Here is Google showing blatant malicious compliance to their own standards. “You want security notifications for payments made through your account? Have a side of ads with that”. They’ve fallen real low since the days of “do no harm” 😞
It is there but almost as a quote… It’s at the end and it just says “and remember, don’t be evil!”. It’s not part of the actual code, so I guess it’s just for show and nostalgia.
It’s literally there as it was previously. They removed it at the start to say “do the right thing” instead, but don’t be evil is there too. It was a drummed up controversy over nothing.
There should be a legal requirement to call a targeted advertisement a targeted advertisement. Being allowed to call them “recommendations” only makes these assholes feel emboldened to push ads where people wouldn’t normally accept them. Microsoft is pulling that dirty trick as well.
If they include call volume data back to the Neolithic period in their calculations, then yes, call volumes are higher than average (the average being 0.001 calls per century, rounding up).
It’s even simpler. A strictly increasing series will always have element n be higher than the average between any element<n and element n.
Or in other words, if the number of calls is increasing every day, it will always be above average no matter the window used. If you use slightly larger windows you can even have some local decreases and have it still be true, as long as the overall trend is increasing (which you’ve demonstrated the extreme case of).
Yeah it’s fun seeing people figuring out which loophole companies use. Is it really anything other than they save a tiny bit of money by not giving a shit about your experience.
Eh, nothing I did was “figuring out which loophole [they] use”. I’d think most people in this thread talking about the mathematics that could make it a true statement are fully aware that the companies are not using any loophole and just say “above average” to save face. It’s simply a nice brain teaser to some people (myself included) to figure out under which circumstances the statement could be always true.
Also if you wanna be really pedantic, the math is not about the companies, but a debunking of the original Tweet which confidently yet incorrectly says that this statement couldn’t be always true.
The IRS ain’t sending an agent to you specifically unless you’ve done something well beyond the pale of what can just be excused as a mix-up or simple misunderstanding
You gotta be in a whole different kinda space for the tax man to be someone you gotta personally interact with.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Fun fact, every capitalist dreams of taxing others for no reason, only they call it rent or subscription and won’t always deliver their end of the bargain.
There are so many times a libertarian has told me their libertarian way of doing things and I say to them that it sounds to me like they’re talking about taxation with extra steps and bigger threats and it’s always “no no no, but see you don’t have to pay for the fire department to come to your house, but no one will insure your house and it will be worthless…”
Well, sure hope you haven’t done a lot of existing in public lately, because damn near everything out there has my tax dollars in it, and I’d appreciate you not abusing them. Get off my roads, get out of my schools, get out of my parks, unless you’re paying into them.
Also, keep an eye out for the nice men knocking at the door. They’ll be there soon with some questions, I’m sure.
Let’s simplify and say that there are peak hours and low hours. 100 people call during a peak hour, and 25 during a low hour. The chance of calling during a peak hour is 80%, since you are four times as likely to be one of the 100 rather than one of the 25.
The same effect means that you are almost always on planes and trains that are very full, even though every now and then they ride almost empty. Fewer people get to experience empty train rides by definition.
Of course this effect falls apart when your usage patterns differ from everybody else’s. If everybody takes the train at rush hour, you might ride an empty one at noon. Or, if you call the hotline while everybody else is sleeping, you might have a better chance.
But yeah companies also just lie to make themselves look better lol
If that frequency is once an hour compared to once in five minutes, then yes. If frequency is too low, then people are more likely to use alternative transport or not go at all.
Because people fear having their culture and race replaced by immigrants. Even if they’re not overtly racist, few people wish to become a minority in “their own country.”
The US is famously a melting pot, and yet we still have a bunch of descendants of white immigrants from Europe who fear that South Americans will take over; that Mexican culture will replace good old-fashioned hodge-podge Western European culture. That their language will become less dominant. That they’ll find themselves strangers in their own country.
It’s usually an indistinct fear. It seems obvious from the verbiage in the dog-whistles, but white European immigrant descendants don’t want to become second-class.
Now, if we treated our own minorities well, they wouldn’t be so afraid. They wouldn’t be afraid that they’d be the ones with Hispanic cops kneeling on their necks; or that Hispanic immigrants would be living in giant homes and they’d themselves be the ones having to eak out a living as seasonal workers.
I think it’s not despicable to want to preserve your cultural heritage, your cultural language, and to have your country legislated with the values you grew up with; but people react poorly when they think it’s happening.
What I most despise in the Republicans in the US is that they’re advocating for preserving cultural values that never existed broadly in the US. The closest subculture to what they’re pushing is a return to the Confederate South: religion, and white supremacy. The Confederates got their asses handed to them, but the racist fuckers never gave up their values, most most Americans are blind to what their real agenda is. And they’ve been good insurgents, cleverly taking advantage of weak areas in our democracy to return power to a minority: themselves. It’s been said and it’s true: if America was a true democracy and we selected leaders by popular vote, no Republican under their current platform would ever be president again.
Anyway, getting back to your question: immigrants bring their own culture with them, and very few completely abandon it and adopt the culture and language of their new country. This dilutes the host country’s native culture, and people are afraid of that. In the US, it’s the highest form of hypocrisy, because our native culture displaced the indigenous culture, and now we’re afraid of someone else doing the same to us.
I agree with everything up until you said “dilutes”. I would argue that immigrant cultures don’t dilute the host country’s culture, they add to it. In other words, the culture that was there still exists in the same amount and in the same “concentration”, and immigrants bring their culture to newly developing areas of the country/state.
framing is important though. Nobody considers a cocktail ‘diluted’ even if that’s technically applicable, the resultant mixture usually improves the beverage.
But the fear isn’t so rational. It’s like a fear that the cocktail in your example will replace the original vodka whether they want the cocktail or not, or that the vodka will be so diluted by seltzer that it will functionally cease to exist.
It’s like a fear of gentrification of the country as a whole.
It’s also important to remember that the US is a huge exception in this regard as well. Most other countries are like 90%+ native population, and immigrant populations tend to be sort of isolated from the wider national culture due to things like language barriers, and they often set up little “bastions” of their native culture locally wherever they live. We even see plenty of that in the US as well. While there are many distinctly US cultures across the country that are derived from a variety of backgrounds, there are tons of “enclaves” of European culture that make it blatantly clear where immigrants from certain countries settled. In Boston, the culture of Chinatown is distinctly unique and separate from the wider culture of the city, which largely has ties back to Ireland (and is very proud of it). And both of those are distinctly different from where the Italian immigrants settled, who effectively have their own districts of cultures descended from Italy regardless of where they immigrated to.
The word has negative connotations, but I stand by it. I an not saying there result isn’t stronger, but if you extend cultural mixing out to the maximum - say humans and the planet survives another thousand years, and global travel is no harder than traveling to the next town over - what you end up with is homogeneity, and this would be sad, I think. Imagine it: the entire world speaking some pidgin derivative mashup of Mandarin, English, and Hindi, with essentially the same culture everywhere on the planet. Just as has already happened, languages are lost, because nobody speaks them natively anymore. All that’s left of the original cultures are some UNESCO sites and preserved old movies. I can’t say the world wouldn’t be stronger for it, but in the process, something irrecoverable is lost.
Definitely agree with your points but maybe “dilutes”. Isn’t the right term. I don’t think they’re worried about their culture being “watered down” or “thinner”, but replaced.
I had a recent conversation with my brother that fits here. We grew up the same, but he became more conservative and moved to a conservative area, or maybe I became more liberal and moved to a liberal area. I’ve been exploring cooking, and actually this has been several conversations where I’m excited over learning about preparing a different cuisine, being able to appreciate what that brings, and he responds with “why can’t you make regular American food?” “Diluting” the cuisine we grew up with would be to use salsa instead of ketchup or mayo. But I have entire meals replaced with new and different. I have a much bigger spice cupboard full of new and different. I make meals that he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how to prepare, so he gets defensive about what he is comfortable with being replaced
I don’t disagree. In fact, I think a strength of US culture is the diversity in embraces. I do feel sorry that this came at the cost of indigenous cultures, but the end result has been a wonderful melting pot, ruined only by Laissez-Faire economics and some badly wrong turns in how we do Capitalism. Plus the inherent bigotry that hypocrite descendants of immigrants are unable to recognize. Or, worse maybe, an attitude of “we stole this land fair and square, and now it’s our’s and everyone else fuck off!”
All I’m saying is that my personal preference would be that this not happen to the entire world. I’d like to visit Germany and see a historic Germany, not another version of America with different preserved buildings. I’d love to visit the Basque region and immerse myself in Basque culture, not some mashup globalized culture selling Basque trinkets, which no-one uses at home anymore, to tourists. It’s selfish, I know.
The difference is US culture is bland and stupid. Its con artists, police and shitty corporate bullshit. In fact the last time the US lost a major cultural element it was slavery. I think its about time ditch some more bullshit. The con artists need to be tried for fraud, the police need to be disarmed, the supreme court dismantled and the corporations razed.
I mean, there’s billionaires and there are asshole billionaires… I don’t give two flying fucks about pop music, but she treated her people pretty well (originally read about this from a trucker friend) - forbes.com/…/taylor-swift-says-thank-you-to-eras-…
so while I’d prefer no or fewer billionaires, I’d really prefer rich people who treated their entire ecosystems well over the current hellscape.
oh and TAX THE RICH. If they can stay billionaires by building new industries and competing for great workers by negotiating in good faith with union labor, that’s fine.
Trader joe, SpaceX/Tesla Amazon and a bunch of other fucks are trying to destroy the entire NRLB, because they hate unions and think they can get away with it. FUCK THEM.
There are no good billionaires. Nobody can possible “earn” a billion dollars in one life time, that’s impossible. If you’re a billionaire, you are one because you stole wealth from those people below you, by paying them improperly, or screwing them. If Taylor is a billionaire it means she hasn’t paid her people enough, and that she’s charging too much for her work.
Provide one proof that she doesn’t pay her people enough. Also, people can choose to give her money if they like. It’s not like she’s a monopoly making a lifesaving medicine and people have no choice but to give her money.
That’s not a proof. She is not a company that has to pay their employees miserably to make profits. She makes music and has fans that willingly give her money through concerts, merch, etc. In contrast, here is an article about how she gave huge bonuses to her tour truck drivers.
I just don’t know how anyone with that much money can look at the world and not throw most of it at making others lives better.
I can’t imagine hoarding that much money because I’d be using it to buy poor people houses, build decent schools, solve hunger crisises, etc. Its an absurd amount of money that nobody needs to keep all to themselves, and it could go towards making the world a better place. There is a lack of empathy amongst the billionaires.
This was the investigation and they apparently let him go if he’s posting about it. Right or wrong I’m not surprised they postured strongly at a guy making threat jokes.
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