Start hosting your own stuff. Rely less on the cloud across everything. This isn’t about having something to hide, it’s about basic rights to privacy.
It’s very easy to run a small home lab type setup with some basic services.
Protectli VP4670 + Proxmox hypervisor lets you run containers and VMs.
Then back up your data to multiple locations using restic. Offsite could be a parent’s house or a friend’s place.
Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.
He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?
Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself...
Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees." He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely.
This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot. Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.
The hobbits meet Bombadil early on in their quest, before they reach Bree and the Prancing Pony Inn. He rescues Merry and Pippin from Old Man Willow, and invites the hobbits to stay at his house in the Old Forest.
There, the hobbits realize something strange about him: the Ring has no power over Bombadil whatsoever.
When he wears it, he remains visible. He treats it as a plaything, making it disappear with a magic trick. Indeed, at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf rejects the idea of giving the Ring to Tom, for he would likely misplace it or forget about it entirely.
So just who is he, exactly?
When Frodo asks this very question to Tom's wife Goldberry, she simply responds "He is." It's a cryptic answer that echoes God's famous answer to Moses in the Book of Exodus: "I am who I am."
Thus, many theorize that Bombadil is God, some kind of angelic being, or even the spirit of the Music of the Ainur (due to the fact that he is constantly singing). But Tolkien's letters reveal something considerably more interesting…
In April 1954, Tolkien wrote:
"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship… but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control.But if you have, as it were, taken a 'vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself… then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless…"
So, Bombadil is a representation of what it means to take pure delight in the world around you — to experience people and things simply as they are, without any thought for what they could be or how you could use them. And this is why the Ring has no power over him.
To Bombadil, the One Ring is simply a ring, and the possibilities of what can be achieved through its power are of no importance. He is able to resist its evil precisely because he is entirely content with the world around him.
At the end of the story, having accomplished what he set out to do in Middle-earth, Gandalf pays Tom a visit before returning to the Undying Lands:
"I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time."
If Bombadil is the epitome of simply enjoying life and being, Gandalf is the epitome of doing. He guides the hobbits, fights the Balrog, and runs up and down Middle-earth to help destroy the One Ring.
But now that he's finally liberated from doing, he immediately heads to Bombadil's. He does so with a sense of relief, as if he's at last able to access a purer and higher mode of being — a sort of innocence that cannot be fully experienced by those consumed by doing.
Of course, by this Tolkien doesn't disparage the value of action. The entirety of LOTR displays the importance of rising up against evil, even in the face of all odds. But with the inclusion of Bombadil, he does remind readers that fighting isn't all there is.
Bombadil reminds us that while it's important to strive and *do*, it is just as important to occasionally step back and *be*. Indeed, your ability to do so plays a crucial role in helping you resist the allure of evil…
Read the full piece here:
https://t.co/aqK2daehIL
The unsung hero of The Lord of the Rings...
UK GOVERNMENT SACKED ITS OWN BORDER WATCHDOG
David Neal was the man the government hired to inspect UK borders and make sure they actually worked. He did exactly that. What he found was not good. He wrote it all up in official reports. The Home Office locked those reports in a drawer.
When he finally went to a newspaper to warn the public that private planes were landing in the UK with almost nobody checking who was on them, the Home Secretary James Cleverly @JamesCleverly fired him.
Here is what Neal actually found.
At London City Airport, only 21% of flights flagged as high risk were checked by immigration officers.
Not some of the time. As a yearly average.
He said it was a scandal and dangerous for the country.
The Home Office said he had the numbers wrong. Then they fired him.
At the moment he was sacked, the @HomeOffice was holding back 15 of his finished inspection reports. Some had been sitting there for 18 months without being shown to the public.
The agreed deadline for publishing them was eight weeks. Not one report met that deadline across his entire three years in the job.
When they finally released 13 of the reports, they chose to do it on the same afternoon that a separate major inquiry published its findings... Draw your own conclusions.
What was actually in those reports? Border control posts left with nobody manning them. Officers at e-passport gates described as distracted and without basic radios. The whole airport border operation rated as neither effective nor efficient.
Neal told MPs directly: I have been sacked for doing my job.
He also told @BBC the Home Office is dysfunctional and described senior officials rolling their eyes when he brought them his findings.
He said the government contacted him three separate times warning him not to speak publicly about the unpublished reports.
He had almost no other way to get the information out.
The people who fired him for raising border security concerns were the same people who spent years promising the public they had taken back control of the borders.
Sources: @BBCNews@guardian@DailyMail@CommonsHomeAffs
Question.
Why is it that multiple countries across the world are now pushing for a social media ban for children simultaneously?
Let's be real.
In reality, this is about censorship.
This can't be a coincidence.
Canadian Indigenous man says the current Canadian gov't policy of immigration is a form of neo-colonialism.
I bet some of the lefty activist types would tear him to shreds and accuse him of all kinds of things for saying this out loud.
If you are of the view that millions of your fellow Britons are angry only because they have been “whipped up” by a few right-wing bogeymen, you truly do not understand your own country.
“Immigrants are just regular people who want a better life.”
So what you’re saying is, they failed to create a better life in their own countries and and with their own cultures, but you want to transfer that failure over to here?
Private constituency-wide polling in Makerfield just released by 'The i Paper' has shown Restore Britain's support in the constituency is huge, and growing fast.
We are going to deliver the biggest shock the British establishment has ever received next Thursday.
Leftists worldwide have much in common:
They preach tolerance, but don't practice it toward anyone who isn't a leftist.
They hate civilization.
They defend criminals.
They are insufferable.
The UK defence secretary has resigned, hitting out at @Keir_Starmer as an utter failure who won't put a penny towards defending the United Kingdom.
Well over £2bn a year goes on housing invaders in hotels.
£15bn on welfare for them.
"They're not all bad, most of them have jobs and they keep the country running!"
Ok, let's take a look at some of them at work.
In this undercover footage from last year, we see elderly Irish people losing their dignity while being manhandled by strangers from the other side of the world.
Some of you believe you're doing something important and courageous by calling out violent and illegal immigrants, but that's easy.
You should be opposing all immigration.
It’s with a heavy heart I can finally announce that the Bell Hotel has been SHUT DOWN.
The Home office just confirmed that all of the migrants on site have been removed. Thank you to all the dedicated patriots and activists who protested every Sunday over the last year or so. Epping is now a safer place because of you.
I want to leave a stark warning though The migrants are gone, but we are not. We are organised, and if you return, we will be back. Keep Epping refugee free.
I love how I am supposed to embrace multiculturalism and accept all new comers. Yet the moment they get here they segregate themselves and make their own communities. But the moment I suggest that I want my own community without their ways Im called racist.