maest

Many people wonder this to the point where "Fridman is a hack and an industry plant" has become a meme.

This is not an issue in Europe, due to effective regulation.

Even ignoring the cut taken by the credit card issuer, why do I have to go through some random card to get a 2% discount, when prices could just be 2% lower across the board by default?

How come this is not a problem in Europe? Credit cards make same promises there, but usage is greatly diminished.

With credit, it's the merchant who loses out. They get bullied by the credit card provider to eat losses.

Relatedly, the credit card system is truly a tragedy of the commons situation.

It's a ~2% drag on the economy for what? For some silly points with constrained value and an excuse to not build better financial infrastructure.

The frustrating thing is that, given the current equilibrium, you're a sucker for not using a credit card - you end up subsidising those who do.

Mandatory adblock for children is something I could support.

"It's not about X, it's about Y" is a very common (and tired) LinkedIn trope.

> It is not about what you are doing, it is always about how you do it.

It saddens me to see how the LinkedIn slop style is expanding to other platforms

All the brand naming makes this read like something from American Psycho.

> earned US "energy independence"

In a very myopic way.

It's not unlikely LLMs could gain more taste in the future. So I'm not sure how long this moat will stay standing

That's a false dichotomy.

"Since there are murderers out there, it is fine for me to murder/there is no point in trying to reduce murder rates."

Trump still has plenty of support from large swathes of Americans despite his increasingly more overt actions.

For many, he _is_ doing what he was elected to do. This _is_ what the American voter wants. The American voter wants illegal immigrants out, does not care how it happens. They also want cheap oil and are willing to overlook the implications of international military action if it means they get it. They also don't care about the environment enough to curb their consumption or invest in alternative energy sources.

These preferences are all aligned with Trump's actions.

This argument is particularly pernicious as it can, in it's general form, always deflect from the issues of climate change and always focus on blaming local governments.

This is what will happen in the future btw - climate change will apply pressure via famine and droughts, but the fallout will always be attributed to the failure of local governments to correctly "manage the change".

We'll go from "climate change is a hoax" to "climate change is just a given and it's your duty to manage it".

It is, however, an excuse to shoot an unarmed, non-threatening person.

(I don't necessarily mean the Minneapolis case - for example, consider the Shaver shooting)

ICE officer. What a bizarre question to ask.

> even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible

If you put yourself in their shoes, you realise that you have to give advice for the 10-20th percentile parents (or worse) because you are giving the same advice to everyone.

The alternative would be to offer more complex advice such as "if X Y and Z then do A, if only X do B", but the perception is that's too difficult for people to follow.

So you end up making very defensive (and therefore onerous) recommendations.

An interesting fact is that, since the introduction of the "baby sleeps on their back, alone", SIDS has gone down, but flat heads have gone up. It's probably been a good tradeoff, but it's still a tradeoff.

Also, I've seen a second time mother refer to "don't cosleep" advice as "western nonsense" which I found funny because it puts things in perspective - vast swathes of the world think cosleeping with your child is safe, natural and normal.

> the "pun" in Veridis Quo

I can't believe I've only just learned about this

Adblock won't block the "subscribe for 2 free articles" popups.

Yes, that is the correct statement.

You understand it incorrectly

You may find this a useful read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

> Our product is designed to be refurbished, but not user-replaceable.

Why?

You can pay with money.

While I get your frustration, the root cause of the issue is not shareholder value maximisation, it's the failure modes of the free market.

Monopolies, lack of transparency, lack of competition, regulatory capture, failure to price in externalities are what allows this to happen.

And these failure modes are allowed to persist due to lobbying, normalised corruption, and the desire for a small/weak government.

The latter is useful for corporations, as it limits regulation, which is the main way these failure modes are supposed to be managed. Yes, too much/bad regulation is detrimental, but so is no/weak regulation.

The more baffling thing is that the modal American voter supports lax regulation and pro-corporate rules at their own personal expense.

It's not an "either/or", as you seem to keep implying.

I assume you forgot the /s.

Otherwise this is a very weak argument. Using the Internet is approximately mandatory in our current society. "Don't use the Internet" is not useful advice.

> the air pumps needed quarters

I landed at JFK and was looking for a stroller to stack my suitcases on. The kind of stroller that is free in every single airport I've been to.

I was shocked to see it costs $7. The guy who (I presume) worked there sardonically exclaimed "Welcome to America."

Related: You should expect to keep getting "no"s until you get a yes. That means, getting a "no" is actually normal, it's not failing.

> Why aren't tables first class citizens in programming languages?

They are in q/kdb and it's glorious. Sql expressions are also first class citizens and it makes it very pleasant to write code