Outside of a very small community (of which I am a member) this won't even register as a problem, let alone motivate a sizeable number of people to do anything about it. Our species lacks the will to even stop literally poisoning ourselves.

Liberals are fairly consistent in defending people's right to their faith while speaking out against people who want to impose their faith on others.

It has nothing to do with investment in trains or not but a tolerance for allowing people who cause trouble to use them. There are countries with far older rail infrastructure that I would use over American public transit. Those countries won't put up with some crackhead or meth addict terrorizing other patrons. The U.S. doesn't want to incarcerate these people or believes doing so is either cruel or unjust and dumps them right back out into society.

There's no point in investing anything in public transportation when the people who will destroy it remain unpunished. Meanwhile in countries like Japan you'd get rude looks for talking on the phone on a train. That alone keeps most people's behavior in check, but they will fine people who act out of line if necessary. The only way it would work in the U.S. is for a private company to run the service so that they can kick people out who don't follow the rules. The public transit systems trend towards becoming the most tragic sort of commons.

I don't care how nice the train (bus, etc.) is if I have to sit next to a strung out druggie that’s acting like a schizophrenic. Contrast this with air travel where people will be kicked off flights for being drunk and disorderly and barred from flying again if they're enough of an ass. The politicians who tax us to pay for public transit rarely use it themselves, so what do they care how miserable the experience is? They won't ban the crackhead because that crackhead might vote for someone else.

People in Europe or Japan would quit riding the rail if it were overrun with the mentally ill drug addicts that the U.S. does little to nothing about. That's why we can't have nice things and until we fix that, nothing will change.

I'm not sure what the unions actually gained. Suppose some drivers did want to unionize. What prevents others from joining the platform and undercutting them without joining or from Uber/Lyft from doing what they should have from the beginning and let each individual driver set their own rate and letting the market decide what a ride should cost.

It's been reported that Trump was overheard by anonymous sources saying, "I'll have those Zoomers voting Republican for 200 years," as he executed a meeting.

This has been going on long before Trump. The only difference is that previously some third party company would buy the data and provide this service to law enforcement. The only difference here is that there's no middleman and the government is buying the data to process directly.

The ultimate problem is that while there are certain things the government cannot do or data it cannot collect without a warrant, there's nothing preventing private companies from collecting the same data. In many cases there are government laws that require collecting and retaining some of that data.

Neither party is ever going to close that loophole because both recognize how useful it is. I think the only way to prevent government abuse of this data is to prevent private companies from either collecting the information or retaining longer than necessary to complete some business transaction. That immediately destroys many companies outright or eliminates their primary business model, so expect them to be against it as much as the government. The average citizen doesn't understand the problem and of those who do, a sizable amount don't care that all of their data is being collected. They want to like each other's photos or shitpost about the latest thing.

If the founding fathers could have anticipated the kind of technology that would enable this sort of thing I think they would have crafted the Bill of Rights in a way to prevent the government from doing what it's doing now, but I don't think anyone in the 1700's could have reasonably been expected to foresee the kinds of massive databases of information that computers enable at very little cost. It would require a constitutional amendment to fix this, but once again I don't think enough people, Democrat or Republican care. There are few people who are willing to pay extra for privacy either and that makes it difficult for companies that don't violate your privacy and sell your data to compete against those that do.

Why are you giving them any of that information to begin with? The difference between now and then is that now it's spelled out in the user agrees that you and everyone else clicked through when they signed up. If the company tells you that they're going to pump your ass to anyone who'll pay and you agree to it, I'm not sure how much shame I ought to heap upon the company. If you don't like social media selling your personal information, then stay the hell off social media.

I think the point is that making exploits near impossible for an individual actor to discover means only well funded organizations or nations will be able to afford being in the business. State actors are a lot less likely to make vulnerabilities widespread like mercenary actors. That doesn't save everyone from exploits, but it does make the average user less likely to be the target.

The real question is how much of a performance tradeoff is this or if there's some other catch.

This reads to me like the sort of pithy post that's directed at something that I've apparently missed, but to your comment empathy is an overrated emotion that should be met with skepticism, particularly when it's politicians espousing it. Any number bet atrocities can and have been done because someone feels the plights of the people. The current dictator of this country no doubt claims to represent the feelings of his people. Like any other feeling, empathy is something that can be claimed by anyone. Unless you can read their mind, who are you to call them a liar.

The emotion may be useful, but like any other emotion it's one that can be claimed by charlatans. Empathy without demonstration is as worthless to me as any other claim without proof. Maybe not everyone grew up on a diet or televangelists or the equivalent to develop this kind of skepticism, but I've never met anyone who was empathetic that had to claim as much or even care about what other people thought of them.

I'd even argue that empathy is bad if a person has no way to act on it. If you cannot improve anyone's life what good to you or them is being able to feel their pain? Acting for the benefit of the heard because it ultimately ensures your own survival is still selfish. Empathy is just another useful survival skill, not some ultimate form of morality to be achieved.

Did you find your way over to r/fuckcars or something?

Japan had a massive car culture of their own and the Greater Tokyo Area is regarded as the largest metro area in the world.

Kids don't play outside as much for a variety of reasons. Smaller family sizes make parents more protective, and ubiquitous computers have made inside entertainment plentiful and inexpensive. Urbanization plays a part as well, but it's by no means the only culprit.

I'm skeptical of this claim. If it were true, more companies would be doing it to attract better employees and the more productive companies would naturally replace the less productive ones. Never mind saving a lot of money not having to pay for office space for employees.

I like WFH, but I also know how much I fucked off when everyone had to do WFH. Maybe it's not all that different from the amount of "fucking off" time in the office when all things are considered. There wasn't any drop of work accomplished. The more I've gone on the more I've come to realize that's almost some kind of universal constant.

Anyone more productive at home than in the office should probably just start their own company.

I kinda like it when companies give subtle hints that this might not be the job for me. Microsoft making Teams work is entirely dream work. It's entirely within the realm of fancy and can turn into a nightmare at any moment. You should be thankful for receiving such a clear warning sign.

This is just the FTC shaking down those companies for some money (political donations are fines too) for shaking down their customers.

Forget turtles, it's shakedowns all the way down.

I think the people working on those projects were aware of that. At least in most of the videos I've watched, it was a talking a point. Having more options or an easier time is certainly good. Snorkeling is something that I greatly enjoy and I think if more people had the opportunity to experience the beauty of nature they would be far more willing to help maintain it.

I'm surprised that they dared complain in the first place. Equatorial Guinea is one of those countries that's been under an oppressive dictatorship for so long that popular content creators on YouTube will eventually wind up making a video about the country or something ridiculous that the country's current or former President (for life) got up to. This is one of those rare cases where no one would really protest if the CIA overthrew the government.