turn when we dismissed the old egalitarian, matrilineal values and began to brute-force our way towards individual profit and power. With all the violence and exploitation of “the weak and inferior” that comes with it: of women, of other cultures, of nature. It was the beginning of sexism, racism, speciesism, ableism.

I haven’t studied daoism so I can’t comment on that. They say that autistics have developmental deficits so maybe a lot of us just can’t develop that kind of sophisticated arseholery 😄

(only joking. I’ve met autistic arseholes, and I think some of us probably were the perfect nazis, a century ago, sticking to their principles 100 percent).

@Philippe 🇧🇪 🇪🇺 For many people (including myself), it really isn't about the outcome, but the decision itself to use a technology with such awful and global externalities. Individual project outcomes are simply irrelevant to me given the mind-boggling scale of these externalities.

It sounds like "wait until you taste the chocolate before stopping using this brand because they use slave labor" to me.

@stephen the reasons why we have this problem in the first place are why your suggestion won’t work.

Small email providers get categorized as spam

And they get overrun with spam especially in the era of cheap, shitty ai services as offered by anthropic, openai, and google

@IncHulk That post is so dumb I really don't understand why it's still being circulated. Please reread it with a critical eye. If you seriously believe that Republicans are the party fighting for the poor and underprivileged then you need to seriously reevaluate what you stand for. Also perhaps read the news every now and then?
Similarly curious how it doesn't mention Andy going on a long tirade defending Trump and Republicans and calling people criticizing him "triggered", a pretty obvious right-wing dog whistle.

That being said, all of this is besides the point, as you do not, in fact, ever have to "hand it to" the Nazis. Doing so says far more about your beliefs than you may be willing to admit.