Deleting the comment altogether because you spent too much time thinking of other examples and it’s just not worth the trouble anymore. 🎩 🧐 🍷

Yeah, corporate executives aren’t filling out a donation form with their corporation listed on it.

They’re sending their donations anonymously and privately to PACs for both parties so they can be owed favors when it’s time to either A) get a huge tax break or B) choose which one or two senators will block the promised attempt to increase their taxes.

Aside from that, they don’t care about the poor man’s squabbles about racism or fascism or rights or dignity or whatever else we plebs think is important. Literally nothing matters to them except making and keeping profit. They make sure they can do that whichever way an election goes. That’s the whole point of “dark money” - so apps like this can’t make candidates blush.

They’re not “passing laws.” They define the minute technical details that Congress can’t cover completely or doesn’t understand. Here’s an example:

Elected Congress: Don’t sell moldy sausage.

Unelected FDA: Ok, here’s how long you can safely store sausage below this temperature. If that date is passed or the sausage has been exposed to higher temperature for this amount of time, it must be discarded to greatly reduce the possibility of selling moldy sausage.

Unelected Judge: Mom said if it’s not green it’s not moldy. Just don’t sell green sausage boys.

Unelected SCOTUS: Yup, that’s how it’s done.

Remember to open a portal to hell to keep your cats distracted as well.

And then add a light so cats can scare the shit out of passersby with eerie dissonance in the dead of night.

You know how corporations acquire other corporations and the government dramatically reviews it for a period of time and then allows it? Trust busting is like that, but in reverse. We just need to do the opposite of what we do now. Instead of watching corporations acquire each other and get bigger, we should be busting them apart into separate entities.

Specifically, it’s supposed to prevent business agreements and practices that are intended to hinder the ability of others to be competitive or do their own business. IOW, it prevents monopolies and industry consolidation.

Here are a few examples of why robust anti-trust laws are needed, and need to be enforced:

1. Everything Walmart has ever done.

2. Everything Amazon has ever done.

3. ISPs preventing competitors from moving into their territory so they can keep prices artificially high and quality of service low.

4. Everything Microsoft has ever done with Windows and what they’re currently trying to do with their gaming division.

5. The way Apple operates their App Store.

6. Everything Nestle has ever done.

7. Everything Google has been doing.

I mean just look at the state of the corporate world. We got here by an endless string of unhindered massive acquisitions and undercutting competitors. Now prices go up and quality of goods go down because no one can compete, and your “choice”, when there is a choice at all, is between 2 or 3 shitty products created by corporations that operate with the exact same min-max business model.

Same, except:

Capybaras always walk single file to hide their numbers.

A house centipede is just 4 spiders in a trench coat.

That’s how you know it’s accurate. Same thing happens if you use makeup remover twice on bare skin.

The geothermal energy system will ensure that the temperature in the athlete apartments in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb does not rise above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) at night

Sorry, but fuck that. Hopefully the system will help the ACs that everyone will need to bring to use less power though.

They’re 100% for sale, even more-so when they’re retiring, and plenty of billionaires are 100% willing to pay. I bet they’ll land a real nice deal.

You freeze time to explore the world, but time only freezes on this world. The moon is ejected from orbit and collides with the stalled Earth just days into your journey, freezing as it enters the time-frozen atmosphere. You decide to keep time stopped to save the planet from the inevitable apocalypse, only to watch the sun, planets and stars slowly fade away, ultimately leaving you and your bestie behind to exist alone in the dark empty space between galaxies among billions of frozen humans and creatures, knowing they are doomed to instantly die if your resolve ever falters for a moment. You decide to continue exploring to meet each one of them before finally using the second part of your power for the first time.

Do you use it for “you’re welcome”? I thought it was more of an “I accept your apology.”

For example, if someone said “sorry for the delay,” I’d say “no worries, I also ignore some emails for days or even weeks.”

This is why it needs to automatically update itself based on inflation and cost of living/goods. If they want to raise prices, the income amount raises too, without need for further input from Congress, and thus their taxes go up again to cover it. They’ll have to dip into their absurd profits and narrow the wealth gap a bit to cover it in the end.

Same thing needs to be done with minimum wage and the “poverty line” btw - though many things contingent on the poverty line need to just be replaced with universal programs anyway, like UBI and single-payer healthcare.

Ahh, daydreaming.

Yes, but those policies don’t provide political cover to eliminate everyone’s encryption and privacy, so…

“The scar”

The marimba has left the chat.

I can charge mine when I shower and get dressed, and sometimes when I brush my teeth and feed the pets at night - about 30-60 minutes a day total. I wear it the other 23-23.5 hours, including sleep with the AutoSleep app. It sometimes gets down to 20% before charging.

If it didn’t charge so fast then it would be an issue for me.

My first smartphone was an early LG Optimus. Don’t remember the exact model, but it was a horrible experience. When it was time to justify an upgrade, I tried an iPhone (4S I think.) It did what I need in a phone and more, and it was smooth, responsive, and reliable, unlike the LG.

Since then I’ve only used iPhones, and also an Apple TV, some HomePods, AirPods Pro, watches, and my wife uses a MacBook.

My desktop will always be Windows, but I’m increasingly tempted to try Linux. I mean, I’ll never use a Mac. It doesn’t do what I need. The other Apple devices do exactly what I need and they do it well. They’re generally a pleasure to use with only a few quirks here and there - probably no more or less than modern Android devices, maybe? I wouldn’t know. I just haven’t felt the need to switch back to Android, since everything works fine. I upgrade my phone every 4-5 years.

So I guess it’s all due to a bad first impression, thanks to LG hardware.