That doesn't mean what they do is automatically legal.

I'm pretty sure there's a demand for "murder my husband", or for "can someone please drown my neighbour". And yet it's illegal to offer such services.

Also: Voters. Smokers are still a fairly substantial fraction of the population, enough to swing a vote, especially if, and that appears to be the trend in most western democracies these days, there are two opposing political sides roughly evenly matched.

I mean, does it not strike anyone as a very weird coincidence that we have almost perfect 50/50 splits in so many countries?

No, but they do everything BUT force to make it the most attractive option. Just as one silly example: With wages and prices as they are, having both partners work full-time is basically required unless you're in the top few percent of earners or inherited wealth. So who's going to cook? After a long work day? Convenience food is the obvious choice. You are not being forced, but unless food is a high-priority item in your life, you are very much steered into that direction.

Yes, but only because most Americans are unwilling to drive a Metro-sized car anymore. They've been conditioned to think small/lightweight cars are unsafe or unmanly or etc.

The invisible hand of the free market solves a lot of things, but it's never quite figured out how to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Everybody wants to live on a livable planet, but nobody wants to pay for the technology required to keep that way.

Being inexpensive to purchase and operate is one advantage scooters have over automobiles; the other is that they are small enough to maneuver quickly through heavy traffic and easier to find a parking spot for in congested areas.

No, it's not. The exported BYD cars do not get any unusual subsidies. Their initial R&D was subsidized, but not the production.

https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

That's actually a good question. Inks have changed somewhat over the past 5,000 years, and there's no particular reason to think that tattoo inks have been equally mobile across this timeframe.

But now we come to a deeper point. Basically, tattoos (as I've always understand it) are surgically-engineered scars, with the scar tissue supposedly locking the ink in place. It's quite probable that my understanding is wrong - this isn't exactly an area I've really looked into in any depth, so the probability of me being right is rather slim. Nonetheless, if I had been correct, then you might well expect the stuff to stay there. Skin is highly permeable, but scar tissue less so. As long as the molecules exceed the size that can migrate, then you'd think it would be fine.

That it isn't fine shows that one or more of these ideas must be wrong.

So are scars, but people still skateboard or rock climb or whatever. If you care that much about what you might think about it in 10 years then a tattoo is probably not for you. It's an imprint left by a decision that past you made on current you. It's just a little more intentional than that time you decided to dive for a fly ball and landed on a broken bottle or whatever.

Yeah, current you might not align 100% with past you's choices, but that's life. You integrate them into your identity as best you can and mostly you don't think about it, and when you do it's a nice reminder of where you were in a certain point in your life. Or it's just a pretty decoration that you got because you like the art.

With scars they happened because the person getting them were enjoying the activity that generated them. If you enjoy rock climbing, and you get scars from it, it's a mark you got doing something you enjoy.

Meanwhile, getting a tattoo of say, your girlfriend might seem like a good idea now, but in 5 years when you break up not so much. Unlike a scar, which you might consider a battle wound from when you enjoyed rock climbing but no longer do so, the tattoo now gives you bad memories and removing it is expensive and painful.

So yes, I don't have a tattoo, because there's nothing I can think of that I'd want forever.

Can you let Tim Cook know that?

I'm an Apple fan, but the money they charge for internal storage is ridiculous, especially given that I can buy an external SSD with 2 TB for like $150 if I shop around a bit.

The cynic in me wants to say that they see "intelligence" and go "great, it has something I don't, let's just 100% trust it".

The social critic in me wants to say that it's due to the gigantic hype about AI and how it'll revolutionize everything, replace everyone and solve all problems.

And the tech/security guy in me wants to say "doh, people do dumb shit. What else is new?"

There weren't even that many good ones for Latin languages, until Google started releasing some under free licences.

Microsoft actually released a set of "Core Fonts for the Web" back in 1996, which while proprietary was available for free distribution with certain caveats.

Linux systems all had a way to get them - they often consist of a script to download the original font packages and then extracted them for use on Linux desktops. This greatly improved the typography so it was popular on Linux systems to install them. But you had to do it as the end user and the license restricted providers from pre-installing them.

They're not longer readily available but have been archived so many times there are many sites still hosting them. Apple licensed the fonts from Microsoft so Macs have them installed by default.

Google however was the first to make a bunch of open-source fonts.

I don't think slashdot has had any actual developers working on its since the early 2000s. It's a mature legacy codebase, destined to run as-is until it can't anymore, then go away.

It's only recently did tattoos go from underground shame to acceptance by most of the public. Probably started around the 90s, and from there the popularity of them took off.

Before that, usually a person with a tattoo was someone mixed up in bad dealings you wanted to avoid.

But since general perception has changed, they've gotten a lot more accepted and more people get them in places that are a lot more visible (people who got them usually had them hidden under clothing). In more conservative circles, this is still the norm and most hide it under clothing for work.

The real problem with tattoos is they're permanent, and I can't really tell you anything I liked 10 years ago I still like today, which means "forever" is kind of reserved for something I'm not quite sure what yet. Sure you can get tattoos removed, but that's often far more painful and far less effective than not getting it in the first place.

Then there's the body issue - well, a Navy sailor who get a ship tattooed on their body puts on a few pounds and the tattoo they got when they were young and fit looks gross and distorted once they are in their 40s and has a beer belly. Or as someone wrote, "A ship with a bulbous bow, now has only grown more bulbous over the years".

It's just something I haven't gotten because "forever" is a long time. And I'm sure tattoo artists have lots of stories of girlfriends now enemies they had to alter.