Western companies no longer operating in the Russian market, but still producing desirable content. … Western companies have ‘legalized’ piracy in Russia.
100% this.
Media is culture, and IMO people have a right to participate in culture. If it’s excessively difficult or impossible to legitimately access culture, one has the moral right to illegitimately access culture, and share it so others also have access.
It’s inexcusable to refuse to directly sell media. The internet has made it easier than ever to trade access to media for money. Geo-restricted subscription services should be a nice add-on option for power-consumers, not the only way to get access to something.
Are willing to pirate content from this niche 3D printing YouTube content creator that you enjoy? I’m not.
I cleanse my conscience by supporting many of them on Patreon.
Accidentally clicking on clickbait without an adblocker directly results in a spammer getting money, and that just makes me feel like crap. There’s so much spam out there that wouldn’t exist without ads, which makes it harder for quality creators to get attention and fair compensation. I feel I can only engage with the internet ethically by refusing to participate in the ad economy.
It sucks that alternative payment models like Brave’s “Basic Attention Token” (or a fairer alternative) never got popular. The idea was to track the creators of websites/videos/etc. you visit and automatically split your monthly donation between them. IIRC it was proportional to the number of ads blocked for each creator, but you could tweak creators’ multipliers to deny profit to spam and reward higher-quality creators. I’d also accept microtransactions for individual videos, news articles, etc. but no platforms for these exist because the big players in internet monetization are all so focused on ads.
There are old movies that have aged much better, like The Man in the White Suit and Colossus: The Forbin Project. These should be the ones we call classics.
I could just be further down the path due to lucky opportunities. 20 years ago I had no ambitions beyond game programming. It was only when I got a biology-related job that learning in my free time started displacing mindless entertainment. The whole field is one big nerd snipe - there are endless opportunities where you can advance the frontier of knowledge by combining a few existing ideas and working out the kinks. The more you read, the more opportunities you see. It’s thrilling. I don’t think I can go back to non-science work.
I think the dopamine from constant learning also helps to keep my ADHD in check. If I start the weekend with some study, I’ll usually also get the housework done. If I start with a video game or TV show, I’ll probably spend the rest of the weekend stressing about my todo list and not getting anything done.
I honestly don’t know what that silence would be like. I’ve spent my programming career jumping between domains, becoming an expert then moving on to find a new challenge. Now I’m building AI stuff for medicine.
In my down time I learn languages, watch videos about physics and math, and play puzzle games.
My brain actually won’t let me stop. Boredom = pain.
David Cronenberg, especially his stuff in the 90s and 80s. He has made so many movies that just got stuck in my brain. Everything’s weird, but memorable-weird. eXistenZ was my favorite movie for years.