Oh yes definitely The Little Prince is a must-read.

The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren is one of my childhood favourites. Originally Swedish but has been translated into English.

The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt another childhood fav., it has been translated from Dutch. Actually, anything by Dragt I loved, but not sure which have translations or not.

In terms of adult fiction, I was hooked on Stig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (he only wrote the first 3 though).

Someone mentioned Kurt Vonnegut; I recommend the one I’ve read of his: Slaughterhouse 5.

The Circle still gives me pause more than 5 years later. It’s by Dave Eggers.

Switzerland is not an EU country…

Lol, what? Australia is a US lackee more than anywhere else. And the CIA was definitely involved in the Whitlam sacking.

same.

15yo me gets an angry phone call from the dad where I’d scored a weekly long-term babysitting gig after the first or second night: don’t think for a second that you’re coming back! (I’m paraphrasing here).

I give a one-word reply and he hangs up.

All I did was leave after getting paid without saying bye while they were checking on the kids. (They were asleep). Because I didn’t want to be coerced to get a ride like last time.

Took me years to realise they were in the wrong.

Look it’s hard to say if it saved lives in the overall ww2 tally, but surrender to save lives was the rationale of the Generals eg in The Netherlands. They looked at what the Luftwaffe had done to Rotterdam, looked at what weapons they had themselves, considered the prospect of what was going to happen to Utrecht next, and decided that further resistance was futile. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_in_World_War_II#German_occupation

Quite a few nations capitulated against the Nazis within days or even without a fight to avoid war. It saved a lot of lives. Does that make it the right choice? Who is to say…

What’s for sure is that Boris shouldn’t have vetoed the peace agreement in 2022.

You put the someone in a re-education camp

Pray, how do I login to the same account on my second phone? Or do you mean you can link multiple computers to the account on your phone? In which case, I’m not running that on my old laptop.

Edit: I’ll answer my own question:

Multiple mobile devices … are not currently supported.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320551-Linked-Devices

Well, that’s news to me.

Signal app size 165MB. Conversations: 42MB.

I can’t message someone on Signal without installing Signal or Molly which also uses Signal servers, which has to be trusted on good faith (can’t run my own). Ergo a walled garden just like Whatsapp.

I can’t register with just a username & password. I have to trust their PR saying they don’t store my ph #.

US has some of the worst legislation when it comes to privacy; when the agencies decide they want your data, Signal will not be allowed to tell you. And don’t give me the bs line that they only store 3 pieces of info about you. Unless you’ve built their server software you don’t know what they collect am store.

I use Signal. It’s the in thing in my circles.

The desktop version cannot be used independently; you still need to make and maintain an account on a smart phone. Also the desktop version uses crazy memory. It’s a pos. I no longer use it. Also you’re limited to 2 devices: one phone & one comp. I sync my xmpp chats between 3 or 4, depending.

This is what I would do.

Signal is so bloated compared to Conversations on Android. Also it’s a walled garden requiring your ph number to register (edit: and requires owning a smart phone👎). Based in the US so not great for privacy. Marginally better than Whatsapp suppose.

Edit: and it requires a smart phone.

Yes, very well.

Yea, nah. Say what you want about X, but Meta is in a whole other league than X. In my communities it’s monopolising to a large degree:

• finding housemates/sharehouses,
• buying/selling second-hand goods online,
• info on events,
• news-updates for community groups, and even
• shift swaps at work

amongs others. All essential services that Meta took over one by one.

X on the other hand is just a micro-blogging platform.

I’d rather be a loner than go back to that shitbook.

As long as their corpse isn’t outside your bedroom door you’re probably fine.

is your friend alive?