Don’t forget Paris!

3.342294e-13 to 5.34767e-13 AU.

It’s weird how many people don’t understand that the goal of capitalists is to charge as much as the market will bear to maximize their returns. Extra sad that we were talked into destroying labor’s ability to do the reverse. Almost like that created an imbalance that is causing everything (the economy, the rule of law, society in general) to wobble more and more as we struggle to either find stability with a new normal, or everything implodes.

He’s too busy shrugging off Russian intelligence sharing with Iran to help Iran target and kill American soldiers. Not nearly as disrespectful to our troops as that time Obama saluted a Marine with a coffee cup in his hand.

Spoiler alert: This country had roughly the same amount of integrity and ethics prior to 2016. The only difference is that Trump gave everyone who gave lip service to integrity and ethics permission to unmask and expose their hypocrisy. To those people, ethics was just a weapon to tie the hands of the few people who actually had strong values.

Presumably you had some point that you were trying to convey with your comment, which is going to get lost by the people who will see it as simply victim blaming. The tone of this reply and your other comments suggest that you’re fine having an abrasive personality and care more about some sense of being right than constructive criticism, so I’ll just leave it there and wish you a good day!

Didn’t think I had to spell this out, but in all three cases it’s victim blaming. Men blaming women for being raped, white people blaming black people for being shot by the police, and the previous poster blaming people for getting caught in shitty contracts by predatory companies. On a scale of severity they’re in completely different universes, but that’s kind of the point of an analogy: to use a more extreme example to illustrate why something is wrong.

Edit: And to be clear, this comment was not addressed at your comment, but the poster who replied to you.

Same reason I “choose” to work for a shitty employer or do business with a shitty company or live in a shitty city/state/country - sometimes my options are limited and I can’t afford to opt out of society entirely. When it comes to HoAs, in the area I live my options were severely diminished. Choosing a house without one means that I’d just be complaining about some other compromise I felt forced to make.

I get where you’re coming from so I won’t downvote, but I thought you might want to know that this has some real “men shouldn’t rape women, but women shouldn’t dress slutty or get drunk” or “police shouldn’t shoot black men, but black men should just comply” vibes.

providing an essential academic counter-narrative to the rampant demonization of one of fascism’s most ardent enemies.

That seems awfully generous for a man that signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and only became an ardent enemy of the Nazi’s after they backstabbed him. I don’t have the time to energy to dive deeper before saying this sounds like one hell of an apologist for one of history’s most evil authoritarians and I have no desire to engage with it further. This man did not care for his comrades and anyone that equates him with any form of socialism is just poisoning socialism in the general public.

You’re not wrong, but I think you’re really missing something important - that we’ve seen some truly ugly and disturbing shit that we can’t ever unsee. Yes, we’re surrounded by negativity on the Internet, and Mr Rogers advice holds: look for the helpers. That restores some of my faith in mankind, but I can’t ever unhear that kindergarten teacher who was willing to turn in her student’s parents because she suspected they might be here illegally. Could I make small talk with her and feel a little more normal? Sure. Do I think the majority of people are like her? No. But… that knowledge is there, the banality of evil is still alive and lurking.

Steve Shives explains it much more eloquently than I ever could, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to devote 15 minutes to a random YouTube video from an internet stranger. I do highly recommend it, as it really encapsulated exactly the kind of sentiment I’m struggling with.

You don’t like Edgy Comic Sans?

Whoops! Definitely a typo. Thanks for the catch!

Adding every picture I take on my phone to the blockchain is an enormous invasion of my privacy, and the number of times where having a cryptographically secure hash on the blockchain to prove a photo’s authenticity is minuscule. Especially in a world where people eagerly believe the most ludicrous bullshit because it reinforces their worldview, in spite of a mountain of evidence to contradict it.

This is more specific to Tesla than self driving in general, as Musk decided that additional sensors (like LiDAR and RADAR on other self driving vehicles) are a problem. Publicly he’s said that it’s because of sensor contention - that if the RADAR and cameras disagree, then the car gets confused.

Of course that raises the problem that when the camera or image recognition is wrong, there’s nothing to tell the car otherwise, like the number of Tesla drivers decapitated by trailers that the car didn’t see. Additionally, I assume Teslas have accelerometers so either the self driving model is ignoring potential collisions or it’s still doing sensor fusion.

Not to mention we humans have multiple senses that we use when driving; this is one reason why steering wheels still mostly use mechanical linkages - we can “feel” the road, we can detect when the wheels lose traction, we can feel inertia as we go around a corner too fast. On a related tangent, the Tesla Cybertruck uses steer-by-wire instead of a mechanical linkage.

This is why many (including myself) believe Tesla has a much worse safety record than Waymo. I’ve seen enough drunk and distracted drivers to believe that humans will always drive better than a human robot. Don’t get me wrong, I still have concerns about the technology, but Musk and Tesla has a history of ignoring safety concerns - see the number of deaths related to his desire to have non-mechanical handles and hide the mechanical backup.

Taxes are either regressive, proportional, or progressive; flat and progressive are the same thing. While some (many?) consider proportional to be a separate category, I would argue that it’s inherently regressive, as any fixed percentage is going to come disproportionately from non-disposable income for any lower income individuals. Sales taxes are considered regressive because of this and they are a flat rate for most purchases.

You can make the argument that people have to buy stuff to exist, but they don’t have to purchase a home, but given the alternative is renting which impacts lower income people even worse, this seems like a specious argument.

Even with property tax, insurance, repairs, and mortgage, I’m paying less per month than people renting much smaller apartments in my area. Thats neither fair nor right.

I would assume that he’d have more cover as a royal in the UK than as an immigrant in the US. Unless you were saying that he left the royal family in disgust for doing things like cleaning up for Andrew for so long, which I realize now was probably what you intended, but I’ll post this anyway in case someone else gets confused too.

On June 6, ABC News’ David Muir asked Joe Biden, “Have you ruled out a pardon for your son?” Biden responded, “Yes.”

A week later, Biden reiterated to reporters during an international summit that “I will not pardon him,” nor commute his sentence, a lesser action that would have reduced Hunter Biden’s sentence but not lifted his conviction.

(source)

Not saying Charles will do an about face like Biden, nor will I say that he’s not just throwing Andrew under the bus to avoid additional fallout, but let’s see what he does if/when Andrew faces real consequences.

Think of the royals like vestigial organs - they still exist and do something, but your body won’t really miss them if they’re removed.

And they arrested and imprisoned Al Capone for tax evasion. The important part is they arrested him, and secondly that it was for something related to Epstein. Hopefully the ensuing investigation will cause more details to be revealed and a wider reckoning to occur, but either way, he’s no longer free.