gila

In the startup I worked for, the HR lead was the CEO’s significant other. They had made fundamental contributions to the operations of the company since its inception and relatively humble beginnings. Once it had grown beyond a certain size, there wasn’t really any particular executive position within a logical company structure for them to fill. The individual departments were run by people more qualified in those areas. I think it made sense for the company to continuously recognize their contributions (and obviously the boss isn’t going to fire their partner), but HR ended up being mostly just a cushy job for them to fall into.

It was one of those companies that likes to say its “like a family”, but really there’s an in-crowd (i.e. the founding staff) and everyone else. I was part of the former, so I could be honest and open with them with regard to HR issues and be supported, and that was nice. But on the other hand, I witnessed HR actions related to incidents involving other staff that caused me cognitive dissonance, because it would’ve been handled differently if I were the staff member involved. More than anything else, because I had found myself in the right place at the right time. Because I was a part of the landed gentry, as it were. That’s fucking bullshit, and the experience made me realize that they weren’t actually different from other companies like I had thought.

LiveCaptions

Same, the last straw for me was the ‘white lives matter’ Yeezy fashion show.

Hot, then once I’ve read everything switch to Active to check popular posts I missed, then back to Hot and there’s usually some new stuff

Same shell, mine has Intel CPU though

I’ve had a lot of thinkpads and currently use an ideapad flex 5. I prefer the smaller form factor for a portable machine I take travelling or out to biz meetings etc. The autorotate and touchscreen work great in Debian with gnome-shell out of the box. No pinch-to-zoom but I believe that works on KDE plasma out of the box.

They aren’t concerned with deaths, this legislation positions the most harmful and most physically addictive nicotine option as relatively more accessible.

They aren’t concerned with nicotine addiction, else NRT gum wouldn’t be allowed to stock within reach of children in retail outlets.

They’re just NIMBY’s, there’s nothing else to it.

In Australia our tobacco strategy was to effectively ban vapes and price cigarettes out of existence.

The impact to date has created two totally new black markets: one for vapes after people realised anyone could just hop on AliExpress to buy them in bulk and resell for a 2000% markup. They are banned for import, but nicotine is a colourless odourless liquid and there are no rapid tests for it, no capacity to do expensive GCMS testing on all the random freight entering the country from China (our biggest trading partner by far).

The other new black market is for “chop chop”, the colloquial name for unprocessed tobacco illegally grown and sold by gangs for cheaper than regular cigarettes / RYO tobacco.

There’s also been a big increase in violent robberies at tobacco outlets and even gang turf wars over sales of illegally imported or stolen cigarettes. The excise tax is so high that the gangs can extract enormous sales margin and still undercut the market.

Predictably (and contrary to the rest of the western world) tobacco use has gone up nationally over the past couple of years following a significant downtrend lasting several decades. I’m confident that this strategy, which has been bipartisan amongst our 2 major political parties, will be used as a future case study in why prohibition is fucking moronic. It has continuously demonstrated to be a net detriment to public health, in this case related to a totally preventable yet leading cause of premature death and public health spend.

There is literally no logic to it beyond Lovejoy’s Law, except for some false manufactured statistics parroted by our leaders which blatantly ignore scientific consensus.

Originally, undiagnosed ADHD. The pathway to get licensed was somewhat annoying for me, and I couldn’t be bothered engaging with it. I’ve also always had great access to efficient public transport, which I took to school so was accustomed to using it.

There’s been lots of secondary reasons over the years - for a long time I had fines to clear before I could progress getting licensed. The fines were bullshit, and I wouldn’t pay them out of principle. Now they’ve expired, that roadblock is no longer in my way, but I’m still not licensed.

Sometimes it’s annoying, but only really in the sense that I’m proud of my independence / don’t like the rare occasions that I’m dependent on others for travel. I’m in the US on holiday now, and there is comparatively almost zero public transport - that sucks. When I’ve travelled around Europe, Asia, New Zealand, or at home in Australia - the issues are pretty few. I don’t feel held back enough to care, and it seems like a money pit.

I have learned to drive a car, though. I’m just not licensed to, and don’t. M 33

Under communism, sovereign authority is attributable. If you ask the US president, they’ll say they have little power. If you ask senators, or congresspeople, or local representatives, the media, the bourgeoisie, neither do any of they wield power. Where authoritarianism occurs under capitalism, apparently no one is responsible for it. Under communism, it’s directly attributable to communists.

Both are often authoritarian, but the argument that communists are more authoritarian is simply an easier one to make.

It’s seen as an investment, yes. Those are important factors for a currency, I agree.

Is there a part where you meant to connect these dots to substantiate the first statement about it being a problem that it’s seen as an investment?

Edit: I get it, you’re saying it’s a problem with the idea that Bitcoin should be used as a currency in everyday transactions. I don’t think that’s a popular use case for Bitcoin, though. I wouldn’t use “digital gold” for everyday transactions, similarly to how I wouldn’t use real gold. That’s not really a problem with Bitcoin though, more of a misunderstanding of it

It’s sad, but as a crypto user I’d be sketched out enough about using a centralised hot wallet app like Exodus in an official capacity, let alone entering my private key in something installed via a 3rd party app store. This probably happens on the Play Store a few times a week, and that’s on a bigger platform with a full security review process. It’s ultimately unavoidable.