Personally, I view it as propaganda still, but I don’t view propaganda as bad inherently.

Propaganda to me is just an organized effort to persuade a larger audience of people politically. Its only bad if the aims are harmful unjustly.

So people organizing a take over to reiterate “No fucking Nazis!” Is a propaganda campaign, but its based.

Societal collapse? No gold won’t save you. Tools and how to use them will.

Maybe during hyperinflation though.

Gods not a terrible investment but it doesn’t have a short term ROI just a REALLY long term one.

I hate Bitcoin but its probably a better investment (and just as useful) than gold.

I’m a fudd though and ONLY buy stable stocks that yield reliable dividends though. ETFs, S&P stuff.

I recommend

“SPQR” by Mary Beard for a good comprehensive book on Roman history

If you prefer chronology for some reason

“The origin of empire” by David Potter is really good

Also “Inventing the Renaissance” By Ada Palmer

I went to college for this shit and these books, while very long, do basically smarize everything I learned on these two subjects. So I’ve saved you probably $10,000

You would love reading any Roman History book and then “Inventing the Renaissance” by Ada palmer.

You’re right. It really does feel like were in the death throws of the republic of rome and the Empire is forming.

Which, naturally, will fall eventually and will likely turn into a nationalist nostalgia and inspire a Renaissance.

You should also be aware that most modern authors have 1 boon and 1 bane. Their boon is significantly more evidence than any other surviving roman historian ever. Their bane is that they will have Tue biases of our modern issues.

Its my favorite thing how much historical interpretation gets done through the eyes of a contemporary. Historians love to go on and on about not having bias, but their human so they do. A good example of this is Edward Gibbons “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” which revitalization our modern tradition of Roman History studies. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re like me and wanted to study intellectual history) this whole series is often used as a criticism of the British Empire in the 17th century.

Of course a lot of it is good enough roman history, but whole stories within the book are complete fabrications. There is no evidence that they happened to Emperor X or Province Y, but the series of events and the alleged public disapprovals of them do match up with the events of his contemporary political moment for which it would have been illegal for Mr. Gibbon to criticize publicly.

And this means of using nostalgia around a long dead empire to affect contemporary politics is what happened in the Renaissance.

Ada Palmers book she effectively (and very accessibly) argues that the Renaissance was more or less just a massive propaganda campaign since by no measure was the “Renaissance” better or worse than the middle ages. In fact the span of the “renaissance” is so grand that it often includes the middle ages or it doesn’t depending on where you want to believe the renaissance started which is constantly redefined.

There’s a few options now, but you can get Intel N100 ITX boards Like this one from ASUS with a soldered on N100 CPU for the cost of a normal motherboard.

If its just a NAS, and I do recommend having a separate Just a NAS, that CPU fucks hard.

Then the media cycle that would have been about the columbine shooters is about the mad stranger who killed two innocent high schoolers and vanished.

I don’t have pride in my government or its actions.

It was actively causing a lot of harm for most of its existence and is now turbo charging its ability to enshittify the world.

The LEAST I can do is make it clear we’re not all in support of this shit.

Love the country and people though. Lots of cool forests to roam and lots of people who don’t suck.

Nah you about got it.

Oh man, Teams +Outlook + Office 365 + onedrive +Copilot?

So good for office shit. So bad for hood practices.

“Hey copilot I’m pretty sure I got an email asking if I had an SOP on X. Can you find that email and the SOP?”

“Copilot, using the recording of the teams meeting ‘Training from Vendor X’ and my notes on ‘Tool Y’ can you compile that into a FAQ sheet for us?”

Sure it misses stuff and is only so good because none of the data is private, but man that’s 90% of my work load for SOP making. Worth the $400 a year corporate pays for it.

We go to a buffet by the lake.

Its honestly really nice not having to Cook, but it does feel quintessentially american to make someone else do it.

I can see how you’d struggle to find youtubers who aren’t sucking Musks toes if you’re watching AI news people and Russell Brand.

But trust me, choosing to simply consume content that isn’t so negative is the quickest way to find rational people.

I personally really like Alex O’Connor right now. He does a lot of engagement with religious and philosophical type people. He’s an atheist who’s just genuinely trying to understand.

Not specifically. I just remember how much Thunderf00t made me an angry atheist for a time and how unpleasant that was mentally.

Looks like he’s on a hyper Musk hate train now. Which while based I’m sure his content is still very toxic to consume.

And I don’t wish that on anyone.

I think a real hobby would help with your mental health…

He’s a libertarian who is, self admittedly, hard to work with. He’s also petty and a pedant.

Great for right to repair and digital sovereignty, but there’s a lot more arguably real issues in the world than making sure my tech is upgradable. Like I’m pretty sure he talk about supporting RFK Jr in 24 [citation needed]'. I don’t follow him as closely since he made a 20 minute video trying to argue that AOC is wrong about there being no such thing as unskilled labor by explaining the exact point.

I really don’t wanna know his thoughts on trans rights or the mass racist deportations.

I want to be called out.

I love philosophy stuff and often I’ll start to form an opinion that’s a scientific or even problematic.

My lovely fiancé will often call out potentially shitty thoughts and I re-evaluate them.

And if you just want a NAS? It is really hard to go wrong with a 4 bay NAS from one of the reputable vendors (which may just be ugreen at this point?) as those tend to still come out cheaper than building it yourself and 4 disks means you can either play with fire with RAID5 or not be stupid and do RAID1.

Actually ASUS started to sell N100 motherboards with the CPU soldered on for $120

That plus a jonsbo N2 or N3, a few extra pieces, and its a few hundred dollars cheaper than the Ugreen options. Sure it will probably run Truenas instead of Ugreens custom truenas or whatever its built on, but that extra $300 is another 24TB hard drive or a HexOS lifetime subscription.

There’s also always the classic buy an old mid sized tower for $100 and slap two massive hard drives in it

I knew a guy who did actually make method in his apartment bathtub.

It was in part to make clean up easier and also had ventilation!

Although that guys was an odd duck and chemistry genius. He’s a PHd student now and was actually making them meth so he could try meth he “trusted”

I doubt your average method manufacturer cares that much about safety though.

Imagine less off a proper BOD and more of a 3D Printable holder for 3.5 inch drives and no actual connections.

I was considering a mini ITX PC with just an external SAS to Sata PCI card. But at the rate of just building that I might end up just building a better tiny nas box with maybe a jonsbo case like the N3

That’s basically what I’m going for.

How are you connecting the mini PC via SATA and how are you powering the BOD?

All of a sudden “Darmok” is a much less stupid episode.