Oh crap! People might have to cut back on their cigaweed, or cook 2 meals a month at home instead of shopping at McD's all the time, to afford their TikToks and Instagrams! Will the atrocities never cease?!? What if they have to cancel one of their streaming services to pay for the internet connection?

Broadband at home is not a right, or even really a necessity. It's really helpful sometimes, yes, but... public libraries have it. Pretty much everyone (in the US) has a phone that has it now. And if they don't have it on their phone, they can go get it for free at McDonalds while feasting on their sloppy meals for 4x the price of cooking something healthy at home. Or they could go work for 2 hours somewhere to pay for a month of service (left coast wages, anyway).

I've known a lot of poor people. The vast majority of them aren't poor because things cost so much, they're poor because they make poor choices. They eat fast food because someone once told them it's cheaper than cooking at home (it's not, unless you buy particularly expensive food). They buy crap they don't need on Amazon and Temu. They don't like to work, and blame the world when they get fired because they don't show up or act professionally. There are a few legit reasons it can be hard to hold a job, the biggest one is for single parents - child care is a PITA. Kids are a PITA. Truly. They can make it really hard to hold a job. But even so, the cost of "Broadband" for a basic plan is not that much, and many of the people wanting these discounted programs are spending far more on hair, and nails, and streaming services, and other stupid crap they don't need, than they would on a basic cable internet plan.

We saved several thousand (maybe even several tens of thousand) lives of people who are mostly going to die in the next few years anyway, and in the process effed up an entire generation of young people with their entire lives ahead of them, tanked our economy, and put a whole lot of people through needless stress and misery.

This is exactly what those of us who were against the lockdowns and school shutdowns predicted.

Was it really worth it?

...many dividers went up, and certain parking spaces became cross-hatched, creating a lot of 78-stall parking lots around France.

Similar, I use a wire or a bit of plastic packaging (the kind everyone curses as they cut themselves trying to get it open) cut to a point. But, I currently have a wood chip or something so jammed in there that NOTHING wants to get it loose, including the end of a paperclip.

I do think the physical shape of the lightning connector would be preferable to USB-C, but the standardization of USB-C is preferably. They just need to address the physical interface and come out with a more robust USB-D, without the tiny crevices to get packed with crap.

On the flip side, my USB-C connector always gets so full of crap that cables won't stay plugged in... I wake up in the morning and the phone is sitting on the nightstand, and the cable is on the floor. I've had a couple issues with wireless, but it's been far more reliable for me (due, again, to crap in the USB-C port, which at the moment I can't seem to get clean enough for a cable to seat properly for some reason).

The worst is when I use a chainsaw w/ the phone in my pocket. Somehow the wood shavings ALWAYS find their way into my charging port.

RCW 49.44.050
Fraud by employment agent.
Every employment agent or broker who, with intent to influence the action of any person thereby, shall misstate or misrepresent verbally, or in any writing or advertisement, any material matter relating to the demand for labor, the conditions under which any labor or service is to be performed, the duration thereof or the wages to be paid therefor, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

There are a couple bits here that make this totally non-applicable. The first is the "intent" piece. A bonus given to employees who have been promoted is generally not intended to influence the actions of that employee, it's a reward for past actions. Miscalculating the bonus when it's given doesn't change anything, unless the method of calculation was given at the beginning of the period covered by the bonus, and then changed later on. Additionally, if Amazon's statement that "We identified and immediately corrected..." is correct, that would clearly show there was not an intent to influence actions.

The law seems designed to prevent things like "Come work for us, we have flexible hours, no weekend work, and will pay you $100/hr" and then after starting, they say "actually, I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday, and if you could come in on Sunday too, that'd be terrific. Mmmkay, thanks! Oh, and we've had some budget cuts, so we're only going to pay you $80/hr, hope that'll be ok!"

Pretty much every reasonable person (and law) allows for an error in payroll/bonus payment/etc. to be corrected, even if the correction is not in the employee's favor.

The other bit of this is that the pay portion relates to wages, and one could argue that a bonus is not a wage; it is compensation of a sort, but it's paid on top of the regular wage for the job. So, re-calculating a bonus is not actually a change in wages.

They're not the most fun to breathe in, but a properly fitted N95 is actually useful against wildfire smoke, too. I wouldn't want to wear one all day in the house, air purifiers are great for that, but they're helpful if you have to go outside.

Beauty of covid is that no one will even give you a sideways look for wearing one now.

This mostly looks like Spy vs. Spy stuff. Pretty much everyone spies on everyone, always, friend on friend as much as friend on frenemy and enemy on enemy. So yes, the US is probably up to their elbows in almost everyone's networks, and Israel is probably up to their elbows in the networks of the US and Russia and China and all their neighbors, and China is up to their elbows in the networks of the Koreas, Russia, the US, etc. In some cases for good reason - I expect the Chinese trust their sometimes-ally NK about as much as we do - not at all. They have a saber-rattling nuclear fool for a neighbor, I expect them to care as much what he's up to as they do about the US.

The biggest difference I see is that China is ALSO up to their elbows in a lot of non-military private company networks in the US and elsewhere, and often seems to give what they find to private industry in their own country to compete economically. The other countries seem to mostly keep spycraft separate from economic development. I'm sure that's not an absolute, but at least at a very high level that's how it appears.

That's interesting, I've had exactly the opposite experience with Comcast support; I live in Western WA, and the few times I've had to call in to their support I've gotten someone in Everett or Lynnwood (about a 90-minute drive from where I live). They've been professional people who knew what they were talking about and were able to help me right away. So, maybe with Comcast it depends on the tier you purchase, or where you live? I'm not sure, but apart from the upload speed being shit (have to pay for 1Gbps download speed to get 25Mbps upload speed) I've had no real complaints with them.

So, what are you saying? Infanticide should be legalized? That's the thing I don't understand about all the pro-abortion arguments... there's precious little separating those arguments from arguments for being able to kill a newborn, or a toddler, or...? Where does it stop?

If a woman who was raped is allowed to terminate a pregnancy so that she doesn't have to care for her attacker's offspring and be reminded daily of that traumatic event, then what about the woman who has a child with an abusive husband (possibly even non-consensually) and eventually gains her freedom? Should she be required to care for that child, being reminded daily of the abusive asshole who impregnated her with it? Or should she be allowed to slit its throat so she can move on with her life, free from the reminder of her abused past? Does the woman have "the right over her body" to no longer use her body (her labor, her work effort, her time, etc.) to care for the toddler or school-aged child? Does that "right" allow her to simply end the child?

When we de-value human life at any level, we ultimately de-value human life at all levels.

At least in my area, the free school lunches were not worth eating, and probably caused as many health issues as they solved.

"Cheesy Breadsticks" was a main course once a week, as was pizza so disgusting the kids wouldn't eat it.

There was a time when school meals were actually made to be somewhat nutritious (even legally mandated to be), but apparently that all went out the window with COVID.

If we really want to help lift people out of poverty, particularly children and single parents, the two biggest helpers would be:

1) Free (ok, sponsored by government, but free to the consumer), reliable child care. This is probably most easily accomplished by adding staff at the schools for before/after care. Lack of affordable and reliable child care is one of the biggest things keeping single parents from having stable jobs. This also needs to be coupled with either an option for child care for children who are ill, or legally mandated paid time off for parents with sick children. The middle-of-the-day call "you need to come pick up your child from school because it has the sniffles" is a major impediment to job retention, and needs to be solved.

2) Proper nutritional assistance. Our current food stamp + expired food bank food system doesn't work well, because it's not coupled with education on "how to make a healthy meal on a budget." Many of those living in poverty literally don't know how to prepare vegetables or cook basic foods, which is the real reason so much of what they eat is processed garbage (hot dogs, food out of cans). It is NOT a cost thing - it's far cheaper to buy some vegetables, chicken or pork, dry beans, etc. and make a meal than it is to buy all the processed and canned stuff.