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Yes, this is one of the reasons there is resistance to socialized health care. People view it as opening the door to the government controlling what they due due to health care costs.

Sure, I dislike smoking, I really don't drink that much either.

But then it leads to questions such as; What about birth defects? What about extreme sports(risk of permanent injury)?

There was a scandal in Canada recently about veterans asking for medical care and being push to assisted suicide: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... >MacAulay walked the committee through what his department knew, thus far, saying the first case that came to light occurred last summer where the caseworker repeatedly pushed the notion of MAID to an unnamed veteran who had called seeking help with post-traumatic stress.


IMO they should just charge a premium for smoking that about covers the expense overall

Solving it with money doesn't really solve it unless there's "real" competition.

Look at automotive insurance points systems. People have to buy it so the sellers lean on the legislatures and before you know it a ticket costs the same points and screws you out of just as much money as an actual accident.


That seems appropriate. A small fraction of people cause most of the losses, they should pay more.

>That seems appropriate. A small fraction of people cause most of the losses, they should pay more.

Surely that was a satirical comment and was meant to be an illustrative example of exactly the sort of mindset that runs political cover for a system as it pivots from providing enough value to become entrenched to using that entrenched position to behave in an extractive manner.

In my state if grandma gets pulled over for an out of date inspection sticker it's the same number of points as actually causing an accident. Someone is being fleeced.

I have zero faith that letting the government choose at the behest of industry who ought to pay more for healthcare that it wouldn't devolve into the same exact sort of exercise in finding a reason to charge everyone more.


I’ve never seen having an expired tag be a points violation, that seems very wrong. IME it’s only ever moving violations that impact safety. For that, higher rates are absolutely appropriate.

Safety inspection. It's a moving violation in this state (of course it wasn't initially, frogs are best boiled slow). That's the magic of it. Frame it as a "safety" issue and everyone who can't think critically about how that sausage might be made will knee jerk approve.

If I was an auto insurer, I would want to know that my policy holders were properly maintaining their vehicles. I would also have a strong interest in ensuring that non-policy holders did the same.

And as a driver, I certainly want everyone around me to be required to properly maintain their cars.


I'm not gonna let the goal posts move here. That still doesn't make it a moving violation on par with driving like a dick and/or causing an accident.

What you're saying seems to make sense on face value but in reality letting insurance leverage safety inspections is just a politically less thorny wealth proxy. The inspections themselves don't provide all that much value (IMO this is because of how comprehensive they are, 90/10 rule and all that) and multiple states have ended their programs because they don't actually provide meaningful improvement for the money.

Regardless, even if there is somme hand wavy justification for it that some people agree with, it's flawed to the point it's probably not something we want to do with medical because it would make insurance unaffordable for so many people on flimsy at best pretexts.


Why do I need to prove my age again?

Right because a child might get online with a phone or computer and see something bad.

I think you should take your own advice: >Stop with the scaremongering.


Few pretty good reasons.

First, yes, it has been proven that there are things online children accessing is damaging to their development. From social media to porn.

Second, and much more important to me, proof that you are actually a human from an approved location. Bots and spam are a problem in general, but specifically foreign meddling in critical moments like elections and referenda is extremely dangerous for democracies. Being able to gatekeep participation in public forums based on you actually being a human in that country would kneecap foreign interference. It can't do anything against local interference, but at least it restricts its volume/scale, which is better than nothing.


> proof that you are actually a human from an approved location

> Being able to gatekeep participation in public forums

And now it becomes clear that what you want is non-anonymity, rather than age.

You should have to prove who you are when voting. Not when participating on the Internet.

(Social media that optimizes for "engagement" (e.g. outrage) needs to die, but that's orthogonal.)


> And now it becomes clear that what you want is non-anonymity, rather than age.

No. Proving your age anonymously is more than enough to prove you're a human and that is all that is needed.


Apparently you want "approved location", too.

Precise age and general location is already sometimes enough to completely identify a person. That alone would make it far easier to, for instance, track people down based on their social media posts.

Forced proof of identity is damage, and the Internet should route around it. Every last bit of this should be destroyed, along with the political careers of anyone who supports it.


But we don't generally define war as murder.

War is termed throughout the bile as being just and necessary.

Philosophically speaking, we define murder as being done for personal selfish reasons; i.e greed, jealously, hatred/anger


Bill is donating his money for 2 reasons; taxes and an attempt to make himself look good similar to Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Microsoft didn't get where it was by playing nice but it is amazing to see how quickly that was forgotten. I think it was working too except that his friendship with Jeffery was exposed, we shall see.

Tribes don't get UBI. There are payments from the casinos to the tribal members, it kinda looks like UBI from the outside.

When I worked as a cashier in Walmart, it was similar to tax refund day. With people buying the largest flat screen TV's and consoles.

There were some people who saved their money but the majority used it quickly.


A rapper made a great song about this a while ago: https://youtu.be/YeV2cExvnMI?si=ZWhMBC1CDBGZHKNB

Also from the comment section: "knife crime, knife crime, it's ain't about knives"

You're saving that banning/ demonizing locking folding knives when almost all crimes are committed with a common kitchen knife wasnt the solution?!? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!


Heh, great track. I mean it's no Linton Kwesi Johnson dis but it is what it is and that's enough.

Look, no one's a fan of the village idiot juggling lit dynamite on a unicycle in the packed shopping mall, and it's no good for anyone if the bad apples* aren't given a route to better things to do so Roman Law countries tend to have any old excuse laws to give cause to have people questioned as to why they're doing whatever the heck it is that they're doing .. my grandmother pulled up kids all the time like that.

The upside of such things is actually problematic and questionable bahaviour can be shunted in one direction and chefs of any colour, langauge, borough address can walk on proud and free with their knife rolls.

The downside is the watchers and guardians can get a bit enthused and selective in their choices of collar, they can develop little clique's of weirdness and corruption, and the judgy types can get a bit overly judgy about all the wrong things.

The challenge for any community is dealing with all that and having better control over the system .. takes time and focus, 'taint easy.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MVsBS7OZvo


I wouldn't say NYC is a hell hole but will say they(locals) don't seem to take crime that serious there, even violent crime.

I was visiting last fall with the family, left the car in the NJ side when taking the ferry to the Statue. They took the train to the hotel and I went to retrieve the car, got a front stage view of a guy using a chain to beat up a security guard at a shopping mall.

Guy had been peeing on the vehicles, guard told him to stop. He took offense at this, got a length of chain and started kicking the door so the guard would tell him to stop. As soon as he came out guy started hitting him over the head with the chain.

Police took a good 15 to 20 minutes to respond, didn't seem interested in looking for the guy. The guard wasn't interested in pressing charges.

Guy was probably homeless and definitely needed mental health but he had the capacity to plan out and execute a violent attack that could have been deadly.


MKUltra was another government program that was widely run but kept secret.

Not so fun fact, the UnaBomber was one of the subjects of that program and it is said that his personality changed drastically afterwards. Note his wiki page doesn't call out MKULTRA or government links by name...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/12/the-unabomber-the-ci...

There are some who claim the dirision associated with the term Conspiracy theory is in fact a Conspiracy..

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...


Unabomber-CIA connection is wild. This is great stuff.

> There are some who claim the dirision associated with the term Conspiracy theory is in fact a Conspiracy..

Haha, that's entertaining. I've heard of quite a few stories, some proven, that CIA or similar agencies were fabricating evidence and bribing people to _create_ conspiracy theories. I believe one such case was a diary discovered related to "Richard E. Byrd's North Pole Flight". If I recall correctly the person that found it later admitted that he was bribed or coerced to do so. I can't look up sources now, might try and look it up later today.

It makes sense. If conspiracies are leaking, you can create fake leaks and then discredit them. Shaming and marginalization is great too.


Let me check but I think it refers to a shared dish; at an izakaiya you often order a bunch of shared food plates and then serve yourself from them.

It is definitely rude to use chopsticks that you just put in your mouth to go rooting around for something in those. You are supposed to take from the top and ideally turn them around using the back end. Some people frown on using the back ends however as it may have been touched by your hand...

Edit add: It means to dig food out, either from your own dish or a shared one. Like mixing the food up to look for something you like in it.


返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)

To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.


Yes, that is why I said that some people frown on it.

However, the people that I learned etiquette from taught me to turn the chopsticks around. They were not low class by any means, company owners from Kyoto region.


A president can not make a law, only sign them into existence. He can also direct enforcement or lessen it.

As far as I understand, the Schedule of Cannabis is written into the US Code. So Congress would need to amend it.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...


It's under the purview of the executive branch to determine drug scheduling

> The term "list I chemical" means a chemical specified by regulation of the Attorney General ... until otherwise specified by regulation of the Attorney General


Thank you, TIL!


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