I fear that this does not cleanly apply to Japan because of their somewhat uniquely active doujinshi (fan work) culture. To give an idea of how big a deal doujinshi are, the largest western convention San Diego Comic Con only draws around 130,000 attendants. The largest Doujinshi convention Comiket drew 750,000 attendants before COVID. These works are explicitly distributed and redistributed for commercial profit (though admittedly usually not at any profitable scale).

Japan copyright law has explicit exceptions for doujinshi, having recognised the immense value to the industry. So many successful artists started by creating and selling doujinshi, which are usually explicitly derivative works of IP.

Doujinshi - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doujinshi

Except that as part of its enshittification Spotify has intentionally changed its algo to push people into more and more homogenous “beige”, nothing music. It has become so prolific that Spotifycore has become a term to describe what happens when you let Spotify autoplay.

With the rise of AI, Spotify is now producing and recommending beige music that is produced on an industrial scale, at the expense of actual artists.

Mood Machine go brrr

Mood Machine by Liz Pelly review – a savage indictment of Spotify | Music books | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/05/mood-machine-by-liz-pelly-review-a-savage-indictment-of-spotify

Not sure of your specific needs, but I feel that self hosting (i.e. setting up a proper server) is unnecessary. Just pick a local first program and use it with syncthing.

The usual trio (which may be overkill) are Obsidian (admittedly not open source), Trillium, and logseq.

The existing Euro does not have a proper system for day to day transactions. Transfers are currently handled by SEPA, which are only suitable for things like bills. This means that a lot of people especially in less developed EU nations end up using an international bank card, i.e. MasterCard/Visa for day to day transactions.

Details are somewhat vague, but the ECB’s website seems to have many good assurances. This even includes strong privacy features, such as offline capabilities and cash-like privacy.

FAQs on a digital euro - https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/faqs/html/ecb.faq_digital_euro.en.html#q1

You joke but pedophiles use Pinterest to stalk and coerce young girls.

Investigation: How Pinterest drives men to little girls’ images - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/pinterest-algorithm-young-girls-videos-grown-men-investigation-rcna72469

r/nolawns

c/nolawns

Sauce?

As suspected, this paper is based upon Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, better known as micro-expressions.

This controversial literature borderlines on pseudo-science, with Ekman’s work having significant conflicts of interest in the form of undisclosed funding from US defence, police, and border control, who wanted Ekman to create systems that can detect lies based on supposed micro expressions. Subsequent independent meta analyses have found that micro expressions cannot be consistently read, even by Ekman’s own researchers.

Unfortunately, despite this, world governments have poured millions of dollars into private contractors to develop AI systems based on this flawed research for border control.

Munecat’s video essay on debunking body language experts goes into much greater detail:

https://youtu.be/Y0VQyEY-B2I

This separation is inaccurate, because the surveillance capitalism imperatives of big tech requires them to be both.

Social media needs ragebait influencers to attract people in the first place to harvest their data, and simultaneously requires projecting an image of being uncontroversial for advertisers. This dichotomy can be seen with Tiktok, which is infamous for pushing people further down polarising echo chambers, yet is unironically one of the fastest growing e commerce sites.

Simply being or or the other is a failing strategy. Purely uncontroversial platforms are too boring. Purely controversial platforms are too toxic. We can see the shittification of Reddit in its pursuit of becoming financially viable as an IRL example of this.

Any differences between the big tech platforms are at best surface level. Meta is genius in how they managed to give the illusion of Facebook and Instagram being separate, despite them explicitly sharing data as part of a vertically integrated surveillance capitalist enterprise.

Read Shoshana Zuboff

Even browsing existing small to medium sized sites has become such a chore, with all these verifications and rate limiters as part of the anti AI scraper effort.

So many cloudflare verification checkboxes. So many Google sign ins. So many cross site cookies and tracking for even basic functionality.

Care about privacy and restrict browsing data even a little? Captcha hell.

Someone (allegedly) fucked the principal’s dog

I owned a Remarkable and returned it because it is so frustrating.

Remarkable runs a scuffed version of Linux, which requires developers to release a separate version of whatever app they have. Although the selection is growing, it is paltry compared to offerings from a typical Android or iOS device.

Below is a list of so called “best” apps. No syncthing, no Obsidian, no Saber, etc. Multiple scuffed versions of Zotero that can’t do annotations.

https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

Even for the few custom apps available, these are all uninstalled and reset with every OS update.

https://remarkable.guide/faqs.html#what-happens-to-third-party-software-when-i-update-or-downgrade-my-os

If you don’t want to use the few third party cloud sync options, then Remarkable charges money for cloud sync.

https://remarkable.com/shop/connect/pricing

Remarkable’s notes are also stored in a proprietary format that cannot be read by other applications. Attempts to reverse engineer it are jank af.

https://github.com/akeil/rmtool

It it works for you, great 👍. But I cannot whole heartedly recommend it. Even if you love eInk, just grab an Android based one like Boox.

Thumbs down for Remarkable. Dumb vendor lock-in with subscription fees and inability to easily transfer notes, no external app support, yet still retails close to iPad prices.

At that point, deploying locked down iPads is easier, cheaper, and offers more flexibility. Which is exactly what a lot of schools and universities already do.

Africa tech is just Chinese tech so they’re already cooked.

Australia basically banned encryption long ago and in doing killed off their tech industry.

We need a New Zealand tech revolution, which is where all the Australian IT firms relocated to following the encryption ban.

Encryption laws are hurting Australia’s tech sector, Atlassian says | Australian security and counter-terrorism | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/27/encryption-laws-are-hurting-australias-tech-sector-atlassian-says

Trixie Mattel and Kim Chi

As much I despise Spotify, I’m trying out Qobuz and it’s just not really it.

No folder organisation for playlists or albums.

No Linux application.

No lyrics.

No support for smart speakers.

No information linking to artist tours and merch.

No dedicated classical music app.

Generally lacking when it comes to non western artists.

Prides itself on providing high quality music, yet still only has lower quality masters for some artists compared to Apple Music, Tidal, and even Spotify.

I want to love it, like the way it loves and respects the music industry, with it’s special magazine etc, but it’s just not it.

It’s so funny, non Australians complaining about Australia slang mirrors foreigners complaining when learning English. E.g. people think Australians are crazy for giving toilets an “immature” and “toy like” name in the form of dunny, but potty is also immature and toy like.

Single payer healthcare systems get all the political attention, but we really need a single payer judicial system. Basically public defenders but properly funded and for prosecution as well.

The US judicial system is also particularly bad because each party is responsible for their own legal fees. Most of the world has the loser pay the winner’s fees.

American rule (attorney’s fees) - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney’s_fees)