You can say privacy works differently for the government- but it isn’t often the “government” that does things. Rarely if ever, as a “government” is a concept. It is individuals who make choices, often they agree to make choices, on their own. Exposing a president still is exposing one person. You can argue that they aren’t a private person when acting in that capacity because they serve your interests- but that implies companies have the right to monitor workers in their private lives or even that in more “traditional” religious marriages that spouses have little to no rights to individual privacy from each other. It clearly implies parents have no right to privacy from kids whom are by default appointed legally and biologically to see to the child’s interests.

I mean like.. duh Eddy. Duh. But there is this sort of ironic hypocrisy there.
Snowden is known for leaking information and providing the infrastructure to leak information.
Secrets. Things people did that they didn’t want others to see, making sure those people were watched and what they did was known.
So it would be a better world then if there were no leaks? If all these things happened in the dark and you were either there and knew or weren’t and would never know…?

I mean look guys… this is an “adult” thing. The car dealership isn’t likely to install the aftermarket turbo kit you bought. Apple isn’t likely to jail break your phone for you or side load apps. That is literally not their business model. There are entire industries who do that sort of work. That’s like going to a crispy cream or Dublin donut and getting mad they won’t bake you a wedding cake even though they have the dough and frosting. That isn’t what they do. Their business isn’t built to do that. They don’t have a pricing model and they have a work flow that is generally disrupted if they even tried to accommodate them.

So what seems most likely without more details is that this person brought their phone in and it failed some test Apple does before working on machines, or it had signs of being tampered with and so they didn’t feel comfortable opening the device and working on it when there may be some other underlying problem or flaw.
Generally aftermarket repair shops, chiefly “15 minute” or “budget” type specialists don’t have the same tools or procedures for repairing devices. When it comes to working with modified devices or devices with non original equipment parts… that’s their business model. They traditionally work with all or primarily third party replacement parts and adhoc practices.

If you put yourself in their shoes there isn’t some sinister conspiracy there. If someone had mostly cooked a meal and you looked at it and it seemed horrible or off, and someone asked you to finish it up or “fix it,” would you want to do it knowing that your name would be on the finished product, that if people got food poisoning or didn’t like the results that you’d be the one who got the blame? Probably not.

If someone comes in wanting a single coolant hose changed and you do the job and the engine overheats and is ruined within the next week, you can’t say that there is no possibility the two events are related. That opens you up to needing to defend a law suit that might actually get heard, and you now need to essentially prove that your work didn’t cause the failure. Which in some cases is difficult or impossible. The same is true even outside machines. A dry cleaner might refuse to clean an item if they are concerned it might be damaged in cleaning or has custom work that could potentially be damaged. Tattoo artists may refuse to work on tattoos started by other artists or to do certain designs or placements. Plumbers and contractors may refuse certain work when someone has already seemed to have had their hands on it, or something isn’t to their spec or code.

I have literally seen people try to blame the mechanic for their radio breaking a few days after getting their oil changed. Asides intentionally sabotaging the radio in some elaborate fashion to fail on a timer- that generally isn’t possible. It’s coincidence- but to someone who knows little or nothing about cars, the radio worked, they go to the mechanic, it doesn’t work after, they see causation. What’s worse though is when there is some theoretical link between the work done and the failure, and you can lose law suits and not only have to refund money but pay for damages you never caused. You can lose $6000 or more taking a job for as little as $50 or less.

So as I said, I’m not here to say Apple is some saintly entity- but my beliefs are to only blame and hold against people and companies the things they actually do wrong.
As far as not repairing out of spec or tampered devices of course I find it inconvenient, but also legitimately justifiable and reasonable. It’s fairly common across machines in general. An auto mechanic might refuse to work on your car- this is even more common with modified cars- because that mechanic is liable if they do work on your vehicle and something goes wrong afterwards. They may refuse to work on a car if they see it has been worked on and the work isn’t up to their standards for the same reasons.

don’t put the seat up or pee with rough the leg holes in their underwear for the challenge of it too. Ultimately there are many things you can do and many strategies but if your girl cares for you and you are putting in effort she’s staying or leaving. Don’t trip. Better if she’s going to do you dirty that she does it now than later.

You can also let them “show off.” If they are good at certain things, instead of avoiding those things jump in. Especially competitive things. Let them play in under the idea of showing off. Instead of trying to win, make your focus or two focuses both or one of:
- making them and their thing look dumb
- making sure your girl has fun.
So instead of taking things super serious, fool around and make her laugh or get her involved and make sure she’s having fun.
Or instead of trying to outdo the other guy, tear down the thing. Generally you don’t want to do it in a super bitter negative way. “This is so dumb, who cares, etc..” but do it by poking fun. Use equipment or such in silly ways or point out how it looks like unflattering things. “Cheat” or “misunderstand” the rules to reach a satisfactory goal but in a very easy way. If they get frustrated etc. and point out that isn’t how to do it joke about why they are making it so hard when it could be so easy and ask things like if they

Or similar. It also works to goad them into aggression- in the same way that slamming them in a football match doesn’t usually go well for you- if you can get them to try and be competitive with you in that way you can make them look bad. It’s especially good if your girlfriend isn’t their class mate or coworker where they will see each other alone alot naturally because you can drive them to try with possibly increasing effort to get to see your girl alone- at which point she (if she’s really your girl), will likely see that this isn’t all on the up and up, and distance herself or work hard to make sure you know what is up and are there when they kick it.

If you can get him pinned into saying something foul stuff or flip a response like it is foul- point out (in good nature) that his responses make it sound like he has some perversion or preference your girlfriend doesn’t like or finds repulsive for example. You can then from time to time reference back to that- “oh man. Your phone is blowing up. It’s those girls you keep ghosting huh?”
You all watch a scary movie and they say they weren’t scared: “yeah. Only ghosts that scare you are those girls you never call back..” you can change it slightly so it works if they are scared too etc. it doesn’t matter if it is true as the perception and association will be placed in peoples minds- including your girlfriend. If they try to seriously defend themselves (not a sure sign but a good one that they intend to try to court favor with your girl), you can shut it down and just say: “look, we are all friends. I’m not judging. I don’t need to know your business like that. I’m just having some fun”

Or just hard clown him. Make him look bad. You can even set him up to look bad. Usually you don’t want to punk him or else he can look sympathetic and you can look like a jerk or desperate. Things like playing football and slamming him are usually bad ideas unless your partner just likes dominance. Making it look like he peed his pants or “good natured” teasing work well to lower his stock. You can also call out his flirting appreciatively and say things like “wow. You’re good. I’m going to have to save that one…” and then start seemingly genuinely asking questions about his romantic life so he is on the spot and has to answer in the context of friends hanging out so he can’t easily manipulate answers or obscure things to build a narrative conducive to setting up a relationship.

Sometimes the “enlightened man” is best. Some women like that. To speak to her about your concerns, that you trust her and aren’t afraid of her cheating but that the way he is acting is disrespectful. You can also have that talk with him depending on what you think is best, or tell her you plan to speak to him and then tell him he needs to cut the sh*t out in whatever tone is most appropriate.
You can also just clown him too. When he flirts with your girl you can clown him. One way is to bag on him when he does it- mock him but with humor and wit or undermine his attempts without directly mocking him but calling them out as cheesy or ridiculous or low rent.
“Wait.. wasn’t that a line from Hustle and Flow..?” Things like that which shut down game while making the person speaking seem foolish for stealing lines from songs or films etc. better if they are themselves embarrassing.
“Ha! You got that line from Twilight didn’t you? My sister <whatever> watches that and I’ve heard that.”

Lol. The picture is a sculpture in a fantasy creature series by Vladimir Matić-Kuriljov.
A live baby platypus looks very different from this, though I still find them very cute.

To close out an uncomfortable and disturbing topic… parents sometimes have hot kids and kids sometimes have hot parents. Most of the time we don’t find them attractive or think of them that way. There is psychology and biology involved. If everyone says you look like your dad or you look like your mom at that age… your mom was banging your dad at that age. Your dad was banging you mom at that age. If you weren’t related- that means you’d be physically your parents type. So like- how would you feel about your parent or kid masturbating to you? No harm no foul cause it’s all in the head?

Calling it rape in the literally sense may be too extreme or undermine physical rape- but I at least can see where there is a concept similar to rape in the sense that there is a sort of violation often times. If each of us thought hard enough, there would likely be at least one person we would be horrified to find out was thinking of us and masturbating. You might be that person to someone else. Empathy might dictate we keep that in mind.

Wether one believes in religion or not, one element of a “moral compass” common in many religions is the element of some being that now or in death is aware of everything that happens in our minds, and/or everything we do in life wether alone or not. That concept that “someone is always watching” has some theoretical moral value in that those who take it seriously will generally try to act and think in ways that they wouldn’t be ashamed of some random external observer could know about. So there is an argument that if we conduct ourselves under a principle that someone could see into our minds, many of us wouldn’t think about a lot of the things we do, or would make efforts to limit and distance ourselves from those thoughts.

Most moral arguments would make a case that our minds are both the roots of our actions and the truest expression of self. That people who indulge in thoughts that are negative are negative people we other others know that or not. While we all have stray thoughts, as previously mentioned parents often have and often feel guilty for having thoughts of harming their children, there is a difference between having a stray thought for a moment and then rejecting and refocusing on something else or embracing and indulging it or even creating that thought originally for the purpose of indulging it. Functionally no one but us will know unless we tell or act on it or technology develops to where people can “see” our thoughts clearly and readily.

It is probably at the least rude to go around masturbating to people without some sort of consent. We can infer fairly reasonably that the person who made that porn movie or who made a video with them masturbating while giving you instructions on how to masturbate are cases where consent is generally implied unless the video is specifically made for a certain person and that is clear or you could reasonably be expected to know you weren’t meant to see it.
“Sexy celebs” and stuff enter an area that can be gray. Saying a “thirst trap” is consent that people will masturbate to it is a bit like saying flirting is akin to consent for sex. But… there is that argument that what happens in our heads doesn’t harm anyone so long as we keep it in our heads.

At the end of the day “thought crimes” are a rare thing to legislate. We DO have them- most legal systems do. Most systems distinguish between planned Murder or intentional killing, accidents, etc. wether you INTENDED to do something is often part of the crime. Insider trading is a crime that can prosecuted based on the reasonable assumption of what you might have known or what you might have thought. Fraud is commonly a “thought crime.” It isn’t a crime to have you invest in my business and then my business fails but it can be a crime to have you invest if I known business will fail or suspect it and don’t disclose the information. Those rely on though policing- was i trying to scam you or was I honestly trying to make us both money and things didn’t go how I planned? You need to argue based on what I thought or would have known etc. about my intentions and not my actions.

If you purposely peak at someone’s underwear should that be a crime? A mirror on your shoe, standing under the stairs looking up etc? If that is a crime- asides an admission of guilt- what is the burden of proof that separates someone at the pool trying to sneak peaks of people through their swim clothes and someone who is there swimming but by chance happens to swim by as someone enters the water and could be accused of peeping? Many places make it illegal to take photos- like you can’t snap pictures of peoples undergarments on a crowded train… but what happens if you see them and then draw or 3D render then and distribute that? We now have this mess where they need to prove it is them- and a web of laws about using likenesses and wether you are profiting or not. The law on me taking a photo at the mall that has strangers in the background is different than the laws about using that photo in an advertisement or creating a cartoon based on them no?