Okay so! You need to download something!

Be it a movie, a game, a software, a book. Where do you even start? You know people catch viruses or fines pirating, so how to do it, and do it safely? This is going to be a bit verbose, so coloured text has the most important info. THIS WILL BE LONG but you can just skim it! (P.S. there are some goodies for artists in the end so do take a peek there if you do art and would like courses or procreate brushes) By the end of this you should be able to download or stream almost anything.

(Disclaimer: I'm not super knowledgeable on the technical side of things, just a moderately seasoned pirate. Will explain stuff to the best of my abilities, but there will be wild semplifications. If there's any issue, or precisations you'd like to make, or just need a hand with something, feel free to reach out to me directly on here!)

Putting a cut here so I don't spam your dashes <3 - now, here we go:

All this is pretty dang accurate. Nice.

However, when it comes to adblocking and safe browsing, use NoScript. It’s an extension compatible with chromium browsers and Firefox that prevents sites from running scripts on your machine without express permission. It requires a little babysitting, but it’ll save your ass. If you want something less involved but also less secure, stick with an Adblock-enabled Firefox, arc, or brave (brave isn’t that bad, but not the best). I don’t know enough about the sites @clorofolle mentioned to vouch for their security (or lack thereof), but if you’re on sites looking for magnet links for illegal downloads, I’d be extra careful with your security.

Additionally, while (some) VPNs are great at masking your traffic and not keeping your data (so they claim, anyway), another extra step of security is to use another network besides your home network to do your illegal business. Generally, if you’re doing things against the rules, don’t shit where you eat. Go to a coffee shop or a library with unsecured wireless and download things there. It might tank their bandwidth a bit though, so be considerate and maybe throttle your connection speed.

The only thing @clorofolle writes that I take issue with is their brief discussion of port forwarding. Giving a vpn an open port can open you up to certain attacks depending on how their security is configured. Please, DO NOT just open ports without understanding the risks. If it isn’t configured correctly, you could end up compromising your own security. To give an analogy, think of the downloading process like eating food. It’s faster to eat if you keep your mouth already open, just like it’s faster to download from seeders if you have the right port opened. However, it’s not a good idea to keep your mouth open in a room full of flies, because they might fly in and that’s gross. Now imagine the flies are hackers. If you keep a port open, it can provide a convenient attack surface for any potential threats that take a look at your computer on the network. Only open ports if you know the risks and if you know who can access it.

but thats just my onion

We need real journalism and an independent press. Language matters.

Valid question.

oh siddhartha gautama, called Buddha, we're really in it now

1,000,000,000 OYSTERS TO FEED COMRADE MAMDANI'S NONBINARY NEW YORK HYPERCOMMUNE

Something so disgusting about how the original Haitian zombie folklore is "the zombies are victims of a sorcerer who exploits them as slaves" and then modern zombie media is "the zombies just appear from an infection that turns Real People into a rampaging horde serving no other purpose than to threaten Civilization" like.

The Haitian zombie is very clearly metaphorical for the very real horrors of slavery, while the viral zombie is fundamentally about "what if there was a type of guy it was completely okay to kill and you got to exist in a survivalist fantasy as a Badass, also when infrastructure collapses it's every man for himself and altruism goes away"

And isn't it super interesting to think about that in the context of historical US-Haiti relations?

Also there's many of them and they spread and become innumerable hordes who invade your town but also you can kill hundreds of them because they're individually weak and stupid

A completely disorganized horde of weak, uncoordinated, literally feral humans that a Real Badass can take out by the thousands, but they somehow overwhelm all the regular people and cause the collapse of society. It's up to the Great Men to fix the problem. This totally isn't a fascist fever dream.

Theyre putting him down :(

there's always some bullshit happening on reddit

adding a blank emoji to my discord server might be the best thing to ever happen to text communication. asynchronous digital equivalent of hanging out in a room with your friends in silence. let's all nothing together

"Not beating the ___ allegations" is such a 'now' turn of phrase, implying as it does a world where everyone's behavior is always on literal trial by a guilt-presuming judge and jury that consists of anyone who happens to be paying attention.

Not beating the panopticon allegations

So turns out the US are setting babies up for a lifetime of illness and increased likelihood of liver cancer in Guinea Bissau in the name of “research”

7000 newborns will be denied the neoneatal HepB vaccine until 6 weeks to ‘prove’ that the HepB vaccine is linked to neurodevelopmental disability on the directions of the Department of Health vis RFK Jr and in collaboration with researchers in Denmark, despite the fact that the vaccine’s efficacy rate and best protection is when administered to newborns, and the total lack of correlation between vaccination and neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Guinea Bissau has some of the highest rates of HepB on the continent, and infants are the group at the highest risk of contracting HepB, leading to chronic hepatitis & long term hepatic diseases like cirrhosis and liver failure as well as increased chance of liver cancer.

The study can’t be carried out in the US or Denmark because it fails almost every benchmark for medical ethics — surprising absolutely nobody, it is in fact heinously unethical to expose babies to preventable disease that causes liver failure and liver cancer, but the “study” has been green lit in Guinea.

Fuck the US imperial project in Africa, fuck RFK Jr and the US Department of Health, and fuck every single collaborative researcher in Denmark. This is some nightmare Tuskegee Study shit and every single individual involved deserves to be in The Hague.

Good news: cancelled as of this morning.