Signtist

It was pretty useful until I had an argument with my mom and the lights would constantly turn off and on.

I would think this guy was being so over-the-top cartoonishly evil on purpose just to get us to grow a spine and rise up to overthrow the corrupt government if we were actually growing a spine and rising up to overthrow the government.

People like things to fit into neat little boxes. If you’re smart, you’re smart. If you’re dumb, you’re dumb. If you’re smart in some ways, and dumb in others, you’re confusing and they hate it.

That’s a fair point. I was thinking it was kinda like being the technical prince of the Ottoman empire or some other country that no longer exists - a neat factoid to talk about, but otherwise not really relevant.

I mean, if killing a person or making them fall in love with you are against the rules, it seems that you’re not meant to use wishes to fuck with people. Sure, Jafar does, but he’s the villain - given Genie’s good nature, I’d imagine he wouldn’t let his wishes do that unless the wisher specifically forced it, which Aladdin wouldn’t do.

Fucking with people by making them suddenly be a citizen of a completely new country, or suddenly not be the ruler of the country they previously ruled would probably be something Genie would avoid, and Aladdin wouldn’t press him on it, even if it’s not specifically covered under the quick list of rules Genie gave.

I always thought he was a “fake prince” because he was the prince of a country that didn’t exist. Like, sure, you’re the prince of this nonexistent country, see how far that gets you I guess. Otherwise Genie would either have to make new land out of nowhere somehow, or displace people who already lived/ruled in a location, which seems somewhat against the rules.

Guilty in the legal sense means you’ve been found to be guilty in the court of law. Until you’ve been tried, you’re not guilty. Otherwise anyone could just say “that guy committed a crime” and it’d be their word against yours.

Ugh, the “both sides” argument again… /s

I used to have a 1.5" leg length difference, so I had to wear a big lift in one of my shoes throughout middle and part of high school as I had a few surgeries to slowly fix the difference. It was a major pain, and I often rolled my ankle in gym class and sports.

That’s not haywire. We already know AI makes stuff up and gets stuff wrong all the time. Putting it in an important position doesn’t make it any less likely to make mistakes - this was inevitable.

True. Think of how many you’d be able to inspect from up there!

That’s the heart of the issue, though, isn’t it? Most people do care about the state of their washing machines even as countless children have nothing to eat. People chastise their kids for not eating their vegetables by saying “kids are starving in Africa,” without doing anything to help any kids in Africa. People want more for themselves even while acknowledging that others have so much less. Studies like this assume that human selfishness is negligible, while it’s actually one of the largest variables that needs to be factored in. Most people don’t actually care about human suffering unless it’s happening to someone they personally know - they care much more about their washing machine.

Forbidden PEZ

Fuddruckers still exists, but they’ve downsized significantly since the mid 2000’s when my friends and I used to go there a lot in high school. There aren’t any locations left in my state anymore.

…those are all corporations. Nationalization would make it a public service, rather than a corporate profit-driven service like how it is now.

You can bet that if libraries, for example, became privatized, we’d quickly see several different library companies pop up, each with their own paid book subscription service with exclusive partnerships with various popular authors, much like we have today with streaming platforms. Conversely, if we were to nationalize those streaming platforms, we’d likely see the service transformed to be more akin to our current library service.

It’s why the rightmost parties generally want to defund many public services and move them to the private sector - it transforms services that we spend money on to benefit the people into services that the people spend money on to benefit corporations.

Except in the US the moderate left generally chooses to cater to the right when they need to bolster their numbers, rather than the far left. It makes sense given that our current Democratic party is far closer to the moderate right than the far left. We’d need to elect new incoming lefter-leaning democratic leaders across all levels of government over the course of decades to get the party as a whole to tilt leftward rather than rightward when a clean majority is needed. It’s still the most viable option, but it’ll be a lot of work to achieve.

I wish the US had a system like that. It’s unfortunate that even a more inclusive voting system suffers from a surplus of voters fueled by hate and selfishness, but here in the US even protest votes for the far left play into the far right’s hands since all 3rd party votes together wouldn’t even come close to rivaling the 2 established parties.

Ah, man. Usually I can talk myself out of purchases like these, but this was my very first video game console, and I got it with those specific games…

Technically those trees generally became coal, while oil is generally from marine life.

Yeah, I’ve never liked them in a carrot cake. Most older recipes will call for both raisins and some kind of nut, but I’ve never had a problem leaving the raisins out.