These companies seem to forget that the main thing holding them afloat is the ability to watch it simply at a low cost. Pirating is very easy and there are plenty of tools to achieve this same goal if prices keep going up.

I’ve already abandoned Netflix. I would rather pirate shows I hear are good than mindlessly scroll on that platform while paying $240 a year or whatever.

This is wonderful to hear. I hope this helps move people away from google and their products.

Same here. It brings back some nice nostalgia. The new memes sometimes don’t do it for me.

I don’t really understand how North Korea continues to exist. I guess they aren’t sanctioned hard enough? I guess it’s hard to get in spies? I guess it’s hard to remove Kim? They seem so weak, but they keep slowly developing into some weird sort of threat.

The interviewed protesters sound a little whacky. Maybe the cars are doing surveillance with the police, but that idea seems far fetched and unrealistic. Maybe I’m wrong.

I agree with more public transportation, bikes, and so forth, but I also agree with self driving cars. I dream of a future in which all cars are driven automatically without human drivers. Humans are very fallible and we all know, in almost every city, how many shitty drivers there are. Autonomous vehicles could fix this.

I guess the search engine works well? Does it find safe torrents (out there such a thing as safe torrents?)?

It’s had its issues, there’s no doubt about that. But it set the precedent for a new kind of society in 1760. It’s an amazing country.

Also, it didn’t inspire the Nazis, that is a ridiculous comment.

Hyperbole much? The US consists of over 350 million people. You think all of them are racist? The people make the country. You’re getting upvotes because it’s a simple statement to make, but it’s not the truth. The US is an amazing country. There are still many racists, but there are less now than there were before, and this will continue to improve as we move forward.

Many natives welcomed the colonizers because they could trade with the them and advance their own cultures. It wasn’t purely about oppressors and oppressed. That binary view is simply removed from reality.

If they were as advanced, then they wouldn’t have been colonized. The railways were introduced by the British colonizers.

Sure, many places would have eventually caught up, maybe, but it would have taken a long, long time.

The anti colonialism narrative that is big these days could use a lot more nuance.

Im creating an argument that goes against the apology. I don’t find that it’s a productive use of time. Nor do I believe that colonialism is all bad. There were many positive aspects of colonialism that lead to a more globalized and multicultural world. It has also led to advancements that would not have occurred at this time without the commixture of different peoples and cultures.

The simple narrative is that the super powerful Europeans came over and oppressed everyone native. But that’s not the reality.

Slave trade, for one instance, wasn’t happening solely because of colonialism. It was happening in Africa long before it became apart of the colonial operation. It has a long history and it’s not one tied exclusively to colonialism.

As for the residential schools, that’s some fucked up shit, no doubt. I don’t know the history of Canada and how all that came about. But the interaction and history of European settlers with North American natives (which once were from the Middle East or Africa and walked over through Serbia and crossed the land bridge to Alaska) is long and complicated. It was not purely one of one person oppressing another at all times.

The oppressor/oppressed narrative that is so popular in left wing ideologies today is a product of Foucault and its subsequent propagation amongst the post modernists. It’s popular in many circles in academia, but it’s not the only narrative, nor is it a perfectly true narrative.

Anyway, I enjoyed Sapiens a lot. I thought it gave more nuance into the complexities of colonialism.

If they became a colonizer, then they were not “in need” of technological advancement. And when I say technological advancement, I’m referring to things like communication, healthcare, a court of law, and so much more.

The places that got colonized got colonized because they were not as well developed, both in terms of capacity, infrastructure, and technology, to name a few things.

Colonialism allowed places not like Japan to become as advanced as Japan.

Yuval Harari’s “Sapiens” has some good perspectives on this issue. I recommend you read it. Then check out some of the cited sources.

But what does this apology actually do? It doesn’t accomplish anything at this point. The people apologizing aren’t the perpetrators. “I’m sorry my great grandpa did horrific shit.” What? You weren’t even around when your great grandpa was. You are apologizing for something for which you have absolute no control or agency. It doesn’t make any sense.

It’s hard to imagine that we would be where we are today, as a technologically advanced and free society in the west, without colonialism.

Would it be possible to have you fediverse username connected to the blockchain so you could use it to associate with an instance? And if that instance closed, say, you could simply connect your blockchain based account identity to another instance?

Apologizing for your forbears actions is strange to me. Colonialism had many bad results and effects, but it also brought about many incredibly positive changes and advancements. It’s not a black and white issue.

Apple TV+. They are releasing some really spectacular shows (Ted Lasso, Severence, Silo) and enough fillers between the spectacular stuff.

I have a hard time trying new google stuff because it seems they kill it a few years later. Google used to be amazing, now I’m highly skeptical of the company. I’ve even switched to using Bing because google searches just result in a bunch of AI shit and other SEO bullshit.