Oh why even mention time constraints, we all know damn well it's financial. Every corp on the face of the earth is constantly cost-cutting everything to the bone to justify more bonuses and higher executive compensation, while making sure the service or products provided are just barely good enough where people don't stage outright riots.
In the sixties, the C-suite earned 21 times what the line worker did. In 2024 it's almost 300 times. So every single time you're dealing with a product that's been value-engineered to where it barely functions, or service people paid too little and empowered too little to actually help you, or stuck in a long ass line because they won't hire enough people, or stuck talking to some damn robot because people are expensive, it's beyond a safe bet that you have an executive or several to blame.
We should be spreading our cynicism over both management and customers. There is almost no level of service so terrible that people won't buy cheaper airline tickets. Let alone losing luggage, you could dial up the risk of death and people would still buy the cheaper tickets.
There's also something about the collapse in civility. Or... something. If you asked a plane full of passengers if they'd be happy to get their suitcase 5 minutes earlier even though it meant someone else lost theirs a lot of them would say yes.
I think we can lay the blame for this on the wealthy elites, too. When people see someone better off than them greedily destroying society for their own personal gain, they naturally think "well why not me, too?".
We need shame, really, societal shame that we inflict on those who have to take government benefits, perhaps. Flying an airline that's known to treat their employees like shit should cause the people at the cocktail to look at you strange.
(We kind of have something like this in that shopping at Costco is considered "good" but lots of people won't admit they shop at Walmart - I'm sure they'll be bankrupt soon given how many people don't shop there!)
What I meant is that most people do admit to shopping at Walmart with no embarrassment. Not the same for buying CCC. They still buy it but they know they shouldn't. Shopping at Walmart isn't like that.
Walmart is pretty much the only big discount store available to many people regardless of their income level unless they have personal shoppers picking stuff up for them. I have a nearby Walmart; the nearest Costco is an hour away and it's a different type of product mix anyway. I don't love shopping at Walmart for a number of reasons but it's convenient for many purposes.
Yes, there will always be someone willing to buy on price alone, but that doesn't mean that there aren't also people who will pay more for better service. To wit: Spirit is financially fucked, mainline carriers are in better condition. The existence
I think the real thing is that - in North America at least - there is a pretty good chance that a mainline carrier will treat you poorly, hit you with unexpected fees, jam you into a tiny seat, etc.
For many people, the difference between an ultra-low cost carrier and a mainline carrier is whether they have to walk through first class on the way to their seats. If you are going to get treated like cattle and upsold on everything anyway, might as well save a few bucks.
Given the choice between Singapore Airlines and United, I'll pay extra for SingAir because I KNOW the service will be better. Given the choice between United and Southwest, I'll just get whichever flight makes the most sense since I don't really expect United to offer better service.
> For many people, the difference between an ultra-low cost carrier and a mainline carrier is whether they have to walk through first class on the way to their seats. If you are going to get treated like cattle and upsold on everything anyway, might as well save a few bucks.
That goes beyond airlines and extends to everything. The trend I've been observing in every product and service category is the hollowing out of the middle: the market bifurcates, one part serving the cost-sensitive customers and getting stuck in a race to the bottom, the other serving premium clientele with highest-quality or bespoke goods/services, gravitating towards few customers and "if you have to ask, you can't afford it pricing".
Multiplying volume by margin, "lots of cheap shit" and "few pricey sales" are both sustainable, but the middle segment - "reasonable quality for reasonable price" - is not.
I mean, is that a consequence of people being innately, for it's own sake, cheap to a point of farce? Or is that a consequence of fifty years of stagnant wages?
I'm sure it's a healthy blend of both, but IMO, if you want to see this actually change, the first thing to even make it tenable as a possibility is the owning classes need to let some money flow down the hierarchy. Like I'm sure we'll always have our misers, our people who refuse to spend a penny more for anything, but I think the vast majority of the time what drives people to shitty retailers selling crap-quality products is that most people are fucking broke.
> I mean, is that a consequence of people being innately, for it's own sake, cheap to a point of farce?
Yes.
The price-driven market segment will never disappear and is an emergent property of human nature and the dynamics of a marketplace where prices are instantly comparable.
Plane tickets are way more affordable for nearly everyone than they used to be, but price competition is more savage than ever. The marketplace has spoken.
While I agree that concentration of wealth at the top is a major problem, I don't think that shaking loose that wealth will change the price dynamics of the airline industry in the slightest.
Well not every one on the face of this earth as that’s where Kansai airport is located. It happens a lot in America and other places too but not everywhere
> Merchant reports instances of broken and smashed Flock cameras in La Mesa, California, just weeks after the city council approved the continuation of Flock cameras deployed in the city, despite a clear majority of attendees favoring their shutdown.
I'm still astonished how poorly optimized the YouTube app is/has always been on Apple TV. It's fucking wild how slow they can make it move about a bunch of rectangular icons, the same unit that can run honest to goodness videogames (if simple ones).
Though I suppose my XBox Series X can run Halo Infinite at 4K/60hz (with a ton of asterisks) and still chokes on the main menu which is also coincidentally a bunch of rectangles.
Huh, that's strange, the YouTube TV app is for us one of the more performant ones, although the UX leaves a lot to be desired. But at least when you move right/down/left/up it does so within 50-100ms, whereas with Amazon's app it sometimes take almost a whole second for the focus on actually move around.
Really it's the only Apple TV app that I regularly have issues with! Sometimes it opens to just a blank gray screen, sometimes you start a video and sits there waiting to start endlessly and doesn't play anything, sometimes it won't send the audio to connected Homepods for mysterious reasons, and even when it works it is so unbelievably slow.
The Nebula app also isn't great, but at least it functions, even if it too is slower that molasses in January.
I think I've once had it freeze and I had to restart the device - but when it is working it is quite snappy. I don't even think its the device - we upgraded from quite an old Apple TV model to a new one and it was equally usable on both.
Catholics have more then just one book. They have whole libraries of theology and tradition way larger then just a bible. And large lists of saints to refer to.
Evangelical would be closer to one book thing, altrought it would still ve a stretch.
^ This. The Feds are so utterly gridlocked in culture war nonsense and whatever dumb bullshit Trump is up to that they cannot effectively govern. States and activists groups are trying to address actual problems the country has, instead of just playing political games on Twitter.
To be fair, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group was murdered with a 3D-printed handgun. He made $10 million in 2023, or about 100 times the median salary of a UnitedHealth employee.
This bill is performative legislature not because of pipes and nails, but because professionally manufactured guns are widespread in the US. Criminals in the US overwhelmingly choose this option.
Criminals have tons of options, including straw purchasing a CA compliant gun, straw purchasing a non-CA-compliant gun from Nevada, or just throwing a brick through the window of the nearest pickup truck with a Glock sticker on it.
I know no such thing. The number one type of gun death is by far, suicide. When a gun owner takes a gun home (or in this case, prints one) statistically speaking they are more likely to use it to end their own lives or harm themselves more than anything else.
You could make a similar case for this as was made for the banning of highly toxic coal gas in the UK in the 1960's. Most suicides are acts of distressed individuals who have quick, easy access to means of ending their own lives. The forced changeover from coal gas to natural gas is largely credited with a reduction of suicide by 40% after it was done. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/
I don't think 3d printed guns have been around long enough to really provide meaningful data on whether this law will be effective, and on the whole, I'm not thrilled about it. But again, as was originally commented: this is an issue where states are, perhaps ineffectively and ineptly, attempting to solve what they see as problems, under a federal government that has shown itself incredibly resistant to common sense gun regulation that virtually everyone, including the gun owning community, thinks is a good idea.
> The forced changeover from coal gas to natural gas is largely credited with a reduction of suicide by 40% after it was done.
The mechanism of that reduction very well could be reducing the level of depression in the populace and thus suicidal ideation, rather than just making the means less handy (or of course, some combination). Coal gas, like any other gas used for combustion, doesn't burn perfectly and UK homes likely had persistent amounts of carbon monoxide roughly all the time since heat gets used not-quite-year-round.
> What historical precedent is there for infringement of Constitutionally-enumerated rights of others based on suicides?
There is no requirement that a precedent exist for limiting personal freedoms for the sake of safety. We infringe personal rights in the name of public safety all the time, not the least of which is current, existing gun regulations, all the way down to far more benign shit like speed limits, and not letting people scream "fire" in a theater. The 2nd Amendment was itself a modification to the constitution, ratified some time after the constitution itself. Hence the "amendment" part.
And as numerous gun activists have pointed out before me: The individual ownership interpretation goes only back to the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, and is not itself law, merely judicial precedent. The right for every single American to own a gun is not enshrined in any law, merely an interpretation of a law, and the law itself was written in an era of single‑shot, muzzle‑loading firearms, not modern semiautomatic rifles, and further, it was written to promote the creation of, and I quote, "well-regulated Militas," not "Ted up the street who owns the gas station."
Further, even if it was spelled out, in the 2nd Amendment, in clear words, that every single American had the innate right to buy and use an AR15, that does not make it unimpeachable or forever carved in stone: We can change that. We can amend the amendment, hell, we could reverse it entirely. The problem of gun violence is a hard nut to crack, and the culture of American gun ownership is long standing and on the whole I myself quite like guns. That said, I think they're far too easy to get right now, and I am far from alone in that opinion.
The "fire in a crowded theater" line is by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenck v United States.[1] During the first World War, he ruled that it was constitutional to send socialists to prison for distributing leaflets that protested the draft.
The judicial precedent set in that case was overturned in Brandenburg v Ohio.[2]
As far as I understand it, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater has not actually been legally tested. This was a non-binding analogy used in the decision of a supreme court case that found it was not a violation of the 2nd amendment to prosecute someone for speaking out against the draft (which was later overturned for obvious reasons).
The fact that the federal government is unwilling to restrict guns and other real causes of ongoing public health crises (such as massive passenger cars and trucks) even as the deaths pile up does not mean that any level of government should be piling onerous regulations onto other things that demonstrably cause essentially zero harm at the macro scale, such as 3D printers, non-commercial/non-military UAVs, and so on.
If the number of people killing themselves with 3D printed guns is not literally zero or vanishingly small at most, I would be very surprised.
Can confirm the utter hell it is to shop for women's clothing. I started transitioning at the ripe old age of 36, and up until that point, have obviously bought clothes for men. My entire fucking life I have bought XL shirts and jeans with a 38-44 inch waist, shorter legs. Never had an issue.
Womens sizes... like Jesus Christ, I don't know how ANY women tolerate this shit. It's completely made up. A size 0 in one brand feels similar to a size 3 in another, feels similar to Large in another, feels similar to -1 in another. Anything you buy and like, you effectively have to pray they keep making forever, and always buy from that brand or you risk getting something else that doesn't fit correctly.
I've never shopped a product category that feels so utterly hostile to consumer comprehension, except MAYBE microtransactions in videogames. And I'm not meaning to be dramatic, that's the only other type of market I've experienced in life where it feels like my attempts to understand what I'm buying are being deliberately frustrated like this.
It's intentional, to force you to engage a salesperson, and that salesperson knows all the jargon and unnecessary variations and how to size clothing that fits you. Once you have a positive transaction like that, it gives the company the opportunity to get a very loyal customer out of you, and it's the more pricey and "exclusive" brands. 100% emotional manipulation - they piss you off on purpose so they can seem like a hero and set you up with clothing that feels and looks good, but the specific fit will only match their numbers, and maybe even only their numbers for that season. How about ensuring that you can match someone who wears XL with an L right after holiday season, or hit them with an XL in the fall to set them up for a change during the holidays, etc.
The schemes are ruthless and never end, and it's all arbitrary fashion. In some ways, it's a lot easier being a guy.
As a trans woman who started transitioning at 43... I agree 100%.
This article mostly discusses waist size, for which I'm in the lower quartile. But after 40 years of testosterone poisoning my underbust is above the median. Finding clothing that fits and is flattering is really difficult!
Obviously it's going to be even more difficult for males to find women's clothing that fits them adequately, as they are designed with the female body in mind.
Maybe there are special clothing shops for transvestites that would provide a better fitting product?
Also, if it actually worked, Tesla's marketing would literally never shut up about it because they have a working fully self-driving car. That would be the first, second, and third bullet point in all their marketing, and they would be right to do that. It's an incredible feature differentiator from all their competition.
More importantly, we would have independent researchers looking at the data and commenting. I know this data exists, but I've never seen anyone who has the data and ability to understand it who doesn't also have a conflict of interest.
> For example, in one project, PRs have to be submitted to the "next" branch and not the default branch. This is written in the CONTRIBUTING.md file, which is linked in the PR template, with the mention that PRs that don't respect that will be close. Most if not all submitters of low-quality PRs don't do anything once their initial PR is closed.
Few things in life are as reliable and trustworthy as the laziness of others.
It's just the same community of people who believe they are unable/it is beneath them to acquire skills because of some impending super-automation that will let them do everything great that they have envisioned but have previously been stifled by the aforementioned lack of skills moving from one hype-bubble to the next.
And, you know, if it was actually mobilized to find lost puppies, I'd be all for that shit. But that's not what it's for. It's for helping cops find poor people, or ICE find Mexicans, or whatever bullshit is making the headlines in 4 weeks.
FWIW, I don't like being a tech downer/skeptic, but every fucking thing is like this now. Every social media is being turned into surveillance. Every cloud-based application, no matter how useful, is bending over so the state can shove it's hand up it's ass and turn it into yet another way for the Christofascists to shove their bullshit into my life. I'm fucking tired, y'all. I'm tired of finding something cool and interesting, and then needing to audit the entire backend to see if my friends and I are endangering ourselves by engaging with it. I'm tired of seeing something fucking useful, a goddamn video doorbell, and being like "oh that's pretty fucking nice!" and then having to box it up years on because the company that built it is going to turn my porch into a node in the nationwide Good Citizen network.
And it's asymmetric because they seemingly NEVER get tired. There's just a whole like 1/3 of the population out there that seemingly never even sleeps, they're just constantly trying to figure out how to make my life just slightly fucking worse, either for profit or to advance their weird evangelical agenda.
I'm so, so, profoundly sick of these freaks.
Edit: And please just SPARE ME the both sides horseshit. Yeah both sides have problems, but one side is fucking dragging us back to 16th century social politics, and THEY'RE the ones I'm sick more of.
I don't see Ring as a politics problem, I see it as a policy problem. Just because something is legal in the federated, ad hoc instance doesn't mean it is advisable to systematize.
Preemptively, the exact sort of "BUT BIDEN BAD" horseshit occurring elsewhere in the thread. And again, yes, Biden bad. Biden is an inept old man who was far out of his depth, who failed, completely, to hold anyone accountable for the atrocity against the Republic that was January 6th. But again, he, and to be sure, the Democrats as a whole, failed that, and whilst that is true, the other side is currently ushering in the end of American global influence and they're going to make it so no American citizen will EVER be able to own ANYTHING EVER AGAIN. So I am simply not entertaining this "both sides" horseshit anymore.
Both sides DO have problems. One has distinctly WAY more fucking problems, and also, WAY more fucking power. If pointing out this obvious fucking reality makes me partisan, or biased, whatever. Partisan I am.
If I'm to be marched into a meat grinder I at least reserve the right to tell the people doing it to me they fucking suck.
It's not a partisan issue. From leftist utopias to god-fearing Texan ranch lands, the police are abusing power and harassing innocent people. Trying to bring religion and partisanship (in one word, even) doesn't help your message.
I'm sorry I'm having a hard time remembering the role leftists are playing in the US right now what with the Executive, Congressional and Judicial branches all being stacked to the tits with Republicans, right up to the top with our dementia-addled conman of a president, sleepily signing into law the policies that will see us excised as the center of world economics.
One was much further gone and the people talking about Trump now were silent about it. Biden barely appeared for months at a time, and even then stage managed heavily, and it still went wrong, and Trump is constantly on camera often ad libbing. Not saying he's great at ad libbing, but they couldn't be more different in terms of communication performance.
are the christofascists in the room with us? you don't think marxists use this technology for nefarious means? chinese social credit must be a myth.
the both sides thing is right, you dont remember the lockdowns over a cold, mandated behavioral changes, and countries sending people to "isolation camps" and pressing digital id?
yeah tho its just the "christofascists" huh?
you people only care when illegal invaders get targeted. your outrage is performative.
In the sixties, the C-suite earned 21 times what the line worker did. In 2024 it's almost 300 times. So every single time you're dealing with a product that's been value-engineered to where it barely functions, or service people paid too little and empowered too little to actually help you, or stuck in a long ass line because they won't hire enough people, or stuck talking to some damn robot because people are expensive, it's beyond a safe bet that you have an executive or several to blame.
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