You buy an $800 home security camera setup off the shelf.
You unbox it, install it on your porch, and then discover that viewing footage recorded yesterday requires a mandatory $14.99/month "Cloud Storage Subscription."
If you don't pay the monthly extortion fee, the hardware you fully bought and paid for turns into a useless plastic paperweight that can only view live video.
Modern tech companies stopped selling you hardware…….they sell you hardware as a trojan horse to rent back your own data.
Not to change the subject from burritos but when I was earning poverty wages in my 20s I used to go to Subway nearly every day and get a footlong Italian sub for 5 dollars. It was generally the only big meal I would eat in a day.
If I was hungry later at night, I could always swing by McDonald’s and grab a chicken sandwich for a dollar.
All of these people are screaming about “eating at home” but I basically never made meals at home in those days and I was able to get by. You used to be able to survive on low wages without making meals from scratch. If that’s not possible anymore then it’s a sign that our standard of living is declining. That’s a problem. You should care about that.
Anyway, I went to a Subway recently and that same sandwich was 13 dollars. McDonald’s, of course, doesn’t sell anything for a dollar anymore.
I saw a post on Reddit that said that “The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.” And I don’t think I’ve ever seen AI described so incisively.
YouTuber Danny Gonzalez wants YouTube to let you "turn off" Shorts altogether as they're his biggest frustration with the internet
"I feel like I would use the YouTube app so much more if you could turn off Shorts"
Ethan Hawke explains why you can't see how good your own era is until it's already gone
"My kids and stuff, some of my kids are older, so 27 23 and they're like"
"Oh back in the 90s, my son showed me the other day like 5 movies that came out some weekend in 1994 something and they're all amazing"
"He said what a time I wish i lived in that time and I was like wow I remember being nonplussed that weekend
and I remember wishing it was 1974"
"So we're in this ongoing thing which make it really easy to be critical and negative about what's happening"
"Cause usually time is the great curator, time will reveal what's good about what's happening right today cause it's harder for us to see it"
Sony is currently charging $70 for God of War Ragnarok digitally. It is $32 at Wal-Mart. The game is 4 years old.
People will no longer have options after 2028 and will HAVE to go directly to Sony’s digital storefront and pay whatever PlayStation says.
USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
@StephenM If we had single issue bills instead of bills filled to the brim with absolute bs then this would be a valid argument. But that’s not the case. Supporter of yours but come on my guy 🤨