Gee… wonder if this ever could have been predicted when Patriot Act was brought out.

Bentonville AR is being turned into a bicyclists haven. To the tune of Arkansas laws are making it that bicyclists don’t have to pay attention to traffic laws. That’s neat, wonder why… Ah. And while bicycling is one of the better things I guess billionaires can do, in the region buying bicycles are far beyond affordable anymore to a walmart wage because it’s gotten so over the top fancy, and the Waltons literally have a helicopter with a bike rack to fly out to the trails. My dad is irritated because of how often it shakes his house as it goes over.

Same city, Alice Walton had a really nice museum built in the area that was surely out of the good of her heart… Ah. Unless really local, one might not know of her nickname “Drunken Alice” where she has a history of dwi’s and wrecks, including one where someone was killed, yet somehow nothing seems to stick.

Yea… I’ve got a bit of an axe to grind with the Waltons having grown up in their personal playground, I agree with you to think this is a problem with just Amazon is ludicrous, and despite only living a state away it’s amazing to hear how people bitch about Amazon, it’s chokeholds, it’s problems, its wrecking of the country, and gives a full pass to Walmart. We live in an oligarchy.

Completely unrelated to my bitching about Walmart, but a perfect example of execs doing this nonsense and how I got in trouble because I can’t stop snarking: Worked for a medical testing facility, ran by a doctor. Said doctor buys himself a brand new shiny Lamborghini, then through the whole email has an announcement that for one day for 4 hours where any of the staff can get a picture with the Lambo and share on the company page. Now I met said doc once during training, but otherwise worked 3rd shift with two other people, he certainly never showed up when we had issues.

So when the day happened, it was one of those I commented it’s the first time I think I’m glad that 3rd shift gets ignored on any staff events. Think about it for a second, then ask the others “Who has the newest car?”, turns out was a Nissan Juke. So each of us go out and get a picture with the Juke, then sent the pictures in to where people were supposed to send in the pics with the Lambo. Turns out they got 4 pictures, the 3 with the Juke, and 1 with the Lambo. Got told by our manager said doc was pissed and to keep our heads down.

Start?

IMO the “getting scarier” is the swinging back part. Grew up in the same time, my parents were big on “No identifying information to anyone on the internet!” I joke with them now that their generation, the ones that told us to stay off post all their business on facebook and the like.

But that’s the thing, you have a small segment of society that was the internet nerds that didn’t trust anything on the internet, hid themselves and the like, but now like you say it’s the corporate walled garden that’s sanitized and happy, which makes that veneer of trust. And boy do people trust it, posting anything and everything.

Odds are lower in percentages of being genuinely victimized as a child, but the lack of paying attention what’s posted has lead to a lot of effects, so people are getting worried again.

hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars ********* see!

I mean, public trust is dropping. Which meant it went from “Ugh, this will be useless” to “Fuck, this will break everything!”

I use the shockz (another open ear headset) daily with my job. Work on equipment, a lot of tedious opening up a machine and fixing it. I don’t have a singular place but move around a lot. Going from earbuds that I have to take out just to have a conversation if someone comes up and asks questions vs the open ear allows me to be able to know what’s happening around me, keeps from annoying those around me with whatever I’m listening to, and I’ve chewed through so many audiobooks which has kept me from losing my mind.

Same here!

Well sure. Only an optimist goes “Wow, this is as bad as it can get.”

The pessimistic crowd is of the opinion it can ALWAYS get worse. We may not know how, but it can get worse.

I think it is obvious where I am on the spectrum when I say I don’t think we’ve begun to see how bad it can get.

While… I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you’re in the trash example used is… not great.

Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they’re still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I’m not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I’m at now.

Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.

Here’s something tangentially related that makes it difficult to find older options, the support. In the US a piece of medical device has to be supported for 7 years. My hospital has these bladder scanners that are in quite a few departments, regular fixture in hospitals (ultrasounds). Jan 1 2024 was when our came up on the 7 year mark. To do preventative maintenance calibration required logging on their server, guess what’s no longer accessible? So to stay in compliance all of us in the biomed department has to figure out how to get new ones to replace the 10 $11k each paperweights we have now.

Friend of mine just had to shell out $3000 for prescription drugs just for survival. Yes he’s on insurance.

Every time someone gets killed, that entire family is probably radicalized, and they’re right to be.

This is why I say Hamas playing the entire world like a fucking puppet. Sure, the individual fighters are probably not happy they kicked a hornets nest but the people who planned the attack I’d be fucking shocked if they were anywhere near Gaza.

Israel’s anger is justified, the attack from Hamas was truly heinous, but holy shit Israel’s leadership acted in the most predictable manner which is horrifying the world that many who would have supported Israel earlier this year is now wondering why countries like the US is involved, especially when the fight with Russia and Ukraine is going on and having trouble getting support. I’m sure many Palestinians did not want anything to do with Hamas, but every family member killed is likely to bring another one over to the fold. The US promptly moved in behind to support Israel, and bent everything to get the US citizens in Israel home immediately, while sending over a carrier group to keep any other country from getting involved… however let US citizens who were in Gaza when all this went down remain there for a month until Egypt finally opened a corridor, citizens that probably now trust the US just a little bit less along with those that payed attention to it.

The obvious plan is to be a destabilization measure, and I fear it will certainly be that. I just hate the feeling of those that know history are doomed to watch others repeat it.

Why are they chasing pennies? Because they can. It’s really simple as that nowadays.

Another +1 for PodcastAddict

like a notification LED, MicroSD card slot and headphone jack

Ah, another Galaxy S9?

I wish I had the skillset to do a work from home job, instead with me having to do repair work I have to go in. But if I could do everything on the computer at my house I’d do everything I could to never be in the office.

There’s in the part in the middle, but I swear when programming stuff comes up it’s always like reading fucking madlibs done by dice roll.