Book was published in 1954. I hadn't heard of it previously. Based on the video blurb, the longwinded but interesting article "Meditations on Moloch" by Scott Alexander might also be of interest. The video is 12 minutes long, I guess not too bad, but I'm still not up for watching it. Here's a longer version of the blurb, I guess:
Yes, that too. I hadn't even thought about trying to send email from a home ISP. Everyone knows you basically can't. I thought the idea was to receive email rather than send it, so you wouldn't be relying on some bigtech company to store it for you.
I think there are still enough v4-only systems out there that you don't really want to host a mail server on v6. You are right though that it would be nice to be able to get static v6 (or for that matter v4) addresses from home isp's. Some do offer that of course.
Another issue can be that the average home internet user has no idea keep even a client system secure. So ISP's might use NAT and default firewall configurations partly to stop incoming connections on the theory that they are likely to be malicious. On home routers you can usually open ports if you know what you're doing. I don't know if that's even possible on mobile phones.
"In his new book, More Everything Forever, the science journalist Adam Becker offers a deep dive into the worldview of techno-utopians such as Musk—one that’s underpinned by promises of AI dominance, space colonization, boundless economic growth, and eventually, immortality. Becker’s premise is bracing: Tech oligarchs’ wildest visions of tomorrow amount to a modern secular theology that is both mesmerizing and, in his view, deeply misguided. The author’s central concern is that these grand ambitions are not benign eccentricities, but ideologies with real-world consequences."
Not sure what you're asking, but can you use git hooks? What is the purpose of the mirror: for backup, for remote listening, or what? If the mirror is the permanent home for the files, you should keep the lossless version there. Is the lossy conversion just to reduce upload bandwidth? How did you get the lossless files onto the client to begin with?
If I imagine this setup, the lossless versions would live on the server, lossy compression would also be done on the server, and then the client could download either version.
I think version control isn't really what you want, since you normally won't have multiple revisions of the same file.
Maybe you could look at git-annex for handling the large binaries in your git repo.
I've never used Discord -- is it similar to Mumble? I tried Jami but found it too unreliable to recommend. What about Nextcloud Chat? I do use that though it is kind of clumsy.
I have a family friend who comes over with her 2 kids sometimes and it's not so bad. Alternatively, if you want to catch up more personally than you can over text, but without dealing with a meetup with kids, you might suggest a voice phone call. Phone calls are sort of a lost technology but they still are better than text or email for some kinds of things. If you do the phone call, be honest about why.
No idea about the VPN stuff but I just don't have the brain cells to spare for watching a Star Wars TV show. I watched the first 3 movies (Luke blows up the Death Star twice) and the first of the prequel movies (the one with Jar Jar) and gave up on the whole franchise after that. I only recently found out from Wookiepedia the amount of spin-offs and sidehows the thing has spawned. I still love this though (music video compressing the whole prequel series to 6 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpvlTVgeivU
Worth mentioning, this book was written in 1954. Full text is online, find by web search.