Apple quality has consistently gone down hill after Steve Jobs (could be post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy, but whatever).
AppleCare is a must nowadays, backups are a must (iCloud or local)- Apple treats their devices as throwaway, regardless of the cost. They just want you to buy a new one, and sadly most people do.
My 2012 MacBookPro (last model that is field-upgradeable) is a tank, but I won't buy a new one when it dies. I've seen 1/3 of 2018 MacBookPros ($2500) have random lockup issues and need to be replaced.
I'm still trying to get data recovered from my wife's 2015 MacBook (wouldn't turn on 1 day, no drops, no water, just dead).

@bcglorf

Use is not evidence of efficacy. Ask the homeopathic medicine industry about that.


I'd like to see some solid evidence of torture producing the results you'd want to see. A closely guarded secret revealed only after X amount of hours on the rack or under the water board.

From what I've read, universally, people who are tortured see their torturers in a rapidly increasing negative light. What could your worst enemy do to get you to betray a good friend? What if you began to harbor feelings that were even more I tense hatred for your worst enemy and they wanted you to betray your best friend? Would you be more likely to work with them then ?

I think the premise itself is flawed when it comes to torture, and more importantly the evidence is on my side.

Your video, Shady Secrets Walmart Doesn't Want You To Know, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

What the government doesn't want you to see https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/1078483941869400064

Ahhh....the ridiculousness of trying any and everything possible to discredit the Republican created, Democrat concluded Steele report. Yes, I'll say that's a Jones style if not Jones created conspiracy theory.
The FBI verified the useable information it contained, some of the supposition in it has yet to be verified like the pee tape, but the factual (undisclosed) financial information was factual and has led to numerous convictions and guilty pleas by his cohorts for hiding their ties with and payments from Russia. Trump wants you to simply dismiss it all and certainly don't look into the proven facts, fortunately the FBI didn't follow that order and went ahead prosecuting Trump's coconspirators, hopefully we'll know what they found on Trump himself soon.

Does't matter if they all Mother Teresa ..
The USA is not obligated to take them in.

Go back home-- We don't want you. Go waist you own government dollars.

It seems when Apollo Mission Astronaut, Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind" statement, but followed it by several remarks - usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control.

Before he reentered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut, however, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian nor American space programs.

Over the years many people have questioned him as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant.

A few months ago, (July 5th, 1995, Tampa Bay FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. He finally responded. It seems that Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors' bedroom window. His neighbors were Mr and Mrs. Gorksy. As he leaned down to pick it up, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Oral sex, oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

-------------------------------------------

if you snope, you a dope. it a joke.

C'mon siftbot! Did you really give it your all? How hard can it be to find a stinkin' thumbnail?

You been drinkin' again?

Don't worry about it. I wouldn't want you to have to get up off that couch and work your servos a little.

I crafted my own thumbnail the good old fashioned way. HARD WORK!

God forbid, I ask you to process and push a few data bits around.

I've had ENOUGH!

Let me get this straight -- some guy trolled 4chan's /pol/ with the most improbable story since that one about a loving god watching over all of us, and Trump supporters sucked it down like it was so many gouts of hot Russian jizz?

I'll answer my own question: yes.

An internet troll on a 4chan -- the site dedicated to stale memes, cam-whoring and Zootopia porn (not that I'd know anything about the latter) -- triggered the stumbling, bumbling collection of idiots who attend Trump rallies like the mouth-breather's version of Triumph of the Will into believing they were the recipients of ULTRA-TOP-SECRET information. Now these people believe they're a movement, and they're going to vote (and hopefully stop there before gunfire is involved) based on this delusion.

Didn't we used to point and laugh at people for shit like this?

What they don't know (muh-ha-ha!) is that this is actually a scheme to identify potential candidates for a new reality show called 'Gullible Island', which will be a cross between Lord of the Flies and Idiocracy. Contestants will be fed a constant stream of conspiracy theories ("Democrats don't want you to know that cyanide is tasty") and then left to their own devices -- at which point the rest of us will turn off the TV and breathe a huge sigh of relief while await Trump 2020: 20 years for treason and 20 years for collusion.

Like quite a few shows produced by US TV networks, I bet the first season will be exclusive to TBS for one year, then released on Netflix just in time to promote season 2. It kind of makes sense that the TV networks still want you to watch TV.

Your video, "What do you want? You want some money?", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The last comment about 'be a nice guy' is interesting.

I was listening to Joe Rogan Experience, and they mentioned something about how the genesis of the 'woman hater' is actually the forever-friend-zoned-nice-guy who gets so fed up with being 'taken for granted'/'shot down' that his niceness turns into hatred

It made sense to me. Essentially, the woman hater is what becomes of a boring nice guy who lacked the patience/endurance to wait for women his age to make their way through all the exciting unreliable men before being satiated (or just getting too old to fetch the interesting men's attention) and finally settling for the nice guy that was boringly always available.



And I get it. It plays into the human natural value system, where things that are scarce are more valuable.

The ahole is fleeting. You can't always have him, and if you do you can't hold him, so he has an element of scarcity, which creates value.

The nice guy will reliably stick around if you go with him, so he is less scarce, so he is less valuable. The lower value in turn makes him more likely to be single and always available, further reducing his scarcity, and further devaluing him, and further increasing his chances of being single. A feedback loop.

I suppose that there is also a 3rd path - the element of nice guys that just stop giving a crap before turning into haters, which makes them more scarce, which actually finally gets them attention, and they stop being single.

(And a 4th path - nice guy finds 'a girl who wants a nice guy from the start'. In my observation this isn't the typical case.)



Cases like this (forever alone nice guy, not specifically Mr Van Driver) are when I think 'arrangement' web sites create a good solution. The guys get to not be lonely anymore, and the women gets taken care of. Kind of plays into the nice guy natural instinct, too.

Amusingly, 'arrangement' may be a better fit for the forever-alone nice guys than 'waiting it out'.
In both cases (waiting vs arrangement) the women are mainly after stability/support.
The older women 'nice guy' matches with by 'waiting it out' would not have picked 'nice guy' if they still had the looks to keep pulling exciting men.
So, if you're gonna be with someone because they want you for support, why not just go with a younger woman and be up front about the situation. If it doesn't work out, either party can walk away. No messy divorce. Seems like a safer and more practical option.

(Not picking on older women, just observing that : as people get older, the single scene becomes more and more 'leftovers' that are 'left over for a good reason'. The odds of finding anyone worth while diminish with time, because the highest quality individuals get retained first. Wait long enough, and you're left with over the hill jaded pragmatists who once may have had looks but now have nothing left to offer. At which point, both 'arrangement' and 'being single' are legitimately better options.)



Regarding Mr. Van Guy specifically, I'm not sure if he had a chance. He had some social anxiety that made him unable to talk to people. So he was likely not gonna get a partner naturally, and was unlikely to succeed among professional peers well enough to get the financial security necessary to be some sugar daddy.

So, yeah, dude was likely a romantic dead end. Possibly even the same mental (brain developmental?) issues that made him unable to talk to people also made him susceptible to getting the sort of crazy tilted that allowed him to run people over. The dude could have actually been fated (circumstantially) to end up in tragedy. Just speculating, wouldn't shock me.

-scheherazade

Funny, but a tangible item is much easier to market.

It's only been in recent human history that we have decided to accept currency sources that are technically not backed by a physical equivalent and. Even then, until bitcoin and other recent crypto-currencies started appearing, we required the force of a large body behind it like a government.

At least with items like gold and silver, people knew that it was an unknown new item that had limitless potential. Imagine a person coming up to you ages ago and saying, "I've filled an empty mine with rocks, but every 1000th rock is blue. I am the only one that can allow access to the mine, so I can manage the rarity of the blue rocks. What I want you, and the other people to do, is treat these blue rocks as valid trade items." I can almost guarantee that you, or anyone for that matter, would say that you would do that only if that person speaking to you guaranteed to make the blue rocks redeemable for valid currency from him at your discretion.

That is one of the problems many have with crypto-currency, the guarantee factor of being able to convert to a more recognized form of monetary unit. It's changing now, but it is still going to be a rough road since the only true guarantee at the moment is that multiple places are starting to recognize it as currency. It could be amazing, but it also has massive potential to financially cripple a lot of people if they trade goods/services for it and it flops.

Maybe...depends on their business. If they make other personalised inflammatory cakes, probably. If they make "hey man, nice shot" cakes celebrating cops being shot, definitely.

If they make personalised hate cakes, I would expect them to either pay a large fine for refusing or use the 'special' chocolate icing, and record the person ordering it for public exposure.

Most places have a no vulgarity, no hate speech, no sex rule applied across the board, which is fine....but you must use common definitions for those terms applied equally for everyone.
If "congratulations Pat and Chris" is ok for you if that's Patricia and Christian, you cannot decide it's not ok for Patrick and Christian, or Patricia and Christine, no matter how icky you find it, or how afraid you are that you'll lose control and kiss them.

Simple rule, if the reason for refusal is who the customer is, not what they want you to make, that's unacceptable.

It’s simple. In Aussie, nature wants you dead.
In NZ, it’s geography that wants you dead.