Uriel238 [all pronouns]

This is, really, any choice terrain occupied by a regional people that is equally coveted by nearby empires. Another example is Korea, wanted by China, Russia and Japan so much you could make an epic RTS game out of the fighting going on there. It also features its own legends, like Queen Min who refused to stay in her place as a woman, ran a spy network that saw the industrialization of Japan (and the imminent threat that posed), and she was ultimately assassinated by a platoon of literal ninjas.

Poland has its own legends, including obtaining the Enigma machine and making sure the allies all had one and the current protocol two weeks before the Germans invaded.

I like the Polish Home Army version of the Molotov Cocktail which added sulfuric acid and a sugar–potassium-nitrate saturated (dry) rag, that didn’t need to be pre-ignited, but would self ignite when the bottled fluid mixed with the rag.

It is always morally preferrable to pirate things made by giant corporations

Fixed It For You.

Regardless of what is regarded as a crime against the state, it is wrongdoing against the public to support corporations that seek to extract more wealth than value they produce.

Intellectual property rights were a (very) temporary monopoly to give creators an incentive to create in order to build a robust public domain.

Copyrights, patents and trademarks no longer do that. So charging for content is now rent-seeking

Corporations, their share holders and the plutocrats who own them pull wealth out of the economy by hoarding it. The whenever you buy from anything but directly from the creator, you are reducing the wealth in the economy since your money goes straight into Scrooge McDuck’s swimming coffers.

And our public domain only contains stuff from a century ago. Steamboat Willie became public domain just a year or two ago. Copyright holders and courts even assert all content should be owned and licensed, including SCOTUS. (Though the US Supreme Court is a traitor to the United States and its constitution.)

Pirate everything. Steal from companies for they have already stolen from you.

Yeah, when I was fifteen, I came to realize parents and teachers alike were willing to pile busywork on me in order to retain the position that I needed to work harder. I just quit right there, which turned into a PTSA crisis.

Curiously, when I got into clerical work, I noticed the exact same methods were used to keep workers feeling inadequate, either to keep them from asking for wage increases and promotions, or as an internal political mechanism to prevent rising competition.

Oh yeah, our capitalist system works on forcing the working class to compete with each other to get a limited number of jobs (and the economy is managed in order to keep jobs scarce), which is a means of allowing companies to underpay their labor and clerical staff. It also allows upper management to abuse their labor pool while keeping them too afraid to lose their jobs to actually report the matters.

So the whole system is designed so that workers will forever be compensated for less than they’re worth. When the communist revolution comes, we really do have nothing to lose but our chains. (And curiously, Marx predicted all these dynamics in Das Kapital )

Here in the states, leading-edge teaching scientists are reviewing the way we’ve been teaching math for centuries as super ineffective, and are now looking for better ways to teach our kids STEM concepts.

So if your kid is like me and enjoys math but finds some aspects and operations to impenetrable < cough > computing integrals < cough > there is definitely still hope on the horizon.

I didn’t see that.

FYI: That is statistically not good for you or your boss. People who take lunches and breaks (even when forced to) are more productive than those who don’t (on average) enough to offset lost time.

Also you should check social media and connect with loved ones between tasks to maximize your morale and productivity.

It was weird to me, when I was looking for rings and jewelry that there are gems that have a higher brilliance and luster than diamonds (and unlike super-fancy bright glass is actually robust enough for typical use). And yet, the folks that want diamonds want diamonds. Since around 2016 after seeing the Mnuchins in the news, it felt like conflict diamonds and slave-mined diamonds are in.

Remember that in the US (whose laws have been extended by trade agreement through most of the world), intellectual property laws are To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts according to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 (or the Copyright Clause of the Constitution of the United States

(Europe has older stuff based on guild secrets and has had literal wars waged over things like cloth buttons vs. brass buttons)

Since we have a long list of instances now in which Science and useful Arts have been inhibited or simply robbed from their developers (case in point Charles Goodyear) within the current system, we might get better art and science without any IP law at all rather than trying to reform the system we have, which is used entirely to control and inhibit progress.

And the efforts by software publishers to inhibit the archival of old games, and the effort of book publishers to eliminate libraries are only the latest examples of how IP is only an instrument of oppression in the 21st century, and has been pretty much since Disney.

When you pirate, you’re not stealing from the developers or authors or creators. You’re stealing from the shareholders, and they are already fat and marbled.

So fuck intellectual property rights.

Clarification: The Mouse as in Disney Corporation not as in the thing you use to move your pointer.

More crime is committed in the making of media than in pirating it.

Also more wrongdoing against society and the public that the justice department couldn’t be bothered with (so doesn’t count as crime).

Pirate it all or don’t watch it.

Note that with rare exceptions, creators are not supported by your purchases. Rather the studios, labels and publishers wh cheat creators are.

If you want to support the creators, pay them directly, or go to one of their performances / signings / functions. But still pirate their work.

Public domain and abandonware and forgotten media are regarded by the media companies as a threat to their business model, since it is possible you can be entertained by them rather than their own for-cost offerings. It is no longer enough for them to control what you consume media, but insist on controlling whether you consume.

And the courts regard them as persons and members of the public as not. We don’t count as invested parties.

According to the US and the EU we common folk don’t figure.

It is now more ethical to pirate (or simply not consume it at all) than it is to obtain legitimate licenses.

Since the publishers are also trying to suppress out-of-print media, abandonware and public domain material (also fair use) and the courts are favoring the publishers over the good of the public, we know it’s no longer about promoting science and useful arts or building a robust public domain.

The companies and courts alike are breaking the social contract, hence the trmporary monopolies enstated by the agencies of the same state are invalid. Piracy is no longer a valid crime since the state licenses are no longer valid.

(They will still enforce the will of the state — ICE does a lot of raids to enforce commercial interests when it’s not massacring refugees— but that doesn’t legitimize the will of the state. It only shows they are willing tyrants glad to use violence to oppress.)

We have nothing to lose but our chains!

Unhiding extensions is one of the first things I do when setting up windows, but it will still hide the .lnk extension on shortcuts, so it’s still a vector for phishing attacks (specifically, tricking the user to do something that runs malicious code).

Experienced pirates will get into the habit of taking precautions against malware attacks and will distrust downloads until they are sufficiently vetted,

That’s okay. Countless musicians lost their jobs with talkies and the rise of recording.

ETA I’d rather see recording industry moguls lose their job from obsolescence than actual musicians.

Please do.

I’m glad to not watch content that is enshittified by ads… or is enshittified by poor development.

Death to IP. Full stop.

Who, exactly, trusts this third party?

I’m so used to getting treacherously betrayed by third parties distrust is my default setting.

Actually it does. It involves making use of a copy that is not the original. Fair use is about experiencing media for sake of dialog (criticism or parody) or for edification. That means someone is reading the book or watching the movie, or using it for transformative art or science.

AI training should qualify for fair use.

Cranky enough to demand satisfaction (in the courts if not the dueling field), but no one in the company will think their own ire warrants empathy for those from whom they pirate.