The problem is that nowadays even ‘quality’ brands are willing to cut costs and make cheap shit because they can rely on brand recognition; or a quality brand is bought by another company and enshittidication ensues.

Nothing is made with pride anymore, it’s all made for profit.

Agreed. For anyone not already following Louis Rossmann, he’s a right-to-repair guy on an anti-surveilance arc and is always posting good information that will make you seethe.

His city tried to buy Flock cameras and he organized enough resistance that they cancelled… but then they are trying again a while later, assuming the scrutiny is off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MiLiQ6olkI

Ring will do the same thing.

Microslop, Meta, Google, et al will get their hands slapped when they are too proud about how they are fucking you, and then will issue a retraction, but only long enough to let the anger die out before doing it again more quietly.

This really should be the first go-to.

Old goods? Assign liability to the food bank and let them handle sorting.

Tossing perfectly edible food in the trash because it’s no longer pretty and (acknowledging) I won’t buy it, it is just insane.

I try to buy bruised food when I can because I know others won’t. a wrinkly bell pepper, cucumber, or zucchini will be exactly the same once I chop it up and put it in my meal.

These same snowflakes were singing ‘despacito’ almost a decade ago.

I hear that. My local ABC store doesn’t scan my ID, though I don’t see a future where they don’t eventually scan every time; and my local grocery store scans occasionally, but not always.

I can’t just not buy age-verified products, though, because sometimes it’s cold medicine or a prescription. **

Back to the original thread, this is not a Discord problem, this is a privacy problem. We need to push back on data capture in general and tell legislators that privacy is important to all people, even those who buy booze.

** could we make little sneaky stickers that obfuscate the barcode enough to prevent it scanning? The cashier would likely revert to visual inspection without the data retention: face matches photo, age is good, override.

This is one of the real root causes of enshittification, particularly around privacy.

Once a product is profitable, the profit needs to be protected. That’s not really a slight against it, just a reality of capitalism. Those developers expect their jobs to persist. Middle management probably wants to keep those developers on staff. C-suite needs number-go-up to keep their jobs (fuck them, but if number-go-down then other people lose their jobs too). Adhering to regulations limits the risk of the government suing the company to oblivion.

Discord has been big enough for a while that it needs to be aware of the legal and political landscape in order to survive. This is just them limiting their risk. It will cost them customers – sort of: I’m gone, and have been since September when they updated their TOS, but I’ve also never given them any money and I’ve never seen an ad other than theirs. I’ve been nothing but a cost, so maybe good riddance?

Discord is not the enemy here. The enemy is congress/parliament and the power grabs they keep enacting. Big Tech has captured our governments and wants our data. The ‘for the children’ angle is such a trope that everyone who isn’t a potato can see through it, and we need to tell our leaders that this isn’t acceptable.

The parenting aspect is a red herring. Nothing about these policies is really to ‘protect the children’. The big tech groups have figured out that they can gate-keep … everything… and require your pii/data to get to it; and that many/most people will give up that data to keep access to their content.

That said, teaching your children about the importance of privacy is becoming as important as teaching them about other harmful online content. “Don’t trust a Nigerian prince, let me know if you’re being bullied, don’t watch porn* and don’t scan your face to get on discord”

* until you’re 18-ish, at which point go nuts, just know it’s all fake.

so… you do want face verification for online interactions?

edit: In-person, for a “regulated” substance - it seems reasonable to require that proof be checked as part of policy, regardless of appearance. There’s no storage (in most cases) and the cashier is the only one who looks at the ID and they are supposed to do it to keep their job. The only place I’ve seen recently where your ID is actually tracked is stuff like sudafed, where buying too much makes you a potential meth maker.

Online, the rule has been “trust me, bro” forever. There’s no person testing you, aside from maybe a paywall to ensure you have a credit card as an age check. Steam is doing the online equivalent of minimal validation and minimal retention that the booze store is.

This is hardly OMGVALVE.

Nothing stopping the transmitter from being attached to a cheap battery and left under the dumpster of a nearby restaurant.

Sure, they can find it, but it takes resources away from harassing civilians.

Someone smarter than me could probably design, or link an existing design, to a cheap assembly that broadcast static and made comms harder for these thugs.

Did you sneak around and do things you were told not to? Probably.

While doing so, did you have the context that you shouldn’t do it? Maybe. Sometimes the learning happens when you get caught, get hurt or have other consequences.

Sure, the answer is education. Tell them that they shouldn’t do <thing> and why. Hopefully, the guilt/shame/pain of doing the thing they know is incorrect will be enough of a deterrent, but adults are fallible and kids cannot be expected to be better at it than adults who also have vices they know intellectually are bad. I don’t want to “completely control” my children, but I do want to prevent harm. Same way we put guard rails at the edge of a cliff.

Just to be clear:

Oh god, they’ll get some access? Like, I can’t completely control my children and they are individuals who have the right to start making choices? Jesus Christ, I’m not going to be able to exert my will over them indefinitely?

Are you recommending that we just sit back and let kids random-walk through tiktok? At what age should algorithm-dopamine-drug-app be allowed? There are studies out there showing that this stuff is harmful to ADULTS and this thread is about known impacts on kids. We prevent kids from smoking or drinking. Why do you think preventing access to social media like this is a step too far?

There’s also a question of age. I’m talking as a parent of a pre-teen. I need these controls where I can get them because the internet is a dopamine machine. It’s a real challenge to limit access to it and my kid isn’t prepared to stop watching tiktok the same way they aren’t prepared to stop eating candy. I can physically limit the candy in the house, but guess where I find rogue candy wrappers? Maybe by the time they are 15, I’ll have taken the training-wheels off, in which case we probably agree.

Finally, there’s an additional context for parents that is cultural context: My kid has never watched squidgames, five nights at freddy’s or stranger things. Many, maybe even most, of his peers have, and that leaves him out of those conversations. There are threads up in this post that haunt me: Am I preventing my child from being able to socialize because I won’t let them play/watch <content> that I think is unacceptable? I don’t want roblox, fortnight, or predatorily-monitized games in my kid’s hands until they are ready.

I recently relented on fortnight. My kid spent about $20 of their money on skins and a battle pass. I asked them recently if it was worth it. They said, “no”. I also recently let them create a roblox account. It took about 2 hours for them to determine the whole game was dumb. I think I’m a good parent.

No shit. I now work from home, but my last cubicle was half that size and had no walls. That’s a god damn luxury cube!

The real problem is that “will you go get a decent candidate.”

There’s rot in the dnc for sure, but if you are not actively trying to fix it then why expect someone else to find your perfect candidate?

You need to be active locally. Precinct, county, district, state, national. If anyone misbehaves, you can ‘lobby’ against them at your precinct level and sway a county vote, etc, until they are not re elected.

These are those superdelegates we talked about so much in 2016.

Don’t wait for a better candidate, make one.

Perfect. And then later, “I hope you enjoyed your glue pizza. We don’t have enough fuel to reach Paris or return to land. This plane has no emergency beacon or flotation devices and is about to “land” in the ocean. Sorry for the inconvenience!”

I wish him to sleep in a bed made by AI. Eat a meal made by AI. And then take a flight in a plane made and piloted by AI.

I listened to part of a segment on my local NPR station last night about melania’s new movie. The reporter was gushing about how great and strong melania is; how she loves fashion and children and supports her husband.

I was revolted and thought to myself about how far NPR had fallen.

Those traits are admirable* but not noteworthy. Millions of devoted parents and spouses exist, but my mother and my wife don’t have access to a film crew to document them and pick highlights.

*unless your spouse is a known domestic abuser, pedophile, rapist, fraudster (…) and actively dismantling democracy in America, in which case… maybe don’t support him unless you are also a monster.

That’s a neat form factor.

I have something like this mounted in a torchiere floor lamp. high output (something like 15000LM) and a cool color temp (6500K I think). My office has daylight when I turn it on, but it’s aimed up, indirect and high enough it’s not generally in line of sight. Probably would have used the bulb above if I could find cob lights when I bought this one.

I feel… seen? or maybe not seen.

If I need to read some tiny-ass model number printed in silver on a grey background off the back of a gadget, I need me some 6000K and 1000+ lumens, not some muddy-warm-white <800.

All 6 items in their store being the same price also makes this feel like a low effort scam. MAGA are susceptible to the grift, as proven by being maga to begin with.

Also, why the fuck make this shit red‽ pick literally any other color.

All that said, I do fully support the IDEAL of embracing people who feel that they are no longer maga, or are coming around to the leopards-ate-my-face kind of realization. They are primed to believe us the next time we warn them.

I’m probably in the minority on this particular post. But this would NOT kill me.

Ew mushrooms. I’d pick them all off and have a pile of poison on my plate’s edge.

Assuming nothing leached out.

I don’t fully understand my hatred, but mushrooms do not belong in food. My only exception so far, and I’ll try most things once, is wood ear mushrooms, which give me seaweed vibes and are just sort of chewy/crunchy.

Similarly, in the US, one of those ‘Hello my name is’ style nametag stickers generally cover a speaker grille. It doesn’t stop the audio, but it cuts it way down.

Also useful for kid toys that are way too loud.