Nostalgia.

It has tried to return in the early 2010s and again in the 2020s. It has not aged well and didn’t really feel like it belonged anywhere within any culture of what was going on for shows around those points in time.

So a while ago I was on a platform where the community valued art that was made by actual artists. AI Art was strictly forbidden and anyone who showcased said AI art in their gallery or used it as a profile picture, had it removed and could face penalty.

AI has been trained to generate art styles from many artists by crawling through the web. Anyone can go to any AI generating source, punch in a few descriptive keywords, tell AI to mimic a style as closely as possible and now you have a copy of said material.

The difference is, is that IPTV is just an internet-based streaming station similar to how networks operate to broadcast television shows. There’s nothing to really pirate.

This is the kind of shit that makes me want to campaign on harassing marketers and advertisers personally.

“I’ve a question for you, Mr.Advertiser”

“Yes! Is it about how we can shovel more commercials to you?”

“No, it’s about what do you value in life and how would you feel if I took it from you, you parasite?”

I wonder what the quarterly earning reports are from stores that have exited the physical media market by now. Like Best Buy has now gone a whole year without selling physical media.

Yeah that was the content I was vaguely referring to.

And kind of agree, a lot of the show’s actual episodic structure outside of the music video part, is shoddy at best. It was car crash television from the 90s, what did anyone expect?

Of course. When people need to save money and have to consider what expense to cut away. People need something to tend to.

I don’t pirate for moral purposes. I pirate because:

I do not have all of the money in the world to simply just spend luxuriously on anything I set my sights on.

I care about having food, a place to stay I can call my own, and a vehicle I need to get to places.

There were stretches in time in my life where I had been broke and too poor while many things have passed me by that I have pirated since.

I find that some services or media just aren’t worth the asking price or the value of what’s there that’s offered, because it does not pique my interest that would make me want to subscribe.

I live a finite lifespan, I do not have all of the time in the world until legal alternatives are available or for some things to be affordable when I know it is likely that they won’t be.

It’s really that simple.

Yeah I’ve read about that collection. Because the officially released versions were either missing content or were inferior.

Borrow movie, rip it, return it. I’m sure people who rent from RedBox did the same thing or those who rented movies in the past.

Man, I’ll never forget the amazement I’ve had when 2 decades ago about how I could replay nearly hundreds to a few thousand games at the time, from Atari through Game Boy Color. All through one computer, through emulation.

Arcade gaming is amongst the most disrespected of the games from video game companies. A lot of them are shoved to the side when they no longer are getting quarters and it’s a dime a dozen that some see digital re-releases, if the companies even get the performance right. Because they’ll just outsource to DotEmu who has a knack for slowing down Neo-Geo games for absolutely no reason.

It’s not gatekeeping if it’s common sense that people should possess already when it comes to pirating.

So, your course consists of things that everyone should already be doing when pirating at all? Why limit it to games?

Just put Telegram in the same pool with Discord, Skype, Teams and all that. They’re more at home there and no longer the status of for the people.

I prioritize ease of use, reliability, basic features not behind a pay wall, solid support and ease of use through Thunderbird so I don’t have to visit the awful web version of said mail program. While I had mentioned that I was on Tutamail, I did a search of them and found a Reddit post about them weighing pros and cons. The cons I read of them go against a little of the things I’m after.

So reluctantly, I had to go back to GMail. I spent over 20 minutes migrating, resetting, re-routing many addresses to my newer GMail. I know that privacy is neither here or there on surface web stuff so I don’t care about privacy regarding that. I’ll start caring about privacy when I sign up for more personalized things and that’s where Tutamail is going to come into play.

Well, I’m embracing a new e-mail service. And maybe a new VPN.

Proton has been giving me some issues sometimes when I couldn’t access my inbox, I can’t have that when I’m in great need to see if anything has happened. Also, I’ve joined Tutamail just now and I can make a lot of folders. Screw you, Proton for endorsing trash and limiting how many folders I can make. Which sounds like a silly complaint and it kind of is, but who the hell limits basic features like that?

So I’ll be giving Tutamail a year long trial, just as I did with Proton 4 years ago before making it my primary service of choice. Push comes to shove, I’ll just use GMail again for at least it’s reliability and as an ironic middle-finger to Proton for this kind of move.

Uh, I’m not affected. What’s there to pay attention to? Not one single instance have I had, in all of 10+ jobs in my resume, where my LGBTQ status was put into question because it was never a matter on the table to begin with. I never brought it up. I never mentioned or talked about who I was with or seeing. I don’t drop hints, nothing. I didn’t have nosy people, which sounds like what you had and other people.

Anytime I was fired or penalized, it was because of policy violations that amounted to insubordination or just performance in general. Not once, ever, has it been because of my identity. You really must be living in places where you’re running into these issues all of the time, because I don’t.

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A lot of them don’t even lie about it as much if you read between the lines. GreenManGaming, HumbleBundle are the exceptions to that.

But places like CDKeys, G2A .etc yeah you can’t be assured that anything you buy from them is going back to the developer. If the developers so much even hears the existence of these kinds of sites, they’d be protesting to have them shut down.

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danooct1 - A guy who demonstrates computer viruses on OSes like Windows and DOS.

WrestlingWithWregret (For wrestling fans) - This guy does various wrestling content but some of his best is PPV Classic reviews. Charming personality.