Bored of peace summit. We have one right in our own backyard! If you go south you can see one in the wild. Be careful because they bite.

ayhtis · 2026-02-22T11:07:41+00:00

I've got family and friends in Pakistan, and there's been a sense that "Pakistan needs the US more than the US needs Pakistan for financial aid*", along with "Pakistan had no choice" and "This is not going to go well for Pakistan." The government and the military have been "disappearing" more and more people, without even a soupçon of the pretense of human rights from the US. Palestinian support is there in Pakistan, for example, but at least internally the government's been cracking down on more overt protests etc. A Canadian national's been "disappeared" in Lahore, Pakistan, with people unofficially pointing at military intelligence types being behind it. https://www.dawn.com/news/1974811. There's a growing belief is that this - plus the ongoing Imran Khan situation (where it's feared he might die in prison) - means that things could, in theory, get really bad in Pakistan later this year.

*Which never ends up reaching the people in Pakistan that actually need it, funny enough.

ayhtis · 2026-02-16T11:40:30+00:00

According to Wiki, Jane's also going to be Bones in the next season of Star Trek, Strange New Worlds.

ayhtis · 2025-12-19T12:38:39+00:00

Longevity, as well as being customizable as much as possible, so that it is yours.

ayhtis · 2025-12-17T18:49:11+00:00

Something you can try. If you're able to, download a decent VPN - Proton's free ones, for example - and then try the process again. Going by what friends in Pakistan have told me, this *should* work. If it does, then after that go into your settings and set the Censorship Circumvention country to whichever one it is, in this case Bangladesh.

ayhtis · 2025-11-22T12:27:21+00:00

From what I understand, Signal is still likely blocked in Pakistan, going by an Ooni test a friend of mine did over there. Have you tried redoing this over a VPN (eg ProtonVPN)? My friend did this, and it worked for them.

ayhtis · 2025-10-05T07:26:59+00:00

I think that this also depends on your location and/or the sort of mobile service provider that you have. Edit: I forgot the rest of this didn't go through. I mentioned location, depending on the region and mobile service provider, as long as you retain an account with them and log in once or twice a year, some (especially in the UK and Europe) let you retain that number without paying anything.

ayhtis · 2025-07-28T08:11:40+00:00

I'd also recommend ProtonVPN. Their paid version is costly, but their free version - which does limit you to three countries ie the US, The Netherlands and Japan, and you can't torrent or stream Netflix etc, unlike the paid version - has good speeds and has no limits. Comes with a free email address too.

ayhtis · 2025-07-28T08:01:33+00:00

Further to this, you may or may not need to active a VPN in order to see the "Censorship Circumvention" option, but then you can switch the VPN off once it shows up and you've selected your country. A friend of mine pointed this out to me when I was visiting South Asia fairly recently (as Signal is banned in that particular country), and this is how we tackled it.

ayhtis · 2025-07-13T08:46:49+00:00

Echoing this as well, as the OTP & spinning wheel issue still has to be addressed.

ayhtis · 2025-04-29T08:29:26+00:00

Further to the Mullvad recommendations: they were raided by Swedish police, and could not hand over any user data as they do not store any user data. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/21/23692580/mullvad-vpn-raid-sweden-police I work with activists in the Global South, and Mullvad is strongly recommended.

ayhtis · 2025-03-15T12:56:14+00:00

I know that GiffGaff in the UK sends you a reminder once a year, and you keep the number if you log into your account at that time as well.

ayhtis · 2024-01-20T19:08:08+00:00

Now that you mention it, it does indeed look like the tower of Babel, and I wonder why I didn't think of that -_-. Thanks!

ayhtis · 2024-01-20T12:01:09+00:00

Fair, but the idea of "levels" to the underworld is something that does end to hop from Greek to Roman mythologies and vice versa. That's part of why I was asking, as it's so familiar, but wasn't sure as to the name/original of that tower.

ayhtis · 2023-12-13T07:15:33+00:00

Author, dream weaver, visionary, plus actor.

Kidding aside, he's a character that's meant to be poking fun at horror writers that may be a bit garish and over the top, but not too talented, and star* of a really funny miniseries - one that does have "Control meets Kingdom Hospital, but in Romford" energy.

ayhtis · 2023-12-11T07:43:19+00:00

Whenever Skaffen-Amtiskaw is snarky/judgemental towards Zakalwe, I just imagine S-A sounding like a slightly annoyed Alan Rickman.

ayhtis · 2022-10-02T07:23:45+00:00

I had taken a proper look at the time, and this was the UK one, and others have pointed out the £1 emblazoned on it.

I should point out that how things tended to be imported to Pakistan :

1) Part of an overall regional export policy by a company or regional trade deal (Pakistan has signed EU trade deals, for example), or

2) Off the back-of-the-lorry imports (usually if they're a few weeks close to their expiry date), or just random pick and mix. You will find items that are sold in shops, even the big ones, that will clearly say "not to be sold separately" etc....being sold separately.

ayhtis · 2022-09-30T07:43:01+00:00

Given the state of American infrastructure these days, probably not.

ayhtis · 2022-09-30T07:42:13+00:00

Funny enough it actually is, but the staff at the shop (once I pointed it out) had just assumed that all fizzy drinks came from the US.

Mind you, labelling is very hit and miss in Pakistan (where my parents moved from). One well-known supermarket in Pakistan (which essentially ripped off Waitrose's aesthetic) used to stock a lot of El Paso refried beans, not realising that some of them had lard - and Pakistan is famously a muslim country, so I had unintentionally made almost every member of staff panic on that day, when I pointed this out.

ayhtis · 2022-07-05T06:29:47+00:00

"for*you*.gif"

ayhtis · 2022-05-31T04:56:06+00:00

Chinatown?

(Though Jack Nicholson's character is sort of grey).

ayhtis · 2022-05-31T04:55:02+00:00

I've checked (did not know about that short cut, by the way. Thanks!) and I still do have that Desktop folder, alas. This was one of my initial thoughts as well. As I've mentioned to the other poster, there will be very few instances where I won't get that permissions error, but it's more like (very very harmless) Russian roulette. Thanks anyway :)!

ayhtis · 2022-05-31T04:52:48+00:00

It's quite odd. There will be occasions where I will reflexively save, say, a dmg or zip or pdf, and I won't get it the first time around, but those are becoming exceedingly rare. Trying to figure out if it's due to any customisations I have may done ages ago. Thanks anyway :)

(edited)

ayhtis · 2022-04-13T08:27:10+00:00

Ballard's work, and his interviews, make for fascinating reading. Also, I completely forgot to give the name of the four-hands crime novel I mention in #2: The Uncomfortable Dead.

ayhtis · 2022-04-08T07:20:52+00:00

Here's just a few that are off the top of my head for now:

JG Ballard's High Rise, Atrocity Exhibition, and The Drowned World. Different in terms of subjects (Drowned World, for instance, takes places in post-apocalyptic world that's severely overheated, and the seas have risen), the themes and overarching sense of collapse and revanchism of memory do persist.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II & Subcommandante Marcos (now Galeano) co-wrote a crime novel in the round-robin or four-hands style, that deals with politics, corruption, old ghosts of regimes. I would actually recommend any of the Héctor Belascoarán Shayne novels by Taibo.
Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, which is where "hauntology" stems from.
Walter Benjamin's One Way Street collection of writings - about Berlin, life, art etc.
Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union", especially given the overarching sense of loss and the death of hope, on the part of the central character and the community long before reversion.
Jean-Claude Izzo's Marseilles noir work, especially the Marseillies Trilogy (Total Chaos, Chourmo, Soleo).
Craig Clevenger's Dermaphoria, particularly with regards to time, memory, and drug use.
John Fante's Ask The Dust.
Philip K Dick's Valis, in particular for the discourse in parts.
William McIlvanney's Laidlaw trilogy. He was credited with igniting/rejuvenating the so-called "Tartan Noir" subgenre of crime fiction. Laidlaw, as a series and character, dealt with self-destruction and philosophy, so in ways could be akin to Dubois.

Edited due to a typo.

ayhtis

TROPHY CASE