When people ask a farmer how they’ve managed to keep their tractor running for 50 years

“The secret ingredient is crime”

Wubba lubba dub dub!

I understand why people always say things like this. It’s the not having a choice that ruins eternity. Fortunately it seems that such a fate is physically impossible in this reality. Even if you were made of the most durable possible material, you would still fundamentally be composed of baryonic matter, which means if you fell into a star, collided with a celestial object at relativistic speed, or fell into a black hole, you would surely die. There is always a way out for an enterprising immortal, and afterwards sweet nothing.

This is kind of a shit metaphor because if we extend it to how piracy actually works it highlights how stupid DRM is in the first place. A lock on your house has to be picked by each individual robber, unless they all show up on the same day. A cracked game would be like if only one person has to pick the lock on your house, but they don’t actually take anything they just make a perfect copy of your house without the draconian 12 step lock you installed and gives copies to whoever wants one. If you never noticed all the people sharing magical copies of your house with each other you would never know you lost anything, because you didn’t. Only your blind greed was injured by the thought that those people might have been willing to pay to use your house if only it had been locked down against those damn house copiers. On your next house you make the locks even more invasive and complex, to the point they block half the driveway or make the oven and bathroom unusable. Then that same one person spends an extra half day to pick it and makes a copy but without the crazy lock so they actually get a better house than you’re selling. Whether people like it or not, digital media has always been on the honor system, and always will be. DRM just punishes people for doing the honorable thing and paying.

I hear they’ve got quite a big ball of twine

Or they wait the two minutes to open a browser and claim they “have it how they like it” when you inform them it shouldn’t take that long…

Fire is a natural and necessary part of many ecosystemsm. It keeps parasitic insect populations down, stuff like ticks and chiggers, and some plant species rely on fire to prepare the soil for seeds and even is required for some plants to release their seeds. In dry ecosystems like the western USA it also consumes old dead plant material, reducing the fuel available for future fires and reducing fire severity overall. Many foresters and fire fighters advocate for increasing prescribed burns, essentially forest fires that we light on purpose in cooler and wetter times of the year to consume the fuel without risking a catastrophic fire that is difficult to control. I just think that’s neat.

I was going to make a speed running joke here but it made me sad so you get this instead.

I’d just like to point out that while women are certainly victims of rape and their likelihood to be raped in their life is far higher, they are far from the only victims of rape. Men are also victims of rape, but often their victimhood is marginalized and ignored, forcing them to suffer in silence or find what little support they can from their romantic partner, if they are lucky enough to have one that doesn’t leave or trivialize their feelings. Women face these same challenges, but they can find support in loved ones, family members, and romantic partners, or failing that at least at women’s shelters. Support that may be nonexistent for their brother or father or partner. To make everything worse, men bear the specter of rape and the rapists who committed it. People feel the need to take precautions with male strangers, acquaintances, and even friends, which can damage their relationships with the men around them, even if those men never have or would rape anyone. All of this is fucked up. I’m not sure why I took the time to type this, but what I’m trying to say is there are reasons why some men have that perception of women. When you are starved of affection and love, see a romantic partner as the only viable means to get it, and constantly feel alienated by what you see as your only viable romantic partners, it’s easy to start resenting them. Men see women turning down with disgust more love than they could hope to be offered in a lifetime, their one goal as they drown in their loneliness, and of course they assume women have it easy. It’s wrong, obviously, on even a cursory inspection, but loneliness and depression don’t exactly encourage critical thinking and deep emotional introspection.

If you accept for a moment that an all powerful god exists and created everything, then that means they made us this way on purpose, knowing we would be horny kinky degenerates. If there is a god, they’re the biggest pervert of all.

When you stand up and lock your knees

If you make a bootable linux usb drive you can do whatever you want with all windows stupid files without even having to install linux.

I mean when you’ve got an existential election and the options are a barely functional geezer who will just do whatever his staff suggest and stupid Hitler your choice is going to be a forgone conclusion. It’s not a choice between two shitty candidates, it’s a choice between one shitty candidate and literal fascism. You either want fascism or you don’t. All these “undecided” voters are either hilariously ignorant, closet fascists, or both.

I mean it’s not a secret. It’s lead. There’s lead in the water down there.

I know this is a joke, but that would require them to put actual effort into their shit ass slow ui that’s had the same stupid bugs for the past 15 years and still doesn’t have a search function that gives you what you fucking searched for.

If the irrational hatred of gay people is similar at all, these people are closeted trans people inflicting their hatred of themselves and their own feelings on the world. Probably.

Reading between the lines here, someone is fucking with the market on purpose. Drop the prices so low the competition goes out of business trying to keep up, then jack up the prices to make it all back multiple times over. Businesses don’t drop the price of products for no reason.

Were? Hmm. Were. Not mutually exclusive with are. Yes were fits.

Long ago the four nations lived in harmony. But everything changed when the business nation attacked. Only the regulations could stop them, but when the world needed them most, they vanished.

To me the ring feels more like heroine or cocaine or something, you know one of the drugs that just make people feel good. The hobbits had no real ambition for more than a good life, and they pretty much all already had that, so when Bilbo or Frodo used the ring it was like “heh, nice” and then they went back to their great life with no desire to use it again. Of course they’re basically microdosing while they carry it so they eventually start to incur the cost. Frodo only really starts to get corrupted after months of grueling travel and suffering, and losing hope of ever returning to his life in the Shire. Everyone else has all these obligations and ambitions that weigh on them, and much like regular people they’ve given up varying degrees of their happiness to further those goals, so the ring would feel like getting back everything they’ve sacrificed and being happy again, or for the first time for some. The metaphor is a bit of a stretch, but I think it fits broadly with these magical artifacts that corrupt people. Just like cocaine, heroin, meth, morphine, or whatever, they give people a feeling that they can’t just get over. It’s biology, they hijack the reward system so we have no choice but to push the feel good button unless we can overcome the urge through willpower or getting whatever feeling the drug or magical artifact is replacing naturally. Some people only get so corrupted but some just keep going, chasing the dragon and replacing more and more of their life with the fake feelings of the drug or magical item.