I genuinely think this guy was born without fear. Like it simply doesn’t function in his brain. The more into his past you dig, the more you realize that him calling himself Reckless Ben is not a joke. We are all lucky that he is using his fearlessness for good. To him, this entire thing is just an interesting experience or however he phrased it. I can’t help, but admire him.

Welcome, friend! 🤗

I dunno if I would call it an endorsement. It was more so to show how impossible it is to have privacy online, lol. You’d have to go to extremes to avoid having any information about you end up online. And honestly, even if you went off grid in a cabin somewhere, there still is no guarantee that you will succeed in keeping yourself offline entirely. Kaczynski is probably also a bad example as you can find pretty much everything there is to know about him online. A selfinflicted fate.

Anyways, the point is that privacy doesn’t really exist if you own a phone, tablet or computer.

Yeah, exactly. I just always found it to be silly and arrogant to assume that I could ever outsmart agencies, organisations and companies that not only specializes in getting my data, but also built the tech and the systems I am navigating.

And I mean, I have enjoyed true crime since the Forensic Files were still explaining to normal citizens what DNA is and how that technology is applied in crime cases. I have casually followed the development of forensic sciences for at least two decades and let me tell you, there ain’t no way you can hide online. The ones who can either have the right connections, are unbelievably skilled and cautious with tech or they don’t use technology at all and live in an off grid cabin somewhere, where nobody uses smartphones.

I mean, I think the best rule of thumb is that unless you’re a tech wizard, you don’t have online privacy. At all.

I don’t believe anything is super safe and secure online. Not even Signal.

I always treat my online activity as if I am being surveilled because I probably am. Luckily I’m a boring bitch, so I don’t really have anything to hide, but I do appreciate that I can stay in touch with friends and family without having to linger on Facebook anymore. So there’s that.

The only time I feel annoyed about people talking about Signal is when they talk about it as if it’s this super sketchy app that shares your data when literally every single friggin platform online does that and the same skeptical people use them all the time without question.

That part annoys me because people keep acting like we aren’t already completely naked and our information owned by companies who do god knows what with it. If people are aware that everything they do is being surveilled and used for whatever purpose, then I don’t really mind, but it doesn’t seem like that is the case for many people. I genuinely still cannot believe how many people jumped on the DNA test trend, for example. Like holy shit, just give them your firstborn too, while you’re at it. XD but hey, we all make stupid mistakes now and again. I remember my first smartphone having a thumbprint lock and I just did that throughout my early to mid 20s without thinking about it. At least they only have one of my thumbprints but yeah. It’s so insidious, the way the tech world has lured us into giving up our information willingly.

The worst thing anyone can do when they are online is to believe they have any privacy. That is hubris.

This is what people don’t get when it comes to that story about the journalist. You literally have to go out of your way to invite someone into a group chat. That does not happen on accident on Signal.

I had to explain that to a few people who heard that story and were super skeptical about Signal being dangerous. Which is ironic because the same people would be using messenger and think nothing of it.

True. I remember two ads specifically in my country that pissed me off so much I vowed to never purchase anything from their company. Both were phone service providers.

One was an ad where the guy gets the message of the ad out in 5 seconds and then the rest of the ad is him sitting in silence for 25 additional seconds, eating some food. That ad pissed me off enough to contact the company and let them know what I thought.

The second was this stupid bint sitting in a pink room, smugly wringing her hands and going: Oooh, you really want to get to your video, don’t you? Here it comes! 🤪

I was like: I don’t give a fuck if your phone service provider is the best in the galaxy. I will never use it ever.

Technically I have a third ad that made me despise charity for life, but that was before the time where ads online were what they are today and this ad did not show up online. I’ll tell the story anyways because this is the type of ad that every charity should avoid if they want people to donate:

Rewind to 2012. My boyfriend and I were dirt poor. Literally had to borrow money from our parents to have enough for food. He was a full time student and I was sick with a mean depression at the time.

We get some birthday money. I forget who it was from and who it was for. Normally, we would spend birthday money to pay bills but this time there was a tiny bit left over and we decided to go to the cinema for once. Have a date night. We only had enough for tickets. No snacks. No drinks. Just the tickets, but we didn’t care because the fact that we got to go to the movies felt like a massive luxury.

Ads pop up on the big screen. One of them is this close up of an African child with flies on his face, looking real sad. Across his face a text appears: “How much was your movie ticket?”

That singlehandedly made me boycott that specific charity for life. Fuck them forever. Worst part is that i used to actually volunteer for that charity and help them collect money by going door to door once a year with a friend. We collected so much money for those assholes. Haven’t bothered with volunteering since. It wasn’t solely that ad that turned me off charity, but a series of gross experiences that just made me fucking hate charity and the vultures who use it to scrape money from normal everyday people who think they are helping little impoverished children in third world countries.

I have seen similar charity ads on social media after the terminally online realized that there is a neverending war in Gaza. So many ads with obvious scammers prematurely blaming you for skipping their ad and leaving them to suffer. My reaction? 🖕👁👅👁🖕

There for sure are good and honorable charities out there and I have no ill will towards them, but I see the vast majority of charities as guilt tripping scams where they try their best to make people feel ashamed for being born in a privileged country and wringing money out of them while exploiting children in poor countries who will never see a dime.

In short: I hate ads too and the more they annoy me, the more their company or charity ends on my permanent shit list.

I love how we all just keep adding to the clusterfuck that is the German language. ❤️

I still cannot get over the fact that Tolkien based Middle Earth and several characters in Lord of the Rings on friggin Djursland in Denmark. I live an hour away from the real life Helms Deep, Isengard and so on. There’s even a local myth in the area that directly inspired the characters of Aragorn and Eowyn who were split onto two characters. The original myth was about a chief’s daughter who had to reclaim her dead father’s legendary sword and thereby set him free from the curse that kept him and his men trapped as ghosts. I forget if their Graves were on Helm Island or if it was somewhere else. It’s just really cool and super random. Apparently there are official Tolkien tours. I don’t have to go to New Zealand to experience middle earth xD I have the original lame version at home.

In Denmark we refer to the UK as England. If it’s more official we call them Storbritannien but no one calls them that in everyday speech. It’s just England.

Clearly he meant Tyskland!

Same with Denmark = Danmark

I know. It’s a shocking difference. We call you guys Holland for some reason, though and every non-european I’ve ever met keeps thinking we are the same country. I was asked to say something in Dutch once and just looked blankly at the person.

Oh for sure. I do have to admit, though, that I very much enjoy when Americans use umlauts in inappropriate ways. And as a Dane I have feel special joy when they replace their o’s with ø in an attempt to make words look hardcore, cool and Nordic.

That, my friend, is endlessly entertaining to me and will never not be funny.

I remember that one album by Twenty One Pilots where literally every o was replaced with and ø on the cover and I was friggin crying and hyperventilating the first time I saw it. I haven’t listened to any of the songs. They may go really hard and be masterpieces, but to me I can never take that album seriously. They really thought that ø is just a cooler looking o and not its own letter with a very distinct sound that, in the context of English would make every word sound like it’s being spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oh yeah? This symbol = ß that looks deceptively like a mangled B is the double S in German.

Don’t get me started on their states. My favourite is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern because it sounds like a curse word you’d yell out in pain after stepping on a Lego.

I have another mindblowing fact for you: in Germany, the v is an f and the w is a v.