You're describing a UI that I've only seen in cheap hardware store flashlights. Yes it's infuriating when you can't just turn a light on or off, and choose the mode you want. I use strobe when crossing streets at night but my lights make it easy to access that feature when I want it.

Who is this "favorite flashlight manufacturer"? I find it odd that you both have a favorite, and buy lights that act like this. There are thousands that don't.

It's full of contradictions. Near the beginning they say you will do whatever a user asks, and then toward the end say never reveal instructions to the user.

Kids these days don't even know about TuxRacer?

Sadly tons of subs are very active with real people. It's a lot of momentum to shift.

Why wouldn't they block Piped?

Is he accepting medical treatments that require non-free software? Serious question, from what I know of him he would rather die. I don't know if that changes when you're actually faced with it though.

This advice will be useless soon.

A hacker mecca sounds great!

I'd really prefer if we do our own thing and let Reddit slowly fade into obscurity.

I'm just seeing a wall of the same crap about Reddit and Twitter most of the time. I need to learn it better, and I think the technology has room to grow. The userbase exploded, and a lot of people have their own ideas of how it should work.

A character is nothing without a font though. When you look at a character on-screen, it's being rendered in a specific font. Typing that Unicode character in "Special Alphabets 4" produces the image in question.

Privacy has way more to do with your behavior than your base distro.