It’s also the death of even the pretense of the American dream. Think about it. All pricing goes algorithmic, for all goods and services. Every company figures out the absolute maximum you can pay and charges accordingly.

What does this do in aggregate? It means that every raise you will ever get during your career is now immediately consumed by rising prices. This produces an economy where there is literally no point at all to advancing your career, gaining new skills, or bettering yourself. Why go to college or trade school, if the extra money you earn is just going to be consumed by companies charging your more for the same products? Why should anyone do anything but simply find the most tolerable minimum wage job they can, and simply work it until they die of old age? If all pricing is algorithmic, anything you do to improve your personal financial situation will be immediately hoovered up by the big conglomerates.

I really wonder about what people thought of that then. Did people really think it was a medical thing, or was this just a socialy respectable way for a man who couldn’t get his wife off to pass the task on to someone who could perform the task with an air of medical respectability?

Or Hell, maybe it was a 19th century kink or swinger thing. People have always been freaky. At times in history they just had to hide it better.

When these get deployed, they’ll finally implement eyeball tracking into the ads. Some smart TVs have in built cameras, and this could easily be one the norm. The companies so far have been too afraid to use it, but the tech has existed for years at this point. Technically, there’s nothing stopping YouTube from just requiring users to have an iris tracking camera enabled. And this would defeat a smart glasses AI ad filter. I suppose you could maybe have a screen on the front that projected fake eyeballs towards the camera, but maybe they could then defeat that.

Or, more likely, they’ll just lobby Congress to ban ad blockers and and blocking devices.

What’s worse is this even makes attending the game in person miserable. I know many very passionate college football fans who show up hours before the game to hang out with friends, and then more times then not end up leaving the game itself early. Why? Because the game itself is a drag. If a game is televised, they add extra breaks to the game to accommodate ads. The game gets stretched out from something of reasonable length to some absurd 3-4 hour long slog. People then only stick around if the winner remains unclear. If the games were a more reasonable 2 hour length, with more engaging and constant action, then most folks would stay to the end.

Exactly. The whole point of a ghost gun is that it’s untraceable. You made it yourself; they can’t track it so some purchase record. The way you use a ghost gun is you make it, use it, and then just leave it at the crime scene. You make sure you never touch the thing with bare hands, so there are no prints on it. If you made one ghost gun, you can make another. They’re easily replaceable. No need to keep it with you after the crime.

It’s important to keep in mind that Luigi is exactly the type of person that the police would try to pin this on. It’s so easy to see how it could happen. The NYPD had a high profile murder of a wealthy CEO to deal with. The NYPD leaders had politicians and corporate leaders breathing down their necks, demanding this case be solved immediately. And at the same time, the suspect seemingly made a perfectly planned getaway and had disappeared. This kind of thing has happened countless times in history. Have a high profile case that simply must be solved? Find some undesirable to pin it on. Ideally this is someone who is already dead, maybe someone who recently killed themselves. You don’t have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if you blame the crime on a corpse. But if a suitable dead person isn’t available, then a living person can do in a pinch.

If you want to pin a crime on someone, you find someone who resembles the suspect and also isn’t someone with a lot of social respect or clout. Homeless people are classic targets. And Luigi was a queer kid, out of contact with his family for months, living in a youth hostel. He is the exact type of person the NYPD would choose if they were looking for someone to pin this on. I’m sure they would try to pin it on a black person if they could, but the person they chose had to at least have some visual resemblance to the person on the security footage.

Truthfully, to ensure I receive better treatment.

Assuming you’re a man, I think we should make you take a pregnancy test every time you go to the doctor. After all, for all the doc knows, you could be a trans guy. So if it’s all about just covering all your basis, pay up for your pregnancy test sir!

Then why don’t they ask this question for all men? Why don’t they ask every man that walks in if they’re pregnant? If the justification is, “we must ask because the risk is always there, no matter how small,” then why would you dismiss the risk that the man that walks in is actually a trans man that happens to be pregnant?

If this was only about trying to cover all of your bases, everyone would be asked if they are pregnant, regardless of gender.

The walking stick was an afternoon project. Just carve, sand, and stain. The staff was a lot harder, specifically the tines that wind around the crystal. I made the staff off and on for several months. I built the tines up by cutting out thin strips of wood. Then I glued them together, laminating the tines up one layer at a time. Once they’re built up, I carved them into a smooth shape and filled in cracks in the epoxy. The amethyst is affixed into the socket I carved with epoxy as well.

I could have made the staff faster if I was really pushing it out. But just the time to glue it up would still require about 2 week to make.

Nah, that’s bogus. It’s a private company, they can do what they want. They could have absolutely given OP the 5/5 rating, and just had them sign something saying that they were content with the bonus appropriate to a 4/5 rating. No one would have had to receive a penny less.

Thanks! Here’s an example. That’s me on the left, my husband on the right.

I made both that walking stick and wizard staff from old Christmas trees. And a close up view of the staff:

When I can, I get a real tree. After Christmas, I trim all the leaves and branches off the trunk and put those in the municipal compost bin. I then put the trunk in storage and let it dry out for a year or two. Once dry, I’ll carve them into things like walking sticks, wizard staffs, etc.

Now live in the 1850s US and try to buy a pair of underwear whose production didn’t involve slavery at some point in the chain.

The problem is the same as it’s ever been - supply chains are complicated.

We used to give lobotomies to those who didn’t fit in right in capitalist workplaces.

One fun version of this. I once read a fanfiction that included a character with an interesting trait. They were cursed to be completely, hopelessly, comically lost. They get lost going to the bathroom in their own home. They end up hundreds or thousands of miles from where they intend to be.

But the tradeoff is, if there is ever somewhere they actually really need to be, they will be there every time. A loved one about to get hit by a bus? By random chance, the character would just happen to be wandering at the right place and time to intervene. Their kid has an important school play they need to attend? They’ll by dumb luck find their way to the auditorium. They live a life completely unable to get to where they want to go, but in turn they will always be where they need to be.

I know it’s a joke. But this could actually be an interesting plot setup, with one modification. I would make it so that Trolley man couldn’t actually save anyone himself. Rather, he has the power to temporarily give anyone powers equivalent to Superman or similar. The only problem is this is so stressful on the person’s body that the power up kills them after it wears off.

I propose a new law. If the victim of a murder is someone who owns a fortune more than 1000x the median household income, then someone on trial for the murder can make an affirmative defense that it was ok, simply because, “he needed killin.'”

Literally, if you can convince the jury that the guy had it coming, you get off Scott free. Anyone who wants to avoid potentially being killed and having their killer escape unpunished can avoid this fate by simply not hoarding wealth over the critical threshold. Those who hoard such fortunes will just have to live with enough kindness that no one could ever convince a jury that they deserved to die. We’ll end up with no billionaires or every billionaire becoming like Fred Rogers. I’ll take either outcome.