It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them still thought that the mission accomplished press release was a big win for W.

You mean my take that some abolitionists were motivated by hate or the take of the abolitionists that were motivated by hate?

Some abolitionists held their stance on slavery not so much because they believed everyone should be free but because they didn’t like minorities being present at all, slaves or not, and thought ending slavery would mean they’d get shipped back to Africa, despite many having no direct connection to Africa closer than they had a direct connection to Europe.

Not all abolitionists thought this way, but it wasn’t always in opposition to racism. Hell, segregation lasted into the 1900s and there’s still a problem with police racism that isn’t being properly addressed to this day, despite the anti-slavery side winning over 150 years ago.

Yeah, I agree. We knew what cool was but kids seem to have lost it somewhere along the way. Though not really same old, older generations were also weird.

Man I feel lucky to have grown up in the brief period where kids were cool, what are the odds?

Or maybe it will be remembered similarly to things like the Hitler youth in the future.

Rule 1 of being in the sun. The sun radiates everything.

At this point, if something upsets them, it might be safer to assume it’s either a good thing or a benign one that doesn’t really affect anyone (but their “solution” sure will) than it being an actual problem.

I was thinking about rabbits, too, that get very vocal when a predator catches them.

It gives me the impression that Elon Musk wanted to literally design one of their vehicles but doesn’t know how to draw smooth edges and rejected any attempts to improve his design because he wanted to see what he had made rather than someone with actual talent’s interpretation of it. But maybe that’s just me.

Just remember those things have cameras all over them so anyone who does this has a good chance of being caught. Unless they obscure all identifying features and keep other cameras that might be in the area in mind, of course.

Footpath makes it sound like it goes through the woods or a field or something.

Julian starts scalping TP, gets Cory and Trevor (or their more recent replacements) to break in and steal TP from homes to make people need to buy them.

Lahey and Randy oppose this at first, but Julian is able to neutralize Lahey when he reminds him how important having TP is for those mornings after nights of heavy drinking. Lahey agrees to leave them alone and run interference on law enforcement in return for 3 rolls of TP a day. “Are you sure that’s going to be enough, Mr Lahey?” Randy asks.

Bubbles wants to avoid getting involved, seeing how pissed off it will make folks with Julian gouging the fuck out of everyone, but eventually agrees to let Julian store his TP in his shed, which is quickly taken over by it.

Ricky says the whole thing is fucking stupid, you don’t even need TP. Ends up in horrible discomfort and pain due to using poison ivy to wipe his ass.

Julian had been dumping most of his significant profits into expanding his venture (and puts the rest into an expensive car and home entertainment equipment, which he showed off in a scene entirely devoid of TP, including a part where someone grabs a roll to wipe their face and Julian stops them with a, “Don’t use that, you don’t know where that nasty shit has been, here use this tissue”, then the scene cuts to Bubbles unable to enter his shed because it’s entirely full of TP and shot ends with him panicking about his kitties"

Ricky discovers that, after the poison ivy, wiping with stinging nettles feels great because it scratches the ivy rash.

Bubbles and Julian discover that his kitties are fine and looove the TP, to Julian’s dismay because they shred the shit out of a few rolls. He had been resisting Bubbles’ complaints and requests to move it up to that point, immediately decides to move them to shopping carts outside.

People start complaining about the TP getting softer because of the humidity. Most of them are stolen from homes, so they aren’t sealed. Julian has to lower prices.

Ricky is found feverish and delirious in a ditch while Julian, Bubbles, Cory, and Trevor are on their way to heist a TP delivery that will ruin Julian’s business. Julian finally decides to put his friendship before profit and they take Ricky to the ER.

While there, Julian also agrees it’s time to ramp down his business because they couldn’t stop the truck and know that more are coming even if they did.

Then, as they exit the ER, it starts to rain.

I think most of the general pop stopped paying attention by the time that was clear. Hopefully more idiots will try to scalp TP and stores will refuse their returns when the scalpers realize any shortages caused by runs (heh) are temporary.

IIRC, the shortage in 2020 was only in stores and warehouse storage didn’t even get fully tapped out before things stabilized.

I also remember going to the stores and being surprised there was still tons of pasta while people were scrambling for TP. I didn’t use a bidet at that time (do now though), but even then my thought was “even if we run out of TP entirely, you can just start taking a shower after shitting, but there isn’t an easy alternative if the food runs out”. The pasta runs came later, but I was already stocked up.

The drop-down text menu with dense options was good design. Adding the quick toolbar for more common tasks was also good design.

Moving everything from the text menu to the quick toolbar was bad design.

Just like the evolution of their search functionality. Started as an explorer feature (good), added to the start menu with a focus on program names (good), then they mixed web results from Bing and it’s unclear if a program I’m searching for is installed and it found that or if it exists and the result is a link to some website (bad, if I wanted to search the fucking internet, I’d launch a fucking browser), also insisting on using their browser (wtf, they should have been broken up 20 fucking years ago, instead the courts decided to just fucking ignore them doing the same shit they lost the lawsuit for only much worse now).

Yeah, his stance on Pence was pretty clear on jan 6 itself. His mob built gallows while he refused to approve security reinforcements for the Capitol.

Out of curiosity, what was the origin of the debt/fee/urgency and how did that pass your sniff test?

“The last time my windows crashed was when the asshole neighbour’s kids were playing baseball. It ended up being this whole thing where those kids and my kids got shrunk and I accidentally threw them out before I realized what had happened and everyone got pretty upset before everything was resolved and we became good friends. So you’re saying that that happened because of a virus? If you get rid of the virus, will you also undo the whole shrinking thing?”

Or act like you have a real virus. Like it keeps opening ads every two seconds and bitch at them for adding so many ads to Windows. Like try to act like an amazing mark for them but make them work for your money–not because you aren’t willing to give it to them but because you’re so dumb you’ve left things in a state where work needs to be done before that can happen.

It Bitcoin gets mentioned, ask why anyone would want you to cut up a coin and send them the bits to an address your smart friend thinks is on Uranus or something.

I’ve seen videos of people that install the remote access software on a VM, I wonder if there’s any where they’ve set it up to pop up new ads every 2 seconds. Even better if they make them wait while they look at each ad to decide if they are interested and insist some just get moved to the side instead of closed because they want to pursue them after the call. Cherry on the cake would be for the ads to be about things like penis reduction or softening pills or hiring a service to fend off all the local singles so you can get on with your day.

Yeah, though I’d still say that those are scams that use technology rather than scams that require technical knowledge to avoid. Don’t just trust anyone that cold calls you or sends a message. If they make a claim that you owe them anything, don’t just take their word for it.

They have a legal obligation (both in the US and in many other jurisdictions) to provide a written notice within 5 days or validation of the debt within 30. If they say they don’t have your address to send either of those to, that’s another red flag. It might also limit their ability to legally pursue the debt even if it is valid because they have an obligation to provide that written notice and debt validation. The debt doesn’t disappear in that case, but it could end up in limbo until the statute of limitations passes (though could also affect your credit rating in the meantime).

Just knowing this non-technical information can turn these scams from panic-inducing events that cause a sense of urgency to mild annoyances or even sources of entertainment if you have the patience to fuck with the scammers and waste their time getting their hopes up that they’ve got another pay day coming. Some real masters of reverse scamming have even managed to get money from the scammers.

My point is that these things shouldn’t just be taught in technical contexts because they involve websites or cell phones, but should be a part of the mainstream education process because websites and cell phones are mainstream.

This isn’t even cyber security IMO. It’s just social engineering and doesn’t require any kind of technical knowledge to understand or avoid.

Unless you’re dealing with mafia loansharks or something, there isn’t often immediate urgency on any kind of payments. And even if it is a loanshark, you’ll likely have an idea of the debt before being approached about it.

And government services take payments in the form of legal currency through direct means. Cash, cheques sent to a specific address (inside the country), bank transfers. Not gift card codes sent over the phone or chat.

If it’s legit, they’ll also know your name and other information. Though just because they do know information doesn’t mean it’s legit because they might have gotten your phone number with a name and other information attached. So use this as a way to rule out those who don’t know (in my experience they tend to just give up if they ask your name and you point out they should already have that information if there’s a warrant or whatever bullshit they are trying to tell you).

Maybe more susceptibility to advertisement?