Or that people who have the most wealth are more “productive”. I’m not sure inheriting millions of dollars makes you more productive than someone working two jobs.

I was at a family party where this guy with the largest pickup I’d ever seen constantly complained about how expensive gas was and how it was Biden’s fault. It quickly became apparent that he only drove the thing the hour drive back and forth from his office job. Truck looked like new despite being a couple years old, save for highway tire wear.

Why on earth does he think we should all subsidize his absurd and impractical vehicle’s fuel? And I’m sure he complains about entitled people on welfare.

And he never shut up about how embarrassing Biden apparently was.

If one of my friends showed me a collection of hats with their name on it, I would pull them aside and ask if they have considered getting professional help.

Technically, yes criminal conversion is certainly a thing. If the laptop was expensive and you lived in a really low crime area where the cops were bored that might get pursued. My experience is that cops are practically more likely to say, absent a court order, to sue the person because it’s he-said she-said. It’s just too much effort for a potentially muddy situation.

You’d be surprised how often things that are theft/technically theft are not actually pursued by police in the US. The property crime clearance rate (resulting in at least arrest) is <15%.

Holding onto a rental car, on the other hand, is both expensive and cut-and-dried enough (contract states definitive end date ahead of time) to be a bad idea.

No, at least not in the US. It does not meet the legal definition of theft because (I believe) the property was initially acquired legally.

Otherwise, the police would be doing repo for things like delinquent car loans, which is dystopian corporate hellscape stuff.

I imagine many of those are ordinances intended to regulate fraternities and sororities—or similar college student shared housing situations.

My local library is right next to a couple schools and, in the afternoons, functions as a really wholesome third space for a fair number of kids. Both free and hopefully inspires several of them to get into reading as a hobby.

Even if I didn’t use the library, that would be an excellent use of my tax dollars.

I worry that people who rely on AI will become skilled in making it seem like they aren’t. Fortunately a lot of them don’t seem very good at that yet.

I’ve done a few job interviews where it was very clear the interviewee was using Chat GPT or something to answer almost every question. But there may soon come a day when it’s not obvious, and then we waste time hiring someone incapable of critical thinking who types proprietary company information into an LLM prompt.

An acquaintance of mine has basically been doing this for years in the form of slop code written by the cheapest outsourcing firms on earth who cannot comprehend rudimentary requirements and have no concept of coding standards. But management insists this is the most cost effective way of doing things, rather than just having a competent group of qualified people do it right from the start.

It seems as depressing as you’d think.

Ohio has lost its relative population and economic significance in recent years, but historically it was a pretty significant state. To give an idea in terms of # of representatives in the House:

Ohio had more/equal reps compared to California until the 50s, Texas until the 60s, and Florida until the 90s. Its numbers have been very close to Illinois for the past century also.

The collective cultural awareness of cities in such a state holds inertia for a while, and Ohio still has a decent population despite some decline.

McDonald’s stopped using beef tallow for fries in 1990. I suppose that might be relatively recent if you are an elf.

I’m a tad jealous of people who got to do this. My work just got busier. It was like normal except people were dying and I had all my groceries delivered.