Purdue pharma followed strict manufacturing and purity standards to produce a drug that killed more Americans than the Viet Cong and Al Qaeda combined.

Can we say that the American healthcare industry really protects it’s customers from harm any better than the cartels?

Penis size is 99% male insecurity and 1% female preference.

The problem with Windows ‘debloat’ scripts is that they monkey with esoteric gedit policies and registry tweaks.

Any Windows update, even security ones, can break the tweaks, cause bugs, or even instability. And naturally the users have no idea which of the tweaks is causing the problem. Especially when its been months since you used the scripts.

Now “deep customization” can break Linux too. The difference is that Linux developers are not going break your tweaks on purpose. For example, Windows recently closed some of the workarounds to install Windows on a local account.

Microsoft decides what users can do with Windows. Company officials have admitted that they’re already coding the OS with AI, and that future Windows versions are going to be AI powered. The Recall behavior of taking screenshots to be analyzed by AI to catalogue everything you do isn’t being developed as a Windows feature, but a core functionality of the OS.

What kind of mouse are you using anyway?

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

-Marx

The big tech boys are all founded on explosive wealth created by innovative technology. And they’re all obsessed with recreating that. Capitalism demands constant growth.

So they’re always in rabid competition to grow and expand while also looking for a new market to exploit.

It’s also why Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet have all been the biggest suckers for AI hype. It would be funny if they hadn’t pushed the entire US economy closer to the precipice.

The police will often inform you of warrants and arrange a time for you to surrender. These perks and more, come bundled with the Founders tier of American Justice.

I reject the idea that there is a correct way to read the Bible or worship Jesus. I certainly prefer liberation theology to prosperity Gospel, but I cannot say that one is doing Christianity better than the other.

I used to be Christian and I had all kinds of ideas about what was correct Christianity. I abandoned all that when I realized that those conceptions were much more about me than they were about Jesus or the Bible.

And I think that’s true of the practicing faithful. Some are good, some are wicked, but the difference isn’t in how they read the Bible, it’s who is reading the Bible.

I had to switch to Linux because it wasn’t presented with any option besides Microsoft when I learned how to computer.

The problem with human rights is that they function as the justification for State violence. “We’re arresting you to protect property rights”. “We’re invading you to free your people from oppression”. I can’t think of a modern conflict that doesn’t have a “human rights” casus belli.

Even your comment follows the form: I can suspend human rights to protect human rights.

The lowest form of argument is semantics.

Palingenetic means rebirth or renewal. The Italian fascists claimed that they would return to the glory of Rome. Hitler’s “Third Reich” implies a return to the first two great periods of German history under Frederick the Great and Bismark.

So fascists are ultranationalists who promise a return to greatness. This definition is unsatisfying because while these characteristics are universal to fascists, they’re not sufficient to describe any particular version of fascism.

Firefighters and EMTs get a little extra glorification to make up for their salaries.

Joking about suicide is a red flag. As in an indication that something might be wrong. It can indicate that suicide is something that’s on their mind often.

I would avoid these jokes in a professional setting because loosing someone to suicide is common and you’re likely to crack a joke in front of someone who will not appreciate it.

In my opinion, bigotry is more like a cognitive bias than a wrong idea. That is it’s extremely difficult to get that stuff out of your head, and the effective strategy is to acknowledge that you’ve got bias and try to correct for it.

I feel like it’s OK to demonize narcissism in ways that would be unacceptable ableism if you were talking about other neurodivergents or personality disorders.

It’s just as blanket and vague as calling someone an asshole.

It’s become such a pop-psych phenomena, I think it’s time for clinical people to abandon the term to pop culture. When a diagnosis becomes a common insult, it’s time for a new term.

Some seem confused so: There was no organized effort to selectively breed enslaved people. While the slavers did get to decide who would have children with whom. And they no doubt chose individuals with “desirable” characteristics. This isn’t the kind of multi-generational project that could possibly hope to select for traits.

The brutality of slavery may have had some selective pressure, but that was unintentional.

I think of analog time as kinda a pie chart telling me how much of the minute and hour that’s elapsed. So I don’t see 13:45, I see 75% past one o’clock.

Does that make sense?

You should know the difference between dejure and defacto.

I don’t want to alarm anyone from outside the US, but the pigs are pretty loose about how the rules apply to themselves.

Boy, you’ve obviously never seen Precious (2009)