> Have you examined the possibility you may be ignorant

I have examined this, and many other subjects, in great detail; it is true.

Its called “making an example”. The Cuban people mostly suffer for their government’s alignment with the Soviets and deciding to put Nukes 90 miles from Miami.

We dont care that they are communists. We deal with all kinds of fucked up regimes around the world but the key difference is none of them have ever dared challenge us militarily with Nukes right off our border.

Cuba is basically perpetually fucked as punishment for that decision and its done as a warning to anyone else that might get in bed nearby with one of our existential enemies (Russia, China).

Crazy what a blockade by the worlds largest economy 90 miles away for decades can do huh?

One advantage of having rich friends is that you have access to their network of other rich friends. Find out how you can provide a service to that network and make some money out of it. It’s difficult to gain access to a network of that sort if you aren’t one of them so you find yourself in an opportune position.

As they say luck is when opportunity meets preparedness. So make your own luck.

Internal v External Loci of Control perhaps?

> We were setting it up and it made her put in her email and phone number to verify. I was appalled; I was like don't put in your email! I'll return it!

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one still trying to fight this fight.

It’s really starting to be a problem with games. Buying games during the holiday Steam sales used to be a big part of my holiday break, something that was my way of winding down after a long year.

But I’ve made it a personal policy to refund any game that requires an account to play (I only play single player games, there’s no reason for games to have my email.)

Nowadays this means basically all AAA games are off limits to me. Gaming in general is becoming less and less of my life as a result. I had originally hoped that some PM somewhere would see refunds coming with “requires signup” as the reason, and would maybe second guess requiring signin for future games, but it just keeps getting more and more ubiquitous.

At this point I’m just saying farewell to gaming. It was once something that gave me a lot of pleasure, but I can’t participate in this industry any more. There’s other things I can do with my time.

Good luck getting the advertising bandwidth to grow...