It’s sort of legally gray but generally speaking in the US downloading is a civil offense but not a criminal one. You can get sued by the copyright holder for example but you won’t end up in jail over it.

People usually never get sued for it because it’s not worth it for Comcast to pay for lawyers to try and extract any money out of regular people. Not only will they almost certainly be unable to even recoup the lawyer fees, they risk getting a lot of bad PR for no gain.

What’s usually considered an arrestable offense is uploading aka distribution. Once you start hosting seedboxes then you enter the area where you’re liable to go to prison.

While there’s some element of truth to what you’ve said- the DNC is using the “End of Democracy” meme as one of their primary themes in their campaign messaging- I don’t think that had anything to do with this shooting.

Statistically speaking the vast majority of domestic terrorism comes from far-right extremists. We don’t know the motivations behind the shooter at this point in time, but the consensus seems to be so far that he was conservative.

I think it’s much more likely he was radicalized online and either

a) wanted to kill Trump to further polarize the political tension in an accelerationist sense (sort of like how far-right organizations were shooting both protestors & police during Euromaidan. Just to increase the outrage, the violence, etc).

Basically an attempt to weaken the regime

Or

b) he became a white supremacist and those tend to hate Trump. Go on stormfront forums and see what they say about Trump. They think he’s a jewlover, fake messiah, etc. They hate Jews, Trump loves jews. Therefore, Trump is a potential target.

Or

c) was just nutty plain and simple. Ie killing Trump would unite him with some cartoon character from Nickelodean in the afterlife.

All of those are vastly more likely than someone being radicalized by DNC messaging, I believe.

Dems promise status quo. America as a whole does not want status quo. Cost of living keeps going up while technology rips apart society in ways we would have never predicted a decade ago.

As long as the only alternative to Trump is status quo, Trump will always win. The DNC’s only real concern is maintaining the current power structure. But it’s like Blockbuster ignoring the rise of Netflix. The winds have changed. The future is going to be radically different for better and definitely for worse.

I appreciate the list. I’m not saying there aren’t valid concerns, just that in my day to day life it’s one of those items where the steps needed to avoid browser fingerprinting is usually more work than the value I personally get from my perspective.

I’ve looked into this, and I’m not clueless. I’ve developed websites, I’ve done a lot of stuff with Selenium / Puppeteer, and have toyed with Firefox browser extensions.

I understand the tools they use and it’s just very tricky to fully eliminate this type of thing. For example they can even use the browser window size. Are you going to randomly change window size to some novel dimension when you open up a tab?

What about the JS engine you use. For example using Firefox already narrows down your anonymity by like 95% or something because only a small amount of users use the browser. Etc etc

It’s hard to do this correctly, and I feel like VPN + private window usually takes care of the price fixing thing on the list, for example. When I’m searching for flights I usually do this.

I also use JS blockers in order to try and mess up the scripts that Facebook & Google have hidden over the internet to track you. But ironically, doing that again reduces your anonymity. They know that if their scripts don’t work on you, you get narrowed down again to a very small % of users.

It only takes a few of those pieces of data to be reasonably sure that it’s you. Browser fingerprinting is tricky to really avoid. It’s not impossible, of course. Just saying to really do it right it might be more effort than it’s worth.

I don’t think it’s taking shelter as much as trying to find an answer to something that has no answer.

For example Eistein I don’t think was trying to take shelter from reality. He wanted to look at reality as deeply as possible and he managed to peek through and see more than almost anyone ever had before.

But he still believed in a God. This is one of those reasons I always call myself an agnostic instead of atheist.

In a practical sense, I’m an atheist. I don’t think Jesus turned water into wine or the Buddha achieved enlightenment and entered a higher plane of existence or whatever.

But I acknowledge there might be supernatural or supranatural items / phenomenon/ or even beings that we can’t ever fully understand.

Nobody showed up because the DNC wanted it that way. It’s standard operating procedure to blindly stand behind the incumbent because statistically incumbent has a higher chance to win.

It’s the safe option, so the DNC put their weight behind Biden.

If DNC actually wanted an open primary with all sorts of people trying to win, we could have done that. But we didn’t.

Now it’s becoming obvious Biden has no chances of winning this election because of his deteriorating mental condition. Not only that, he’s even less likely to be an effective head of state. Why are we choosing to put ul an almost-senile guy to represent the strongest country in the world?

I think another primary is fully justified. The best course of action would have been to have a real primary in the first place. But what else are you going to do at this point?

Biden can’t win and even if he could he shouldn’t win

I remember back in the day everyone used Firefox. Then Chrome came out and there was a nice ad campaign and it was actually way faster.

Then slowly everyone switched to Chrome. At some point in the last 15 years, it switched to Firefox being superior.

I switched back to Firefox maybe like 7~ years ago? But I did it for open source reasons.

Yeah I’d only worry about it if I were trying to buy drugs on the dark net or something. I guess if torrenting became illegal I would also worry.

You can stop pretending anytime. Go ahead and do the research. Maybe you assume you’re right and don’t know. Maybe you know you’re wrong and your pride doesn’t allow you to admit.

Who knows

So you give up pretending Biden has any other accomplishments?

I don’t understand what even to say to people who think bombing brown people is OK as long as the plane flying it has a pride flag.

I named his biggest accomplishments. There’s a reason he’s more unpopular than Trump, an already deeply unpopular president.

We are fucked as a country but I’ll be fine.

Infrastructure bill, climate bills (even though he’s also given more fossil fuel approvals than Trump and oil companies are making nearly 3x profit under him), OTC birth control… what else?

High inflation & high interest rates & high government spending on war.

I would support a candidate that would

A) reduce cost of living

B) raise wages

C) enact immigration reform

D) stop funding endless war

Right now neither candidate promises any of those items. Those 4 items would make a massive difference to virtually everyone in this country.

I couldn’t care less about trans bathrooms. Sure, they deserve respect and equality and all that jazz. But I’m sure they would also like a good paying job and being able to comfortably afford their rent and groceries a lot more than kids being allowed to go to drag shows.

Don’t you see how they’ve successfully managed to trick everyone into accepting these BS culture war issues as some sort of substitution for real meaningful change? They have their boot on your neck and you’re happy about it.

We’re accelerating downhill, I think there’s only a few years left before another big war

Protectionism against China check

Expansion of border wall check

Unconditional support of Israel check

Detention of asylum seekers at border check

Soaring corporate profits check

Massive number of oil and gas drilling approvals check

Virtually no meaningful legislation or policy that improves quality of life or lowers cost of living for working class Americans… check

Trust me. It’s not as different as the kool-aid would have you believe. You can’t just wave a pride flag around and pretend to be a progressive. I don’t buy it.

MAGA agenda is gonna happen under Biden too. Biden expanded border wall. Abortion rights are getting dismantled under Biden. Inflation and interest rates are pressing down on working class Americans under Biden - meanwhile corporate profits soar, especially oil companies. Oil companies are making 2-3x higher profits right now than during Trump.

Sure, the rhetoric coming out of white house is going to be more racist, more xenophobic, more anti-gay, etc.

But fundamentally I think the changes this country is going through is much deeper than presidential office. If Biden were a strong leader, maybe he would be able to stem the tide.

But he is not a strong leader. He is the last gasp of air that the establishment neoliberals are desperately trying to maintain. One last attempt to maintain the broken status quo of the great experiment we started under Reagan.

The tipping point has already been reached, a tsunami is coming and people should get ready for that

The same as if Biden wins. I don’t think the office of president is going to meaningfully change my life. It did not the last 8 years either.

Either way we’re headed to war, economic troubles, radicalism, etc. Biden and Trump are both stepping stones towards the authoritarian state capitalist system we have been cultivating for decades.

People are going to be fine as long as they do what every person in Latin America did under the military dictatorships supported by the US. Shut up, do your job, and don’t make waves.

Don’t worry, it can’t last forever. These systems have a tendency of falling apart eventually. The next manifestation will be better. Just like WW2 had to happen to bring us our post-60s civil rights era society.

We can discuss what people should do all day. I’m talking about what people will do. Biden is losing this election. People are talking more about whether he is even capable of the job and nothing about the good things he can do for the country. His own party is rebelling against him, with Dems from swing states calling for his resignation.

Biden’s toast, and the DNC with him. It’s unfortunate but it is what it is.

Speaking confidence has nothing to do with lying or telling the truth. Go back 20 years ago and look at a Biden speech and compare it to today. Hell, go back 4 years ago to the last Biden v Trump debates.

Biden isn’t half the capable public speaker he was before. He mumbles and gets lost. He sounds unsure.

Trump doesn’t care if what he’s saying truth or not, he just says things with the conviction of a conman.

You have to look at it from the GOP perspective. Trump is the most popular candidate, he managed to accomplish big ticket items in his administration, and he is more “mentally there” than Biden.

Just look at debate. Trump spoke quickly and confidently. Biden mumbles and forgets what he’s talking about, stands there with mouth open staring, etc.

There’s a reason in 2020 debates, polls showed most people thought Biden won the 2 debates. But in the last one, overwhelming % of people thought Trump won debates- even democratic voters.

I think you misunderstand who is asking Biden to drop out and why.

Dems are interested in who is the DNC candidate and Republicans are interested in the GOP candidate.

Republicans as a whole are OK with Trump. He’s not incredibly popular, but he has some achievements under his belt and has a relatively small but very loyal core group of voters. The average Republican believes that a) Trump has good chances of winning election and b) will likely move forward conservative policy objectives.

Therefore, why would they want him to drop out?

If we look on the other side at Biden. A growing group of people believe that he is not 100% mentally there because of his age. Because of this, not only does he a) have lower chances of winning the election but also b) is he really competent enough to be president? Sure, there’s a sort of shadow administration behind him but people still put value in having a strong and mentally quick head of state.

Beyond that, there’s also a small group of progressive voters who are unhappy with Biden’s policies. He simply isn’t a very effective leader and is one of the most unpopular presidents in US history. He’s even more unpopular than Trump, who was also a deeply unpopular president.

So, people want Biden to resign because they believe other people would not only a better chance of winning election, but would be more effective leaders in terms of advancing DNC policy objectives.

Greedy people are more likely to end up wealthy. Greedy people are also more likely to end up doing ethically dubious things.

Of course, any wealth at all is unethical if you’re being honest with yourself. There’s a famous passage in the Bible.

Jesus was out teaching his disciples or healing people- whatever he did. And a rich man comes up to him and asks

“Jesus, I want to follow you and go to heaven. Please tell me what I should do”

What did Jesus say? Jesus told him to a) sell all of his shit b) give that money to charity c) physically follow me around

What did rich guy do? Have an epiphany about morality and living the good life?

No, he cried. He cried because he didn’t actually want to let go of the good things he had for morality.

All of us in first world nations are guilty of this to some extent. The way our world is shaped you essentially have to be unethical to survive. There are levels to it, of course. But I think your perspective is too black and white and needs a little nuance. Seem like a teenager.