You really don't like to use

or die "$!"
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do you?

First thing I'd do is sprinkle my code liberally with that magic incantation.

Secondly, I think you may have mistaken the cookie syntax for LWP.

My (working) LWP script which needs to accept cookies has this:

$ua->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new(file => "cookies.txt",
autosave => 1));
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---

($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss')
 =~y~b-v~a-z~s;                             print
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