You could argue that, but are these personal benefits not just checks from lobbyists? And does this power not come largely from the leverage they gain expanding their influence in order to justify bigger checks?

I remember writing a comment about invasive advertising by Instagram. Just shared some anecdotes about how a few extremely specific conversation topics soon became the topic for the ads I was seeing on Instagram, and pointed out that if they were in fact using background conversation to target ads, it would be extremely easy to automate with the voice recognition technology available at the time, so why would they ignore the opportunity if targeted ads are their main source of revenue?

It became one of my most down voted comments at the time, and I had about twice as many replies as downvotes, claiming all kinds of wild or easily disproven shit to disprove the idea that Instagram used such tactics. Was very fishy

I can practically guarantee that people who say they hate tea haven't tried brewing any kind of loose leaf tea at the proper temp and time.

I got a 1kg brick of the cheapest loose-leaf black tea I could find for ~$3.50, and it's delicious. I drink it almost every day, I bought it in June last year, and I'm just now running low. I brewed a bag lipton black tea at work recently, took one sip and I dumped it the fuck out. Absolutely foul, that stuff.

So I can see why people hate tea if they've only ever tried cheap bags with boiling water

Huh, we had 7 for our school district (one for each branch, and I think the army and navy had two), but my high school alone did have just under 3000 kids.

We had all 7 of these guys (and one woman) going from class to class every day for a month giving four 90-minute presentations per day to pander and force-feed each individual classroom of ~30-50 students a glorified recruitment ad. They even set up one of the portable classrooms as a recruitment office for that month.

I'm curious, did the recruiters hand out forms to kids under 18 that required parent/guardian signatures?

I'm asking because ours did, and I could swear that these forms were a sort of pre-enlistment contract that needed parent/guardian signature in order to waive the 18+ requirement for agreeing to enlist. So although we wouldn't actually be enlisted until we turned 18, we could agree to enlist beforehand with a parent's signature. But, as strong as that memory is, I still can't help but doubt myself because of how insane and illegal that all sounds.

Strange, I can't see your comment. Maybe something is wrong with your account?

What a disgusting video.

Greedy, manipulative, despicable behaviour like this is why I take no issue with people who just repair their broken things by ordering a new one on amazon and sending the broken one as a return for a full refund. I'm not sure how a person could even feel remorse while pissing in the face of a company pushing shit like this into their employee's faces.

A surprising amount of people I know like to upgrade their graphics cards this way, returning their old card in the new box, getting free cutting-edge upgrades as soon as they become available on amazon's dime. Seems to have worked pretty well for them over the years 🤷

Lots of people still think that introverts hate social interactions, or feel better without any social interactions at all, but we do need to be social. Some people get dogs or cats and that helps them a lot. But lots of introverted people will tend to find some way to mask the loneliness by distracting themselves that requires a lot of attention, or occupying themselves with something that emulates social interaction. Playing a game while watching twitch streams of that game can fill both of those roles, listening to the streamer and reading chat periodically. That can work in a pinch, but it's not a real solution. And I don't have a real solution, aside from "find your balance", but I know that's not helpful.

I can suggest something that I found to be a more effective distraction, though. And it even could lead to the first steps to a solution to introvert loneliness if you're lucky. You can try going to a local bar/pub on a slow day. It helps if you drink alcohol, but you really don't have to. And of course if there's a history of alcoholism in your family, you should definitely avoid the alcohol. Make sure to sit at the bar, because a lot of bartenders will start up conversation with lone patrons in their down-time, and the same goes for drunk people getting up to buy another drink, so you don't have to initiate if you don't want to. You can end up having a few interesting conversations in a night (or sometimes none at all), and go home either feeling good about going out on your own free will (I.E. Not being forced into a social situation), or exhausted from any overbearing social interactions and therefore a bit more content with going back to spending time by yourself for a while.

This helped me before I made a couple of friends (who I met at the pub) while living alone in a new city, after my distractions got stale. I say it's worth a try, but everyone is different.

It was hard to initiate that first trip to the bar though, it felt very, very weird. But halfway through my second beer, I felt mostly content with even just listening passively to background conversation. By the time I ordered the 3rd, the bartender had initiated conversation, and before I knew it that feeling of loneliness was gone. It's important to keep moderation in mind though, I could see that being very effective in catalysing a drinking problem. I did this 2-3 times per month, and that was just enough for me.

So ymmv, but it helped me a lot.

Came here to say something similar about touchscreens on phones. It's probably the most impactful innovation they've had, and ever will have imo. I can't ethically support Apple as a company and I haven't owned an apple product since the first iPod touch, but they absolutely deserve credit for this one.

Even if they didn't invent the touch screen, or even the touchscreen phone, they certainly figured out how to perfectly integrate touchscreens into mobile devices a fluid and intuitive user interface which served as a canvas on which to build pretty much anything you wanted in the form of a mobile app (a $200B+ industry which the iPhone absolutely catalysed the explosive growth of).

It arguably even began a significant change in the course of modern human interaction, due to how much more versatile and therefore more commonly used mobile phones with a similar UI basis became since then; because of that, increasingly popular social media platforms now had a new way to provide use for their platform (via mobile apps) on a device that pretty much everyone now had with them all the time. I don't think it's coincidence that social media use saw such substantially explosive growth soon after the iPhone and subsequent "copycats" were on the market.

So their innovation here was really the first step in a number of global paradigm shifts. It was just such a monumentally impactful step forward. Because of this I genuinely think that the iPhone is almost guaranteed to be in history books for centuries, like the printing press or the light bulb.

You can always pirate it. I mean you DID buy it so it's not "stealing" if you're playing a cracked version that only thinks you're online at all times

And even it is "stealing", fuck 'em 🤷

Same. I was a cook in a casino restaurant (bear with me), and when I applied for the job the head chef asked me "can you pass a drug test?" I said "oh yeah, I don't do any dr-", he interrupts me to say "I didn't ask if you do any drugs, I asked if you can pass a drug test. Yes or no?"

Well, turns out 2 line cooks had heroin problems, the head chef, sous chef, and morning lead chef were functioning alcoholics, one general manager was coked out of his fucking mind 24/7 until the last few days before payday, the other was taking about 3x as much xanax as anyone should, and the wait staff smoked approximately as much as Snoop Dogg.

Needless to say, that place was the definition of a runaway clusterfuck. Much of their problems were caused by the rampant drug use amongst the employees that could have been prevented if they were a little more thorough with the drug tests, rather than literally giving me the pee cup to take home and bring back later.

I still remember the first phishing website I ever accidentally visited, rnyspace.com

I'm certain it is. I sent an objection/data deletion request, and their "privacy info" pages are absolutely in violation of GDPR, because their forms are NOT reasonably accessible. I needed to use 3 separate mobile browsers and my desktop. When you finally get to the form, they ask some basic info, and the box where you're supposed to make a request ends by asking something like "what rights do you believe are being violated, and why?". The fucking gall on these cunts.

I planned on dropping some links, but they all have hard-coded non-functional redirects, which is intentional and absolutely infuriating. The redirects either just break like this one, which is suppose to be the one that contains a link to the form:

https://help.instagram.com/contact/117037592428568

Or they take you somewhere barely related, like this one which was the hidden start page for the form:

https://m.facebook.com/help/1221288724572426?wtsid=rdr_0bxiU4jakSVimlO8y

Or maybe it was this one? I can't remember, because it doesn't fucking take me to the page I saved the url for:

https://m.facebook.com/help/238318146535333?wtsid=rdr_0LKGtSJZTQyEH3R9N

Anyway, I'm mad if that's not obvious. If you happen to find the form, you can try opting out. I haven't heard back yet. Here's the thorough and crystal fucking clear message I wrote, feel free to copy/share it:

The rights granted to me as a resident of an EEA country and a citizen of an EU member state, which are outlined in the GDPR, would be violated if Meta is non-compliant to my requests and objections. I've noted the exact sections within the GDPR outlining my rights, just before each pertaining request/objection, to explain why I believe my rights and freedoms are impacted by the data processing (although, I should not need to explain why).

I am exercising my right to object outlined in GDPR Article 21 Sections 1, 2, and 6:

I object to the processing and collection of my personal data for direct marketing, and request that no further collection or processing of my personal data is carried out.

I am also exercising my right to erasure outlined in GDPR Article 17 Section 1 (b) and (c):

I request that all of my collected and/or processed personal data be erased.

I am also exercising my right of access outlined in GDPR Article 15 Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, and Section 4:

I request a full copy of my processed personal data, as well as any relevant details listed in each subsection of GDPR Article 15 Section 1.

If any of my personal data is stored under an email address other than the ones currently or previously associated with my account, then I will need the preceding requests and objections to be carried out for the personal data generated under each of the following: [all email addresses I've used anywhere in the past 20 years].