I didn’t both sides this. To clarify; I meant that if republicans brought forth policies to preserve personal privacy, or the democrats decide to bust up monopolistic companies- doesn’t matter which side tried to bring up any of these ideas; they would be so neutered by the time the ink dried the impact would be negligible.

I can see how you could take my comment as both sides-ing it. I haven’t seen either party do anything that impacts the quality of daily life (in a positive way) for myself, friends or family. The examples of abortion and gun control are just examples where the overwhelming majority of citizens want one thing, in very clear terms, and the government does absolutely nothing about it despite the wishes of the people.

I’m also clearly not advocating for any third party. If you take the very common knowledge that the government no longer works for the people and twist that into throwing away your vote on Kennedy or Nader your problems are larger than limited browser selection.

And how’s that antitrust case going? Where are we on net neutrality? Student loan forgiveness for like 10% of borrowers? Expanding Medicare? I only criticize democrats because that’s the party that’s supposed to do things for us. The American republicans are Christo- fascists who’ve long abandoned any pretense of constitutional law or responsibility for their country. Either way- we have crumbling infrastructure, hungry children, women dying because religious abortion restrictions, and lead pipes. And these shit bags can just send another $25 billion to kill more brown people in the Middle East.

So forgive me if I doubt they’ll take the time to learn what http means or even consider something that doesn’t have a wealthy donor behind it.

I like Doctorow, and these point are valid. I just don’t see the American government doing anything to benefit the people, regardless of left or right orientation. Most Americans want abortion access and reasonable restrictions on gun sales; I can’t imagine any candidates, local or federal doing little more than making empty promises on these subjects. Even Obama care is a hugely compromised husk of reasonable healthcare for all, and you still have republicans clamoring to dismantle it.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t think any American politician would take on this topic.

The problem with pfas is that it’s not just one chemical. PubChem says it’s more like 7 million. Yes there are ways to destroy/remove them and they are being used in remediation. However some methods work better for certain types of pfas, and all have some form of operational costs from manageable to expensive.

Yes there is public support for legislating the use of these chemicals; it is also a market with a value estimated around $28 billion. I don’t expect these companies or interests will be eager to encroach on these profits.

Even if legislators can regulate the use of these chemicals it will be challenging on at least 2 levels. Given the variety of pfas if one chemical is banned there is another pfas that can perform the same function with a slight molecular tweak so that legally, it is not banned/regulated. And, this stuff is in practically everything- and I’m not exaggerating; I knew someone doing research in this field. They had strict instructions on what products they could use bathing before work, no lotion, lip balm, cosmetics, even specific writing utensils and paper were required; all those items were prohibited not because they could foul a test, but because they likely contain pfas and would cause inconsistent data.

Drinking water aside we don’t exactly know how much of this is already out there or what it’s in.

We should definitely worry about pesticides, but pfas is pretty concerning, and worse, it’s impacts are still emerging with research.

I’ve noticed that, I also appreciate you can kinda tinker which I appreciate. It’s wild being so accustomed to the limited control you have from using windows and mainstream software

I dual boot and am maybe considered a newbie. But I’ve had this set up for about a year slowly preparing to stop using Microsoft crap. It’s part of a longer path to digital privacy that was kicked into gear when the win 11 update made my Wi-Fi card disappear, like gone- like it was never installed. Fuck HP and Microsoft

Ironically I had disabled secure boot to try another distro. Was going to drop Ubuntu for something else, still might but no rush, plenty to learn.