Beaches are tougher but I believe there’s a nudist resort in every state in the US. You can visit the AANR website and find the closest one. If it’s a “family resort” that means it’s probably very welcoming, if a little boring depending on location.

We all know that the hate for Mexico is nonsense. They aren’t coming over the border and stealing highly coveted jobs. The jobs that have actually been taken by immigrants are largely middle class jobs that require degrees, things like IT and medicine.

In part, this has been fine. It drives the salaries down a bit because they’re willing to accept less to move to the country and even the lower salary is still much more than they would make at home. Companies win because there weren’t enough qualified people to go around for a while, so immigration closes the gaps.

This is pure conservatism though. Allow foreigners to come study here in unlimited numbers, then let them stay to take middle class jobs at lower salaries in these non-union industries. It’s like outsourcing but everyone is in the same time zone and they won’t resist your return-to-office mandate.

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an ad from the OS on Android. I know some manufacturers, Samsung in particular, include ads but that’s not “Android” so much as “Samsung’s shitty skin of Android.”

The closest I’ve gotten to an ad on Pixel is a thing to review new features after updates.

It’s the downside of open source: You’re at the mercy of companies that don’t care and developers who are primarily interested in the hardware they’re using rather than the hardware you’re using.

The best experience is going to be hardware that’s built and certified for Linux. System76, Tuxedo, a bunch of other smaller names and the rare Dell or Lenovo. But that’s definitely not practical for everyone, or a good idea to convince people to buy new hardware for Linux.

It’ll be a slow transition. The more enthusiasts hop on the bandwagon, the more manufacturers and hardware vendors will care about support. The more Microsoft keeps irritating their customers, the more companies will move away. The support will come, it’s been improving for a long time.

All that said. I’d recommend CachyOS or PopOS if you get the urge to try again. I’ve tried a bunch of distributions and those seem to have the best focus on “just make consumer hardware work right out of the box.” That’s no guarantee of course, but it’s a start.

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.

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.

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.

SyncThing has been great for me. I tried NextCloud and OwnCloud first, granted years ago, and they were not great. So I’ve been using SyncThing at least 5 years now.

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.

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.

I loved that skit on CollegeHumor. https://youtu.be/gwChStnnidA

Honestly, I think some of it is a bit over the top. At the end of the day, they’re a company producing a product and not the chosen savior. But as far as giant companies go, they’re almost everything you could want.

• Lots of pro-consumer policies. From making returns a thing, to never taking away access like some stores, to big sales. If the idea of buying a digital game in 2004 and still having access to it in 2024 doesn’t sound revolutionary to you, it’s because you haven’t paid attention to how other companies run their stores.

• Open source contributions. Gaming on Linux is getting a huge shot in the arm from Valve, Steam, and the Steam Deck, both through direct contributions and indirectly through showing it’s viability.

• Employees, by all accounts, are well taken care of and enjoy their jobs.

They aren’t perfect, but the bar for a company, especially in the gaming industry, being ethical is so low that the way Valve operates makes them basically saints by comparison.