The only damage that exists from piracy is to the copyright holders profits…

Since the copyright holder is usually a corporation that is owned by shareholders, the majority of which are richer than all of us combined, ask me if I give a shit and I will show you my field of shits to give, and you will see that it is barren.

Eat the rich. Or Luigi them… I don’t care.

The difference is respect.

I can disagree with you but still respect that your decision is yours to make. In spite of any moral arguments, if it’s not illegal I don’t have grounds to demand that you do anything differently. I can provide suggestions, guidance and opinions on it, but I can’t force you into a decision I agree with.

But I’m also not a vegan. I see the world as much as I can from a neutral perspective. Things are not good nor bad, in and of themselves. The value statements of “good” and “bad” are a matter of perspective. If I were to win the lottery, that is, for all intents and purposes, a good thing… For me. For everyone who lost, not so much. My win, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t good nor bad, simply something that happened.

I would agree that from an empathetic viewpoint, many of the practices I’ve seen publicized about factory farming from pro-vegan groups or persons, hasn’t been good. Often it can be cruel or lacking any sympathy to the animals, which isn’t great. However, looking at things more broadly as I tend to do, any such report will be cherry picked as the worst of the worst from an unknown sample of the industry. So I take what I see from those groups and persons with a grain of salt.

Of course the industry, defending itself, will do the opposite and cherry pick examples of their most humane practices and locations. So that isn’t the full picture either. Even news media, largely owned by corpo’s who are likely invested into the meat industry, will skew their coverage to their own benefit, so even that cannot be fully trusted.

As always the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and bluntly, I can’t be bothered to dig deep enough to figure it out. My thoughts on a solution is to impose policy and procedure via laws and ordinances against factory farms for a minimum standard for their livestock, and government run enforcement that’s well funded to ensure those regulations are being followed. IMO, that’s what government is there to do. If the majority disagree that needs to be done, then such measures will not pass their respective legislative process to be passed into law. In that case, the focus should be on changing the hearts and minds of those who are opposed to the regulation and trying again when the number of people who supports the idea has increased.

You make your own choices though. Get mad, yell in the park at strangers about it, do whatever. You’re free to make those choices.

Throughout my life, things have always gotten worse.

I’ve come to the conclusion that for any major investment, the time to invest was the early 2000s, and the second best time is right now, because it’s only going downhill from here.

Unless it’s tech, because early tech is almost always shit compared to later versions of the same… To a limited degree. Eventually it all gets enshittified.

The most significant insulin development in recent years is glucose reactive insulin.

I would argue that any development short of GRI is not significantly different than any other insulin treatment. You have to take insulin and either regulate how much insulin you take for how much sugar you consume, or regulate how much sugar you consume too match how much insulin you’re taking.

The intervals/amounts differ, even methods of administration differ, but they are not drastically different.

GRIs actually regulate blood glucose “automatically” like a pancreas would. Which makes treating diabetes with a GRI, not dissimilar to treating any other condition that requires a single dose of medication every day. You take the medicine and go about your business, not giving your condition a second thought in your day to day activities. That’s huge.

This is all well and good, however, GRIs are little more than a lab experiment at the moment. Human trials are set up begin in 2025 sometime.

So my point stands, make insulin cheap, let people live for a few more years until they can see the release of GRIs; where there is a real, tangible change in how they manage their condition.

Everything else, is just variations on the same, bad, theme.

My brother has used so many different brands and types of insulin, from long-acting to short, in vials, pen-like dispensers, and even a couple pumps… They’re all varying levels of bad. The least bad has been the pumps, but the pump isn’t dependent on what brand or type of insulin you use… It’s a tool to make it easier to manage the amount of insulin being recieved at any given time. Everything else is little more than a difference in labeling.

Why not both?

Let’s hold them all to account. Why should we give someone a pass just because they’re not part of the c-suite?

Pardon me, but, Mr Rose, can you please tell me… What fucking better treatments?

My brother is T1D and he’s been like that since his teens. Literally the only way for him to continue to live, at all, is to take insulin.

It’s times like this that make me thankful I don’t live in the USA.

But seriously, if anyone knows of a “better” treatment for type 1 diabetes, I’m all ears. I’ve been looking for something for my brother for years, and I’ve come up with jack shit.

My take is that regardless of what system of government you use, there will be the affluent/aristocrats that run everything, get all the nicest shit, etc, and the unwashed masses who get whatever is left over.

This is a people problem, not a system of government problem.

The only way to balance everything is to basically make everyone in the country responsible for voting on all policy, which is impractical at best; the only alternative is to have a very altruistic leader in charge of making the final decisions.

If the leader can’t consistently make decisions that benefit the people at the cost of his own happiness, affluence, wealth, etc, then what is demonstrated by this meme, is always going to be inevitable.

IMO, someone that altruistic will not hold power since those that are supposed to implement their orders, will quickly turn against them, resulting in a coup, and the leader being ousted for someone more selfish, who will reward the those with power unfairly by taking the rewards away from the “lower class” to give to them.

Everything is doomed to failure. Move to the forest and start from scratch.

I made the foolish mistake of thinking things had finally started to make sense when Netflix happened, and I got my hopes up that going legit would be viable.

Oh well

I’ve been back to the high seas for a while.

Before I get into it, I’ll give an honourable mention to the RIAA/music industry, which is largely just putting all of the music on every platform and letting users choose which one they want to use. This is the way, and I’m happy to pay one service to get access to the stuff I actually want to hear.

Back to video/MPAA. Are you all on crack? I saw this coming back when Netflix was the only licensed media game on the internet… I was subscribed and enjoying some shows, the shows then… Went away, they disappeared. After looking into it, the show I was enjoying was pulled when a copyright was revoked by the publisher, so Netflix no longer had the right to distribute the show.

I saw the writing on the wall. That publisher was going to make their own Netflix competitor with their stuff on it, to try to extort more profit from the streaming stuff. Clearly their c-suite thought that people would be willing to pay for just their content separately from Netflix. I saw that writing and noped right the fuck out. Grabbed my tri-point hat and flag from storage and set sail, and I’ve never looked back.

The copyright holding asshats, ruined internet streaming, because everyone wanted to be their own thing. They splintered the entire online streaming thing into a bunch of disparate platforms all with some subset of the media available via streaming. It’s worse than cable, honestly.

IMO, the only good move that’s happened for streaming (but horrible for so many other reasons) was Disney gobbling up all the other media studios and production companies, then putting all their stuff on one service. There’s a few holdouts, but by and large the two biggest players right now are Netflix (the OG) and Disney (+)… So a bunch of good media ended up on D+, and so it’s kind of “the” streaming service… For better or worse (mostly worse, as OP points out).

I’m still firmly on my ship, sailing the high seas. Unless they go the way of music, and allow all shows on every platform and you pick your platform based on your preferences, I’ll stay on this ship. Thanks.

Hey, don’t point it out! People are blissfully ignorant of how much they are owned. Don’t try to educate them.

• corporations, probably.

Mine are.

I should rephrase.

Instead of “massively overpriced” I should have said “way outside of everyone’s budget”

Still overpriced, but the cost is low enough to actually afford it.

I agree.

Everything needs to rise IMO. Except for the highest levels of management.

My job in 2016 paid 90% of what I make now. Inflation in that time has been around 25%, and I’ve only increased around 10%…

Minimum wage is far worse, I know this, but just because minimum wage needs to increase doesn’t and shouldn’t imply other areas don’t also need to be increased.

I’m in a more senior position, and I’ve changed jobs at least three times to get where I am now. If minimum goes up, I won’t be angry about it, but I will be left wondering why I’m not also getting more.

Companies need workers and wages have been stagnant, and plenty of working people who used to be middle class, are now homeless, despite still being employed.

The whole situation is fucked and the only people profiting out of everything are the wage theives at the top and their shareholder friends.

It humors me that we’re making the housing market so unaffordable that “tiny homes” are a thing. They’re smaller than ever and it’s literally the only thing that’s not massively overpriced.

I thought that’s what condos were supposed to be. Somewhere between apartment living and a full house (townhouse/semi-detached/fully detached)… Do people really care that much about having a lawn?

I almost thought this was going a different way. I’m happy to be wrong.

I imagine some capitalist, right-wing fucker is screaming at their screen going “nu-uhhh” and furiously typing that you’re wrong despite having done zero research.

I’m employed, and I live like I’m in poverty. As much as I want to lift up the homeless, I would also appreciate fair wages for the employed.

Since rent/housing has gone insane, I’m having a hard time making things work on the money I’m making. I’m well over the “poverty” line and I can’t afford to put fuel in my car and buy name brand products, even if I wanted to. Products like… Idk, Campbell’s.

How dare these people wanting to improve the life of the poors by giving them handouts. For shame.

*I’m a “poor” and I approve this sarcasm.

So … People who have billions of dollars sitting around doing jack and shit, are ruining the economy?

That actually checks out.

At this point, “centrist” is slang for, “I want to argue for what I believe in under the guise of being the ‘Devils advocate’”.

Remember you absolutely must not go to these specific sites.

Do not do it.

See you all tomorrow for class.

But how else is he going to pay for his yacht… I mean, pay to feed his children… Yeah, that’s relatable with millennials and zoomers that are so far in debt and earning so little that they can’t afford kids, right?