In the US, virtually no one has been legally prosecuted for consumer level piracy since around 2010. The only exception is a small group of copyright trolls that focus on porn videos. The government was never the one doing it; if the government raided your house and found evidence that you illegally torrented .mkv files, they wouldn’t care or do anything with that information.

That said you should still use a VPN, because industry groups are now completely focused on getting ISPs to send intimidating letters to people and eventually shutting off their internet, rather than prosecuting individuals in court, and they do that by discovering people’s IP addresses by monitoring torrents. If you use a VPN and bind your torrent client to it, you are entirely safe from all consequences that actually happen.

I also had to read the bible in school, although importantly this was highschool english class, we read basically the whole thing, and it was treated similarly to other literature, it was overall very educational and important context for understanding western society. From the article it sounds like a lot of what they’re planning in Texas is to show kindergartners religious propaganda about the bible and small passages rather than giving students an unfiltered look at the full text, which seems less useful.

IIRC the game Dungeons of Dredmor allows shield dual wielding as a viable build

Google sucks, but one thing I think they did right was giving you a way to print out a list of one-time passwords that can be used to recover an account if you forget your password.

So if all we did was decide to stop growing corn to turn into ethanol, and we used only that land for generating only solar power, we’d be able to generate 84% more electricity on an annual basis than we do today from all of our energy sources.

Damn. Factorio lied to me about the space efficiency of solar panels.

Which is the furry country

nothing I say gets removed

I guess widespread shadow moderation practices probably do make fewer people upset, can’t complain about something you didn’t know happened

VR is cool but Facebook VR is a horrifying and/or boring concept

I relate to this image

I’ve done a fair bit of DIY stuff in my home including various plumbing projects and it’s all been doable with just reading manuals, watching videos and spending time thinking things through. That said blow torches scare me and I did everything with pipe cutters and sharkbite connectors and such, but it works, and I did what I could to make sure it was done well/correct because I need my plumbing to work.

My experience with commercial plumbers, mostly from when I was renting, is overall pretty bad and that they are mostly unwilling to think at all beyond the immediate billable job. There was a whole ordeal where water backing up from the drain kept flooding one of the rooms in my apartment from under the walls, and while fortunately my landlord was honest enough to call plumbers when this happened, just about every time they would use a drain snake, claim the problem was fixed without really checking, and then it would just happen again later. It ultimately turned out to be a problem with the pipes not being connected to the sewer where they met the street, and was finally fixed with city involvement, but it took a hell of a lot of advocating for myself and pushing back on bullshit explanations to get to the point where the real problem was even identified or acknowledged.

I am 100% convinced that just about any anarchist system of plumbing would be a significant improvement, though maybe the plan described in the OP image should be adjusted a bit away from hobbyist plumbers going around taking responsibility for the critical systems in other people’s homes and towards a network of free expert advice, guidance, and tools to help people maintain their own living spaces, which they will naturally understand and care about on a level people who don’t live there won’t.

Even simple gripper pads work pretty well.

The ideal is people doing it just because they can, but how many people have the financial means for that? I’d say another reason for Reddit going to shit is all the people wanting to express themselves somehow, but only having a little bit of time to type something out on their phones and not enough to put thought or research into what they are saying. Streamers, youtubers etc. put a lot of work and practice into making something someone might consider good, and a lot of that is only possible because they get paid and so don’t have to get another full time job that removes any time for creative pursuits.

It’s under clear attack, but is not yet nullified. I already touched on this but the examples you cite are exactly where it’s doing what it is mean to; the clear illegality of these things is something people can recognize, and courts still have power. As an American, I’ll say that this is the only civic principle with any sort of universal recognition that matters, and it is the biggest thing holding the country back from collapse. What else do we have? Surely not a sense that human beings should be treated with care and respect. If freedom of speech ceases to exist, so does the United States; we must never let it go.

But to such a government it doesn’t matter anyway. They will do whatever the fuck they want. They will introduce new laws if they feel like it.

They need to entirely trash the constitution and effectively dissolve the US republic first. Maybe they’re heading that way, but it is a barrier, and the lack of ambiguity of

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

is the whole substance of that barrier. If you think an exception for hate speech isn’t something that can be abused, look at all the countries right now criminalizing protest of the Palestinian genocide using it as legal justification. Think about the entire situation that is prompting these killings; we have clear legal rights to peaceful protest, and people are exercising those rights, for which they aren’t arrested and charged with speech crimes but killed outright in profound contempt for the law, because they don’t have a legal process to silence them, just the ability to kill people. This is exactly when we need free speech the most, and it makes very little sense to fantasize about removing it so you can silence others when you are the one whose speech is in dire need of protecting right now.

DHS’s purpose since its inception in 2002 has been to oppress those in the U.S

Yep. Should repeal the patriot act while they’re at it.

It makes for some pretty neat (infuriating) game mechanics. Like an infinite mob spawner, but more intuitive and less dull.

The reveddit browser extension is pretty good, notifies you of all your reddit comments that are getting invisibly deleted (probably more than you think)

Is Signal secure? How do they get the info?

Maybe “safe” would be a better word

There is no reality where repeating state propaganda lands you in jail, unless maybe you do it in some way the state doesn’t like. Government censorship can’t solve this problem, it can only make it worse.