With the caveat that I rarely use any of them because I prefer having my own files, CDs, and records, I've gravitated towards deezer for the most part, apple music the rest of the time.
Reason being that deezer is the least annoying as regards setting up playlists, and apple is my wife's preferred service, and it's usually easier to just let her set up the playlists and then make suggestions for adds/removals over time lol.
Mind you, I don't really like any of the interfaces of any of the services. They all suck in different ways.
Legit, we've got about an acre in the back yard, and I was working toward this for most of it. Can't do the work required now, so it's gotten less native than it used to be, but at one point, it was all plants native to my region, and they are still dominant. The rest of the yard is better set up for my crippled ass to handle, so I can pull out invasive species as needed. There's a section maybe twenty feet in a rough circle plus a corner where it's "grass", but it's mostly random clover with dandelions I can't be bothered to remove every year. The chickens have been keeping anything else from setting in compared to yard B.C. (before chickens).
It'll eventually get taken over by random plants, I'm sure. It'll be as I age out and cripple out of the work involved, since getting my kid to do a damn thing ain't happening lol. But for now, me and the chickens have a nice area to walk around and putter.
And it sucks because their sound is great. And I dig his vocals. But gods damn, the lyrics are just so juvenile, fratboyish, edgelord bullshit most of the time. Like, if you take individual songs, it isn't too bad; nothing wrong with a little bit of lyrical bullshit now and then. But it's pretty much every song, so it wears thin after a while.
It is possible to respect their efforts, but refuse to sign up for things on principle.
And, if the account is "free", then why did you need to give them an email in the first place? If they aren't getting money from you, then needing a login that would require an email address is sketchy as hell on the surface, and there's no explanation given.
Yeah, blocking the site in its entirety is kinda weird, seems like extra effort for no benefit at all when you can just not use the site. But objecting to what is a pointless "account" unless they're monetizing the information makes plenty of sense. Worker owned is not a guarantee of good behavior. It certainly helps, and it's the superior business model imo, but it isn't inherently going to mean they aren't doing dumb shit.
My wife is a damn yankee, transplanted to the south.
Every family gathering she attends, she still sits next to me and ends up asking what someone said.
You want a real trip? There's a show called Moonshiners, that features some people with southern accents, or Appalachian accents so deep that I have trouble getting everything they're saying, and I'm from the same region. My wife has watched it with subtitles and will look at me and ask if that's what they really said because it sounded nothing like what the subtitles said lol.
But, in general, accents are easier if you grow up with a wide array of them to learn from. You then get used to processing them and it stays as an ability, up to a point.
The older usages of it weren't as bad, supposedly (and I don't have the access to link a source that's authoritative without paying) and were generally akin to calling the wife the queen of the house, but also implying that she was more of a dowager queen, and one without power.
But it eventually just fell into the usual trope of men either dismissing their own feelings by joking about their wife, or expressing the idea that the wife is something you put up with rather than respect and love.
Now, that first part is important! Using terms that seem derogatory, but are really there to cover up genuine emotion that is untoward for a "real" man has been a thing for a very long time now, so you can't just assume that any given man using terms like "old lady" or "the old ball-and-chain" are being misogynistic. It's becoming less common for men to cloak their affection behind dismissive or derogatory terms, but it is still there.
It's like when you're petting your dog and you're babbling about them being a monster or beast. You love the dog, but you're using inverted meaning to express it. It's just that the freedom to babble to your dog about how wonderful they are became more acceptable sooner. Which is a bit of an indictment of the systemic misogyny we live in.
Anyway, if you compare that to the supposed origins of "old man" to refer to a father in specific (rather than the use to mean a husband/boyfriend which is one use of the phrase), it came from naval usage like so many other neat phrases.
Is was, and still is, a term used for a Captain or other commanding officer. When it got applied to dads, it was from a similar way of thinking, wherein the father is in command of the household, but it was also an honorific of sorts.
The reasons for it being used that way in the English and American navies is a whole essay by itself, but that essays are already out there online, so I'm not making this longer by going into it lol.
Anyway, the tl;dr that's horribly misleading is: a combination of ageism, patriarchal thinking, and a tinge of misogyny here and there.
Eh, it isn't all the time for most people, and it isn't hard to shut down for most people either.
The key is that it isn't a separate entity, it's just your own mind using words to ideate. Like, you can see the sky and just enjoy the blue, or you can think about the blue in words, if you have that inner voice. People without that voice still have a way of processing and thinking, it just isn't in words, it's more abstract.
The few people I've met that don't think in words do seem to have difficulty in expressing the experience to others though.
Nah, people remember, it was just not that great at breaking hetero stereotypes. It just shifted them to being pretty while still thinking the same way. It was a step for sure, but not really a big one.
What really helped break through the bullshit was gay men coming out and living life. When men started seeing the vast array of masculinity in that community, it allowed new discourse about what masculinity is, outside of the old patriarchal paradigm.
You started seeing more men embrace their self and express it fully. The discussion about being free to express emotions, to be a nuturing man, to be gentle and kind and open with everyone started becoming a possibility instead of a weakness. And nobody had to give up anything to have that freedom. It's still perfectly fine to be traditionally masculine if that's who you are, as long as you aren't trying to define others.
From there, we all got to expand our personal definition of masculine for ourselves. And, as we move into a paradigm where everyone can just be who they are, without any need to label themselves if they don't want to, we will be able to pick and choose even more. We can explore the fullness of human experience in a way I don't think has ever been possible. And that is largely thanks to our trans and non binary friends and neighbors stepping up and living their lives without apology.
Hell, if you ask me, the first step was back with the hippies and their long hair. Then the metalheads picking up that baton and running with it through the eighties until that one barrier to looking like a man was gone and likely gone for good. Those guys at the end of the boomer generation looking to escape the trap patriarchy had set for them took the first public step by growing their hair out and still being men, being comfortable with it.
It takes time to shift perceptions. It takes people at the edges being willing to step forward and be the change.
Being real here? Anyone that can't see the damn button for it during initial setup isn't going to give a damn.
Best practices? No. Opt in only should be the default. But that's still about choice, not whether or not telemetry is inherently a bad thing. But if someone is too damn lazy to look at the settings of a program when they first use it, that's pretty damn stupid. But, hey, people in general are stupid.
