The last game I pirated was Driver: San Francisco a couple years ago, because you couldn’t (still can’t? maybe?) buy it anywhere except for like, second-hand physical media, and I am not going through that hassle. I can’t even remember the game I last pirated before that (Probably Sims 4, because fuck EA and fuck that laundry list of DLC – but I can’t be sure).

Music, movies, and TV shows, though? Oh yeah, baby, that’s a weekly activity now. Netflix I dumped many years ago when the fracturing of content to twenty different streaming services happened, and Spotify I dumped just this last year for a few different reasons (the CEO donating to AI weapons programs, introducing a fuckass AI DJ, ICE ads, getting fed up with songs I either can’t find or can find but aren’t available in my region, or could listen to and enjoyed and then having them suddenly become unavailable, etc…)

I’m sure, someday, Steam will enshittify. Probably shortly after Gabe dies – and it will be a dark day for me and millions of gamers worldwide. But for now, I’m more than happy to let Gabe empty my wallet with sales and convenience, because the gettin’s been good for a couple decades and will likely remain so for another couple. I can’t say the same for music, movies and TV; I don’t know if I’ll ever end up paying for them again unless the distributors involved sort their shit out.

Do yourself a huge favor and download Nicotine+ (which is a client for Soulseek, you can also use the official SoulseekQt I guess but it’s old and not as feature-rich). That and Spek to make sure you don’t get any fake bitrate files from people.

The only two real downsides to Soulseek, imo, are the fact that a lot of the chatrooms are basically unmoderated IRC (So many nazis to ignore. So many.), and the problem of fake bitrates. The huge upside is you can find pretty much any and everything on there if you wait for the right people to be online to share it. I’ve found quite a few rare albums and such that I couldn’t get from my usual gettin’ places.

the fact that Gabe said “piracy is a service problem” fifteen fucking years ago, and none of these fuckwits in content distribution have learned this at all is a source of continuous astonishment to me.

I, too, remember candleja

IT’S NOT DIFFERENT AT ALL, IS IT STEVE?

“the birth of superintelligent life”

Whoever wrote this couldn’t huff their own farts harder if they tried.

that is an egg with legs.

Boris sounds like a cool guy, I wish I had a Boris.

I would unironically sooner become an actual hermit and never socialize again than give these cretins my ID or even trust that they’ll delete an age verification photo. Knowing Discord? yeah, no, absolutely fucking not

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

no, it’s much simpler than that: I think that any system, no matter how well-designed, can be broken by anyone with the will and patience to break it. And in an apocalypse, there would be no shortage of people with the will to do it and the time to plan how.

compounds on… the outside of the bunker. As in, not a bunker itself. Additionally, fed with what? I assume if billionaires are to the point of hiding in bunkers and paying “loyal guards” in food, that food outside is relatively scarce, and probably global transportation infrastructure is no more. Meaning they either have food stored onsite in the compound (which just means storming the lower-security compound first, getting a bunch of food, and then gassing the bunker to get even more goodies), or they’re somehow moving food from the bunker to the compound (which sounds like an easy way to get into the bunker).

that would probably work better, but if the infrastructure for communication between bunkers exists in the bunkers, and 95% of the people located in bunker A and bunker B want to escape and kill asshole billionaire A and asshole billionaire B, all they have to do is coordinate a simultaneous attack using that same communication infrastructure. If the order to “get ready to kill xyz prisoner’s family” can be communicated, so can “get ready to kill Bezos”.

If blocking the ventilation doesn’t work, I can think of plenty of chemical and biological agents to introduce to a ventilation system that will produce the desired effect. Filters only catch so much, have a limited lifetime and will deteriorate, and can be hastened to deteriorate faster. I doubt they’re going to fit a HEPA filter factory down there.

And as for the armed guards, if the world is bad enough that the billionaires have hidden away in their bunkers, I doubt it’s a world where fiat currency has meaning anymore. About the only ways I could see armed guards being kept in line long-term would be to have their families all held hostage in the bunker as well, and/or explosive collars – and the latter can be hacked, I’m certain. The former, I’m sure they could try, but then you’re not relaxing in luxury in post-apocalypse bliss, you’re running a massive underground prison where every guard hates the warden and wants to help the inmates escape and murder the warden. That doesn’t sound easy or fun no matter how much money you have to throw at the problem.

Really, I find it unlikely that billionaires will be able to retain much in the way of long-term control if the outside world gets bad enough that they’ve sealed themselves inside a hole in the ground, no matter what kind of connectivity they have down there. They can build whatever they want now, while fiat currency still has meaning; but once it stops making sense to worship the dollar and the planet is on fire, they’re just some moron in a hole in the ground with lots of supplies. They’re a loot cache.

I didn’t say “the next term”, though, I said “when the dust settles and adults are back in charge.”

That might be ten, fifteen, twenty years from now – but there are young men in this administration committing crimes right now whose impacts will still be felt years down the line, it’s not just the ancient orange fuckwit; and those men will likely still be alive if nobody has doled out mob justice to them in the intervening years.

I have no idea who will survive that long, not in this powder keg; and justice delayed is justice denied. But conversely, someday, these morons are not going to be in power, nor their cronies or their controlled opposition, and it might just happen in our lifetimes if we work for it. And me, personally, I really want to see Stephen Miller’s face when he’s sentenced, even if seeing his corpse would be satisfactory.

Not to mention, fully consenting Latinas! I know “not being a rapist” is a really low bar to clear, but for a wealthy, male, politically-connected American in 2026? Fantastic. Wonderful. Groundbreaking.

Oh, I imagine they have supplies to last a year.

I say open them after 100-200y, make it a fun time capsule, then turn them into museums – “this is one of the places where we buried alive the biggest leeches in society after they constructed the most lavish palatial bunkers to hide in during a time of global turmoil!” – you can show people just what excess wealth to the point of detachment from society will drive a person to do, and what society will do in turn to them.

I do not believe in any deus ex machina coming in and saving the day, not at this point – but you’d better believe someone is going to hang for the multitude of crimes being undertaken by this administration, up to and including high treason, once the dust settles and actual adults are back in charge.

This administration hasn’t just been doing a bad job, they’ve been doing a deliberately awful job; kneecapping our global soft power in almost every way possible across multiple fronts (the killing off of global aid, our intelligence being leakier than a sieve, hostility towards allies, etc.) in a way that will affect the prospects of the country for generations, in almost exactly the way a hostile foreign power would want them to. People this stupid (don’t tell me they’re all evil geniuses, there’s a couple evil geniuses mixed in with a whole smorgasboard of evil morons), perpetrating this many crimes all at once, leave lots of evidence of their stupid crimes – there will be too much evidence to not convict someone of something. Probably a lot of someones.

whether the someone(s) that hang are the same someone(s) responsible is what determines whether this bullshit continues to be a cancerous growth on our government or not.