Also, to be clear -- I was joking. Realize this is a parody before I get flamed with responses from the libertarian squad or the Society for Boarding in Awesome, Really Reliable Order (or SBARRO for short -- ever wonder why they are in so many airports?) yammering onto me about how I insulted them.
Somebody did something on the interwebs (or intertubes or whatever those new-fangled contraptions are called). This is a tech site, so we've gotta cover it!
(Actually, if you're serious -- it's here because seating processes on airplanes make everyone bitchy for some reason, and everyone thinks it's inefficient and thinks they could plan it better. So, somebody complaining about some aspect of that is bound to get all the anal retentive wackos here worked up and spouting their favorite ideas about what's wrong with planes and boarding and kids on planes and snakes on planes and whatever. That and... FREE SPEECH, LIBERTARIAN MUMBO-JUMBO, AYN RAND IS A GODDESS!!!! etc. P.S. I'm NOT saying Southwest was in the right here -- just why this story will get everyone worked up.)
That's all good reason for boarding them last - so they don't slow down those who can board quickly.
Huh? How does that produce greater efficiency? Let's see, we could:
(1) Let families board with the first half-dozen groups of random people with various privileges ("Now let's have our first class..." [2 people board, a minute later] "Now let's have business class..." [5 people board, two minutes later] "Now let's have our elite Silver whoop-di-do members..." [no one boards, three minutes later] "Now let's have our Bronze not-so-much-whoop members" [2 guys from the back take 30 seconds to realize they were called and slowly make their way up, chatting on their phones the whole way]... etc., etc.).
In that case, the families could get settled with almost no one else on the plane, and almost no one else in economy trying to find their seats.
OR...
(2) We wait until last, and the families join the end of the long line stopped almost at the gate itself of people waiting to get on. The families with more bags per person and more people to strap in and get settled in their seats per person then spend 10 minutes wandering up and down the aisles trying to find places for their bags and get their kids settled... while the attendants get increasingly testy as they have to go up and down reopening luggage bins and find a pillow for Jr. since he's asleep on Dad's shoulder and no one on the plane wants him to wake up when he's strapped in the seat. And the plane is now going to take off late because we needed 15 minutes to board 10 whoop-di-do members who didn't have to do anything, but now it's crunch-time for the parents who could have already been settled in.
I completely understand why airlines do NOT let families on early, because they now charge people extra for those privileges. But if they were trying to maximize efficiency instead of profits, it would definitely make sense to move the families on when fewer people are obstacles on the plane.
Actually outside of the US it seems to be common practice to ask people with young families to board first anyway.
Yeah, it often is within the U.S. too, particularly for infants and very young children. But I mostly see it used for parents with kids in strollers or whatever, not for older kids or even relatively small kids.
If you are blocking the aisle while you buckle seat belts and the like you are slowing the whole boarding process. So it makes sense - send them in with first and business class.
Yeah, the problem is the escalation of fee structures in recent years. 15 years ago your policy made perfect sense. But now most airlines charge for any checked baggage, which means more people stuff everything into larger carry-ons, and many planes don't have enough room to stuff everyone's bag in.
So, everyone's worried about boarding early enough so that they don't have to have their bag stuffed 10 seats behind them, which will make them the last off the plane.
But, of course, it isn't enough for airlines to charge fees for checked bags -- now they figured out that people don't want to worry about the hassle of finding space for their carry-on, so now for an extra fee many airlines will let you board early (with business class or whatever).
So, it makes it really hard for the airlines to "give away" that option to families to board earlier, when somebody else in coach paid $35 or whatever that day for that privilege. In addition, there seem to be a lot of folks out there who assume that anyone travelling with a small child on a plane must be an evil person wanting to annoy other travelers deliberately by bringing a kid on board (when the reality is that most parents know they usually only travel with small kids on planes when there is no other reasonable choice). So, it will just lead to even more (unjustified?) feelings of unfairness if these parents are given seemingly special privileges.
It's the same crap that causes people to cut people off or not let people merge in traffic. Sometimes it's worth a really insignificant sacrifice to let everything flow better, and letting the kids on early would probably make the entire boarding process faster and smoother. But most people would probably just resent it... and so airlines don't do it anymore.
nah, the plastics the leading piano companies use now have just as good a feel, that wasn't true three decades or more ago but there is no point to ivory keys now.
I would qualify this slightly and say that the plastics may be "just as good" in some ways, but they do feel different. And I know some people who have strong preferences. Ivory's porousness changes the way keys feel and how easy it is to grip them (or slip), particularly if your hands are sweating (as many people do when performing in front of crowds under hot lights). And on lesser quality pianos, ivory often had a distinctive texture that... well, just feels different. High-end older pianos had highly polished and very even keys (sometimes most "silky" feeling) that might feel similar to modern "perfect" plastic, but most pianos were not as consistent. Personally, it doesn't matter to me, but I can certainly understand those who might prefer one or the other.
(By the way -- just to be clear, I'm NOT trying to argue in favor of Word or doc/x. I personally prefer LaTeX and pdf... but I've experienced lots of conversion woes.)
I believe that the mess will be comparable to mess created just by using a different version of MS office. I.e. not significant.
It really depends. If your resume/cv is a basic, barely formatted text document, sure. Nothing bad will happen. But I've been going back and forth between Word and OpenOffice/LibreOffice for over a decade now at various times, and any document with complex formatting and precise spacing (as is often true with resumes/cvs) is bound to be a disaster when viewed in Word. All the formatting will basically convert "correctly," but the spacing and rendering are often way off, making the document look like you didn't pay enough attention to detail (exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want in a job application).
Sure, you're right that you'll get some effects like this going between different versions of Word (particularly Mac vs. PC), but those are usually a LOT less noticeable and may only be a couple blips here and there. You can mitigate the effects through trial and error and avoiding certain kinds of direct formatting, but it takes a lot of time and effort to sort this out... and the problems may change with different Word versions.
I'd more easily believe that the libertarians would cheat more, because they assume the rules don't prevent it, and that rich capitalists would actually cheat less, but they'd exploit every nuance of the rules to their advantage.
Seriously? See Wall Street.
Libertarian != Anarchist
The whole point of Libertarianism is to have a minimum set of rules that prevent people from infringing on each other's rights. If those rules weren't necessary, there'd be no reason for government at all... we might as well have anarchy.
Capitalism, on the other hand, encourages the concept of the "invisible hand" where the market will assure optimization and "punishment" for those transgressions which would interfere with the good operation of the market. Capitalists will disagree about the importance or necessity of regulations, but the primary motivation is not balancing freedom against rights (i.e. libertarianism), but maximizing profits. Rules are only necessary to the extent that they increase profit.
Strictly speaking, these two concepts are thus not on the same continuum. It is possible to be a libertarian capitalist or a marxist capitalist. From a theoretical sense, it's thus hard to say which philosophy is easier to violate "rules." However, libertarians necessarily believe that an ordered society must come from at least SOME fundamental "rules," whereas not all capitalists believe governance is necessary (hence "anarcho-capitalists").
By the way, just to be clear -- I almost NEVER download "free" kids apps anymore, because my experience is that they include all that crap. I don't want it. My experience is that most of the decent kids apps cost at least $5, and I'm pretty suspicious of anything that costs very little or claims to be "free." I may be a niche market, but I actually am willing to pay... and if you're trying to market a "free" app to me, there's very little chance I will even try your app today, because I just don't want to deal with your crap.
Also, it's easy to think that you'd pay $20 for an app after you've spent time with it and found it useful. You likely won't pay $20 up front for every app, so where does that leave developers?
Why the heck wouldn't I? Maybe you're too old to remember this, but people used to sell this stuff called "software" that came on things called CD-ROMs, and -- believe it or not -- it was common to pay $10 or $20 or even much more for a decent "application." Many apps don't do as much as old applications on CDs did, but they do as much as something you used to easily pay $5 or $10 for. I still will, and I still do.
Apple don't do demos or upgrade pricing, and you're suggesting in-app purchases are a dirty technique. So, ideally how should developers supply their content to you to earn this $20?
Boycott Apple. I know I do. If you have the option, demos or detailed demo videos or whatever are the way to go. But I would (and have) also buy a $5 or $10 app on the sole basis on unanimous or near-unanimous positive reviews... reviews which don't mention the kind of crap I mentioned in my original post, or (better) make clear that the app doesn't have that crap.
I don't want it all for free, but I think companies should be honest about their business model. I think they should distinguish between "Free" trial, "Free" with paid upgrades, "Free" ad-supported, etc.
Agreed. I'm very happy to pay for a good app. In fact, contrary to the stupid current pricing model, I'm willing to pay WELL for a *great* app. If an app does what I want, has a good featureset, and is stable, I'd gladly drop $10 or $20 or perhaps even more on it.
But I'll only pay for something like that if I'm guaranteed not to have a bunch of crap like ads or nag features or whatever. I'd rather pay well for a handful of great apps that work well than a boatload of free crap.
So, I don't just want these labels on "Free" apps -- I want them on ALL apps. If you gave me a choice to (1) spend $2 for a decent app that spills ads all over my screen and nags me to upgrade or buy some related app every other day, or (2) spend $10 for an app with fewer features but also without all the ads and other crap, I'll spend the $10.
As it is now, I can never tell whether it's worth it to try downloading other "free" apps or to spend the extra money for a paid version or for a more expensive app, because I might still end up with all this junk.
This is particularly true for kids apps. I don't EVER want a kids app with in-app purchases. EVER. EVER. EVER. There are lots of great free (or very cheap) kids apps out there, but there's no way to know what to expect until you download the thing. And even then, you might use the thing for a few days or a week before suddenly seeing some pop-up ad to buy something.
There's NO need for that other than greedy app makers who want to trick kids into buying things or adults who haven't figured out how to lock-down the device.
If your app is so darn good that you think I might want to buy other stuff you made, put a link on the homescreen that says, "If you like this... more titles" or whatever. I'll find it, if I like it that much, and I have in the past.
Otherwise -- app makers out there -- realize that I'm a parent who will pay for quality. I'm not just looking for the best thing I can get for $1. I'll pay you $5 or $10 or maybe even $20 or more if you can make something good that won't throw up some stupid crap to confuse a kid and potentially sucker people into buying stuff they didn't intend to. And I've talked to a lot of other parents who would like the same thing.
Oh, I don't assume it's unsolvable. I just don't know where and how to start and what's actually healthy. I mean, just look at all the replies I've gotten here: one person says this is healthy, the next says that is, the third one says both of the previous ones are bad for you and it's those instead that are the healthy foods and so on.
Yeah, this is typical. Everybody, including most nutritionists and most medical researchers, seem to have different opinions. I would never claim to know definitively what is "healthy" and what isn't, but from your posts here, you seem to think that what you're eating is NOT necessarily healthy. I agree that eating a wide variety of foods, including plenty of veggies, is probably better. But it's hard to make categorical statements beyond that. Personally, I try to eat a variety of things in moderation, and in recent years I've been cutting down on carbs (though not eliminating them), especially processed ones. But I don't claim to have all the answers -- you need to find what works for you, what doesn't cause you to gain weight, and what makes you feel good.
I do know other people who have food texture issues similar to what you describe. And while some of them eat a very limited diet, I know others who have gradually expanded. I hope you figure it out.
Also, I have never ever been interested in cooking and it doesn't come to me naturally. It's easy for people to say "just learn to cook!" when it's one of those things you totally suck at -- not everyone can be good at everything. I posses quite literally zero creativity.
Again, I'm just trying to help here -- but have you tried a book like Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" or a cookbook focused on "one-pot easy and quick dinners" or similar titles? I learned some things about cooking growing up, but I've learned a lot more as an adult, and most of it was just from buying a variety of cookbooks and trying things out. You don't need to be "creative" -- some cookbooks, like Bittman's, are designed for relative beginners and often contain 5 variations on most recipes, so you can tailor them to what ingredients you have on hand or perhaps how much time or effort you want to put it. (I'm not trying to promote Bittman, by the way -- there are lots of other good cookbooks, but it's one I know a lot of people have found useful.)
I saw a food and nutrition therapist and asked her for help, too, but all she offered was "eat more veggies" and kept repeating that like a parrot -- not a single god damn recipe that I could actually try.
For your problem I think you'd be better off talking to a cook or chef than to a nutritionist... or even just a friend who knows quite a bit about cooking. If I were you, I'd find somebody like that and tell them the kinds of foods and textures you like and dislike, and see what advice they have. (There may even be a way that you could sign up for a "cooking lesson" or two and use that time for your questions.) Texture is often about technique and the way you cook food, and there are other options besides just throwing everything into a blender. But a skilled cook will likely be able to suggest good recipes and resources that could fit your constraints.
The real issue is that it does take considerably more planning and preparation time than a pizza that you can just throw in the over for 15 minutes or other preprocessed food that require minimal prep time by the people who are actually eating it.
You don't need both more planning AND more prep. Often you only need one. Sometimes you don't need either.
With the knowledge of proper chopping and cutting techniques, and some thought about recipes that require little maintenance, there are dozens of different full-meal dishes I could make off the top of my head that require less than 10 minutes of prep and active cooking time.
If you want more variety or dishes that take longer for flavors to develop... One of my best friends grew up in a family of 6 where both parents worked -- but they ate home-cooked meals every day. Every weekend they just spent a few hours putting together simple dishes, cooking them (often low maintenance things like slow cooker stuff that would take 5 minutes to throw things together and then would just sit for hours), and then they'd refrigerate or freeze the stuff for use on weeknights... it just required reheating, which took all of a minute to remove it from the freezer and pop it into the oven.
Make big batches and alternate the kinds of dishes you make on various weekends, and you can easily build up a repetoire of a half-dozen or more options for weeknight dinners with little effort and almost no prep time required other than a couple hours one day per week.
There also are lots of time-saving things you can do for dishes you eat on a regular basis. Lots of ingredients can be prepped in advance in big batches. For example, if I want to make pancakes, I could spend 10 minutes measuring out the ingredients every time, or I could spend 10 minutes measuring out a giant batch of dry ingredients for 10 or 20 batches of pancakes, and then store homemade "pancake mix" in the pantry, ready to just add milk and eggs (and whatever else). Lots of other dishes can be simplified in the same way by prepping dry ingredients or ingredients that can be frozen in big batches.
Yeah, you're probably never going to save as much time as you would eating frozen TV dinners (and not everything can be made fast -- you're not going to be able to do homemade croissants in a short amount of time or something), but given the cost savings and the health benefits, it's surely worth it.
That could be, or it could not be. I don't know. I would need to solve the food texture - issue first and I don't know how. Most what people offer me is "stuff it all in the blender and make it all the same, messy goop." -- doesn't sound like much of anything worth eating.
I would need to know exactly what kind of "processed" foods you like to suggest a way to create similar textures in less processed stuff, but it's certainly possible. There is an incredible array of possible textures in food -- all you need to do is find a few dishes that work for you, and you can build more using similar principles.
As for the rest of your comment, I'm really not following and beginning to suspect you must be a troll. You want processed food with homogeneous texture, but processing food in such a way to make it have a homogeneous texture "doesn't sound like much of anything worth eating." That indicates to me that you're either lying about your texture aversion or your objection to whatever "healthy food" is broader than texture -- you have problems with flavor too. So, we need to fix both.
The point is the problem is NOT unsolvable. Even if you only liked to eat some weird textured food that is generally only available in processed stuff, chances are you might be able to make it yourself in a more healthy way by using your own ingredients (under your control) and using only one or two chemical additives to get the special texture effects you desire (something modern chefs are experimenting with).
No, see. The concept of "rape culture" doesn't trivialize rape.
When it predominantly refers to things that aren't rape or sexual violence against women, I think it does. We may just disagree here.
But I think it's reasonable to refer to cultural norms and behaviors which do in fact seem to promote the idea that rape is an expected or normal thing as "rape culture".
I'd actually agree with this. But I don't believe that any off-color joke or innuendo or stare or whistle or whatever "promote[s] the idea that rape is an expected or normal thing." I think they are often inappropriate, and I don't do these things myself. But they are a far cry from rape.
Then I saw news coverage
Yeah, is this your dataset? You do realize that the news is almost designed to promote hysteria and paranoia, right? Every day, I can turn on almost any news broadcast in the U.S. and hear about a murder or a stabbing or whatever -- it doesn't mean we have a "murder culture" or a "stabbing culture."
Rape is far too common. It's horrifying. But, we need to look at actual statistics. And I think there's an important difference between intentional forced violent rape or assault vs. ambiguous non-violent sexual situations where the main problem is lack of communication and/or ignorance on the part of one or both parties.
By the way, not that this should matter, but I was the "victim" of such situations twice with older men, when I was in my teens and again in my early 20s. For the latter case, I was groped repeatedly on the butt by an elderly man who was my friend, and later he initiatied inappropriate contacts (backrub, etc.). Technically, I guess I was assaulted. I certainly felt violated and "icky" and awful afterward. Frankly, I was just sort of shocked when the whole thing happened -- as far as I knew, we were friends, and I had no homosexual interest, and certainly no interest in a man who was maybe 50 years older than me.
But was this a part of a culture that would have escalated to rape? Absolutely not. This elderly man was incapabable of forcibly raping me. When he saw I did not respond to his awkward attempts, he stopped and never pursued it again. It was just his fumbling attempts to "make a pass" at me, though it took me a while to recognize that. At the time, I felt violated and weird. But I was NOT raped, and I would NEVER pretend that what happened to me was in any way comparable to rape.
My point is that this guy didn't need to be educated about "rape culture" -- he needed to be educated about appropriate behavior and ways to make a sexual advance on someone, and maybe a bit about cultural norms and why a 20ish guy probably wouldn't be interested in him anymore.
Yes, personal responsibility is a thing, but the fact is, statistics are also a thing, and if doing one thing at a societal level increases the number of rapes, and doing something else lowers the number, doing the former thing and then complaining that it should be all about personal responsibility seems pretty, well, irresponsible.
I absolutely agree. But we actually need statistics to resolve this issue. For example, why are we talking about a "rape culture" more and more in recent years, when the actual number of rapes has been declining for decades? Note that studies which show this keep the definition of "rape" constant -- but we've been expanding the definition of "rape" more in recent years, leading to a perceived increase.
I also think we're arguing "across" each other, rather than against each other here. I'm NOT saying it's okay to just let people sexually harass others or whatever. I'm NOT saying we shouldn't educate people about these issues. But just as you say there is a nonzero number of people who take a culture of sexual harassment to be license for rape, so I can say there is a nonzero
That is similar to the argument about sex education (i.e. it makes children have more sex), but it is very clearly evidence from endless studies that talking about it has the effect of making people more responsible, not less.
Yeah, personally I would have agreed with you. I was merely quoting the opinion of an organization devoted to preventing rape and sexual assault.
Please note that the objection here is terminological. No one is suggesting that we don't educate people about rape. Instead, it's about whether we lump together various aspects of misogyny into a "rape culture," and imply it's all part of the same thing. I'm pretty sure this organization is saying: teach kids about harassment and appropriate conduct, teach them about assault, and teach them about rape. But be clear about what each is, and point out that while sexual harassment may be common (though still not excusable), sexual violence is not, and it's an individual choice made by aberrant individuals, not just part of the "culture."
Please explain how social security is not a Ponzi scheme?
The first generation that received social security was paid by the working generation (2nd generation). The 2nd generation is paid for by the 3rd generation and so on. It only works as long as the next generation (new investors) grows fast enough to pay for the current generation. This is classic Ponzi scheme, the first investers get paid off right away (and well), and the second investers pay for them and they get paid less well, and then the 3rd generation get paid even less, and so on, and you can only sustain it if you get more investors or you actually generate income. Unless I am mistaken, the only income social security gets is from the current investors.
Well, you're basically right, though there had been moves to put the system on a more rational footing, such as the resolution of the 1983 Social Security crisis, which was supposed to create a permanent "trust fund" that anticipated the retirement of the Baby Boomers and was supposed to save money in advance for that. (For a long, but relatively balanced account, see here.)
Unfortunately, very shortly after Reagan and Congress negotiated this deal, they decided just to throw the newly collected funds into the general federal funds, rather than saving them.
So -- I suppose you can say it has ended up as a Ponzi scheme, but it wasn't originally intended to be one, and when the first predictions were sounded in the early 1980s that it might turn into one, the government took action (apparently) to try to prevent it.
But... well, they couldn't keep their "hands out of the cookie jar," and once the taxes were collected, the money was just spent on wars, etc.
I don't think they think the "trifling" transgressions are "just as bad". I've never heard anyone say, or even suggest, that they are "just as bad".
I don't think most people (even most strong feminists) would say things like that, but the word "rape" is coming up increasingly in relation to things that are nowhere near as extreme. For an extreme example:
Goshen College of Indiana declared all male students who stare at women as rapists early this year.
They state on their website:
"Don't allow psychological rape or commit it yourself. Psychological rape consists of verbal harassment, whistles, kissing noises, heavy breathing, sly comments or stares. These are all assaults on any woman's sense of well-being."
It looks like the link has since been taken down (but you can still see archived screenshots here).
Obviously this is an extremist perspective. But the ideas are out there, and it's not surprising that some people will equate "trifling transgressions" with much worse things, given the common use of the phrase "rape culture" in recent years.
And if you haven't heard of "rape culture," just search for it. It's the more extreme, but still quite common, term for the misogynist aspects of out culture (the kind of thing #YesAllWomen is about).
Obviously, some of these misogynist tendencies are often terrible. But referring to it as "rape culture" or calling stares "assault" or advocating guidelines against "psychological rape" risks trivializing ACTUAL sexual assault and rape, which is a horrific crime.
On the other hand, I've seen very good evidence presented that the "trifling" transgressions tend to correlate strongly with environments in which people are a lot more comfortable pushing things a lot harder. which means that there is at least some reason to believe that they may contribute to an environment where people will think they can get away with rape.
This is probably true. But, contrary to your initial claim, there ARE people who are making an implicit equivalence between actual rape and these lesser offenses. Like any hyperbole, it risks simply offending the opponents of any ideas -- so rather than teaching people appropriate guidelines for conduct and what constitutes "harassment," you end up alienating people when you say "rape culture," because the vast majority of people (even those who might sometimes harass someone) are not actually rapists... and when asked to combat that, instead of more mild "harassment," they may just ignore the inflammatory rhetoric.
Heck, even the RAINN (the largest US organization dedicated to reducing sexual assault) has explicitly noted the problems of current nomenclature and the improper equivalence created by it (from one of their reports to the White House):
In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming 'rape culture' for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime
Moreover, they argue that this emphasis on the larger culture (and attempts to stop minor behaviors) sometimes actually CONTRIBUTES to sexual violence, since individuals may come to believe that rape is simply a societal "norm" since everyone talks about it so much, rather than a crime committed by rare and specific ind
It's not a typo. A tyopographical error iis a mistaek in typing, typically when tow letters are transposed. You didn't know the phrase "an old chestnut", you had only heard it said, and assumed it was "chess nut". See, it's this sort of lack of rigor that throws one's entire assumptions into question.
I never jump in and say something like this, but will you shut up already?! Your pedantic nonsense is doing nothing to further the discussion, and after a whole bunch of posts, you still haven't offered anything substantive. And besides, your premise here is wrong -- there is a known psychological effect that allows these sorts of errors for homophones and near homophones. When I'm typing fast, I occasionally write stupid things that sound like what I mean, but aren't... that doesn't mean I don't know the correct phrase; it just means I'm writing quickly. GP could have been ignorant, or it could have been a typo.
In either case, stop debating writing style and offer an argument, or shut up please.
> I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it.
The goal of the EU ruling is not to erase the stories from the net. It is simply to make it harder to find
Were you responding to me? If so, note I never claimed the goal was to "erase stories from the net." I simply said that it "won't work," and by that I mean it won't do very well at achieving its goal, which -- as you correctly note -- is to make stuff harder to locate.
The EU is trying to approximate that balance. All the people who complain that it won't "work" are defining the problem wrong. It isn't a situation where black or white will work, but grey might.
See, here's the problem. If TFA works, we basically have a database to find everything people have registered to be "forgotten." As I said, if this site continues to exist, then the EU ruling is ineffective: it only managed to get rid of some search engine links, while also facilitating a system where people who want to do even casual actual background checks know the second place to go. In effect, it makes it easier to find, if someone puts forth just a step beyond the minimal effort.
For people who actually care about finding the details of someone's reputation, the ruling may thus make it easier to find information someone really wants hidden... which seems to be the opposite of the EU goal.
I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.
Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander and lose your career over a lie that is interesting enough to go viral where your vindication isn't and doesn't.
THIS. All of the stories on this decision seem to be focusing on people who are clearly bad or did terrible things in the past.
But our modern news and social media society on the internet archives all sorts of crap that isn't actually true, and never was true. But the salacious headline will always draw attention; the minor blurb on the back page will never be remembered when the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted or everyone just admits that it was a mistake.
(Just to be clear: I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it. But we do have a real problem -- even if 95% of the claims made so far have been by people who committed horrible bad past acts, the real injustice is to the 5% who just got caught up in media attention for something that turned out not to be true, or even nowhere near as horrible as people claimed.)
(Of course, this assumes you never carry a balance on your card... and why would you?)
I'd guess it's because you don't have enough money to get what you need, so you charge it.
Nope -- that's NOT why most people carry a balance on a credit card. They "don't have enough money to get what [they] WANT."
Yes, there are lots of poor people out there in dire straits, but most of them can't even qualify for credit cards, because they don't have reliable income or whatever credit history they have is bad. The people who charge extra on credit cards are typically people who have enough money for what they NEED, but they WANT more stuff faster than they can make money to get it. If they really NEEDED something, there are often ways to take out loans that would give a better interest rate than a credit card, or they could get government assistance or something if it's a basic human need.
The other group of people who carry a balance are the people who usually did pay off their balance in the past, but they've lost a job or had some other unforeseen expense. Most of these people could also have been saving more for a "rainy day," but I have a little more sympathy for them. And there are some for whom the "rainy day" has lasted so long that it depleted a reasonable savings... they should perhaps not be faulted either.
But most people just use credit cards for crap they don't need that they can't afford, but they want it NOW. And I personally think that's a stupid financial decision, because at credit card interest rates, it will cost you more in the long-term than just waiting a little while to save up or just buy something more affordable that will work in the meantime, like responsible adults do.
The U.S. dollar bills last 5.9 years, not "less than a year". I just love Slashdotters who make up bogus facts out of thin air to support their viewpoint. There are 2 $1 bills in my pocket right now. Both were made in 2009, which supports the 5.9 years fact.
Well, I was a little off, but closer than you -- the average lifespan of the dollar bill is about 18 months. I do remember reading something a while back that estimated it to be a little less than a year, but this fact is from the people who make the bills (and thus have to replace them), so I'm tempted to believe them over an AC. I've seen other estimates, but none more than 2 years.
As for your other points, at no point did my post even argue in favor of eliminating dollar bills; I simply pointed out a savings by the government. I was just correcting a previous post that made it sound like the cost of dollar bills didn't have anything to do with him. You think coins are inconvenient? Fine. I never said they weren't. Try a course in reading comprehension before attacking people randomly (and making up your own "bogus facts").
But modern money does rely on the banking system because it has no intrinsic value. Notes are just that - notes from the bank that they owe you X amount of dollars. Coin used to be worth their actual weight in copper, silver or gold (and was thus international) but those days have long gone.
And precisely what is the "intrinsic value" of gold and silver? Copper mostly sells for its market value as a raw material. Gold and silver have huge premiums on their price compared to their actual utility, just like fiat currencies.
Notes and coins only work because people want them to and trust them to, but that could break any time.
All that would need to happen is for you to end up in a situation where "shiny rocks" are not particularly useful, and gold and silver would be worthless too. Just like fiat money, gold and silver "only work because people want them to and trust them to," but that could ALSO break. The only reason to trust them any more is because they have a longer history of made-up fake value ascribed to them.
In real "survival" circumstances, the people who will be able to buy stuff will be those with food, clothing, tools, weapons, etc. Those things have something closer to "intrinsic value," since humans will almost always need them. Gold and silver are just more traditional "fiat" money, and their value is held up by the market, just as any other currency.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL. Awesome. Thanks for that.
Also, to be clear -- I was joking. Realize this is a parody before I get flamed with responses from the libertarian squad or the Society for Boarding in Awesome, Really Reliable Order (or SBARRO for short -- ever wonder why they are in so many airports?) yammering onto me about how I insulted them.
Somebody did something on the interwebs (or intertubes or whatever those new-fangled contraptions are called). This is a tech site, so we've gotta cover it!
(Actually, if you're serious -- it's here because seating processes on airplanes make everyone bitchy for some reason, and everyone thinks it's inefficient and thinks they could plan it better. So, somebody complaining about some aspect of that is bound to get all the anal retentive wackos here worked up and spouting their favorite ideas about what's wrong with planes and boarding and kids on planes and snakes on planes and whatever. That and... FREE SPEECH, LIBERTARIAN MUMBO-JUMBO, AYN RAND IS A GODDESS!!!! etc. P.S. I'm NOT saying Southwest was in the right here -- just why this story will get everyone worked up.)
That's all good reason for boarding them last - so they don't slow down those who can board quickly.
Huh? How does that produce greater efficiency? Let's see, we could:
(1) Let families board with the first half-dozen groups of random people with various privileges ("Now let's have our first class..." [2 people board, a minute later] "Now let's have business class..." [5 people board, two minutes later] "Now let's have our elite Silver whoop-di-do members..." [no one boards, three minutes later] "Now let's have our Bronze not-so-much-whoop members" [2 guys from the back take 30 seconds to realize they were called and slowly make their way up, chatting on their phones the whole way]... etc., etc.).
In that case, the families could get settled with almost no one else on the plane, and almost no one else in economy trying to find their seats.
OR...
(2) We wait until last, and the families join the end of the long line stopped almost at the gate itself of people waiting to get on. The families with more bags per person and more people to strap in and get settled in their seats per person then spend 10 minutes wandering up and down the aisles trying to find places for their bags and get their kids settled... while the attendants get increasingly testy as they have to go up and down reopening luggage bins and find a pillow for Jr. since he's asleep on Dad's shoulder and no one on the plane wants him to wake up when he's strapped in the seat. And the plane is now going to take off late because we needed 15 minutes to board 10 whoop-di-do members who didn't have to do anything, but now it's crunch-time for the parents who could have already been settled in.
I completely understand why airlines do NOT let families on early, because they now charge people extra for those privileges. But if they were trying to maximize efficiency instead of profits, it would definitely make sense to move the families on when fewer people are obstacles on the plane.
Actually outside of the US it seems to be common practice to ask people with young families to board first anyway.
Yeah, it often is within the U.S. too, particularly for infants and very young children. But I mostly see it used for parents with kids in strollers or whatever, not for older kids or even relatively small kids.
If you are blocking the aisle while you buckle seat belts and the like you are slowing the whole boarding process. So it makes sense - send them in with first and business class.
Yeah, the problem is the escalation of fee structures in recent years. 15 years ago your policy made perfect sense. But now most airlines charge for any checked baggage, which means more people stuff everything into larger carry-ons, and many planes don't have enough room to stuff everyone's bag in.
So, everyone's worried about boarding early enough so that they don't have to have their bag stuffed 10 seats behind them, which will make them the last off the plane.
But, of course, it isn't enough for airlines to charge fees for checked bags -- now they figured out that people don't want to worry about the hassle of finding space for their carry-on, so now for an extra fee many airlines will let you board early (with business class or whatever).
So, it makes it really hard for the airlines to "give away" that option to families to board earlier, when somebody else in coach paid $35 or whatever that day for that privilege. In addition, there seem to be a lot of folks out there who assume that anyone travelling with a small child on a plane must be an evil person wanting to annoy other travelers deliberately by bringing a kid on board (when the reality is that most parents know they usually only travel with small kids on planes when there is no other reasonable choice). So, it will just lead to even more (unjustified?) feelings of unfairness if these parents are given seemingly special privileges.
It's the same crap that causes people to cut people off or not let people merge in traffic. Sometimes it's worth a really insignificant sacrifice to let everything flow better, and letting the kids on early would probably make the entire boarding process faster and smoother. But most people would probably just resent it... and so airlines don't do it anymore.
nah, the plastics the leading piano companies use now have just as good a feel, that wasn't true three decades or more ago but there is no point to ivory keys now.
I would qualify this slightly and say that the plastics may be "just as good" in some ways, but they do feel different. And I know some people who have strong preferences. Ivory's porousness changes the way keys feel and how easy it is to grip them (or slip), particularly if your hands are sweating (as many people do when performing in front of crowds under hot lights). And on lesser quality pianos, ivory often had a distinctive texture that... well, just feels different. High-end older pianos had highly polished and very even keys (sometimes most "silky" feeling) that might feel similar to modern "perfect" plastic, but most pianos were not as consistent. Personally, it doesn't matter to me, but I can certainly understand those who might prefer one or the other.
(By the way -- just to be clear, I'm NOT trying to argue in favor of Word or doc/x. I personally prefer LaTeX and pdf... but I've experienced lots of conversion woes.)
I believe that the mess will be comparable to mess created just by using a different version of MS office. I.e. not significant.
It really depends. If your resume/cv is a basic, barely formatted text document, sure. Nothing bad will happen. But I've been going back and forth between Word and OpenOffice/LibreOffice for over a decade now at various times, and any document with complex formatting and precise spacing (as is often true with resumes/cvs) is bound to be a disaster when viewed in Word. All the formatting will basically convert "correctly," but the spacing and rendering are often way off, making the document look like you didn't pay enough attention to detail (exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want in a job application).
Sure, you're right that you'll get some effects like this going between different versions of Word (particularly Mac vs. PC), but those are usually a LOT less noticeable and may only be a couple blips here and there. You can mitigate the effects through trial and error and avoiding certain kinds of direct formatting, but it takes a lot of time and effort to sort this out... and the problems may change with different Word versions.
[citation needed]
I'd more easily believe that the libertarians would cheat more, because they assume the rules don't prevent it, and that rich capitalists would actually cheat less, but they'd exploit every nuance of the rules to their advantage.
Seriously? See Wall Street.
Libertarian != Anarchist
The whole point of Libertarianism is to have a minimum set of rules that prevent people from infringing on each other's rights. If those rules weren't necessary, there'd be no reason for government at all... we might as well have anarchy.
Capitalism, on the other hand, encourages the concept of the "invisible hand" where the market will assure optimization and "punishment" for those transgressions which would interfere with the good operation of the market. Capitalists will disagree about the importance or necessity of regulations, but the primary motivation is not balancing freedom against rights (i.e. libertarianism), but maximizing profits. Rules are only necessary to the extent that they increase profit.
Strictly speaking, these two concepts are thus not on the same continuum. It is possible to be a libertarian capitalist or a marxist capitalist. From a theoretical sense, it's thus hard to say which philosophy is easier to violate "rules." However, libertarians necessarily believe that an ordered society must come from at least SOME fundamental "rules," whereas not all capitalists believe governance is necessary (hence "anarcho-capitalists").
By the way, just to be clear -- I almost NEVER download "free" kids apps anymore, because my experience is that they include all that crap. I don't want it. My experience is that most of the decent kids apps cost at least $5, and I'm pretty suspicious of anything that costs very little or claims to be "free." I may be a niche market, but I actually am willing to pay... and if you're trying to market a "free" app to me, there's very little chance I will even try your app today, because I just don't want to deal with your crap.
Also, it's easy to think that you'd pay $20 for an app after you've spent time with it and found it useful. You likely won't pay $20 up front for every app, so where does that leave developers?
Why the heck wouldn't I? Maybe you're too old to remember this, but people used to sell this stuff called "software" that came on things called CD-ROMs, and -- believe it or not -- it was common to pay $10 or $20 or even much more for a decent "application." Many apps don't do as much as old applications on CDs did, but they do as much as something you used to easily pay $5 or $10 for. I still will, and I still do.
Apple don't do demos or upgrade pricing, and you're suggesting in-app purchases are a dirty technique. So, ideally how should developers supply their content to you to earn this $20?
Boycott Apple. I know I do. If you have the option, demos or detailed demo videos or whatever are the way to go. But I would (and have) also buy a $5 or $10 app on the sole basis on unanimous or near-unanimous positive reviews... reviews which don't mention the kind of crap I mentioned in my original post, or (better) make clear that the app doesn't have that crap.
I don't want it all for free, but I think companies should be honest about their business model. I think they should distinguish between "Free" trial, "Free" with paid upgrades, "Free" ad-supported, etc.
Agreed. I'm very happy to pay for a good app. In fact, contrary to the stupid current pricing model, I'm willing to pay WELL for a *great* app. If an app does what I want, has a good featureset, and is stable, I'd gladly drop $10 or $20 or perhaps even more on it.
But I'll only pay for something like that if I'm guaranteed not to have a bunch of crap like ads or nag features or whatever. I'd rather pay well for a handful of great apps that work well than a boatload of free crap.
So, I don't just want these labels on "Free" apps -- I want them on ALL apps. If you gave me a choice to (1) spend $2 for a decent app that spills ads all over my screen and nags me to upgrade or buy some related app every other day, or (2) spend $10 for an app with fewer features but also without all the ads and other crap, I'll spend the $10.
As it is now, I can never tell whether it's worth it to try downloading other "free" apps or to spend the extra money for a paid version or for a more expensive app, because I might still end up with all this junk.
This is particularly true for kids apps. I don't EVER want a kids app with in-app purchases. EVER. EVER. EVER. There are lots of great free (or very cheap) kids apps out there, but there's no way to know what to expect until you download the thing. And even then, you might use the thing for a few days or a week before suddenly seeing some pop-up ad to buy something.
There's NO need for that other than greedy app makers who want to trick kids into buying things or adults who haven't figured out how to lock-down the device.
If your app is so darn good that you think I might want to buy other stuff you made, put a link on the homescreen that says, "If you like this... more titles" or whatever. I'll find it, if I like it that much, and I have in the past.
Otherwise -- app makers out there -- realize that I'm a parent who will pay for quality. I'm not just looking for the best thing I can get for $1. I'll pay you $5 or $10 or maybe even $20 or more if you can make something good that won't throw up some stupid crap to confuse a kid and potentially sucker people into buying stuff they didn't intend to. And I've talked to a lot of other parents who would like the same thing.
Oh, I don't assume it's unsolvable. I just don't know where and how to start and what's actually healthy. I mean, just look at all the replies I've gotten here: one person says this is healthy, the next says that is, the third one says both of the previous ones are bad for you and it's those instead that are the healthy foods and so on.
Yeah, this is typical. Everybody, including most nutritionists and most medical researchers, seem to have different opinions. I would never claim to know definitively what is "healthy" and what isn't, but from your posts here, you seem to think that what you're eating is NOT necessarily healthy. I agree that eating a wide variety of foods, including plenty of veggies, is probably better. But it's hard to make categorical statements beyond that. Personally, I try to eat a variety of things in moderation, and in recent years I've been cutting down on carbs (though not eliminating them), especially processed ones. But I don't claim to have all the answers -- you need to find what works for you, what doesn't cause you to gain weight, and what makes you feel good.
I do know other people who have food texture issues similar to what you describe. And while some of them eat a very limited diet, I know others who have gradually expanded. I hope you figure it out.
Also, I have never ever been interested in cooking and it doesn't come to me naturally. It's easy for people to say "just learn to cook!" when it's one of those things you totally suck at -- not everyone can be good at everything. I posses quite literally zero creativity.
Again, I'm just trying to help here -- but have you tried a book like Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" or a cookbook focused on "one-pot easy and quick dinners" or similar titles? I learned some things about cooking growing up, but I've learned a lot more as an adult, and most of it was just from buying a variety of cookbooks and trying things out. You don't need to be "creative" -- some cookbooks, like Bittman's, are designed for relative beginners and often contain 5 variations on most recipes, so you can tailor them to what ingredients you have on hand or perhaps how much time or effort you want to put it. (I'm not trying to promote Bittman, by the way -- there are lots of other good cookbooks, but it's one I know a lot of people have found useful.)
I saw a food and nutrition therapist and asked her for help, too, but all she offered was "eat more veggies" and kept repeating that like a parrot -- not a single god damn recipe that I could actually try.
For your problem I think you'd be better off talking to a cook or chef than to a nutritionist... or even just a friend who knows quite a bit about cooking. If I were you, I'd find somebody like that and tell them the kinds of foods and textures you like and dislike, and see what advice they have. (There may even be a way that you could sign up for a "cooking lesson" or two and use that time for your questions.) Texture is often about technique and the way you cook food, and there are other options besides just throwing everything into a blender. But a skilled cook will likely be able to suggest good recipes and resources that could fit your constraints.
The real issue is that it does take considerably more planning and preparation time than a pizza that you can just throw in the over for 15 minutes or other preprocessed food that require minimal prep time by the people who are actually eating it.
You don't need both more planning AND more prep. Often you only need one. Sometimes you don't need either.
With the knowledge of proper chopping and cutting techniques, and some thought about recipes that require little maintenance, there are dozens of different full-meal dishes I could make off the top of my head that require less than 10 minutes of prep and active cooking time.
If you want more variety or dishes that take longer for flavors to develop... One of my best friends grew up in a family of 6 where both parents worked -- but they ate home-cooked meals every day. Every weekend they just spent a few hours putting together simple dishes, cooking them (often low maintenance things like slow cooker stuff that would take 5 minutes to throw things together and then would just sit for hours), and then they'd refrigerate or freeze the stuff for use on weeknights... it just required reheating, which took all of a minute to remove it from the freezer and pop it into the oven.
Make big batches and alternate the kinds of dishes you make on various weekends, and you can easily build up a repetoire of a half-dozen or more options for weeknight dinners with little effort and almost no prep time required other than a couple hours one day per week.
There also are lots of time-saving things you can do for dishes you eat on a regular basis. Lots of ingredients can be prepped in advance in big batches. For example, if I want to make pancakes, I could spend 10 minutes measuring out the ingredients every time, or I could spend 10 minutes measuring out a giant batch of dry ingredients for 10 or 20 batches of pancakes, and then store homemade "pancake mix" in the pantry, ready to just add milk and eggs (and whatever else). Lots of other dishes can be simplified in the same way by prepping dry ingredients or ingredients that can be frozen in big batches.
Yeah, you're probably never going to save as much time as you would eating frozen TV dinners (and not everything can be made fast -- you're not going to be able to do homemade croissants in a short amount of time or something), but given the cost savings and the health benefits, it's surely worth it.
That could be, or it could not be. I don't know. I would need to solve the food texture - issue first and I don't know how. Most what people offer me is "stuff it all in the blender and make it all the same, messy goop." -- doesn't sound like much of anything worth eating.
I would need to know exactly what kind of "processed" foods you like to suggest a way to create similar textures in less processed stuff, but it's certainly possible. There is an incredible array of possible textures in food -- all you need to do is find a few dishes that work for you, and you can build more using similar principles.
As for the rest of your comment, I'm really not following and beginning to suspect you must be a troll. You want processed food with homogeneous texture, but processing food in such a way to make it have a homogeneous texture "doesn't sound like much of anything worth eating." That indicates to me that you're either lying about your texture aversion or your objection to whatever "healthy food" is broader than texture -- you have problems with flavor too. So, we need to fix both.
The point is the problem is NOT unsolvable. Even if you only liked to eat some weird textured food that is generally only available in processed stuff, chances are you might be able to make it yourself in a more healthy way by using your own ingredients (under your control) and using only one or two chemical additives to get the special texture effects you desire (something modern chefs are experimenting with).
No, see. The concept of "rape culture" doesn't trivialize rape.
When it predominantly refers to things that aren't rape or sexual violence against women, I think it does. We may just disagree here.
But I think it's reasonable to refer to cultural norms and behaviors which do in fact seem to promote the idea that rape is an expected or normal thing as "rape culture".
I'd actually agree with this. But I don't believe that any off-color joke or innuendo or stare or whistle or whatever "promote[s] the idea that rape is an expected or normal thing." I think they are often inappropriate, and I don't do these things myself. But they are a far cry from rape.
Then I saw news coverage
Yeah, is this your dataset? You do realize that the news is almost designed to promote hysteria and paranoia, right? Every day, I can turn on almost any news broadcast in the U.S. and hear about a murder or a stabbing or whatever -- it doesn't mean we have a "murder culture" or a "stabbing culture."
Rape is far too common. It's horrifying. But, we need to look at actual statistics. And I think there's an important difference between intentional forced violent rape or assault vs. ambiguous non-violent sexual situations where the main problem is lack of communication and/or ignorance on the part of one or both parties.
By the way, not that this should matter, but I was the "victim" of such situations twice with older men, when I was in my teens and again in my early 20s. For the latter case, I was groped repeatedly on the butt by an elderly man who was my friend, and later he initiatied inappropriate contacts (backrub, etc.). Technically, I guess I was assaulted. I certainly felt violated and "icky" and awful afterward. Frankly, I was just sort of shocked when the whole thing happened -- as far as I knew, we were friends, and I had no homosexual interest, and certainly no interest in a man who was maybe 50 years older than me.
But was this a part of a culture that would have escalated to rape? Absolutely not. This elderly man was incapabable of forcibly raping me. When he saw I did not respond to his awkward attempts, he stopped and never pursued it again. It was just his fumbling attempts to "make a pass" at me, though it took me a while to recognize that. At the time, I felt violated and weird. But I was NOT raped, and I would NEVER pretend that what happened to me was in any way comparable to rape.
My point is that this guy didn't need to be educated about "rape culture" -- he needed to be educated about appropriate behavior and ways to make a sexual advance on someone, and maybe a bit about cultural norms and why a 20ish guy probably wouldn't be interested in him anymore.
Yes, personal responsibility is a thing, but the fact is, statistics are also a thing, and if doing one thing at a societal level increases the number of rapes, and doing something else lowers the number, doing the former thing and then complaining that it should be all about personal responsibility seems pretty, well, irresponsible.
I absolutely agree. But we actually need statistics to resolve this issue. For example, why are we talking about a "rape culture" more and more in recent years, when the actual number of rapes has been declining for decades? Note that studies which show this keep the definition of "rape" constant -- but we've been expanding the definition of "rape" more in recent years, leading to a perceived increase.
I also think we're arguing "across" each other, rather than against each other here. I'm NOT saying it's okay to just let people sexually harass others or whatever. I'm NOT saying we shouldn't educate people about these issues. But just as you say there is a nonzero number of people who take a culture of sexual harassment to be license for rape, so I can say there is a nonzero
That is similar to the argument about sex education (i.e. it makes children have more sex), but it is very clearly evidence from endless studies that talking about it has the effect of making people more responsible, not less.
Yeah, personally I would have agreed with you. I was merely quoting the opinion of an organization devoted to preventing rape and sexual assault.
Please note that the objection here is terminological. No one is suggesting that we don't educate people about rape. Instead, it's about whether we lump together various aspects of misogyny into a "rape culture," and imply it's all part of the same thing. I'm pretty sure this organization is saying: teach kids about harassment and appropriate conduct, teach them about assault, and teach them about rape. But be clear about what each is, and point out that while sexual harassment may be common (though still not excusable), sexual violence is not, and it's an individual choice made by aberrant individuals, not just part of the "culture."
Please explain how social security is not a Ponzi scheme?
The first generation that received social security was paid by the working generation (2nd generation). The 2nd generation is paid for by the 3rd generation and so on. It only works as long as the next generation (new investors) grows fast enough to pay for the current generation. This is classic Ponzi scheme, the first investers get paid off right away (and well), and the second investers pay for them and they get paid less well, and then the 3rd generation get paid even less, and so on, and you can only sustain it if you get more investors or you actually generate income. Unless I am mistaken, the only income social security gets is from the current investors.
Well, you're basically right, though there had been moves to put the system on a more rational footing, such as the resolution of the 1983 Social Security crisis, which was supposed to create a permanent "trust fund" that anticipated the retirement of the Baby Boomers and was supposed to save money in advance for that. (For a long, but relatively balanced account, see here.)
Unfortunately, very shortly after Reagan and Congress negotiated this deal, they decided just to throw the newly collected funds into the general federal funds, rather than saving them.
So -- I suppose you can say it has ended up as a Ponzi scheme, but it wasn't originally intended to be one, and when the first predictions were sounded in the early 1980s that it might turn into one, the government took action (apparently) to try to prevent it.
But... well, they couldn't keep their "hands out of the cookie jar," and once the taxes were collected, the money was just spent on wars, etc.
I don't think they think the "trifling" transgressions are "just as bad". I've never heard anyone say, or even suggest, that they are "just as bad".
I don't think most people (even most strong feminists) would say things like that, but the word "rape" is coming up increasingly in relation to things that are nowhere near as extreme. For an extreme example:
Goshen College of Indiana declared all male students who stare at women as rapists early this year.
They state on their website:
"Don't allow psychological rape or commit it yourself. Psychological rape consists of verbal harassment, whistles, kissing noises, heavy breathing, sly comments or stares. These are all assaults on any woman's sense of well-being."
It looks like the link has since been taken down (but you can still see archived screenshots here).
Obviously this is an extremist perspective. But the ideas are out there, and it's not surprising that some people will equate "trifling transgressions" with much worse things, given the common use of the phrase "rape culture" in recent years.
And if you haven't heard of "rape culture," just search for it. It's the more extreme, but still quite common, term for the misogynist aspects of out culture (the kind of thing #YesAllWomen is about).
Obviously, some of these misogynist tendencies are often terrible. But referring to it as "rape culture" or calling stares "assault" or advocating guidelines against "psychological rape" risks trivializing ACTUAL sexual assault and rape, which is a horrific crime.
On the other hand, I've seen very good evidence presented that the "trifling" transgressions tend to correlate strongly with environments in which people are a lot more comfortable pushing things a lot harder. which means that there is at least some reason to believe that they may contribute to an environment where people will think they can get away with rape.
This is probably true. But, contrary to your initial claim, there ARE people who are making an implicit equivalence between actual rape and these lesser offenses. Like any hyperbole, it risks simply offending the opponents of any ideas -- so rather than teaching people appropriate guidelines for conduct and what constitutes "harassment," you end up alienating people when you say "rape culture," because the vast majority of people (even those who might sometimes harass someone) are not actually rapists... and when asked to combat that, instead of more mild "harassment," they may just ignore the inflammatory rhetoric.
Heck, even the RAINN (the largest US organization dedicated to reducing sexual assault) has explicitly noted the problems of current nomenclature and the improper equivalence created by it (from one of their reports to the White House):
In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming 'rape culture' for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime
Moreover, they argue that this emphasis on the larger culture (and attempts to stop minor behaviors) sometimes actually CONTRIBUTES to sexual violence, since individuals may come to believe that rape is simply a societal "norm" since everyone talks about it so much, rather than a crime committed by rare and specific ind
It's not a typo. A tyopographical error iis a mistaek in typing, typically when tow letters are transposed. You didn't know the phrase "an old chestnut", you had only heard it said, and assumed it was "chess nut". See, it's this sort of lack of rigor that throws one's entire assumptions into question.
I never jump in and say something like this, but will you shut up already?! Your pedantic nonsense is doing nothing to further the discussion, and after a whole bunch of posts, you still haven't offered anything substantive. And besides, your premise here is wrong -- there is a known psychological effect that allows these sorts of errors for homophones and near homophones. When I'm typing fast, I occasionally write stupid things that sound like what I mean, but aren't... that doesn't mean I don't know the correct phrase; it just means I'm writing quickly. GP could have been ignorant, or it could have been a typo.
In either case, stop debating writing style and offer an argument, or shut up please.
> I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it.
The goal of the EU ruling is not to erase the stories from the net. It is simply to make it harder to find
Were you responding to me? If so, note I never claimed the goal was to "erase stories from the net." I simply said that it "won't work," and by that I mean it won't do very well at achieving its goal, which -- as you correctly note -- is to make stuff harder to locate.
The EU is trying to approximate that balance. All the people who complain that it won't "work" are defining the problem wrong. It isn't a situation where black or white will work, but grey might.
See, here's the problem. If TFA works, we basically have a database to find everything people have registered to be "forgotten." As I said, if this site continues to exist, then the EU ruling is ineffective: it only managed to get rid of some search engine links, while also facilitating a system where people who want to do even casual actual background checks know the second place to go. In effect, it makes it easier to find, if someone puts forth just a step beyond the minimal effort.
For people who actually care about finding the details of someone's reputation, the ruling may thus make it easier to find information someone really wants hidden... which seems to be the opposite of the EU goal.
I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.
Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander and lose your career over a lie that is interesting enough to go viral where your vindication isn't and doesn't.
THIS. All of the stories on this decision seem to be focusing on people who are clearly bad or did terrible things in the past.
But our modern news and social media society on the internet archives all sorts of crap that isn't actually true, and never was true. But the salacious headline will always draw attention; the minor blurb on the back page will never be remembered when the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted or everyone just admits that it was a mistake.
(Just to be clear: I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it. But we do have a real problem -- even if 95% of the claims made so far have been by people who committed horrible bad past acts, the real injustice is to the 5% who just got caught up in media attention for something that turned out not to be true, or even nowhere near as horrible as people claimed.)
(Of course, this assumes you never carry a balance on your card... and why would you?)
I'd guess it's because you don't have enough money to get what you need, so you charge it.
Nope -- that's NOT why most people carry a balance on a credit card. They "don't have enough money to get what [they] WANT."
Yes, there are lots of poor people out there in dire straits, but most of them can't even qualify for credit cards, because they don't have reliable income or whatever credit history they have is bad. The people who charge extra on credit cards are typically people who have enough money for what they NEED, but they WANT more stuff faster than they can make money to get it. If they really NEEDED something, there are often ways to take out loans that would give a better interest rate than a credit card, or they could get government assistance or something if it's a basic human need.
The other group of people who carry a balance are the people who usually did pay off their balance in the past, but they've lost a job or had some other unforeseen expense. Most of these people could also have been saving more for a "rainy day," but I have a little more sympathy for them. And there are some for whom the "rainy day" has lasted so long that it depleted a reasonable savings... they should perhaps not be faulted either.
But most people just use credit cards for crap they don't need that they can't afford, but they want it NOW. And I personally think that's a stupid financial decision, because at credit card interest rates, it will cost you more in the long-term than just waiting a little while to save up or just buy something more affordable that will work in the meantime, like responsible adults do.
The U.S. dollar bills last 5.9 years, not "less than a year". I just love Slashdotters who make up bogus facts out of thin air to support their viewpoint. There are 2 $1 bills in my pocket right now. Both were made in 2009, which supports the 5.9 years fact.
Well, I was a little off, but closer than you -- the average lifespan of the dollar bill is about 18 months. I do remember reading something a while back that estimated it to be a little less than a year, but this fact is from the people who make the bills (and thus have to replace them), so I'm tempted to believe them over an AC. I've seen other estimates, but none more than 2 years.
As for your other points, at no point did my post even argue in favor of eliminating dollar bills; I simply pointed out a savings by the government. I was just correcting a previous post that made it sound like the cost of dollar bills didn't have anything to do with him. You think coins are inconvenient? Fine. I never said they weren't. Try a course in reading comprehension before attacking people randomly (and making up your own "bogus facts").
But modern money does rely on the banking system because it has no intrinsic value. Notes are just that - notes from the bank that they owe you X amount of dollars. Coin used to be worth their actual weight in copper, silver or gold (and was thus international) but those days have long gone.
And precisely what is the "intrinsic value" of gold and silver? Copper mostly sells for its market value as a raw material. Gold and silver have huge premiums on their price compared to their actual utility, just like fiat currencies.
Notes and coins only work because people want them to and trust them to, but that could break any time.
All that would need to happen is for you to end up in a situation where "shiny rocks" are not particularly useful, and gold and silver would be worthless too. Just like fiat money, gold and silver "only work because people want them to and trust them to," but that could ALSO break. The only reason to trust them any more is because they have a longer history of made-up fake value ascribed to them.
In real "survival" circumstances, the people who will be able to buy stuff will be those with food, clothing, tools, weapons, etc. Those things have something closer to "intrinsic value," since humans will almost always need them. Gold and silver are just more traditional "fiat" money, and their value is held up by the market, just as any other currency.