fear

True. Back when I rented it was a good situation because my rent was dirt cheap and I was able to save money. Seems those days are long gone with rentals sometimes being double or triple what a mortgage payment would be.

Renting isn’t the greatest decision, either. You’re throwing money at a landlord and gaining zero equity. People often do it because it’s that or homelessness. These systems are in place to take advantage of people who aren’t the best decision makers. Just because they can be taken advantage of… should they be? Or should we be better than this and revamp how we house people so that it isn’t a massive scam with the opportunity for extra side scams like we see here?

If the landlord wasn’t a massive dick, they both could have benefited from this situation. She’d have the renovated bathroom she wanted, and the landlord knew his property was being taken care of without even needing to lift a finger. Instead he got greedy, and rather than blame the greedy jerk people want to jump on the “stupid” victim. Except it’s not her fault her landlord was a prick.

I’m not arguing this point. Even though I disagree with how she chose to spend her money, I can still acknowledge that it’s not her fault the landlord took advantage of her and kicked her out to charge higher rent to the next person.

Except shaming obesity doesn’t solve that problem, either. You’re kind of proving my point here without even realizing it.

Your advice isn’t helpful for people who don’t have the means to own their own home. Being trusting or naive isn’t something that should be shamed. There’s a way to educate people with kindness and compassion. People aren’t born knowing how to best handle the legal end of a renovation. But go on and call her stupid some more, that’ll help the onlookers. You and I and everyone in this comments section will be smart and secure with the claws we have dug into the insides of the pretty housing bubble. Perhaps if we bicker even more, the problem will disappear completely.

A proper comparison here would be more like a leased vehicle than a rental car. It’s not the “stupidest thing ever” for this tenant to believe she would be living there for 1 or more years and wouldn’t suddenly be evicted. Your exaggeration only benefits predators, and your pity is hardly a reward to anyone.

Everyone is so busy insulting the tenant doing the upgrades when it’s the landlord who behaved badly. If all we do is collectively blame victims when they get taken advantage of, society will crumble. This woman wasn’t stupid, she just didn’t have her guard up in preparation for the massive asshole who had power over her. There’s a difference.

When you are trusting, you’re called stupid. When you trust no one, you’re called unreasonably cynical. They’re two sides of the same victim blaming coin. Start blaming the actual problem: predators.

Is it time to retire again already?

Your assessment seems spot on to me. I’m connecting some projected dots to late stage capitalism. Perhaps the AIs will trickle down and such if we hold off on regulations.

Of course it’s possible for the government to impose regulations without sticking their face in and motorboating the AI’s contents. Google, Microsoft et al. would love to prevent this from happening because they actually do have their faces in there.

This is such an important distinction. Current AI is incapable of wanting to cause any of that harm, yet it’s already happening. The danger won’t be skynet, it will be and always has been human greed and ignorance.

Hmm, this makes me think of the tradition on certain parts of the internet where people publicly announce the name and crime of this convicted rapist. They’ll explain where he’s currently living, the name he’s trying to go by, and bars he was seen at. This activity seems to stem from the outrage at the excessive leniency he was shown by the judge, although could also be protecting other potential victims.

I wonder if this kind of vigilante doxxing would fall under the scope of such a law, especially when his name is already in so many publications.

First the Streisand effect led to her home. Now it leads to her entire discography. Poor Barbara Streisand.

I wondered the same thing. It’s relevant that she’s a DO as opposed to MD. Not that DO automatically equals quack, but there does seem to be a higher degree of quackery among osteopathic physicians compared to MDs.

Yeah, I took a look at the code they used in the article that might help someone generate functional attacks. A rando experimenting without permission would likely get banned from the service.

I know, she was claiming people had metal objects sticking to their bodies as an adverse vaccine reaction. This is a common magic trick any of us could do using a combination of sticky/clammy skin and an altered center of gravity. I was just pointing out that magnetic fields are used therapeutically and don’t have a high degree of associated risk, making her claims that much more absurd.

What’s funny is that magnetizing people is actually a good thing and can help cure mental illnesses like depression.

I just tried this on ChatGPT, it doesn’t work.

I did. He assured me in more professional terms that they don’t give a shit. I do a lot of business with them and have been a client in good standing since I became an adult. They apparently have nothing set up to retain customers who leave over this, which would indicate that hasn’t been an issue for them. Or they might be banking on me not following through, but that just means they don’t know me very well. When it comes time for me to make those changes to my policy, I’m gone.

Privacy has been beaten to a bloody pulp, but the fight doesn’t need to be called yet. Don’t give up, keep telling everyone you can. I know things are looking low right now, but every person you reach matters.

In the case of Zoom, an approach that could actually work is having every step of the solution already completed if you’ve got an employer trying to push Zoom on employees. Make sure you can clearly state here’s the problem, here’s why it’s dangerous for the company, here’s a great alternative, here’s why it’s safest for the company, and here’s how you install it. Reach out to the IT dept if you’re not the IT dept to get them on board. If the advice is coming from multiple employees, that will help your case.

Imagine getting caught and having your claim denied or being sued for insurance fraud. I’m happy to use ublock origin, but what you’re describing is playing with fire. We need to make sure it never gets to this point in the first place by making it illegal for insurance companies to do this.