Generally when people bring up some personal detail, my immediate reaction is to assume the opposite. Especially if it begins with “as a.” For example: “as a woman,” this person is a man. “As a black person,” this is the whitest person you will ever meet. “As a 60 year old,” definitely ten.
My fear is them going public or selling. If that happens, it’ll probably be Microsoft willing to spend any amount, and the government hasn’t really been in a “preventing monopolies” mood for a while now.
I was mostly focused on how irritating it is that there’s yet another way that basic necessities are monetized, rather than on the actual implementation details.
The government already tracks average home and property values for determining property tax and also for determining what is a reasonable mortgage for a given area. I was kind of thinking that it would just be in addition to property tax so based on your home value, so those with very large houses would already be paying proportionally more into it.
I would argue that the concept is flawed. The base idea is that you calculate statistics on how much you would be likely to have to pay out, then set premiums such that you’ll always be ahead of payouts. Essentially, everyone pays so that the unfortunate few who need help can get money out of the common pool to help.
This is just taxes, basically. We already do this with fire departments and such. However, insurance adds a profit motive on top because it’s a company, so the amount they take in must always be significantly higher than the amount they pay out. And if it’s a publicly traded company then the amount they make above and beyond the amount they pay out must always be higher every quarter.
Like at a certain point, why not just do taxes and better disaster relief? As an added bonus, the government would have an extra incentive to care about things that may make the payouts increase, like poor infrastructure or climate change.
This has to be terrible news for conspiracy theorists. Our government got caught doing something shady overseas but it was encouraging other people to NOT vaccinate, which is the thing the conspiracy theorists thought our government wanted everyone to do.
I’m legitimately interested to see how/if Fox or OAN report on this. It should be entertaining.
And then interrupting that hold music at seemingly random intervals to tell you that they care about you, or to tell you that you could do this faster on their website.
I had to call Assurant recently because their website literally threw an error and told me to call in and wouldn’t let me proceed. I was told by the automated messages no less than 4 unstoppable times that the website is faster, and then after explaining the situation to the person she told me that the website is faster.
She was clearly reading the script and it’s not her fault so I kept quiet, but I have rarely felt such extreme rage in my life.
Because they focus on curb appeal. Their phones and TVs and appliances look pretty in the store so people buy them. It’s not til you get them home that you begin to notice that they are trash. The next problem is that people may not even realize that the competition is better. If you buy a Samsung device knowing only that it looks good in the store, you probably aren’t the type to research, so you think that’s just how it is: Modern phones have weird confusing UIs, modern TVs have weird menu lag and ads, modern appliances just don’t last the way they used to.
Worthy, sure. I just mean that what actually happened with The Jungle was people focused on how gross meat packing facilities were. The working conditions were treated as kind of a secondary, less important issue.
Even the stupid things that hurt everyone! That’s the best part. We’ve been so into racism as a country that we shoot ourselves in the foot constantly to spite black people.
There’s plenty of examples, but the one that always comes to mind for me first is public transportation. We led the world for a while there. Buses and trams and all sorts of ways to get around easily. It feels awfully coincidental that we let black people ride wherever they wanted on the bus and all of a sudden public transportation takes a back seat to car infrastructure right after.
A moral panic is when people freak out because they’re scared for the nation’s morals or values. The Jungle made people, rightfully, freak out about their health (whether that was the intention or not). I don’t think it qualifies as a moral panic.
I feel like this does a great job of explaining why I hated it, at least. https://youtu.be/DxFPmF1puW4
The trick is that it has to be a threat, and if we’re being honest then the more money and power you have the more obviously threatening it must be.
DON’T SAY: “I’m going to kill you.”
DO SAY: “It would be great if you died right now.”
And if you have influence and/or money, feel free to say: “I wish someone would kill you.”
I spotted the problem. It talks about “education” which is really just code for “communist indoctrination” obviously.
I think the problem is that search does not make money. Ads make money, and subscriptions make money. Convincing people to switch from Google ads to New Google ads would involve dumping tons of money into becoming popular enough to attract advertisers. Convincing people to pay for search, like Kagi is doing, is probably even harder.
Here’s the thing. You’re sometimes right. There’s definitely negligent parenting that leads to juvenile crime. There’s also circumstances outside of the parent’s control… The community, the schools, the other children they interact with outside of the home, any mental illness or problems the child might have.
The common theory here is that the parent should be more involved. But two things:
Children NEED some level of freedom. I’m so fucking sick and tired of the people who believe children should be monitored at all times. When you see it in practice, you immediately recognize it as a problem. Those children are stunted socially, emotionally, and in terms of their abilities. A parent who can 100% ensure their child does no wrong is 100% ensuring their child becomes a neurotic or entitled mess.
Available time and resources are not split evenly. Before someone says, “but someone who can’t raise a child shouldn’t have had a child” please keep in mind that peoples circumstances change. Ignoring the whole abortion debate, access to birth control, etc, a person who has a child with a loving partner with plenty of money can end up destitute and alone and still have that child. A person who has a support network of siblings and parents can lose them. A person with a reasonable amount of money for having kids can be financially overwhelmed caring for a child that has unexpected difficulties in life.
Yeah, there’s shit parents in the world. But the law is a hammer that lacks the ability to discern a terrible parent from one who is just unlucky. It’s not the right tool for this job.
I just want one of the “You can’t vote for Biden!” people to outline what I should do instead. What’s the play here? Dismantle the government? Sure, outline your plan and let’s see if it has any merit. Protest? Great, tell me when and where but it doesn’t preclude the need to vote.
They talk big, but if their entire plan begins with “don’t vote” and ends with “bitch about it online” then it’s not a great plan.
I have a similar one! I did house calls. I got called out on a warranty call, someone said a coworker of mine didn’t fix the problem. I look in the notes and the coworker says he did a standard virus removal, suggested virus protection but was turned down.
I get there and sure enough it’s riddled with viruses again. Coworker was legit, notes all in order, I tell the client that this isn’t a warranty issue, the work was done, and it has now been reinfected and will need another removal. He seems fine with this, but his wife flips out and demands I prove it got reinfected.
I suggest that we can check the web history. Since it was popping up ads, we’d see when the pop-ups started, and more importantly we’d see if they had stopped after coworker left. Guy says that’s unnecessary, it definitely got reinfected, and this time he’ll buy an antivirus. Wife is having none of it, says go ahead and check and I’ll see the problem was never fixed. I ask if they’re sure, guy kind of resignedly says to do it.
I’m not one to kink shame, but when all the trans porn site titles came up, the dude was clearly mortified. I didn’t get very far into trying to figure out if I can prove it’s related before the wife says “just fix the damn thing” and stormed out. I hope it wasn’t too bad for him, she seemed a bit difficult to deal with.
To be fair, I bet some percentage of those that don’t use an ad blocker ARE using something like no script and just don’t need one as a result.
There’s some inherent risk in the ad blocker as well, though. If it’s an extension, you’re trusting that this thing you installed, that can read and modify every website you visit, isn’t going to do anything sneaky. Yes, maybe it’s open source, but every once in a while something sneaks into open source projects, too. It will get caught, but it could be after the damage is done.
I mean, I use an ad blocker. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to value security and not use one.
Oh that’s easy. Encryption is only legal when communicating with a business that is registered with the IRS and not when doing peer to peer. There, we’ve hopelessly broken digital privacy while letting the US government determine who gets to exist online.