I’m not against piracy, but publicly posting about intending to pirate would just invite cops to come and snoop around. I’m not dumb. I should either shut the fuck up about this topic and feel free to pirate or I should not pirate so I can freely speak up about how bullshit it is to pay for these things when piracy is far and away the better experience. I chose the latter, and especially now that resources have been provided to help others to choose the former, others can do so without even asking where to start.

I can afford to buy my media, but I wasn’t always so financially stable and I refuse to forget those chapters of my life. People are really struggling right now, so I wouldn’t dare judge anybody for pirating instead of paying these absurd streaming bill amounts just to get a dogshit selection, bad UI, and pisspoor video quality. As everything in life seems to be going to subscription model, I’m becoming more interested in owning my media. It also just seems like building a NAS and ripping my discs to build a library within it could just be a fun tinkering tech project.

It’s ludicrous that the original pirate-killer service has become such a bad deal. 13 years ago it was such a good deal that it didn’t really make sense to pirate anymore. Now it’s triple the price, 1/3 the quality content, and a worse experience.

I would have had less issues had I pirated

This right here is the problem. Consumers are being punished for paying for their service. I would be more than happy to hand over my hard earned money for products and services that are good value. I’m not trying to get something from nothing here. It’s absurd that we could get better than they’re promising, let alone actually delivering on, and it could cost us nothing.

Yesterday, I learned that several titles on Netflix are locked out from the ad-supported tier “due to licensing restrictions”. Inexcusable. Pay, still sit through ads, get a fraction of the library. I think I’m gonna start building a NAS and home library this year. BDs and DVDs can be snatched up for cheap from pawn shops and eBay. I’ll do it legally just so I can tell any FBI pricks to go fuck themselves if they should ever decide to check on my shit.

This. Conservatives have poor media literacy. They don’t understand that they’re the punchline in stuff like that. They miss the point of stuff like RoboCop and Starship Troopers and unironically like those movies for the action and don’t even recognize the social commentary. They watched Team America and guffawed into their 24 packs of light beer at every shallow joke without recognizing that the jokes were intentionally shallow to point out what an idiot would think is a good joke. It’s like the TV show in Idiocracy. The real joke is below the surface.

Without hesitation. If the taste, consistency, nutrition, and price are all the same, then the only differences would be whether an animal was bred to suffer until slaughter and the likelihood of illness from consumption. I’m assuming that stuff like e coli would be nearly impossible through this. Plus less demand on farm meat means less chance of coronavirus mutations like the 2009 swine flu outbreak. And less of a need for the real estate, feed, and potable water to grow those animals. I must be missing something because I’m struggling to see a downside here.

I’m sure that, in the same way that there’s still a market for objectively inferior exploitatively mined diamonds as a status symbol instead of lab created diamonds, there would still be a market for rEaL meat where “you can really taste the suffering” or whatever.

Now here’s the more interesting question that actually has me on the fence: if “growing any kind of animal tissue” is what has been achieved, where would you stand on consuming lab-grown human meat? Is it immoral? Are there risks? Should such a thing be restricted in some way like alcohol or handguns? What would be the proper etiquette and presentation and everything if it became socially accepted? What wine would pair best with it? Or would it be more of a beer pairing? If this weren’t socially acceptable, would no-suffering chimpanzee meat be okay?

If it only takes a small cell sample, would it be unethical to dig up extinct animals like mammoths or dodo specifically to enjoy their meat? If that’s okay, and it chimps are okay, would neanderthals be okay to eat? Where would we draw the line?