Yup, this is a key part of the “he was framed” conspiracy theories. The dude was supposedly smart enough to evade capture for a week while the entire country’s police force was looking for him. And then he was too stupid to break the gun apart and scatter the components?

Wrong on both counts; Apple does support RCS, and RCS doesn’t support encryption. Google messages can be encrypted, but that is done using a proprietary handshake that Google implemented on top of the RCS protocol.

I think part of the point is just to show that they can be touched. It would be like walking up and saying “bang bang” with finger guns instead of actually shooting them. It’s a way of going “I could have done it. You’d be dead if I wanted it. This is a reminder and a warning that you only rule because the plebs allow it.”

I agree, there are better things to do to CEOs, especially for companies as shitty as Enron. But if CEOs are on high alert like they are now, then a pie to the face would be a good way of keeping them anxious. It would tell them “your security failed. They need to succeed every time, but the masses only need to succeed once.”

Yup. Voyager/Wefwef is basically the new Apollo. It’s not 100% there in terms of feature parity, but it’s damned close and is being actively developed.

and easier to work out mentally IMO.

And this is the key factor to why math teaching has changed. Rote memorization is actually really really awful for learning.

Teaching math used to be a case of having students fill out their times tables. I still remember having to fill out this chart in under 5 minutes:

This was a quiz that we had to do multiple times per week. It was given to us blank, and 5 minutes obviously isn’t enough time to actually calculate everything; We were expected to have it memorized. And when the students had memorized the table, the quizzes changed into a series of small calculations from the table, again under 5 minutes. So if we ever had to calculate anything out, we could just refer to our memorized times table and pull the number off of that. But the issue is that this only works up to a certain point; Nobody is going to be able to reasonably memorize their times table beyond maybe 15x15. And this means that the times table essentially becomes worthless for doing math in larger numbers.

So instead, the “new” math teaches students how to take complicated problems (like 17x3) and break it down into easier steps. 17x3 is complicated, but 20x3 is just 2x3 with an added 0, and 3x3 is easy too. So if we can convert 17x3 into (20x3)-(3x3) then it becomes much easier to do in your head. Because not everyone can calculate 17x3 accurately, but virtually anyone beyond 1st grade can calculate 60-9.

The “new” math was developed by studying how the students who were good at math actually did their calculations. And it turns out, when you actually understand the concepts, you can create mental shortcuts to break the difficult problem down into a series of smaller problems. And that’s exactly what the “new” math does.

Yup. Epstein getting killed was inevitable, but it’s not like he had many fans; child molesters don’t tend to win popularity contests (unless it’s running for the highest seat in the country…) His death had people upset, but only because it meant he wouldn’t be able to testify against all the billionaires. He was only working against the billionaires because the prosecutors were forcing him to do so.

But Luigi is a symbol of someone actively working against the billionaires, and killing him will turn him into a martyr.

VideoHaikus

Reddit had YouTubeHaikus, which were short (often less than 15 second) videos. If you’re focused on short-form videos, then “haiku” at least expresses that.

Also, government is built for stability, not efficiency. Ever heard of a company Bus Number? It’s how many individual employees can get hit by a bus, and the company continues to operate without interruption. A higher bus number means less efficiency, but also more stability. And importantly, even the most efficient companies should never have a bus number of 0, because that’s just setting your company up for failure.

If you have one dude down in IT who has been silently plugging away for 20 years, does all of the weekly server maintenance tasks without making a huge fuss about it, has slowly absorbed other duties throughout the years, etc? Yeah, if he gets hit by a bus, your company is likely fucked. Maybe not right away, but soon enough, when all of those “extra” tasks suddenly aren’t getting done and begin to pile up. Even if the company immediately re-hires for the position, the new person won’t know everything that the old dude was doing. Since the old dude had just been quietly soldiering on, a lot of his job duties were tacit and implied, rather than being written in a job description anywhere. The bus number is 0 in a surprising amount of multimillion dollar companies, because efficiency means there’s just one or two people holding everything together.

Imagine if the DMV was forced to close for the week, just because Janet in accounting got the flu and she was the only one who knew how to do some mission-critical task. Or even worse, what if City Hall shut down after a tornado landed across town? Because one or two people across town happened to work at City Hall, and were affected. People would lose their goddamned minds, because crisis is when people need the government the most. People expect roads to be cleared of debris, power lines to be repaired, access restored to blocked neighborhoods, water service to be restored, etc… But if the government has a low bus number, there’s a good chance that the government will shut down when a few government employees are affected. The bloat is, in large part, a redundancy to ensure continued operation. The government never has just one person capable of doing a task.

But this opens a whole new can of worms. You’re telling me he was smart enough to evade capture for a week, but wasn’t smart enough to ditch the ghost gun he had used in the murder?

It smells like turned off body cams and planted evidence.

Yeah, New Mexico IDs and license plates both say “New Mexico, USA” for exactly this reason. So many people have almost been illegally arrested and turned over to ICE by incompetent cops during traffic stops. Cops will pull New Mexico plates over, see the New Mexico ID, and demand to see visa paperwork because they think the person is from Mexico.

Any “retro” collection. Old video games, for instance. In many cases, the barrier to entry is sky high, because there are very few old consoles or games on the market; The collectors have bought all of them, and are never planning on selling.

The point of calling it privilege is simply to point out that your worldview is shaped by your upbringing. The fact that you have family and friends to rely on is inherently shaping the way you view the world in a way that may blind you to the struggles of those who don’t have the same support network.

It’s essentially “let them eat cake” in a new wrapper. If you’ve never struggled to put food on the table, being too poor to eat is an entirely foreign concept. So foreign, in fact, that you’ll potentially fail to even consider it as a factor if you hear someone doesn’t have food. You’ll default to assuming they must not have food due to some other reason. Likely a reason that lays the blame largely on the person in question. You’ll assume they spent all their money frivolously, because you can’t comprehend the fact that some people don’t have money to spend at all. Or you’ll assume that they’re lazy, because you can’t comprehend someone trying and still failing to eat. Or any other number of reasons. Regardless of the reason you think up, it will inherently be coming from a place of privilege.

My wife was caught up in that Ebola scare, because she was on the same plane that the nurse (who had been treating Ebola patients and knew she had been exposed) flew in on. The feds came knocking on her door, and basically said that if anyone in the household left the house, they would immediately go to prison. They put ankle monitors on everyone in the household, and security tape across all the doors and windows so none could be opened without visibly breaking the tape. The CDC called every hour or so to do mandatory temperature checks, and they had to talk to every person in the household to make sure everyone was still present.

Apparently she almost got fired over it, because her manager initially didn’t believe her. She tried to pull the typical “if you’re sick you need to find someone to cover your shifts. If you can’t find anyone, you need to come in” BS that is rampant in retail. It wasn’t until my wife had the feds call her manager and basically tell her “she’s 100% under quarantine, and if you encourage her to break it we’ll haul your ass in front of a judge” that the manager relented.

I bet he’d be like "Nah, use it to pay for people’s health care more assassins.”

Imagine a crowdfunded CEO bounty program

Yup, this is my concern. They’ll claim he resisted during their no-knock raid, and they had no choice but to execute him in his bed. And all of the body footage will be “accidentally” scrubbed, or every single officer “forgot” to turn their body cams on.

“The assassin didn’t resist” is going to be the new “Epstein didn’t kill himself.”

That’s exactly what Valve did. The automated refund system wasn’t available, but you could request a manual review and cite the added anti cheat; Valve was refunding those who did so.

it’s far easier to start a business than to get a job

Also why so many Koreans run donut shops or nail salons, and why 7-11’s are almost universally franchised by Indians. They’re all relatively easy businesses to start, can be run out of any strip mall near a neighborhood, and all have the potential to hire and train your family members. And if your cousin owns a donut shop (and you’ve worked there enough to know how it works,) you can go open your own across town. Because if you come in on a work visa, your ability to stay in the country is held hostage by your employer. But if you start your own business, that’s not an issue.