Just because you can think of ways out of enforcement doesn’t mean all enforcement is impossible. If there’s a plumbing truck parked at the movie theater, management is going to damn well know if plumbing work is occurring. I know it makes us feel smart to think of loopholes but we don’t need airtight enforcement in order for a law to make sense. There are tons of laws on the books that aren’t actively and exhaustively enforced, and they exist to give authority to those who would take action in situations where they can.

It’s a myth that you can write anything off as a business expense and the IRS can’t do anything about it.

That’s not a loophole. If the truck wasn’t driven to this movie theater for work purposes, then it wasn’t driven for work purposes.

It’s not necessarily that. It’s more like, if I configure my phone to silence notifications for an hour on the weekend, there’s a chance either through my own fuckup or the settings being so complicated that come Monday morning I will miss something from work.

I don’t know why people are losing their minds over the concept that someone might want to get away from their phone for a while.

Well in part it’s just being perceived that way. The car will decide if you’re drunk somehow becomes government surveillance. The App Store will ask for proof of age: government surveillance. And so on.

I’m not saying that this is a false interpretation but certainly it’s leaned on extremely hard in the way people report on and talk about these things. Hence why you get the sense that everyone everywhere is suddenly completely about government surveillance.

I think we could have a whole conversation about drunk driving and the efficacy and fairness of this kind of measure without even cracking the lid on government surveillance. But no one wants that. Nope, if it isn’t a direct descent straight into Fascism, it doesn’t get clicked on.

I’m actually with you - I don’t believe any one president can just wave a magic wand and do away with regulatory capture forever. I’m not sure what I said specifically that made you think I put that all on the president.

However it would be equally fallacious to say he can do nothing. It is still a very relevant question, which no one seems to want to answer: what CAN the next president DO to restore trust? Not necessarily restore it ALL but begin to heal the situation? No colorful metaphors. Actual actions that are within the power of the office. This is a real question.

That’s a list of problems. I guess I just have to keep bringing you back to “what should the next president do?” You know, about them.

But if I ask you that are you going to compare me to a bully harming someone? That’s my WTF here.

What? I’m literally asking what the next leader should do to start improving the situation, not asking anyone’s forgiveness. If you can’t name one actual concrete thing, just admit it.

It’ll take decades to make up for completely but what can the next president do to regain some trust?

Could be. I struggle to imagine what would need to be bolted to the wall, only in that place, only on that one floor.

That looks like where Cotton Eyed Joe kept The Subtle Knife.

This makes sense. What never makes sense to me is when people worry about viruses from ice cores that are a billion years old. Because it works both ways: viruses have to be pretty well adapted to you in order to harm you. There are no such viruses long before humans even existed. I’m sure there are exception, as with viruses that manage to jump species, but I wouldn’t worry much about viruses from before the time of mammals, yet some people freak out MORE the older the ice core is. They’ve seen too many movies about ancient evil escaping old crypts.

The more you know, the more there is for you to possibly worry about. Ignorance is bliss! Here’s a fun anecdote to calm your jitters.

Once upon a time I was trying to reassure my coworker who had an upcoming appointment. “I’m scared! I want to do it but I’m scared of the pain! It’s going to hurt!” she groaned.

I asked “where on your body are you getting the work?”

“On my stomach,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, “that’s a good place. It won’t hurt that much. You have a lot of fat on your stomach.”

She just frowned at me. One of the other cooks walked in and she shouted “He just called me fat!”

“The rhetorical ‘you!’” I tried to explain, to no avail. I never heard the end of that one from her.

As far as I’m concerned, Tom Waits solved ticket scalping back in 1999. He did two shows in my area on the Mule Variations tour. When you bought tickets, you could only buy two, and you had to give a name. Not an id, just a name. And then at the door, you had to show ID. You would anyway because it was a 21-and-up show, but the name on the ID had to match the name on the ticket. They didn’t scan shit. Just the doorman glanced at the name, and compared it to what was printed on the ticket. You could buy as many pairs of tickets as you wanted under the same name, but you couldn’t then sell them to people because their ID wouldn’t match at the door.

Simple. Non invasive. It worked. The show was amazing.

This is a good example of how the past doesn’t go anywhere. Those drugs are still around as much as they ever were, or in even greater numbers. But we all know what they are now and what they do. There’s nothing to talk about so their names drop off the cultural airwaves. They’ve settled into the culture. You don’t hear about them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around. The past doesn’t go anywhere. The future is just laid on top of it.

Well, that’s what a rhetorical question is. You’re making a statement, not a query, but the best way to couch your statement happens to be with a question mark at the end of it. I’m not sure this is the best example of one, but at least they made an attempt to label it as such.

Aren’t we as humans proving every year that goes by, that no matter how much power and knowledge you amass, you can still be an evil, childish, asshole? God is just a little further along that dotted line. He’s got all the power and knowledge. This doesn’t make him mature or good.

Cutting to the chase, just ask your mom if any man has ever touched her inappropriately or gotten her to have sex when she would rather not have.

Then ask her why she hasn’t ever told you this before.

But it’s in the studs /s

This post is mildly infuriating. Unscrewing it is not even an “easy fix” it’s just plain and simple what you do.