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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I think the difference can be drawn in parallel to cigarettes: an unfiltered cigarette is worse than a filtered one for smoking. Both are obviously bad for you, but if you’re stacking carcinogens and other health concerns, eventually you’ll reach someone’s breaking point. I don’t think anyone is claiming alcohol is healthy, but I also don’t think the response should be “it’s already unhealthy, so this isn’t won’t stop anyone”. Every risk associated decision we make adds to the statistics pool for whether we get sick. Mitigating that might actually worry someone enough to switch to a healthier (not healthy) form of alcohol consumption.



  • FOSS is made because people want it to be made and made available. People who make games and art vary between it purely wanting to be made and wanting to make a profit off of that. If you’re dense enough to think saying you value something at $0 and then still enjoying it like the other people willing to support the IP, then you’re an asshole.

    There is a balance between what the creator is allowed to value their idea and what people are willing to pay for that idea. If they can’t find a middle ground, then the transaction shouldn’t occur. If you force that transaction by stealing their idea and efforts, you’re being a thief. What you use to justify your actions is up to you, but you’re a thief nonetheless.


  • It is theft, but the argument is better framed as to whether or not it’s moral theft. Most people who pirate feel comfortable pirating from larger corporations over small time creators/groups, with the usual justifications you’ve provided above. Personally, I’ve justified it at times because I couldn’t afford to purchase the thing, which leads to another argument of “if I wasn’t going to buy it in the first place, is it actually effecting them”.

    There is no argument to be made, however, where it isn’t true that if you were to have purchased it, the owner of the idea will make more off of it. Whether you care or not about that owner getting more is a different argument, but you are robbing them of value for the idea, however little that value might have been.

    I’m not arguing for or against pirating, but people in the comments saying it isn’t theivery really seem to be arguing whether stealing is wrong or not. Call it what it is and go back to the argument people have been having for thousands of years.

    Which, I realize I didn’t address libraries. Taxes pay for libraries to operate, and then the library pays to have copies of the works. If no one wants to read my book, libraries aren’t going to just go out and buy thousands of copies. And trying to tackle libraries would also start to erode arguments for reselling something. And to bring it back to the OP, I’ve read books in a library before that I enjoyed enough to purchase a copy of my own. I’ve also read books I haven’t. But someone purchased that book for me to rent, and in a small part, I’ve paid for that book myself by paying taxes.


  • I find it funny you’re calling him intentionally obtuse right after you seem to just simplify theivery at whether something physical is stolen. If you’re basing it off of something being stolen or not, IP is used to protect the realized gains off of an idea. Yeah you aren’t stealing a physical something, but you are robbing the creator of what the item is valued at. It is exactly the issue that you can’t own an idea that IP is usually heavily protected. Ironically, the intention is to help new ideas(and their profiting worth) from being stolen by someone (or something ie Coporations) with better means to distribute and profit off of the idea. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I just get a copy of a game, underpriced it, and sell it as cheap as I wanted? I’ve put no thought or labor into actualized the idea, so I have no reason to price it beyond my initial investment. It why when someone (or something) sells full rights to their IP, it can be worth millions. They don’t care about the idea. They care about what the idea can provide in the future.

    To draw a parallel, saying IP isn’t real is like saying currency has no worth. On the surface, duh of course currency isn’t actually worth anything. It’s not like people can (practically) eat a dollar or make shoes out of a dollar, but we’ve (generally) collectively decided it’s worth something. It instils confidence that when I walk into a store, my currency has a conversion rate of so many dollars per good. If thousands of people added millions of dollars into their bank accounts by just “copying” the electronic money, no one has lost money, but the value of the currency is deflated by those actions because there’s nothing stopping everyone from from just adding millions to their accounts. The confidence that people will be harshly dealt with for deflating the currency like that is one of the innate things that gives currencies (and IP’s) their value. Handwaving it away by saying it isn’t actually real is also just being obtuse.


  • Which is not what the original video is talking about; almost the exact opposite to the study. I’m not confusing the mechanics of how capitalism works, nor am I misunderstanding the way in which the wealthy few use their wealth to manipulate the media to get voters to side with them just enough to not revolt. What you are confusing is the study effectively points out that the will of the populace is inconsequential compared to the will of the ultra wealthy. They don’t have to sway the people. They have a much smaller pool to sway, which are the actual people who vote on these policies. Why go through 8 iterations of of policy when you can purchase enough of the actual voters (senators and representatives) to where the populace is irrelevant to sway. The video is how to do it in a “fair” manner. The study implies how it’s actually done: purchased and paid for. That’s a flaw in any form of government; not some exclusive exploit towards democracy.


  • That study doesn’t conclude that at all. That study says that the policy will follow interest groups and generally what the “elite” want. It’s like saying “hey, if you use this strategy in Monopoly, you can generally win out against the other players in the long run. This study show if you’re a banker, you can literally just decide the dice rolls whenever you want”. That’s two entirely different things. Continuing the analogy, it’d be like if the banker decided another player land on one of your properties. Yes it benefits you, but the only thing the banker cares about is bankrupting that player. It just so happened to benefit you. It wasn’t some way to “slowly move the policy”.


  • I think the video is an interesting thought experiment, but I don’t know that is holds weight within the scale of the political spectrum. I think while a more progressive viewpoint of the world is by using a 2D map of economical and political leanings, that isn’t really the case in real life. People will usually vote along a 1D political line, wherein the entire point of the video falls apart. The choice isn’t between 4 quadrants, the choice usually is how left or right something is in a linear scale. On a linear scale, you can’t really gamify the policy to work like they describe in the video.



  • I’ve come across this, and this might be something related to that specific server and maybe timeouts. It only happens to me occasionally but it’s always either he same server. Either Jerboa isn’t able to handle the more poplar servers/the settings for the account, or the server is having the issue. I’m not an expert, I’m just trying to voice what I’ve seen in my end.


  • I’ve been having that feel too as well as with immediate future choices. I finally might be able to buy a house, but I’m in Florida. So do I put money, time, and effort into a house that’ll be under water when I get done paying it off (assuming it isn’t destroyed by a hurricane), or do I seriously start looking at moving jobs/states to even have a chance at having a house that will be there in 15 to 20 years? Renting seems like an even worse option since this last year has proven they can just charge 50-100% more and get away with it. And once the house thing gets “solved”, now I have to wonder if we ever get our shit together and stop destroying everything in and including the world so the house thing even matters. Idk. This is just a paragraph meant to vent. I don’t have an answer for you, because any sane person almost has this gnawing constantly in their heads. Personally, I’ve just made goals that have been bettering myself and my surroundings as well as the people around me. As for why? I’m not religious, so at this point I figure if I do my best, I can one day die happy knowing I at least tried to do something.