I just had a heartless thought that I sort of have mixed emotions about.
If the warranty on my car can be cancelled because I never do preventative maintenance, why does my insurance premium keep going up to defray the cost of people who won’t engage in preventative medicine?
Kluwe has also written a few books. The Prime book was a great read by paperback sci-fi standards.
On the one hand, a tragedy his career was cut short. On the other, I’m glad he got got spared from that meat grinder, and has a bit of a platform to speak out.
Well as a red-blooded, corn-fed American who grew up loving the 4th of July almost as much as Christmas, I want you to know that I came into this comment section to say that the U.S. should get fucked.
I don’t know what you silly foreigners with your mostly competent leadership, thriving social safety nets, successful education systems, and consumer protection laws are doing, but once again you’ve proven amurican exceptionalism, because I have already reached the point at which I think our government and meddlesome oligarchs should fuck off.
We’re number 1, baby! Yeehaw!
(In preventable deaths, incarceration rates, and maternal mortality rates, and pretty close on poverty and murder rates amongst OECD nations.)
Someone commented here yesterday that just as NAFTA allowed manufacturers to export jobs and find reasoning to squeeze blue collar workers, creating a general shift to white-collar work in the U.S., this move is designed to squeeze those higher paying white-collar jobs, so that even more money goes into corporate and investor coffers.
My own addition to that thought is that it seems the natural end product is that the only way to make money once that system has done it’s evil deeds is to have money and be a member of the investor class.
Or, in other words - they aim to do to all of the U.S. what Walmart did to small towns across the U.S.
Without a care in the world, obviously. I think the people wealthy enough to not be impacted by this will thrive on exploitation until the U.S. economy is sucked dry to the point of unsustainability for their grift (or revolution occurs), then, like the parasites they are, will take their grotesque wealth and move onto other economies they can exploit.
One of the things I’ve learned is that folks struggle with satire that is ironic or bitter rather than outright foolish. It’s like there’s a blind spot for ironic double speak.
It’s about 60/40 on whether someone is going to come along, miss the subtext, and lead a charge against your tone without actually giving your words a second thought or whether someone is going to offer support for or explain your statement.
Once that first response casts the die, you’re just along for the ride. No one else can see any perspective but that first interpretation.
My girlfriend asked why I carry a gun around the house?
I looked her dead in the eye and said, "the motherfucking decepticons". She laughed, I laughed, the toaster laughed, I shot the toaster, it was a good time.
…. I don’t know. It’s just what came to mind when I thought of household appliances being hijacked.
I did a quick search, so I’m basically an expert now. imaginary hair flip
So, some flashlights have multiple brightness modes. I guess that’s controlled via a tiny, low power microprocessor.
And if it’s a computer, it can be hacked!
So the firmware does things, depending on the capabilities of the hardware in the flashlight, but you can set it to override defaults for brightness, change how many levels of brightness you have, add (or remove) a blinky SOS mode, sleep timers in case it’s accidentally left on, and even add a way to check the battery percentage via a button press pattern, that the flashlight responds to with a series of blinks.
No lie, kind of fascinating stuff. I like to hack other stuff, like smart appliances (replacing firmware so it doesn’t share my data, but I still get to use it as a smart device). I don’t think I would be into talking to my flashlight via Morse code, but I can see the appeal as both a hobby, and for folks who need flashlights as safety equipment.
Formally: Jeb!
Informally: Jebland
Dialectical variant of English: Jeblish
Collective name for the people of Jebland: Jebanese
I’m kidding of course. We all know the process to rename the U.S. would be taken over by the wealthy and we’d wind up named HCH (Human Capital Holdings), LLC, a shell corporation/nation that is jointly owned by Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street.
I went through a rough patch awhile back that saw a lot of “yes”’s to things just to keep myself from being still enough to let my thoughts catch up to me.
A friend invited me out one Tuesday night, to a bar within walking distance of our apartments. We got a table on the patio and got deep in our cups late into the night. The vibe had gradually shifted (they put on better music and it felt like the bar slowed down – it relaxed) and I realized something – last call was an hour and a half ago. But drinks had kept flowing - just reappearing while we chatted with the crowd (that was drinking and getting high on the patio) clustered around us. But there was no crowd outside of our group. In fact, all the patrons had gone, and we were apparently just partying with the bar staff, getting to know their life stories. After a spell, I got self conscious and moved to leave. I tried to pay, and they just waved me off.
It was honestly kind of a magical experience. I never did food service or bar work (I chose the retail/manual labor early career skill tree). It felt like a forbidden peek into their lives.
There’s a checklist. It has 4 boxes.