I know that the name of the fallacy comes from an example, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a scotsman invoke “No True Scotsman”. I’ve heard countless Americans invoke it though, and one side does it far more than the other.

That paranoia came about when crime documentaries got big on TV (and now internet) rather than a consistent increase in abductions. People are really bad at reasoning with probability and undoing attentional bias from media, so they even think it can be likely kids would be abducted if left alone.

This is why 24/7 location tracking on kid’s phones is completely normalized. Sure, it’s not a bad thing to take precautions, but tracking your kids like a dog seems a bit much. And I’m sure a lot of parents misuse it for a lot less serious things (eg teens being at the mall unsupervised).

I may be biased from seeing what I see in my state, lol. Families have to beg them to stop driving after they crash into a building, no political will exists to change things. There’s more states than I thought that require additional driving exams, at least in certain circumstances.

Not to mention, I’m pretty sure if they started debiting accounts arbitrarily and en masse, there would be a nationwide bank run and an apocalyptic economic crash. I’m not sure they’d want to wage nuclear war on the US economy. At least not yet.

In the US, it seems supporting policies that make the elderly retake the driving exam is complete political suicide. There is a good reason for it and it would keep people safe, but there’s no chance of it happening while the population that mostly votes is old.

It’s never really “infinite” in practice. What it really means is that the amount you can lose isn’t bound by the money you put into the trade. If you buy a stock normally, you can only lose up to the amount of money you used to buy it. With shorting, you can lose 5x, 10x, 20x the amount of money if things go wrong for you.

The amount of underpaid/unpaid overtime I’ve heard of is terrible. At this point I will always ask if someone gets paid 1.5x if they’re hourly working overtime, or if they’re classed as salary exempt from OT pay. The former is blatantly illegal yet still happens often enough, while the latter can be legal but is usually taken advantage of with no compensated days.

Agreed, the beginning of the end of involuntary-only censorship happened when Tiktok got popular. The older generations try to find the limits of allowable content on platforms (within reason) but the younger ones effectively self-castrate everything they post everywhere. And it’s because one app owned by a Chinese company is a bit strict about it. It’s disappointing.

In theory it’s supposed to be unconstitutional to use FLIR on a house without a warrant to find evidence. In practice though, I’m sure they can easily ruin someone’s life for a while based off of “heat signatures”. This isn’t even mentioning what they could get away with if the Feds are involved. Who even knows anymore?

I truly don’t know either way, but it would be laughable of them if the only thing that blocks unregistered users from loading more content is a pop-up. I’ve gotten through forced pop-ups with uBlock’s block element tool in the past.

I’d imagine it’s far more difficult (and possibly illegal) to forcibly gain access to a website that denies access until you log in or register. Maybe there could be an extension that creates throwaway accounts for you to use, but I’m not aware of any myself.

I wonder if it’s possible to register a VOIP number for free and use it for Facebook. I haven’t tried it myself.

Pocket lint + port with no cover = clogged ports that chargers can’t plug into all the way. It’s very common.

I almost completely ruined the charge port on my last phone by digging out lint and scratching the contacts. I don’t use cases without port covers anymore.

I usually tend to see that 2019 was the best year in recent memory for many people online in general (lockdowns marked the start of “worse times”). Not to say that no one would have a reason to hate that year though.

4.7 million sounds like a typo honestly. 47 million would make more sense considering that many people need their own PC to do freelance work.

I’m doubting that many people will suddenly see the benefits of PCs over phones and tablets in order for these numbers to blow up, but I could be wrong. It seems that mobile devices fill that need for most people and it’s been that way for a while. Given the tariffs though, it may be a comparatively better time to get a PC for gaming than an Xbox or PS and that could bring the numbers up.

Maybe you’re technically and logically correct (I don’t know enough to say) but they could and would still arrest them regardless and there’s not much that can be done about that. A private citizen that’s stateless is de-facto defenseless against the government while a diplomat is backed by an entire government.

The UN is supposed to help prevent citizens from being rendered stateless as well, but it happens in smaller countries regardless. If the US does it, unfortunately I don’t see the UN doing enough to stop it.

Lol I remember eMachines. Integrated graphics on a desktop tower and the thing sounded like a leafblower under load. Also I believe it wouldn’t support a dedicated GPU either.

Reddit used to really drive me nuts, in the work-related subreddits, where everyone used to say, “Your co-workers are not your friends.”

Reddit is full of the asocial “leave me alone” types (or at least used to be) that make every excuse to not to socialize with others. Taking their advice to heart is an easy way to become a miserable person. There’s lots of nuance between “set up barriers in front of everyone” and “share every detail” and they seem to lack that.

this means that you get more economic growth by giving those rich people more money to spend, not by lifting up the other 90%.

This is probably true for industries like fashion, but I disagree with this point applying in general. There is only so much food, gasoline, and paper products an individual is willing to buy, no matter how rich.

The restaurant industry, for example, would collapse as we know it if most non-wealthy people suddenly don’t have any extra income to spend on prepared food. They need velocity in orders just to remain open at all. I doubt most places could remain open off of a few rich people buying a lot.

This isn’t to say that they won’t stop extracting more from the lower earners. Many of them would be fine killing off industry if it makes themselves richer. I personally think all of it’s a short-sighted cash grab that’s gonna keep poisoning the economy until something changes.