As a former smoker (quit in 2009), I absolutely LOVED smoking. The whole thing. Opening the pack, packing it down, pulling out the cigarette, lighting it, the first drag filling my lungs, the fullness in my chest. The only thing I didn't like was that it made me smell bad. When I started a job where I was working close to people and the smell made me insecure, I decided to quit. I still miss the ritual.
Anyone who has quit smoking will tell you that the habit is the hardest part about quitting, not the physical addiction.
I quit smoking by using Swedish snus until I got used to not smoking and then just tapered off the snus. This was after smoking 2 packs a day for 10+ years.
I used to do this with textbooks so that I didn't have to carry around the whole book all semester. But, I would take it to staples and have the binding chopped off and have it three hole punched, then keep it in a binder.
There's also currently a recall of 30,000 pounds of Argentina beef at the same time Trump announced they would be increasing the allowed imports of Argentina beef and are relaxing beef import regulations so that they can undercut American ranchers.
I feel like your initial question can be applied to a lot of things. For instance, Elher Danlos Syndrome has 13 variations depending on which gene is mutated. This include 11 known mutations and 2 catch-all categories for variations where we haven't yet found the mutation. Why are all these mutations under the same disease when they have such a range of symptoms? My guess is that it is because they were all lumped together before we had the language to talk about them as separate things or the technology to identify the causes. Going back and saying oh all these people don't have ASD or EDS or whatever but this specific thing that we have now identified might cause some disruption is research and awareness.
Not for me. My memories, fantasies, thoughts just look like movies. If I get deep into thought it takes over my whole perception and I don't see the world around me at all. Kind of scary when I get home from work and realize I was lost in thought and can't remember the drive.
Would this apply also to the singularity at the beginning of the universe? I guess I thought that the singularity was where all matter is compressed so much that it occupies a zero dimension point. I'm not sure if that applies equally to black holes and the singularity at the beginning of the universe. I'm kind of dumb on this stuff even though it fascinates me.
I'd be more than happy to pay for the day's paper when I want to read it, assuming it is just that, I pay for a particular day's paper and I get access to the whole paper without having to subscribe, register, or give up my personal information. If I could buy a paper online the same way I could in a 7-11, I absolutely would.
When I did customer tech support for a major retailer, we had confused customers calling all the time because they would randomly get price-match refunds they never asked for. They were installing apps that were automatically requesting the refunds by searching their emails for orders and checking the prices on the websites. These people had no idea they had even given these apps permission to read their emails.
A cynical take is that it is design. The cost of the tariffs gets passed on to the people, but the refund goes to the corporations who have no legal responsibility to pass it back to the people. It's basically a $100B wealth transfer. It also primes people to accept higher costs. It's not like those prices went back down after the tariffs ended.
I haven't noticed the battery life being bad or good. So I guess it is fine. My other phone is an iphone 17 pro max. I feel like the battery degrades at about the same rate on both phones, but I use the pixel more.
Cape has SIM swap protection and IMSI rotation. As far as I know, Phreeli doesn't. Phreelie just promises not to collect, use or sell your data but doesn't seem to have any actual privacy tools like Cape does.
I have a garmin but my banks don't suppose it for tap.
There are a few settings you have to adjust for the camera to be any good. I thought it was trash until this weekend when I found the settings. The default has quality at 95% and has "highest photo resolution" toggled off. The stock camera app doesn't seem to let you set the resolution specifically.
I use Varo and Sofi. Both apps work on my phone. The only app I have had a specific problem with was the MyQ app, but there is a workaround for that one.
I got a Pixel 10 during prime day and installed GrapheneOS with Cape for the provider. So far, it's been mostly great. The only setback, for me, is the lack of support for tap to pay. I haven't been able to get any wallet app to work. I keep my iphone with minimal service mainly to still have tap to pay and do facetime with my book club.
Maybe if they made it on effective tax rate. Your vote is weighed based on the percentage of INCOME that is taxed, but everyone gets a vote regardless.
My theory about this, as well as how it seems most powerful are abusers, is that you have to be willing to comprosmise your morality to get into that position in the first place. So it is not that being rich and powerful corrupts you, but you have to already be at least somewhat corrupt to get there at all.
I learned to code on an LP MUD back in the late 90s. It was a fun experience.
I did all my work in the MUD interface using ED. I didn't realize other people wrote their code offline and sh'd in to upload it. I got very good at writing and editing code on the command line.