chicken

Relevant Snowden quote:

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say

I pay for vpn service anonymously even though I probably don't need to, as my main use is torrenting. I can see a remote possibility that vpn payment records at some point end up being used against pirates, even just as some kind of risk factor flagging, in the same vein as what you are saying: "If someone is paying for a vpn, surely they're doing something bad?" In countries that really want to crack down on speech and human rights, vpns get banned outright to varying success, and if you can't pay anonymously in that situation you're pretty screwed, this hurts those people.

In general I think everyone should be trying for some level of actual privacy online as a matter of principle, just because of how everyone being fully tracked and observed puts way too much power in the hands of those watching.

The current administration and its agencies have clear contempt for any sort of crypto privacy they have shown in a variety of ways. The Tornado Cash sanction and criminal charges, recent Bitcoin mixer criminal charges, the proposed rule putting a "Primary Money Laundering Concern" black mark on people seeking crypto privacy in virtually any way... if it's possible to still purchase online services privately after this, I'm sure they will go on to take further measures to try to close the "loophole". They don't want anyone doing things without being able to monitor them.

I hate how polarized everything is that this level of emphasis that you are not taking a certain side is required to criticize an argument made against that side. Bad, misleading arguments are bad, should always be ok to point it out.

Would only really be relevant for tournaments, except the organizing bodies of which aren't affiliated with Hasbro and have their own sets of words and drama over them. People playing casually can just have house rules about whether slurs are or aren't accepted and what counts as one.

This could be right and maybe I'm under a rock but I am suspicious of articles that reference dumb things people are supposedly saying without any quotes or citations

if somehow the population of pirates increases, that will lead to maybe tighter controls on piracy or a more global crackdown of piracy

Yes, I think most people accept that this is how it would likely work. And it actually is the case that many pirates do not agree with what I am saying, and see this as something to be avoided by keeping piracy niche, and would like to preserve their own access that way, and use this reasoning to argue against greater accessibility. But it's kind of like voting; any action you can take as an individual affecting the broader society is unlikely to make much difference in determining outcomes that affect you personally. It's possible to mistakenly imagine that they do, it's possible to not be thinking about it at all, and it's possible to have different ideas about what you would like to affect; for instance a person wanting to keep piracy niche might have some idea of a group identity of more technically literate and connected insiders like themselves, and want to act to protect the interests of maintaining media access for that group.

To me, this subjectivity of goals and the relative absence of direct personal consequences make these choices very unlike a game of prisoner's dilemma, in which you can expect the consequences of your choices to be unambiguous, tangible, and personally experienced. Instead of working out an optimization problem for clearly defined personal interests that are the same for all actors, the task is one of empathy and imagination - what can the world look like, what should it look like, who do we care about and what do we want for them? How do different visions of the world weigh against each other?

We definitely don’t want more people to pirate

Many of us do. Why would we seed torrents, donate to crackers and repackers, offer useful advice etc. if we did not? Personally I would prefer for everyone to stop paying money for software and media entirely, and for the industries that produce those things to collapse, and the legal structures protecting them to be dismantled, because I think we would create better stuff without financial incentives. Not everyone is operating under your idea of a rational perspective here.

That should depend on how the chemicals accumulate though. If all the plastic ends up in your blood and never gets naturally filtered out, it could make sense. Maybe it builds up in your fat/muscles instead though, or gets filtered over time and the amount in your system is the same as the amount in what you have recently eaten, idk

Why would you use a leech instead of a needle or something? What are they for

How do you forget to wear socks and not realize? Putting shoes on without socks feels dramatically different.

ok yeah that sounds like it merits a felony

At least they can afford lawyers now lol