smeej

Your advice is the equivalent of telling someone who has dyslexia, "Reading isn't hard. You just look at the letters, and then you say the words out loud. Or if that doesn't work, you have to come up with some other way to make it so when you see the letters, you know what the words say, and then you say them out loud. Just hack it."

Some people really do just have to figure out a way to get through life missing a skill that "typical" brains have. It's not "hack it until you make your brain do the typical thing." It's "choose a field where you can get away with not doing the thing, or hire someone to do the thing, because you're not going to be able to do the thing, and all the advice in the world isn't going to change that."

What do you think discipline is if not willpower? This might explain why we're talking past each other.

I can do the exact same thing a hundred days in a row as long as the circumstances happen to be the same. And I can try to make them as similar as I possibly can. My lights come on at the same time. I eat the same food. My clothes are in the same place.

But the second something happens that I can't control, the night the wind howls all night, or a cough wakes me up, or for some damn reason, I wake up hungrier than normal, it doesn't matter how many times I've done it. None of it is automatic. It's all new now. All of it requires decisions. It's like it was never there. And that's why, frankly, I don't ever get to 100 identical days.

Your brain does something different with whatever you mean by "discipline and good habits" than my brain does. And that's really cool. It sounds awesome to have a brain that does that.

It also sounds way easier and like it's not something you actually deserve any credit for, in the same way that my learning how to speak before I was a year old or read before I was 3 is just "a cool thing about my brain" and not something I deserve credit for.

The difference is that because your cool thing about your brain is common, people who don't have it are considered "less than" by people who do, whereas my cool thing about my brain is uncommon, so people looked at me as "more than" other people. Both are baseless. You and I have no more control over having these advantages in our brains than we do over our height or the color of our eyes.

You're hitting on exactly what I meant, though. You're generalizing from "it works for me" in a way that implies it's equally possible for everyone, that everyone's brain has the ability to look at something they decided to do earlier, and then just do it, without sending them through a spiraling decision matrix that factors in all the other things that have reemerged as possibilities since whenever they made the first decision.

It's so cool that your brain has this "decision persistence" feature. And it does seem to be common enough that it's treated as "typical."

It's just not remotely universal. Not all of our brains have this.

To solve digestive problems, I managed to eat the exact same meal every single meal for 20 straight months. And it didn't help me lose weight.

So I dispute this statement with some enthusiasm.

> existing for them must be utter HELL.

You've certainly hit upon why they use the same password for every single thing.

> There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that time and I have to do it, period.

Gosh it must be nice to have at least an ordinary amount of executive function skills. Is it really this easy for neurotypical people to build routines? That's really all it takes?

I don't see how this removes willpower at all. It just determines what time you have to use it.

Also a possibility: An on-screen keyboard. I'd happily click the keys. Or even the lines on the staff for that matter.

This would be comical but for the years I did live in poverty. In what world does my being able to afford it now mean I've somehow always been well off?

This is ignorance, plain as.

> Insurance companies completely dictate what she can and can't do, and frequently she is unable to do more in-depth, best-practice analysis because insurance won't pay for it.

The distinction between "can't do" and "can't get paid for" seems to get lost a lot with medical providers. I'm not saying this is necessarily what's happening with your wife, but I've had it happen to me where someone says, "I can't do this test. Your insurance won't pay for it," and then I ask what it costs and it's a few hundred or a couple thousand dollars and I say, "That's OK. I'll just pay for the test myself," and something short-circuits and they still can't understand that they can do it.

The most egregious example was a prescription I needed that my insurance wouldn't approve. It was $49 without insurance. But the pharmacy wouldn't sell it to me even though my doctor had prescribed it because they couldn't figure out how to take my money directly when I did have insurance.

I get that when insurance doesn't cover something, most patients won't opt to pay for it anyway, but it feels like we need more reminders on both the patient and the provider side that this doesn't mean it can't be done.

Neither does collective responsibility, for the same reason, particularly in any sort of representative government. Or did you expect people to pause being idiots as soon as they stepped into the ballot box to choose the people they wanted to have collective responsibility?

To all the people saying this doesn't go far enough to change things: Of course it doesn't. This is a symbolic beginning, not the whole project.

Things like the composition of school lunches were determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid. What gets subsidized with SNAP and WIC was determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid.

The depiction of the recommendations does get fixed in people's minds. And then when actual guidelines come out for things that actually matter, like food programs, people expect them to correspond to what they know of the guidelines.

It's not that different from any corporate rebranding announcement. They show you the new direction they want to take the company with new imagery. You don't laugh and roll your eyes and say, "Suuuuure. Show us some new pictures. That'll fix it." You evaluate the direction the imagery says they're trying to go to decide if you think it's an improvement.

So, is eating "real food" like meat, vegetables, and fruit an improvement over a diet based on (especially processed) grains for people's health? Of course it is.

I'm not a fan of this government (or anyone else's, really), but I also think the people who are most likely to take this administration's word for it on something like dietary change are statistically among the people who would most benefit from this kind of dietary change, so I sincerely hope this works, and I'm glad to see they're trying to steer it this way. Even if the damn pyramid is upside down and looks like a funnel.

Also came looking for this comment. I get the symbolism of leaving grains at the bottom, but it's dumb.

Just turn the darn thing over. I won't even complain much about having the bottom bulk be "meat, vegetables, and fruit" with just a tiny layer of grains at the top. But this is a funnel, not a pyramid.

What got to me was when my own doctor was telling me I was "healthy at any size" when I was telling her about things like plantar fasciitis in my feet that clearly got worse as I gained weight. Like, it would be one thing if I told her I felt like a million bucks and my labs were excellent and I was a little bit big. But I was in there explicitly telling her that I was NOT healthy at my size.

I eventually got a better doctor and a dietitian and lost 50 lbs by changing my macros to focus on getting enough protein, fat, and fiber, which finally curbed my hunger, and wouldn't you know it, my feet feel better.

I mean, you're citing goodereader.com as though that's somehow an authoritative source and not just a blog by a guy who likes ereaders, but has no special legal knowledge.

Much more useful would have been if you had linked to an archive of the original Kindle Store Terms of Use, which state:

> Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.[0] (emphasis mine)

Notice that "or as authorized by Amazon" is part of the clause with "solely on the device," not a separate clause that somehow might be interpreted to apply to the "right to keep a permanent copy" part.

Does it also say that it is considered licensed to you? Sure. But the "license" is the "right to keep a permanent copy."

It's one thing for Amazon to say, "Shit, we sold you a book we weren't authorized to sell. We have to undo the whole transaction." It's quite another to do what the GGGGGGGP comment (I didn't count the G's) is complaining about and delete your permanent copy of a book for which they did validly sell you a license to keep a permanent copy.

Amazon has meaningfully changed the license agreement now. In 2025, it says:

> Use of Kindle Content. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you subject to the terms of this Agreement, including without limitation those in “Changes to Service; Amendments” below, a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through Kindle Software or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Software.[1]

They've eliminated the right to keep a permanent copy that was originally part of the license sold. That change matters. Deleting content sold under that license is a violation of the terms of the agreement on their part.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110109000847/http://www.amazon... [1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

I do at least appreciate that emails from one Proton account to another Proton account are secured by default. It has made it much easier for me on the few occasions I've needed to send someone something securely but haven't wanted to walk them through setting up PGP. "Create a free Proton account" is a much easier process.

The recipient's email service provider seems to be the "third party" at issue here.

> "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books," spokesman Drew Herdener told the Guardian. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers."

> Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".

This has nothing to do with people's having bought a license to the books. It's about Amazon's never having had authorization from the publisher to sell the books. There is no reference at all to people's having licensed the books from Amazon. Amazon referred to people as having bought the books.

The linked article is about Amazon's having realized they had no right to sell the books they thought they had sold and reversing the transaction, not revoking a license to something they thought they had licensed to you.

You seem to be missing the importance of that nuance.

Yeah, my reading story is apparently really odd. Didn't realize that until I was much older.

My mom read to me a lot when I was really little, pointing at the words as she read them, and as she tells it, one day when I was 3 I just told her it was my turn and I read books to her. She figured maybe I'd memorized a couple favorites, but on our next trip to the library, she found out some switch had flipped in my head and I was now "a reader."

Neither of my parents had younger siblings or cousins around and I was their first, and apparently they didn't remember their own childhood reading learning very well, so, "Oh, I guess she reads now," was as far as they looked into it until my preschool teachers were very surprised when I started the next year.

I don't really have any explanation for it other than "when I see words, I know what they mean," so unfortunately I don't think it's particularly helpful or generalizable. Just a quirk I guess.

This was taught by default in my elementary school. I found it frustrating, though, because I don't actually read a word at a time. I've always processed blocks of text, a few lines together. I can read one word at a time if someone needs me to for some reason, but I don't do it by default.

When I was young, I thought it was so strange that they would slow people down like this. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the way my brain flipped the "on" switch for reading was different from how most people read.

Plus, even if you wear the watch on one arm and the ring on the opposite hand, they're only ever a maximum of your wingspan apart when in use.

I'd just love the "customizable button on a ring" concept, and that battery could last basically forever.

I think I'm as interested in it from a pure "button that's always with me" perspective. I already have my original Amazfit Bip watch configured to send a "track back" signal to Snipd via Gadgetbridge to snip podcast notes while I'm driving or washing dishes or whatever. And I've configured a basic Bluetooth remote camera shutter to turn pages forward and backward in KOReader on my Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color so I can read it on a stand while riding a stationary bike under my desk.

In other words, I am apparently exactly the kind of weirdo who would use the heck out of something like this!

In the vast majority of U.S. markets, it's almost always better to buy--or even rent--the cheapest house that meets your space and safety needs and invest the rest in index funds.

Anyone who ends up with their primary residence as their "biggest investment" has been a piss poor investor.

I just genuinely thought this had been the case for at least ten years. That's what makes it so surprising.

That they haven't monetized it like this when this is how basically everything is monetized and they spent so long burning money hand over fist just boggles my mind.

That was my thought too. "Starts"?? I assumed they had been selling aggregated data about user trips the whole time.

Fixed-rate 30-year mortgages have been around for generations now. They're long since priced into the market.

Whether any specific person actually thinks through whether spending as much money as the bank will lend is prudent, instead of buying a house they can actually afford, saving the money, and upgrading later, is a different question. But it's not fair to blame the mortgage itself.

I still don't understand how this means you "can't afford to sell your house." It just means you can't afford to buy another house at the same price as the one you have now. That's a different problem, and one that doesn't actually have anything to do with the interest rate on your existing mortgage. You can't afford to buy a house today at the same price that you could on the date you closed on your current house, but that's true regardless of the interest rate on the current house.

Let's put a number on it. Since the article uses $400k as a reference point, let's use that. You could afford to buy a $400k house back when you bought your current house. You cannot afford to buy a $400k house today. That would be true whether or not you had purchased your current house, and regardless of the interest rate on its mortgage if you had.

You only "can't afford to sell your house" if you're underwater on the mortgage and can't come up with the money to sell it.

I found the vehicleprivacyreport.com site awfully misleading. The "Vehicle Privacy Label" only lists what the manufacturer's current policies are, not what applies to my vehicle. It makes it seem like Toyota is somehow remotely collecting and sharings tons of information about my...2007 Prius. But this car came out in 2006, well before people assumed easy internet connectivity everywhere. Shy of having physical access to my vehicle, they can't read anything, but it's not easy to find that explanation on the site.

There are already so many ways (and reasons) not to do free or open source software. People who find them convincing are using them. People who don't generally are not.

It seems like the author of the post is just potentially having a change of mind from one side to the other, which barely even seems noteworthy.

I think I probably would use a project that had a license that said "you can use this for now, but if I later decide I don't want evil people to use it, you'll have to maintain your own fork based on the last version before I made that decision."

Isn't that kind of always the bargain we're making? We can use someone's work as long as they're willing to let us, but if they change the license, we might not be able to continue using it.