Uriel-238

A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness

He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came walking down the track
And they never went further, no, they never went back

Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the Telegraph Road

Property is theft. <Bolshevik chorus swells>

Privateering usually meant the state’s navy issued the ship and demanded a substantial share of the prize leading to creative accounting at sea. It was a deal taken typically by naval officers who might otherwise be tempted to desert when going on the account is offering better prizes and career options. (Desertion to piracy was a big problem in the Queen’s Navee.)

A letter of marque means you can find safe port at colonies of the issuing state so long as you are attacking its enemies (usually Spanish vessels during the Golden Age).

Piracy is midnight oyster and clam harvesting without a license to break the oyster cartel, making restaurant oysters and clams more available and cheaper to customers.

It is from this grand tradition along the US West Coast that the notion of media piracy rose, and much like the Golden Age of Piracy robbing the Spanish Silver Train, piracy is associated with snatching ill-gotten gains from those who don’t deserve it, sometimes benefiting communities that do. (YMMV).

Media Piracy is copyright infringement, which is totally not stealing.

The US Supreme Court taking content out of the public domain so that it can be reserved for private use isn’t stealing either, but it causes more harm than piracy.

This probably is along the same lines as the predictive criminality models used in some US counties to justify giving some people higher bails and longer sentences.

The programs themselves don’t actually use any valid formulas and are based on prior regional and racial arrest histories, so the software generally would perpetuate the biases of the precincts and DAs of the area.

We’ve long established we can’t trust law enforcement with the forensic tools they have let alone give them new ones.

Actually the possibility of social engineering SWAT attacks on targets is a valid point. I noted some years ago that there are hospital devices that are now connected to the internet when they are in active use (such as those devices that administer medications intravenously based on timing and user input, and while such a set up could kill a patient by reprogramming the module, we’ve not yet an attack affect one yet.

We also get little conversation about how copyright extensions and patent trilling robs the public use of public-domain content, especially when the Mouse is lobbying the federal government to extend rights further.

It took France about a century before they went full Republic. I’d give the folks in Iran some latitude.

Note that the hijab thing was the last straw, and they’re still going without functional infrastructure.

I suspect the molotovs will resume flyong shortly. They are already on a short fuse.

The serious question is with what? I doubt the AI is going to kill you with disgusting pics or existential philosophy.

This means they hooked it up to something that might be used as a weapon of attack: an industial printer or a t-shirt cannon or a gunship at port.

Huh. I really can’t imagine normies exist.

When I think of a normie, I think of the Cleavers, or the Simpsons. A conglomerate average of what we expect white America to look like.

I think every family has to deal with weird shit, weather mental illness, disability, fentanyl addiction, Juggalos or a Gen X discordian auntie who takes no-one’s bullshit. We all have stuff going on that kicks us out of the normie threshold.

Okay, here’s the thing about death. Everything about death is expressed in the negative.

There’s no boredom
There’s no excitement
There’s no joy
There’s no pain
There’s no frustration
There’s no elation
There’s no disappointment
There’s no surprise
There’s no bewilderment
There’s no love
There’s no conflict
There’s no violence
There’s no resolution
There’s no reconciliation
There’s no forgiveness
There’s no vengeance\

There’s no you. Your story ends.

As it is right now the world sucks. There’s a lot of misery and a lot of people are choosing to check out (Around 40K per year in the US succeed. We guess about 120K more try and end up in the ER.)

If you cash in, everyone you know is going to be shaken. They’ll all have to deal with the sneaking suspicion they are personally at fault for you choosing to quit. A suicide note won’t help. It’s not a rational belief. Even little kids will wonder if they did something (or failed to do something) to change your fate.

Anyone who depends on you, even if just for emotional support will go into crisis. Unless you’re a hermit in the Yukon, this is more people than you think.

Family may try to deny it. They will make up stories about how you were coerced or secretly murdered or drugged to diminished capacity. If they cannot deny it, they’ll be ashamed and try to cover up your suicide, suggesting maybe you perished by accident.

Police will resent the job of telling professionals who engage you (doctors, therapists, teachers, etc.)

Alt-righters will revel in your expiration.

Elected officials will feign concern. The ones attached to your district will wish you moved first. White Christian Nationalist officials and Freedom Caucas officials will presume you’re one of the degenerates who are on their target list, and your action affirms you knew they were right.

Most Christians will assert you are damned to Hell.

Mostly it’s a shit show, and a bunch of statistical counters will increment by one.

Consider crisis counseling, maybe. If you’re in a developed country, your county probably has a hotline or chat.

And what does that mean? That drivers for most hardware doesn’t exist unless we write it ourselves? I don’t have time for that steep a climb.

You guys are now seriously freaking me out. My experience has been decades of windows not mainframes with 1980s era OSes. Is all that experience going to be useless?

I’m looking forward to owning my computer, especially as Microsoft claws away more of my rights season by season. But WTF am I getting myself into when I make the jump? Is it possible to own my computer and have an easy to understand OS?

I hope I’m not fucking myself when I try to make the switch, but when the first response to it’s got problems is don’t look a gift horse in the mouth then yeah, it makes me a bit worried I’m going to be left out in the elements on my own by a community with the attitude of COD gamers.

It’s part of how I remember id est versus exempli gratia

The problem is noted by Karl Marx, the capitalist inevitably captures the government and its regulating departments so that the body of laws will be revised in their favor. Remember that the point of copyright laws in the Constitution of the United States, to promote science and the useful arts was killed when IP was extended. Every year that someone owns an idea is year that the rest of us does not.

I don’t know the solution, but corruption of the temporary monopoly was inevitable.

I assume UBI. Already quality of product is not cultivated by the current publishing system. People who get their books published do so by affording a good agent with connections, which rules out the black kid using a manual typewriter her brother rebuilt.

Maybe capitalism doesn’t work, except for the richest capitalists?

Most IP owners didn’t create what they have, but bought it off someone else. I have little pity for rich people.