Lol, someone loves the taste of boots

And also probably some chunk of those views are from bots or otherwise not real trying to boost engagement metrics and game the algorithm

That explains why in the movie Predator, you can hear the crunch of Doritos right before it attacks.

None of this is a likely threat, but is any of it completely outside the realm of feasibility?

Yes. It’s well beyond being worth considering. You’re describing a massive conspiracy where hundreds of people from multiple countries’ governments as well as private corporations would all need to work together without any information leakage. All this to entrap some Canadian programmer who tried to torrent season 2 of a TV show aired in 1990. If any of this was worth doing, it would have been done by now, yet we hear of nothing like this ever happening.

I’ve gone my entire adult life downloading copyrighted material without using a VPN and it’s never caused me any problem. My contract with my ISP confers me a level of trust that I’m perfectly comfortable with. I’m familiar with the Canadian law around this stuff, and how it’s been interpreted by the courts in the past. I am under no threat of financial damages being pursued against me. My ISP has no incentive to log my online activity or report it to foreign authorities. And even if they did, the Canadian courts limit the pursuable damages to four figures; barely enough to pay for the lawyer that would file the suit.

That level of paranoia is a waste of energy. I know that what I’m doing works just fine. Why would some Hollywood studio plant CSAM in a torrent? That would implicate them as well. It makes zero sense. They have better things to do than entrap some nobody in a country whose laws don’t favour them seeking any damages. It would cost them far more in legal fees to come after me than to just leave it alone. The notices they send out are entirely automated and exist primarily as a scare tactic.

If you’re willing to be curious and open minded about things beyond your limited perception and experience, rather than be a know-it-all, I’d be happy to share with you an example email that I recieved recently. I think the language they use is quite interesting.

The law in Canada limits the ISP’s risk exposure and the pursuable damages of the rightsholder. Also it definitely would cost them if they told me “we have not responded to this notice from the rightsholder” and then turned around and did exactly that. That would be a flat out lie to their client. I’d have grounds to sue in a situation like that.

Also, I’ve been doing this for almost a decade and never had any problems. Maybe you shouldn’t assume that your situation is everyone’s situation.

Your ISP has the same access to your data, but they also have a payment account linked to you, and they regularly cooperate with rights holders and law enforcement.

This varies widely by ISP and jurisdiction. I never use a VPN and my ISP doesn’t give a fuck what I download. They forward me the scary letters from the rights holders but they always preface it with “don’t worry, we ain’t no snitch”

Yeah it’s one thing to say “idk what I saw but maybe it was something”. It’s quite another to say that what he’s saying is the truth and if you don’t believe him then you’re calling him a liar. Sounds like something a liar would say.

I tend to notice that it’s only fascists that try to promote their agenda in other countries.

That is definitely not the case. All sides of the political spectrum try to push their views in other countries. John Oliver, a British American media personality, urged Canadians to vote for Trudeau in 2015 on his show.

I’m so fucking glad I got out of that hellhole of a city.

Even right wing economists agree that carbon tax is the best way to do it. The only case against it is a climate change denial case. It uses the laws of economics to attack the problem of climate change at the source. The issue is whether the tax rate is right and whether we allow corpos to buy “offset credits” that are actually worthless.

“Increasing competition” without lowering prices is meaningless.

Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.

Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that “increasing competition” meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I’m really surprised that a party called “Canada future” is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you’re coming from.

Hopefully the fact that this was a national park that was affected will make the federal government start considering a federal wildfire fighting program.

Damn, you’re right. It makes total sense now.

BTW I love your username. If only there were some way to make money off it!

No, I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that the name for the thing you’re describing, where some fantastical premise is extended logically using more realistic science, is “science fiction”.

We call that “science fiction”, not 100% science-based

I’m still stuck on “science-based”

100% science-based dragon MMO

How I read this poll: 55% of Canadians want a party to the political left of the Conservatives to win.

How our FPTP system reads this poll: 70% of ridings want the Conservatives to win.

I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve said here, but in what way is Trudeau a “technocrat”? The main conservative critique of him before his election was that his previous work was as a teacher and that he was too young to lead the country. One of his big claims to fame has been appointing cabinet positions based on identity rather than aptitude. I don’t see how you could claim that he’s a “technocrat”. He’s a fairly run-of-the-mill politician.

If anything, Harper had a better claim to the title of “technocrat” since he had a background in economics, although he then went on to fill his cabinet with people who viewed the government as a stolen car in a chop-shop, so he wasn’t really a technocrat either.