Careful with this. Downloading pirated content can definitely be illegal depending on where you live.

It’s just not usually enforced as heavily as redistributing.

As a devout lefty who thinks America and capitalism need a lot more checks and balances, I have to somewhat disagree with you.

When we talk peace, we are talking relative terms. And I suppose I should also add prosperity into the mix.

I think the West has enabled a period of relative peace and prosperity never before seen. And I think it’s getting, overall, better every day. Technology and capitalism, for all their evils, have lifted billions out of poverty and saved billions of lives.

Depends. He seems pretty out of it right now and I don’t know how much he would really accomplish. He’s also pretty old and unhealthy.

But if he comes back angry and the people around him are effective, then yeah we would start looking for other places to live. I’m not trying to live in a Russian-style handmaid’s tale.

I don’t think it’s dramatic to suggest Trump may actually put an end to our democracy though. Another Lemmy commenter summed it up best. They pointed out that we on the left may have disagreed with McCain or Bush, but we never once feared that they would seize power or leave NATO. We trusted them to at least keep the ship afloat and respect the basic tenants of our free and democratic nation.

With Trump, we don’t have that. All bets are off because he’s an unhinged narcissist. He would leave NATO and risk the Pax Americana that has stabilized the world for almost 100 years now. And he would do it for money, for negative attention, or just because someone told him he couldn’t. America has some pretty major faults but China and Russia are not ready to take the reigns. Say what you will about the West but we at least endeavor to protect human rights. I think anyone who isn’t trying to build on the current Western peace is incredibly dangerous in a very scary way.

They should be careful. Plenty of alternatives cropping up. No, they’re not as technically impressive, but anyone with some basic Photoshop knowledge can do the same things on GIMP, paint.net, photopea, etc. Might just take a few extra steps.

All going to be less relevant soon with AI art though. If we are in the rotary phone stage of AI, wait until we get to the iPhone stage.

Seinfeld is hilarious.

It was just so popular and unique that everything after it tried to do the same thing and we all got used to seeing this type of humor everywhere. There is a whole TV Tropes page about this called Seinfeld is unfunny.

It’s still funny though. If you just pick up a random episode halfway through, you probably won’t find each moment-to-moment interaction to be side-splitting. However, if you know the characters, you’re just waiting to see which petty societal norm is going to turn into a whole ordeal - like George and Jerry disagreeing about whether moviegoers should pick up their own trash after a movie showing or something. Of course, the hilarious part is when George inevitably loses the perfect relationship with a beautiful woman because her father worked as a movie-theater cleaner and was never home for his family due to inconsiderate movie goers. He leaves his junior mints on the ground, she storms out, and we see Kramer walking into the movie theater with a metal detector as he scours the floor for valuable trash as part of his new side hustle.

It’s not a real episode but that’s basically the formula and it just works. You are waiting to see how shitty and petty they can be while living up to your expectations of them as characters. You know they never learn a life lesson or gain any true moral clarity. Oh, and my wife especially loves that they frequently do little gags and call backs to previous episodes.

I think the issue is that these service providers are more than capable of providing “unlimited” data, but choose not to because they can make a lot more when people inevitably go over their limit. The salt on the wound is the fact that ISPs usually have no competition. They usually have a monopoly on the area in which they operate.

Where I live, we have unlimited data that only gets throttled if you use a truly absurd amount (like if you’re constantly pirating large amounts of 4k movies or something). No caps or unexpected fees. Overall, I always felt like I had it pretty good, and I still think that…mostly.

The funny part is that my ISP had competition move to town recently. I kid you not, the week before the competition officially started up their service, my ISP sent a letter saying they were doubling my Internet speed for no extra charge.

They were trying to show how awesome they were but really it was the biggest slap in the fucking face. You’re telling me you were overcharging me that much for years?

Another issue is that advertising, which you never asked for, makes up part of your monthly data usage, as do routine and unavoidable downloads like security updates, video game patches, etc.

Thank you so much for mentioning this. Just went back and listened to Love Me Dead and Lake Pontchartrain.

Damn, they are so good. Shame they never got bigger than they did.