That product is the reason I wrote this journal entry... because it ISN'T out there! It's out of stock!

Charisma has everything to do with it, and policy nothing to do with it. An authoritarian leader can contradict himself on policy and his followers won't care.

Authoritarian leaders are not the least consistent about policy. That's why scholars have had so much trouble characterizing fascism as an ideology, because it's not an ideology. It's a disease of ideology; it's politics rotting from the head down, like a fish.

Because authoritarians follow charismatic leaders...

Just saying repeating what someone else says doesn't make it true, no matter where you claim your loyalties lie (or in this case loyalties you disclaim).

I am doubly sorry to hear that.

What's more, Amazon stops promoting (i.e. hides) sellers with poor feedback ratings/ratios. They can't penalize individual bad sellers when just the product reviews are negative... any company could be selling an item that isn't very good.

It must be a uniquely American thing to equate massive levels of attention with good service.

No, but it's the only way to differentiate full service restaurants from their cheaper and more convenient fast-food counterparts. I've seen many restaurants which go out of their way to keep all condiments behind the counter, rather than leaving them at the table, and don't bring them out with meals that would likely require them, either. Then your server has to make a special trip just for your request, and maybe you'll leave a larger tip. The US has a head-start on fast-food, so these changes will spreading to the rest of the world a few years later.

Besides, as others have said, it's more a tactic to passive-aggressively push you to eat your meal quickly and leave. Those restaurants with "good service" you're frequenting, are probably actually cookie-cutter chains trying to maximize profits and pretty far down on the "good service" scale. You'll do better at the very expensive and classy restaurants.

Maybe. But it also provides the flexibility to have a thin and light phone when I want a thin and light phone (the majority of the time) and to switch to a case with additional battery power when I want it for extended outdoors activities or whatever.

Are you honestly comparing vaccination with enforced sterilization? What the fuck?

The whole point is not eliminating "whole sections of society". That's exactly what this is about. If we refuse to vaccinate, we endanger those that cannot be vaccinated. Because the same group also cannot participate in a potential cure, for exactly the same reasons.

If these people could only endanger themselves, I'd say more power to them. Don't get vaccinated, but at least then have the decency to die peacefully when you get infected. If that was the whole story, I would not mind it. Not one bit. I'm all for idiots and assholes removing themselves from the gene pool. We, as society, can only benefit from it.

So technically, I would actually be for the removal of a section of society... albeit by their own doing, not mine.

The problem is that they don't just endanger themselves, but others too. It's a bit like drunk driving. If they could only kill themselves, all I would do is make sure they have enough to ensure a speedy delivery. Unfortunately they rarely die alone.

I am not talking with selfish assholes who cannot accept their responsibility to society.

You might also remember that people got lynched in the wild west for no crime other than being the "wrong" person at the wrong place at the wrong time. What about their freedom?

Freedom is something earned by responsibility. That part is one that people easily forget.

Obviously their market study didn't lead them to the conclusion that people would like to buy phones that come with a protective cover. It seems there can't be a market for that.

> These serve mainly Amazon and other customers.
> Many buyers are clueless about this difference and
> review sellers by saying "I hated this product!" or
> leave product reviews saying "It arrived late! 1 Star!".
> C'est la vie.

Sometimes that's the only way to get attention and a response though. Unless you have the time to actually call their support.. and keep hanging up and re-calling until you get one of their non-outsourced call centers... the "Where's my stuff" process in their help section delivers empty platitudes these days, rather than results. This is especially the case if you accidentally order from one of their "affiliates", in which case even the phone support people refuse to help and shuffle you off to a third-party non-Amazon email address, usually with no actually phone number available, which will not garner a response.

A couple of 1-stars though, where publicly visible, will more often invoke a response and resolution.

I don't know either, but I'd guess that it does, because most abductions are by relatives. But hey, maybe those particular groups don't overlap much.