Readit NewsEdit: Note -- I confused Ringworld with Discworld, as pointed out by rowyourboat below.
The right to free speech only means you can't be prosecuted for what you say. It does not compel any private entity to distribute everything that you want to say.
A couple weeks ago Oman Air cancelled the return leg of a long distance flight due to a change in schedule.
They offered to reroute me with the Qataris via Doha.
I preferred to cancel the (in principle non-refundable) flight and make different arrangements.
The money,~2'500$, was credited to my card 4 days later. Including fees paid for preferred seats.
It's a shame that they stopped service to my city. Beause it's a great airline, which always provided stellar service.
Since you are not an "active user" they will give you the most attractive people to swipe on. Every couple of days they will give you a "limited time" discount on gold or platinum or whatever. The push notifications are my favorite part, "you could be missing out on the love of your life!!!".
Not to mention the interactions with the UI are littered with casino like visuals. The whole purpose of the app is to get you addicted and spending time and money on it.
It's much easier to naturally meet people in real life through work/school. If you can't there, go hang out at coffee shops or bookstores or something and just hang. Strike up conversation with people, just live. You'll get rejected and some people will be rude but it's all real. You could also always pick up hobbies and meet people there. Just be social, don't spend time and money on these machines of misery.
I don't want to discuss it too much because there's enough nuance here for people to hang you with no matter what you say, but, a brief parable: I spent exactly 1 sentence pointing out to someone you could make porn with Stable Diffusion and they started hosting a SD instance for deep fakes in our non-technologist community with girls in it, and also started what I still think of as a "porn dungeon" chat room.
It was immensely frustrating trying to verbalize why this was antisocial and why there was a set of people who were legitimately upset by it. They never really understood fully.
But I'm sure they had moment with the Taylor Swift deepfake stuff from last week.
There's isn't really a 100% logical Spock reason why it's bad, other than other humans find it deeply distasteful.
I think the only ones who can make money are those playing poker and are really good at it. That's because they are playing against other players and not the bank. They still have to beat the rake.
I'm not even sure comp players, that is those who play to get non-cash rewards like travels, restaurant and hotel stays while minimizing their losses can still have an advantage. I heard that casinos calculate comps by expected losses, making sure they stay on top (statistically).
And they are cheaters, but it is like saying thieves can make money.
It’s also what they get for enshittifying cars. China might sell me the car I want: simple, ultra reliable, long range, no infotainment system, no tracking, no subscriptions, no attempts to foist software on me, and made of standard parts making it cheap to repair. Just a motor, battery, wheels, and basic car comforts.
I don’t want to see China win this one but I’ve felt it coming for a while.
Roughly, it used to be A330 vs 767 and A340 vs 777, the A330 and the 777 were the winners in these segments. The 787 was built to beat the A330, and it did, and the A350 was built to beat the 777, and it might.
Airbus reacted to the 787 with a re-engined A330, the A330neo, which was not a great success, but not a total flop. Boeing re-engined and enlarged the 777 to create the 777X, whose smaller variant positioned against the A350 is a slow seller, but whose larger variant, which has no direct competitor, has seen some sales - if Boeing manages to get it out of the door, the program is again hugely delayed and over budget.
Surprising, but you can't just dismiss statistics on the basis that they're surprising to you. A lot of people lead very different lives, invisibly.
15-20% of people are disabled: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
It is possible that the "50+ hours" is not accurately counted.