That’s the thing. We think 2 steps forward 1 step back is making progress, but the steps forward are tiny, and the steps back are huge.

My country was invaded by terrorists on September 11th, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. We waged war on the entire region the terrorists came from, eventually killing the leader of the group, and nothing changed. All our bombing did nothing, all our sacrifices of innocent people were for naught.

Amazingly, killing a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the terrorists that attacked your country is a bad move, and only serves to create more terrorists as people watch their loved ones die by your hand and grow to hate you.

If your takeaway from America’s terrible actions post-9/11 is that we should’ve been even more brutal and wiped out the entire mostly-innocent population of the middle east, you’ve got the wrong takeaway.

I’m definitely in support of A, regardless. I only know complex words from having seen them used correctly in the wild; how could anyone be expected to learn them otherwise?

The ability to find an approximate definition of a new word using context - and slowly whittle it down to the actual definition over subsequent encounters - is invaluable for gaining better language comprehension.

Pretty sure they mean one less account someone could track you with, because yeah, staying on top of sending monthly checks for stuff is something I’m very glad I don’t have to do anymore. My credit took multiple hits in my younger days from bills I forgot to pay on time.

Sweet Home Carolina! No, wait…

Nah, they just did a bunch of takes for the music video.

Pretty clear that it’s “Biden warns Americans that their ability to even pretend that the US is a democracy is at stake” As in, the US is not a democracy, but we pretend it is, but Biden is warning us that our ability to do so is at stake, because it’s going to get so much worse that we won’t even be able to bury our heads in the sand anymore.

As much as I personally disagree with you, given that all you’re thinking about is your own benefit, and not any of the myriad of benefits to the city, the world, the people who can’t afford cars, etc, I understand that your outlook is shared by the vast majority of Americans, and can’t be ignored if we ever hope to have an effective public transport system.

We’re going to need to somehow devise a system so convenient that it actually sounds attractive to the huge amount of people who spend 10%+ of their paycheck on car payments not because they have to, but because they want to.

Tell everyone else not to try the lasagna?

It fits pretty well for people who are really bad at sex. I mean… maybe it does… who knows? Definitely not me.

It’s been a while since I learned about cations and anions, but I still remember their charges by thinking of anions as onions that need a single sharp blade to cut, making a “-” sign, while cations have 2 front paws of sharp claws that make a “+” sign. It’s a dumb way of remembering that I came up with on the spot when I first learned about them, but I still remember after more than a decade.

We got rid of lead products because governments put out new regulations that prevented companies from making products with lead, not because the population collectively decided not to buy products with lead in them. If companies had been allowed to continue making lead products, they’d have done so, and people would have continued buying them despite the science pointing to them being bad for you.

Companies will do whatever is profitable unless prevented from doing so by regulations, and people will buy what companies sell because most people don’t know, and don’t have the time to figure out what products they buy are harmful to themselves and others. Even when they do, they often don’t have the wealth to make a change to buying safer, more expensive products.

“How society works” is that people have to buy products to survive, and often have little choice among what products they can afford. If we want companies to start lowering their emissions, we need to force them to do so with regulations, just like we had to do with lead.

No, I don’t, “the population” does. I have control over myself, 1 teeny tiny sliver of the group that is “the population.” If there’s one thing “the population” is known to put the effort into doing, it’s twiddling their thumbs. It’s nothing more than a huge writhing mass of opinions. To expect it to coordinate effectively enough to make change happen is just as ridiculous as to expect all the molecules in a glass of water to suddenly converge on one side. “The population” doesn’t make change, it buffers against it.

“Oh, all we have to do is get 8 billion people of different backgrounds, opinions, socioeconomic standards, and every other metric to agree on something. Surely that’s a feasible task!”

Is that loss?

Do they just let people write whatever they want on patents??

Hahaha, no… Only rich people!

That’s a fair point. You’re correct that my point is that the equation should be balanced, but you’re understating the reality with the statement “unfortunately it usually isn’t.”

I put in 4 hours of work last week, though my employer thinks I put in 40. In those 4 hours of work I started and finished a project for the company that will earn over $100k in gross profit. It ended up being almost exactly 1.5x my yearly salary. Just by putting in the absolute minimum effort I’m already earning my company more in a week than they pay me in a year. And I don’t even work for a large company. I’d imagine corporate giants have an even greater divide.

I’m not responsible for worrying about whether I benefit the company; most companies have gotten so good at maximizing profits while minimizing costs that even the most layabout worker earns them significantly more money than they cost to employ. My only thought is about how I can do as little as possible while still ensuring management continues to think I’m being productive.

I turned down the promotion they offered me. It was significantly more work, required me to come back to the office, and only offered a 10% pay raise. It doesn’t matter where your “standing” in the company is - if you’re indispensable, you can fight for good pay even outside of managerial roles.

I get paid way more than my coworkers, and even my supervisor, because when I got hired I immediately made a bunch of random tools in google sheets that only I know how to maintain, and spread them around until everyone was using them. Before long, I was essential to my department, and praised for going “above and beyond” even though I was mostly just dicking around making the tools rather than doing my actual job.

I have 0 coding experience, so the tools are absolutely horrendous behind the scenes, but that just means that they break pretty often, and people are reminded that only I know how to fix them. So, when I went looking around on LinkedIn for other offers after a few years, I eventually got one that was paying way more since it was in a major metro area, and I took it back to my manager to negotiate a 50% raise and a full-remote designation that virtually nobody else in my office is given.

You don’t get ahead by working hard, and you don’t get ahead by working smart to benefit the company, you get ahead by working smart to benefit yourself. Think about it this way - if you’re at the store to buy bananas, and you see that they’re selling bananas for $0.05 ea, you’ll likely think “Wow, that’s a great deal!” and buy a bunch of those bananas at the $0.05 price. You’re not going to pay them the price you think would be fair for a banana, you’re going to take advantage of the price you’re allowed to pay so that you can save money. Your employer sees you - working for less than you’re worth - as a $0.05 banana. You’re nothing more than a cheap commodity they were lucky to snag on sale.

I’m a bit of a noob about privacy, but wouldn’t preventing people from knowing you’re using Tor be pretty important? I know that, among people who know of Tor, but don’t know much about it, the use of Tor alone is generally associated with criminal activity, and often conjures up imagery of worse things than just piracy.

If I were to tell my friends I was thinking of using Tor, and I didn’t immediately have a good explanation of what I’d use it for beyond “privacy,” then they’d think I was into some nasty shit. I’d imagine the ISPs, and anyone else they might give/sell their info to, would be suspicious of anyone logged to be using Tor.

If it was realistic to expect people to do that, fast food wouldn’t be the enormous moneymaker it is.