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by M_Grey 3399 days ago
I'm glad to discover that I'm not alone in that, "Hmmm, I wonder if my internet history has put me on all of the lists yet?" reading pattern. On Wikipedia especially, the fun is opening an endlessly nesting series of related topics. Sometimes that can get... weird.
4 comments

I used to worry about being "on a list" and then realized I wasn't okay with worrying about while considering myself a free person.

Every time I wonder if I might get in trouble for reading, clicking, or watching something I make sure to do it.

That is a great attitude, and it not only helps you (by being more knowledgeable and less worried about hypotheticals), but also the rest of us by reducing effectiveness on the profiling of those who read certain things - the same way that being a normal person that uses tor reduces the "use tor"="pedophile" fallacy (and substitute tor by end2end encryption, torrents, decentralised communication, or what have you).

So thank you!

Exactly! You can't give in to even the idea of restricting knowledge.
"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world." - Louis Pasteur
Researching chemcal weapons on wikipedia wont get you on any list. Asking people where you can buy the needed stuff, THAT is list worthy.

Anything on wikipedia was put there by someone. That someone is far more suspect than the readers. Material that is actually dangerous is quickly edited away. Unless you live somewhere properly dangerous or are already on a list. Such people should probably stay away from the internets all together as almost anything found online can be made to sound evil.

Would googling for sources suffice?
...I kind of hope so.
I somewhat lost of my fear of this when in my late teens I became fascinated with these[1] and basically read everything I could find about them, including poking around LANL's website enough to spelunk a PDF of their paper about construction methods

This lead down a rabbit hole of reading about all of the types of military-grade explosives available & their yield and discussing creative scenarios to exploit EMP weapons with friends online.

Not on the no-fly list or any watch-lists (that I know of) yet.

[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...)

Same here, it is unfortunate that we have to be worried about appearing on lists just for having a curious mind.