I don’t like his movies but I respect his hustle. He has enough money to approach an agent and tell them “I want to make this movie, I want to cast all my friends in it, and I want my character to walk away with a hot date at the end” and the agent just says okay.

They’re pretty much all the same movie with different names on them. But it’s pretty clear that everyone involved in those movies was just having a great time making them.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/jared-leto-joker-suicide-squad-method-acting-dead-animals/

He sent his co-stars dead animals and condoms as “gifts”

So much so that King famously doesn’t actually remember writing Cujo

You don’t see how cultural relevance has caused HBO to cut JK Rowling a check in order to make this show, which she then turns around and donates to anti-trans organizations?

Pirate or not, people watching and interacting with this stuff and talking about it with other people keeps it in the public consciousness. As long as it remains part of the zeitgeist then Rowling continues to profit from it.

It’s quite easy to find other, better stories about wizards that don’t directly fund bigotry. I recommend Dresden Files.

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

How does doing nothing help us at all?

Being out in the streets making a big noise means that the government sees their people being upset and the cops out managing the protest could be in danger themselves. Protesting in the streets interrupts business and draws attention. At best, it means someone knows you’re pissed off and can’t ignore you. At worst, it could scare the cops and politicians away from interfering in the protest - or even, force their hand into enacting the changes you’re protesting for - due to concerns about their own personal safety.

If you enact a change in government and no one complains about it that means it is A-OK to continue this course of action. Silence is explicit approval when our only means of expressing disapproval is to speak up. If you aren’t speaking up then you are expressing that you approve of the events that are unfolding currently.

Logic and strategy tell me that Trump is going to enact the Insurrection Act no matter what happens. He has never once in his career been beholden to a fact before. Project 2025 and his own speeches tell us that this is his goal.

Fair enough, you got me there. Didn’t realize there was such a population of internet craving people in what’s supposed to be one of the last relatively untouched areas of nature on the planet.

That being the case though, why didn’t this all happen in 2013, when O3b launched to specifically solve this problem for them? It’s still running, by the way, after several rounds of upgrades, and significantly more stable than Starlink with their dinky little 5 year disposables. Microsoft, Honeywell and Amazon all use it. But the original and ongoing intent of the project was explicitly to bring internet access to all otherwise unreachable areas, such as islands, deep in Africa, and the open ocean.

I don’t oppose Brazilian villagers having internet if they want it, but the situation in which it arrived to them feels suspect to me. I have no proof that Starlink actively went out and pushed internet service onto them like a drug dealer but it would not be out of character for Musk and his subordinates to do so, and that just feels bad.

Regardless there is already an existing solution to this. If you want internet in the Amazon you can use satellite internet. It does not have to be Starlink. If you want good internet, maybe don’t live in the Amazon. People in general should probably be leaving that place alone. The article you linked even talks about one of the village leaders splitting his time between the village and the city. We can try and run a fiber line to Manaus and/or Porto Velho and that should be able to serve a reasonably large enough area around them, but even if that fails there are already other solutions.

When this baby hits 8x10^8000000000 fs/Z you’re gonna see some serious shit

People paying for internet service don’t live in the Amazon rainforest

But they specifically don’t want to do that because ensuring a 5 year service life means you are required to continue buying more satellites from them every 5 years. Literally burning resources into nothingness just to pursue a predatory subscription model.

It also helps their case that LEO has much lower latency than mid or high orbit but I refuse to believe that that is their primary driving concern behind this and not the former.

and doesnt really bother anyone?

Don’t they threaten to fire missiles at America like, weekly?

And try and fail to do it once every six months or so, I feel like I’ve been hearing about failed North Korean missile launches or tests with some regularity since like 2000.

Then the rest of us will handle it and accept thank-you’s later.

Lost my job around 2017 and it was real difficult to get a new one in the tech sector without a college degree. I lucked in to the one originally through professional connections. No such luck the next time after I got downsized.

So I ended up working at my local auto parts store to make ends meet in the meantime, and figured out that I actually really like fixing cars. It exercises the same sort of problem solving capacity but the problems you solve are usually a little less arcane. Made a few new connections including a guy who worked at an actual garage, got offered a position at that garage if I wanted it, and the rest is history.

I still dabble in programming as a hobby, but I enjoy working with my hands and the feeling of fixing a physical object is more fulfilling to me than fixing software. So here I stay (for now).

Not OP, but the answer to that is going to be “having a work transfer”

If you don’t already work for a company that’s willing to relocate you out of country, or don’t already have citizenship rights in another country that you can cash in, you’re not going anywhere. Not one single place in the world wants American refugees right now, and unless you’re a rocket surgeon, you’re going to be immigrating illegally if at all.

Best move for regular people right now is likely just getting a travel visa and then quietly overstaying it. Just don’t get caught.

I used to be a programmer and now I fix cars professionally, I feel like half of my professional life has been gazing upon some ancient work of dark magic and cussing loudly because I know I’m about to have to go in.

The line between jank and wizardry is sometimes blurry. The best magic has a little bit of jank in it, and the worst jank is sometimes a little bit magical.

Here’s my entire credit card and I’m bringing my steel-toes

I don’t really disagree with your other two points, but

You can plagiarize with a computer with copy & paste too. That doesn’t change the fact that computers have legitimate non-infringing use cases.

They sure do, of which that is not one. That’s de facto copyright infringement or plagiarism. Especially if you then turn around and sell that product.

Therein lies your problem. I can show up for a weekend. I can show up for several weekends, in fact. I can’t sit in a protest for two weeks, because I have a job I need to keep in order to eat food and own a home.

As the economy collapses further more and more people will become available for the sort of protest required of them, because they will no longer have job responsibilities. Or food. Possibly including me.

Until that time, I will be making efforts to keep my job.