Soulseek.

It’s true, I’m in a right-wing hell-hole and that makes it hard. Thanks for the kindness.

The wifi rollout thing is tricky… Especially because who do you untrust the administration to? Technically whoever is managing it can see everything everyone in the subdivision does online, and since it’s all shared, could be doing packet sniffing to de-obfuscate your traffic and if they’re untrustworthy, potentially be stealing your PII. They’re already going to have a lot of your PII simply from knowing who you are and where you live, but basically having your entire internet history at their fingertips no less.

It’s part of why I refuse to move in somewhere that someone else controls the connection, literally for that reason. I want my own private connection because I don’t trust other people with this.

I generally agree with the sentiment of the article, but I do take issue with this part:

Get a therapist. Join some clubs. Develop a well-rounded social circle. It will enrich you beyond words.

For men who have already done the self-work and already go to a therapist and have never had a single emotional support at all, this is heartbreaking. The clubs are all full of men who refuse to do this kind of emotional self-labor and self-regulation and why would I, as a man who has, have any interest in being friends with these groups of men? Is it my fault that I’m surrounded by men who refuse to develop as people and that leaves me with an incredibly small social circle of trustworthy people to be able to share my emotional support needs with? I want to be enriched by a trustworthy social circle but I live in the USA and I am literally emotionally starved. I have never had emotional support from family, from friends, and hardly any from women. Why must I, someone who has done the labor of trying to be a better person, be punished for how other men continue to fail?

The closest I’ve found to a “club” that I actually enjoy being a part of is the private tracker community, and there’s still a fairly large contingent of assholes in that community. The people who are decent are half a world away from me. One of my closest friends that I made in the private tracker game is from Germany. He’s a hell of a dude but it’s very unlikely I will ever be able to meet him in person.

Why is it my fault as an individual man who has put in the work that I struggle to find other men who also put in the work? It just seems like a cruel joke to be alive for this. I’m doing the work, it’s not my fault other men aren’t which leaves me with… *checks notes… still no emotional support network.

SimpleX Chat – Many suggested this and I will explicitly recommend against it due to the founder’s positions on various topics. This includes being anti-vaxx, believing COVID-19 was a hoax, trans- and homophobia, climate denial; In the SimpleX Groupchat he’s also been seen basically bootlicking trump a couple times, but I’ve lost receipts to that

Unrelated to the main points I kind of always thought SimpleX seemed sketchy…

Ben Edlund reportedly in shambles.

more people are using it than ever

We’re making more money than ever! But what if we could make even morer money than ever!?

If only false advertising laws had any teeth.

TBS x Mehnersmoos - Bierdurst

Dieses Musikvideo ist verdammt lustig.

That’s… Depression.

However, I am not a psychologist. Either way, those are not healthy thinking patterns and you should probably see a therapist to find out in more detail what is happening in your own mind before jumping to a relationship. Mostly because those kind of thoughts aren’t going to magically stop once you’re in a relationship, you’ll just be doing the same thing… just with a partner, who may well be understandably confused and hurt by such thinking.

I strongly suggest finding a therapist you like and trust… and I understand that’s not always easy. It’s definitely easier said than done.

I’d find it embarrassing because I’m gross.

It sounds like you’re suffering from depressive issues. Everyone deserves love and nearly everyone is sexually attractive to at least someone. With roughly 4 billion potential mates (give or take a few hundred million), you have what is honestly near infinite possibilities for finding someone who loves you for who you are.

However, it might help to get help for the depression first. Anyway, everyone deserves love and to be desired. That includes you.

You have been single for ten years, it’s time to free yourself and at least try to find someone. As someone else who is single and also struggles with depression and self-image issues, I wish you all the best.

Pretty sure the body still has to be alive for most organ donation… but maybe I’m wrong when it comes to eyes…

But it sounds sketchy as fuck.

Don’t worry everyone he is just using the Fielder Method to rehearse for having a commercial pilots license.

Nathan Fielder reportedly in absolute shambles.

Well that’s new.

Not gonna get more paying customers by blocking real ones NYT.

A lot of people make posts and then delete the post and/or their entire account, nuking large threads leaving them with the title “Permanently Deleted.”

To be fair, Joshua R. Simmons has since changed their name to Robin Riley and now goes by they/them pronouns which I did not notice noted anywhere on the matrix.org website. They’re still the same person who has been running the foundation for a long time, so I hope I can be forgiven for not realizing their updated pronoun status. So, you’re correct that they are no longer going by he/him pronouns, but I really don’t know much past that.

I mentioned in the original post that I found a reddit thread where they talked about their pay and the breakdown of finances. They pull in roughly a million a year for the whole foundation, and 50% roughly goes to staffing, which means with 8 other people in the organization, everyone else is making about $60k a year if we’re going to talk about underpaying people for their jobs. That’s all the other executives and the entire trust and safety team.

Once again, if they’re failing at their job to keep the project funded, that’s when you make sacrifices to make it work.

Does that matter if he is failing to secure enough funding to run the non-profit? If they’re risking shutting down major portions of what they do as the guiding foundation for the Matrix protocol, isn’t that literally his fault since he’s in charge? If the non-profit fails are all the people who donated their fucking money in hopes of it succeeding going to be happy that instead of being willing to take a haircut on pay to save the damn organization he was instead using their donated funds to fund his fucking lifestyle instead of, I don’t know, living in a more modest area and doing more of the foundation business remotely?

Maybe someone shouldn’t be taking on this kind of major risk and asking people for donations for the project if his kids are so fucking expensive. Nobody forced them to have those kids or live in a high cost of living area. Christ.

Not trying to be rude but they are not meeting their funding goals, which is his job. That’s the entire point of the foundation existing, is to meet funding goals so they can continue to develop the protocol. If they aren’t making enough money, should he take a paycut, or should they shut the whole thing down? It seems to me like they want to save the project he could take a modest pay cut, but that’s just me.

If they have to pay their Executive Director that much as a non-profit and are failing to meet their funding goals as a non-profit the amount he gets paid has fuck-all to do with where he lives, and has everything to do with him failing at his job to secure funding.

So we’re supposed to fund this guys lifestyle as people who donate to the project while the project itself twists in the wind? Give me a fucking break, dude. This is how you set your organization up for failure.

It’s not like a bunch of his work couldn’t be done remotely. Maybe he should move to bumfuck Idaho so he can afford to run this god damned foundation. But nooooo, he needs to live in some obscenely expensive area, right? Bull. Shit.

Not trying to be a dick but the Executive Director can take a fucking pay cut.

I found a reddit thread from 4 months ago where he said his salary was $170k/year. I’m not saying he is making obscene money, but if that’s nearly 15% of all operating costs he can shave that down to $80k-$100k and still live comfortably if he’s willing to accept a more austere standard of living.

I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be paid well, but he’s getting a damn sight better pay than moderators and community managers who seem to make up 50% of the budget for multiple people: the trust and safety team as well as the other employees at the foundation.