• 0 Posts
  • 58 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle
  • And how much of those profits go to those workers? Let’s take a well known Marvel movie, the Avengers Endgame. It cost roughly $220 million to make. The total global box office for that movie is estimated around $2.8 billion. That’s ~$2.6 billion in profit. Please tell me how much of that went to the film crews and various film departments? Hell, a huge chunk of the budget cost probably went to the actors to begin with.

    Anyway, my original point wasn’t even entirely around sticking it to the billionaires. Until laws are made to protect our ownership of digital licenses, I have zero problems with people pirating. Additionally, the majority of folks are going to be paying, so a minority of people–who typically have lower disposable income–pirating content are not destroying regular peoples’ livelihood, this has been proven for over two decades now.

    Bottom line: Come down from your ivory tower and just let it rest. Regardless of what either of us says or believes, pirating will continue with or without us. You can disagree with it, which is fine, or you can justify it, which is also fine. It won’t change reality either way.


  • Defending multi-billion dollar corporations in this day and age is absolutely bizarre. And for the record, I rarely pirate these days. And even then, it’s for digital copies of physical content I already own. But I really don’t give a shit what others do, especially if they’re not hurting common folk. And if you truly think it’s okay not to fully own the digital licenses your purchase, then good for you for keeping those billionaire’s boots clean.






  • If the whole point of dumping Biden is that he couldn’t win,

    That was certainly a part of it, but think about why everyone was saying that. He really is old and it is abundantly clear he is struggling every day to remember and carry out basic tasks. Additionally, think about this: What would happen if Biden had gotten sick from the flu or something a few weeks before the election and died (which isn’t that far-fetched)? We’d have no time to mount another candidate and get them the national coverage needed to sway those swing voters. Biden stepping down is a good thing, both for his own health and to significantly reduce the risk of a freak incident occurring the closer we get to election day.

    I get it, Kamala isn’t an excellent choice, but she already has national name recognition and is already experienced at that level. Most polls conducted in June and early July had her on almost even footing with Biden’s numbers, with a couple giving her an edge and some showing her slightly behind. However, those polls were conducted before a media blitz and country touring kicks off. I can easily see those numbers only increasing as her campaign’s momentum builds. Biden was already predicted to win the electoral college, and I suspect the same will occur with Kamala. I hope I’m right.

    And lastly, I agree, we desperately need to get rid of First-past-the-post voting and move to Ranked Choice Voting. The current status quo of the two-party system has crippled our government for far, far too long. Luckily, more and more states have looked to switching to that system (with some already adopting it). Hopefully, that trend continues into the future.




  • There was actually a Radiolab episode about this scenario. A kid grew up with insane parents and later joined the real world and was in a fucked up legal limbo status due to there being no record of their birth. They couldn’t prove they were even a natural citizen of the US. It’s been several years since I listened to that episode, but iirc their state senator/some politician ended up campaigning on their behalf to get laws made to cover these fringe cases so in the future, kids like these aren’t completely screwed. Not sure if the law ended up getting passed or not. Anyway, it was the first time I’d heard of people doing this kind of crap to their kids and it blew my mind. Utterly selfish and abusive.

    Edit: found the episode: https://radiolab.org/podcast/invisible-girl






  • That would be Russia, is my guess:

    The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, “except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.



  • Did you even read some of the quarantines? There are several instances of them quarantining entire countries, no boats in or out. There’s instances of towns being isolated, etc.

    Lastly, your first sentence is absolutely baffling. We KNEW COVID was everywhere, wtf are you even talking about? At its height, the US alone was having around 200,000+ confirmed cases a day. You are vastly underplaying how close our medical system came to collapsing in huge swathes of the country. There’s absolutely a reason why there’s a global shortage of doctors and nurses right now, the burnout during the pandemic was absolutely unreal for medical workers.

    The kneejerk complete shutdown at the beginning was a tad overkill in some places, but that was because of so many unknown variables. The initial strains were absolutely more deadly, so why risk it? However, I don’t remember anywhere in the US going to extremes of making it so you couldn’t even walk outside. Now, places like China absolutely went way overkill with literally forcibly boarding people into buildings.