80
votes
You're running for office on a somewhat petty, yet univerally-understood single issue. What is it?
Imagine that on the campaign posters, it will say your name and then this policy. For example:
Vote for <your username> ...
- Rain boots for everyone. (No American / Englishman / Indian / etc. should have soggy socks.)
- A Speedy DMV. (It should take 10 minutes to renew your license at the DMV.)
- Rice in every restaurant. (Rice is good with everything. At least some Asian KFCs will serve fried chicken with rice!)
It should resonate deeply with people, without the expectation that it should solve any of the deeper problems in life.
All vehicles (and all trims) must be sold with a hardware switch to disable all internet access, telemetry, and data collection. Nor may unrelated features be tied to network access to coerce customers to enable it.
You get my vote if you change vehicles to 'everything'.
Sure. For example, why does a toothbrush need to be internet-connected, and why does it need a 300MB app to go with it?
Somewhat related to this: make it illegal to put features/functions into an app that aren't also exactly the same on the website, with the possible exception of functions that require GPS or other such mobile-device-specific functions. Also, it should be possible to permanently turn off interstitial screens recommending to install an app (I'm looking at you Paypal).
I really think "Make my Fridge / Car / TV Dumb Again" would unironically be a winning platform. Like the other candidates would eventually scramble to have a position because of your meteoric rise.
"What do you think about <insert war>?" "War is bad. You know who doesn’t think about war though? My dumb as rocks fridge." overwhelming applause
Cash reform in the US.
Pennies are actually useless. Nickles are useless. Dimes are still useless. Quarters can barely buy you a single gumball these days. There should be $1, $5, and $10 coins and $200 and/or $500 bills. When I was a kid a $100 bill was extraneous for most things, but today weekly grocery shopping can easily surpass that amount.
Just need to do a full rebase and move that decimal point 2 times for every bit of money and we'll be fine. A penny could actually buy things again, but also median wage will be around $500 annually. The average rent payment would also be closer to $20/month. The $1 store is actually gonna have some pretty baller items in stock.
Sadly the single-digit millionaires will only be 10,000aires now. But the top 15 billionaires will still be billionaires, which goes to show just how badly the tax system is screwed up.
You're going to scare off as many software developers as you attract with your word choice of "rebase"!
We'll just copy the change, delete it all, the apply new change.
Might result in data loss, but those are the risks.
Shit, I left the API key in here, have to delete the repo and push again.
Don’t we love rebasing? It’s merging that scares me.
I do love rebasing. The only thing I love more than rebasing is when my non-git-guru team members know what the fuck is going on...
Agree on the coins - the only useful one is the quarter (because the coin mechanism in vending machines works better than the bill acceptor).
I like bills because they aren't heavy in my pocket or uncomfy and cold when they touch my skin.
But yes, eliminate the penny, nickle and dime!
We'll never make larger bills because it benefits the government for the transfer of large amounts of cash to be inconvenient.
Why do you want to use coins more?
I want coins to be useful. As they are now they are a burden that you are penalized for when you use cash.
But bills also kind of annoy me in and of themselves. You have to organize them and fold them into your wallet, which is annoying when you're just trying to make a quick transaction in what should otherwise be a swiftly moving line. But if I get coins, they can just quickly be put in my pocket. When I want to pay with coins, I could simply grab all the coins in my pocket and hold my hand out and it's easy to see which ones are which.
Beyond that, vending machines with bills are painfully annoying to use. Buying a soda usually means slowly inserting two to four bills and then getting coins back. Why not just insert coins and be done with it?
Because coins absolutely suck to carry around. I already try not to carry cash and do everything I can to not own any coins, which means I wouldn't really be affected by this, but I just don't understand why you actually want a heavy, jingly mass in your pocket.
Most people already have heavy jingly masses in their pockets with their keys, for one. And by retiring lower value coins there will be fewer coins in your pocket, which means less mass. Coins don’t wear down so don’t need to be put in wallets and can just go in a pocket, so they are preferable to bills.
I also vastly prefer cashless transactions, but I prefer them mostly because cash transactions as they are now are terrible. I want them to be better.
As an Australian with our basically tear-proof bills (you can still cut them, but I don’t think it’s possible to rip them by accident) this argument took me by surprise. It’s pretty bonkers how much security and technology goes into modern cash these days, and yet the wealthiest country in the world still uses cotton fabric?
Well that got me researching. When switching, there's two major things to consider: the cost of switching and the benefits it would bring. With no numbers to back it up, I would say that the cost of switching for the US is very high; much higher than it was for Australia. The US dollar is basically ubiquitous across the world and never "expires", so we'd be dual maintaining infrastructure for both types of currency for the foreseeable future.
But the more interesting thing is what benefits it brings. The most tangible benefit that polymer supposedly brings is its durability. It lasts longer than paper currency. But.. does it really? The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates that paper banknotes last "around six months to 1.5 years for the $5 and $50 denominations", whereas polymer banknotes last "3.5 years for $5 banknotes up to 10 years for $50 banknotes".
However, the US Federal Reserve puts the $5 at 4.7 years and the $50 at 12.2 years. Perhaps the Reserve Bank of Australia is underselling their paper banknote or the US Federal Reserve is overselling theirs, or both, but the cost-benefit analysis that the RBA did on switching to polymer was based on their assertion that paper Australian money basically constantly disintegrated so..
It's possible that the US dollar's formula for its "paper" (cotton and linen mixture) banknotes is simply more durable than other countries out of a need for global, constant use? If so, then the main benefit of switching is negated, the costs are high, and not replacing a biodegradable product with a plastic one is a fine decision.
I don’t actually know the process, but I never imagined an abrupt switch all at once, and rather a change only to new notes being printed. If banknotes (polymer or paper or fabric) wear out regardless, that implies they’re removed from circulation one way or another anyway.
So the way I pictured it, all new cash gets made of the new stuff, and for maybe a few decades you’ll have a mixed-bills economy, but as damaged notes get removed from circulation, the overall distribution will trend towards mostly polymer.
Maybe once the circulation of the old notes is low enough, then you launch a campaign to encourage people to trade in their older bills, to try to get the last bits and pieces out of circulation. Maybe you could have it that bringing in the old cash gets you a benefit of slightly more than it’s printed value (“bring in $5,000 of your old banknotes, and we’ll give you $5,000 in new cash, plus a $50 tax credit” — just spitballing, 1% is possibly too high) or maybe you just say at some stage that businesses no longer accept the old banknotes, but banks will accept them for a lot longer?
Actually, thinking about incentives, you probably want to publicly announce your intentions and let self-interest guide things. Once you reach the “we wanna wrap this up” stage, then just announce ahead of time that every year, you’ll reduce the printed value by 1%, so after 10 years your $100 bills will only get you $90, and after 50 years your bills are worth half their face value, and after 100 years they hold no legal tender value.
This is an unfounded and inaccurate assumption. USD is widespread, but old notes are taken out of circulation -- they do, in fact, "expire" because they wear out over time. US bank notes are already redesigned regularly, afaik in large part for anti-counterfeiting purposes. The Bureau of Engraving & Printing even lists its schedule for upcoming bill redesigns on its website. While I'm sure switching material would not be cost-free, the reasons you give here simply don't apply.
Expire as in old notes are still valid, not that notes do not wear out over time. Since they don't expire, the cash handling infrastructure would have to account for someone holding on to an older note in a safe where it didn't wear out. The rest of what I wrote is centered on the average time before wear and tear cause notes to be removed from circulation.
I don't think there would be any reason for new notes in circulation to invalidate the existence of old notes. Over time they would be largely removed from circulation naturally due to wear and tear, and there's absolutely no reason to insist the old notes are no longer valid even after changing the new notes to a new material. Especially if that new material is more durable, you'll gradually get to the point where there are very few to no old notes in circulation, and there's zero need for switching the materials notes are made of to be a sudden transition.
I don't think this is true because the US dollar is a reserve currency. There's people literally hoarding a ton of US currency because it's the world's reserve currency. This is a problem that no other country that has switched their currency materials have ever faced.
But again, let's ignore that and assume that's a problem that can be solved by just biting the bullet. You're still neglecting my main point, which is that according to the Australian and US numbers, there's no durability benefits to switching to polymer over the current US blend.
I don't see how other countries holding old banknotes in their reserves has any bearing on the cost of putting redesigned bills into circulation. If it were such a big factor that it made redesigning bills infeasible, we would not already be redesigning bills on a regular basis. The existence of USD currency reserves is entirely irrelevant to the question of "do we change what material we use for banknotes when we redesign our bills", because nothing about doing that impacts those reserves in any way. They would not be forced to cycle out all their old bills and replace them with new ones. The US would not have to stop recognizing old banknotes -- there are already systems in place to recognize old banknotes even after a redesign.
Whether there would be an actual benefit to switching materials does matter more to whether this would ultimately be a good decision, but I don't actually care about that (and if that was your main point initially, all I can say is that your comments did not reflect that from my perspective) because from my initial reply my point has been to debunk your inaccurate picture of how feasible printing new banknotes would be if we did decide to change materials.
Its probably very good we don't have plastic coins.. would be so much more plastic waste
Would it be? Who throws out coins - or at least, who would if they had actual value? If they were only made from recycled plastic and not new plastic, it might be a good way to sequester recycled plastic that we can't use in other ways.
Not sure how we'd prevent counterfeiting though.
Plastic of any kind is constantly shedding and breaking down. What do you think microplastics are?
I thought a lot of that was from things like being broken down by the sun and broken into smaller pieces, which are less likely to happen in someone's pocket or piggy bank or other places where coins are kept.
Also, if we only use recycled plastic, we'd b3 using plastic that was going to shed into microplastics anyway. If this took even just a little bit longer that would be a positive.
Friction on plastics is a big part of microplastics, and coins are generally subject to a lot of friction.
Sounds true enough. I know very little about materials science.
The Army would give Soldiers coins in the form of gift certificates for 25¢ denominations to avoid Soldiers walking around with exactly that.
Now a days they probably just use card.
I do wonder if US currency being the same size and broadly similar shades of yellow-green across denominations contributes to that. My local currency uses much more different sizes and colours to differentiate currency so as long as they're not folded, there's no real issue quickly picking out the correct note.
Downside to this is that some higher, but still reasonable to carry bills get rather tall, which means you need a bigger wallet which is less comfortable in a pocket.
I personally find flipping through unorganized bills of varying sizes more difficult. If they’re all the same, you can just run your finger slowly over the consistent edge to flip one at a time, like looking through a deck of playing cards.
I can say from personal experience that the range of sizes used for other currencies does not result in a wallet that's overall bigger in a way that remotely affects comfort. The dimensions are different but not that different or even wholly in a way that would make them larger. At least with Euro bills, they're less long on the other side of the rectangle (the one that doesn't really vary between bills) than US bills.
Different colors combined with different sizes make it more or less trivial to sort through unorganized bills that vary on both axes, in my experience, and they also make you more likely to keep bills sorted by denomination when you put them away. It's more like those block-sorting puzzles they give kids than flipping through a deck of cards.
I am also speaking from personal experience from living in the US with uniform bills and living abroad with varying bills, both for many years. I have had more frustration (minor in the grand scheme) and a larger wallet with the latter.
I'm pretty sure my current wallet is smaller than my wallet back in the US was. But to each their own, experiences differ.
Sounds like everyone gets a purse
With my rebase idea carrying around a roll of pennies would be the same as carrying $50 in $1's. While the pennies would be heavier, they'd also be more compact, about the size of my thumb.
Added bonus that coins are much easier to sanitize.
Oh and people have a very hard time grasping large numbers. Wealth inequality is much easier to grok at smaller scales. Scaling down means my household now makes $1,200 a year, the doctor next door $2,000. The average home costs between $3,000 and $10,000. The average household has less than $5,000 in net worth, and Bill Gates has a net worth of $1,500,000,000.
But why would you want to carry around coins? They're heavy and jingly and don't sit nicely in your pocket.
Coins make the "clicky clack math rocks" part of my brain happy. They're not dice but they're a close second.
But I have no pockets because of the patriarchy (add pockets to my campaign pitch) and when I do have pockets anything in them makes the pants fall off my hips due to stretch material. So.... I'm torn.
You just gotta choose dresses with pockets. They exist, I've seen them with my own eyes!
Also just a tiny coin purse does wonders. Much less bulky than a billfold.
I don't wear dresses basically at all and if I carry a bag it gets left places so I don't do purses, including cook purses. My wallet is attached to my phone so I'm a card only person.
Men's pants just don't fit me well, and women's pants don't get good pockets often. Especially not in work clothes.
As my two aesthetics are "don't perceive me" and "Fae at the Renaissance Faire", I wear belt pouches with the latter. These do not match my work "don't perceive me" attire.
You may be interested in my wife's new obsession, namely the capes and cloaks section.
bookmarks for when I have money
But belts without pouches would help with the pants falling down thing.
I am built in such a way that they don't do much
Unfortunate - what about suspenders? If your work outfit involves an undershirt and overshirt you can run them in-between the layers and have no suspender rub but also no one perceiving them.
I don't wear undershirts usually, no, and I've thought about suspenders but boobs make them hard to wear without seeming weird and I don't dress quite masc enough to pull them off I think.
Mostly I hate thinking this much about clothes.
Your stance is one that really makes me reconsider the social rejection of the burqa.
As a cis white man, I'd very much like the privacy that would accompany being in an all-black full-body/mask burqa with a crowd wearing the same.
The problem of course being that I can't be the only one doing it as it would be qiute ominous to have a single gigantic black blob towering over the masses. Oh and the whole 'cultures where that's the norm are often quite cruel to women' thing.
There's a reason why some folks are comfortable in that attire once used to it. There's a reason some folks wear the same clothes every day.
I'm not quite there, I just don't like thinking about attiring my body day to day. It's a lot. When I'm able to just wear jeans and a T-shirt, I like wearing fun/cute (soft) tshirts. But for work, it's a chore.
For a LARP or Renaissance faire it's the one time I dress particularly femme.
Jammie pants and T-shirts 4 life. My awareness of women's fashion is far greater than my awareness of men's fashion mostly because my wife is an encyclopedia of historical clothing.
Found some cargo sweats that my partner bought for himself but they didn't fit him! So they're mine now and they're a) super comfy and b) way too warm for the summer months. But I'm enjoying the gray sweatpants vibes.
oh god I think cargo sweatpants might be my ideal form of clothing, I gotta look for those. I already love cargo shorts and sweatpants individually
Found them on Amazon but I didn't make the order so I don't have a link handy but absolutely worth out, they are cozy
Speaking to an owner of several pairs. looolllll
Summer is for those mesh athletic shorts for breathability (my circle calls them Daddy Shorts). Or quick-dry cargo shorts, which are fantastic if you're liable to get sprayed with a hose with no warning.
Yeah neither of those is appealing to me, I prefer pants to shorts though I own a few capri length pants and will wear shorts around the house.
Well I say that, cargo shorts might be but we're back to pants not fitting me great when cut for men. I may just need to go shopping which, it may not surprise you, I also hate
...also, do burqas have pockets?
Where there's a will, there's a way.
My wife is in the other room making a skirt with historically-accurate pockets which can hold approximately 2L of space in each.
I wouldn't be carrying more than like 10 coins in my normal day...not gonna walk around with my rent money in my pockets. A quarter would have the buying power of $25, and I'd still be going cashless for any purchase over like $1 anyway.
10 coins is far less weight than my cellphone or my multi-tool. And I can pick out any given currency out of my pocket by touch, instead of needing to pull out my wallet and read.
While we're at it, make the bills have different color/texture for the different denominations! I'm legally blind, and it's such a pain to use cash because I have to look closely at the numbers to see them. If the bills were different colors, it would be much easier.
Yeah this one of the things I really like about Euro notes -- the bills are all different colors/sizes.
Australian smugness intensifies
Grats on being first, you guys. Canada didn't fully transition until 2011. But, when your neighbor NZ wanted to switch, they came to us instead.
Vote for me, I'm Definitely Not a Fae and I'm running on:
Anyone that responds to your chronic medical or mental health condition suggesting you try some combination of "going outside", keep a positive attitude, or "have you tried yoga?" Is immediately exiled to a desert island with no shelter, mandatory yoga and electroshocks if they stop smiling.
If I get a second policy it'll be the same for people who say you'd be prettier if you smiled more.
I'd swap your platforms as I'm pretty sure that venn diagram is close enough to a circle.
Went for the one with a wider experience gender wise.
But oh no if I get a two for one, that'd be such a terrible thing as a politician. ¯\_ʘ‿ʘ_/¯. Plus all of those people would be gone ( ´◡‿ゝ◡`)
My other, other idea might have been about leaving milk out for the fair folk.
I for one welcome the inevitable matriarchy.
A system of competition between women where men are prizes?
I'm allegedly a catch so I'll be a great trophy husband when my wife loses in the Thunderdome.
you would love 'the Substance', currently in cinema's now :D
Oh man not sure I am up for that much body horror 😬 but I may check it out on streaming
You've got my vote... if it's a month where they actually fill my ritalin scrip and I have the brain juice to remember it's election day
Once in power I'll make it so that you can get your ADHD meds auto filled and delivered.
Because it's some bullshit that both are impossible.
Ritalin Scrip is the best typo. Now I'm imagining a pharma corp that pays employees in Ritalin, and the company store accepts Ritalin as quasi-legal tender. Some neurotypicals are on stims all day, and it's called financial abuse.
Please add telling you to just lose weight and you'll be less sick, suggesting the fad diet of the month for the same reason, and outlaw BMI and I you have my vote!
Oh, that is absolutely included. I considered working that as my primary argument but went with the broader experience for political success.
Y'know, DefinitelyNotAFae, I think you would be prettier of you smiled more.
Still wouldn't give you my name though, that's too dangerous for my taste.
I regret to inform you that it seems like your sock has gotten wet. Like you maybe stepped on a small puddle, a melted ice cube before getting your shoes on mayhaps. Small, wet, cold. It's odd though, it just feels like it happens with every sock... They can't all be wet, can they? Maybe it's the lint trap in the dryer.
Surely they'll dry out soon...
This is haunting and I'm stealing it for curse ideas in future fiction.
I will gladly count my blessings in having provoked a fair folk and having gotten away merely with permanently wet socks.
That's also what sandals are for until winter comes.
Oh it seems there's a misunderstanding, I'm a perfectly normal human, I just felt it a kindness to inform you of your sock problem. See it's right there in the username
Plus time not wearing them will give it a chance to really soak in. Winter could be... Uncomfortable
Please forgive me if this comes across rude, how often are people telling you to spend time outside?
I work in mental health, and it is almost a meme of how often that is presented as a solution for people who are feeling depressed in particular. Personally I don't get told that very often. But pretty much everyone I know of who struggles with their mental health has had that experience at least once. So it's less about the frequency for any particular person and more about the pervasiveness of the just try some gratitude and some yoga "helpful suggestions"
I suppose however, the reason you're afraid of coming across is rude is the other implication of touching grass or going outside. I don't get told that either. And while I do encourage my students to go get some sunshine when we have the opportunity before and after the winter hits, we're all well aware, that isn't the solution
While I can understand the frustrations there, nobody likes hearing a broken record. I've had many discussions with my psychiatrist, and the studies are almost definitive on this.
Seasonal Affective Disorder is incredibly common, one of the biggest triggers of depressive episodes. More time outside in daylight hours and more Vitimin D in the diet help tremendously in most cases.
He sees a massive boost in caseload starting every October. Some of that is pending holiday family-trauma flareups, but most is the influx of SAD patients. Sidebar: Mad props to the team that managed to get that naming to stick.
That, and a quiet walk outside to seperate yourself from the rest of your stressful life is a gateway towards excersizing, which is also heavily correlated with improved mood.
It's the difference between "this will fix your problems" and "this is helpful for you."
Yes outside time, especially getting sun when you can, is great. But besides the broken record aspect, it is used in a dismissive way - "you're not really depressed, you just need to get outside", in concert with a level of toxic positivity or gratitude, and the "have you tried yoga.". I'm working with folks that are wanting to be validated in their diagnoses, which are rarely SAD (and if so not wholly SAD). When they hear the above, especially from friends or their primary care doctor (hopefully not from a MH professional) they feel dismissed and invalidated. Because they have heard it before.
Edit some examples:
Twitter quote
And the reply
Have You Tried Yoga?
This one is more.about chronic pain than MH. Same rule applies.
These are memes for a reason, everyone's heard it. What works for an individual is great, hell what works for most folks is great, but especially when people have experience with chronic issues it's somewhere between exhausting and enraging to get told the same cycle of things from everyone who thinks they must be the first person to have suggested it.
If you lost a shoe and you looked everywhere, absolutely everywhere and every time you shared the story of you losing the shoe, especially opening up a bit and being vulnerable, your friends said "but did you look under the bed?" Now you looked under your bed, 35 times because you just absolutely needed to find your shoe. And it's an obvious place to look. But then you talk about it on Facebook, or share with a coworker and they all say "under the bed?". Anytime anyone heads the story, even if you say you checked under the bed in the story... it's one of their go to responses. You'll probably get at least a little frustrated.
You may already know this, but I already knew that getting outside and getting exercise can be good for folks, so fair is fair. In my job it's about asking what helps them feel better, and encouraging them to do positive coping skills, rather than unproductive self-soothing, until they get the professional help, or their meds kick in, or just to stay alive for another couple weeks. If that's outside and exercise great, but I'm not the first one to mention it, and I'm not gonna sound like an ass when I do.
Vote for me. ლ(^o^ლ)
As someone who absolutely does need to go outside more (though more for my other mental illnesses than SAD), another factor is that I absolutely know that I need to do those things. It's like being fat and having the doctor say I need to lose weight. No shit, Sherlock! I don't need any special training to figure that out. The problem is that I have other symptoms and problems, many caused by the same disorders that would benefit from these activities, that interfere with my ability to do the obvious things.
Another factor, of course, is that people, even medical professionals, will recommend these things instead of actually giving a shit about underlying issues that are not, in fact, cured by going outside or exercising more. It is well-known among fat people that doctors will insist that literally everything is caused by your weight and that exercise will cure you, even when you have a sudden onset of symptoms without any change in your weight. Exercise is a phenomenal activity for your physical and mental health in myriad ways. That doesn't mean it's not legitimately harmful when doctors recommend it instead of even testing for other issues.
I had a doctor who gave me a blood test that showed my TSH was elevated (the first way you usually get screened for thyroid problems) back in 2020. She didn't schedule the follow-up tests for thyroid function bc she didn't think it was severe enough. I got a depression diagnosis and encouragement to exercise more. One thing hypothyroidism definitely isn't cured by? Exercise. It actually makes it more or less impossible to build any stamina, so any of my attempts to start an exercise routine in the following years were absolutely sabotaged by the underlying untreated illness.
I went to a new GP when I moved to a different neighborhood and complained to him that I was feeling constantly exhausted and lethargic, and he told me I should start exercising. His suggestion was "even just running for 20 minutes a day without stopping". I was too ashamed to admit that I couldn't run 20 minutes straight even less frequently than that. I couldn't bend over and put on my shoes without an extra-long ikea shoe iron, and I blamed it on being fat and out of shape.
I switched GPs again bc it was hard to get an appointment with that new guy and she recommended we do the big standard blood test that screens for things. And then after that, we had a follow up blood test for thyroid function, because my TSH was still high. Lo and behold, my thyroid has indeed not been working correctly. I don't even know if I actually have depression or SAD (I traditionally had both) -- this will be my first winter with a healthy amount of thyroid hormones in my system in who knows how long. And the scarier part is that while my ultrasounds show my thyroid doesn't have any tumors or nodules... I didn't get an ultrasound of my thyroid until this year. What if the cause had been much more serious -- something that can kill or seriously injure you if you ignore it for four years bc your doctor thinks you're just fat and depressed?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not excusing lazy doctors for not following through.
But my point is "going outside" is to other doctors what "floss every day" is to dentists. A practical baseline proven to help with numerous ails that most people ignore.
And when their goal is to get as many people going with the least amount of medicine, reminding people of the basics is kind of their job...even if it feels patronizing.
Edit: @DefinitelyNotAFae this reply is also for you.
There are ways for doctors to not sound like assholes giving this suggestion. There are ways they absolutely sound like assholes.
The issue is not reminding people of the basics. I was really explicit in that detail. I talk to my students about going outside, exercise and reframing negative thoughts. But talking about going outside (or exercise) in lieu of doing actual medical tests? Going to the dentist for a toothache and being told to floss more but they don't even do X-rays to check for cavities*? And this isn't just professionals, you'd be happy if your friends respond to your toothache with "have you tried flossing?"
Please read through the comments with other people's experiences for why this is so harmful and absolutely frustrating. Because you're falling into the same pattern. You're explaining to two people who are aware of the benefits of exercise and sunlight why it's so important. We know. So does everyone that voted up my proposal. We're so completely and totally aware. My focus wasn't even on medical professionals, it was "helpful" people online or otherwise.
*Had this happen for joint pain, doc told me to lose weight despite having pain in multiple joints all at once, including my wrists. Oh, he actually offered me a medical weight loss program which felt more like a sales pitch. Mentioned my breasts were "large and pendulous" which is definitely causing my elbows and wrists to hurt. I never saw him again.
It is patronizing. It would be just as absurd and patronizing to say "floss every day" to someone whose teeth are falling out or even someone complaining of a toothache. Just because something is generally good for you doesn't mean it's a solution to even minor problems. Offering basic advice for the general population to someone with something more serious going on is not just patronizing -- it's not even good advice.
And, frankly, your reply feels patronizing, assuming that people with chronic health issues like me (and presumably also @definitelynotafae) are unfamiliar with the idea that things like "go outside" and "get some exercise" and "floss every day" are generally good advice. Reminding me of those basics actually is not the doctor's job if they aren't addressing my actual health issues. Their goal shouldn't be to "get as many people going with the least amount of medicine", it should be to get as many people going with appropriate interventions for whatever issues they have.
And it certainly is not the job of random people who aren't medical professionals to remind me of basic good habits that they don't even know I'm not already doing and which may not help my health issues at all -- for all they know, those things could worsen my condition. My college roommate had EDS and the number of people who insisted yoga would cure her when it actually would really fuck her up? Non-trivial.
Universal sabbaticals, a social security like system where instead of waiting for full retirement age you get a paid year off every decade.
A lot of people put off their big dreams until a future retirement when they’re often too old to really enjoy them.
I can already see people taking that sabbatical year to work a side gig. I agree with where you're going with this, but people work out of necessity PLUS mental perception of necessity. My father just finally retried this year, but for the previous decades, his enforced year would have been torturous: he's not making money (even if there are payments)! The customers will grow reliant on the competitor! Etc etc.
Working as a crutch for anxieties is a whole mental health thing. Many people have no retirement dreams other than the ridiculous one that their health and circumstances remain exactly the same forever.
Dreams don’t have to be a vacation on the beach, it could be a paid opportunity try starting the business you’ve never been in the financial position to start.
If you’re already doing the exact thing you want to be doing and have no other desires or dreams I’m not going to force you to take a year off, bank the year and have the option to retire a year earlier if you want.
Toilet paper orientation standards. The loose end runs across the top to hang down on the outside, not the inside. Anything else is barbarism, unless you have cats - their innate barbarism justifies some sacrifices.
Came here to post this, perhaps I can be your deputy.
I'm behind this, but... people should want to do it because it's right, not because the government mandates it. That's my only objection.
I would've voted for you until I got cats. Same with folks that have small children. While the outside, over the top is definitely superior, it allows small hands (or paws) to pull and pull and unravel an entire roll.
Copyright terms are far too long and shouldn’t allow for some of the largest companies on earth to have sole ownership of our modern mythologies. A lifetime owned is a lifetime denied!*
*which doesn’t really work since life+70 is for personal ownership, and 90 even is corporate, but try making that into something that people will remember.
Copyright term of 10 years, with an exponentially scaling 5-year renewal option ($100, $100,000, $1 billion) By the time I hit 40, all the nostalgia of my childhood should be public domain.
One of the very few ways to "make money" as a writer lately as creative industries have been consolidated under Wall Street control, if you're not one of the small handful of superstar showrunners, was to have a break-out book picked up for a series/movie. You wouldn't be made rich that way, but even a 'modestly successful' book might score you a one-time payment of six (sometimes low seven) figures when the Big Wigs came a-knocking offering a series or movie contract for your story.
Ten year copyright term means that completely stops. Why pay a writer for their book to make a video version out of it when you can just wait that decade out and get it for free? Hell, trad publishers will dial back.
Why buy some book when you can just sit on it for a couple more years, then not cut any back to the writer? Some of the bedrock revenue streams for trads come from stuff like To Kill a Mockingbird and similar titles that are still in print. Who deserves that revenue? Some publisher, or the (family of) the actual writer?
Who writes when they can't make any money out of it? Who invests in writing when they can get it for free?
I suspect what you meant, what you actually thought about in your head, when you said "copyright term of 10 years" was probably something like "corporate copyright". You probably hate corporations and corporate copyright control. But that's not what you said. What you said was end copyright. Which fucks over actual creators.
Corporations don't write stuff. They hire people to write stuff. Or, sometimes, buy stuff some one wrote. Either way, a person wrote it. A person created it. But sure, who cares about creatives? Take away the one thing they still have in the corporate big money industry of turning writing into Big Video Content.
It's very meme to say "fuck copyright." But Copyright is just about the only thing that isn't fully corporate, fully subsumed into the MBA workflow of the video side of creative.
Statistically, most writers.
Very few of whom can afford to not have other jobs. Some want to do it full time, some don't, but one of my favs writes multiple novels per year, plus short stories and sometimes comics or other projects. She can do that because she gets paid for it. I don't want copyright to last forever but absolutely it should help folks make a living (create the world where it isn't required to make a living and we can renegotiate)
I mean, my wife is in the process of writing a book, and cares more that people read her book than making any money off of it. She intends to license as a creative commons non-commercial so her ebook can be distributed freely, and fanfic be in the clear, while retaining any off chance of a video production.
Maybe, just maybe, creative works should be made primarily for the joy of making them, rather than any expectation of getting a payday from it. Get a day job to pay the bills, be creative in your free time.
Prolific, popular writers will still have an audience that doesn't want to wait a decade to read their latest work.
That said, I'd be willing to allow long-form written works to extend up to 30, with a lower renewal price curve, given the slower burn and smaller audience for initial consumption. Small stuff like news articles and opinion pieces much less so though. So maybe a more realistic renewal scale for written works would be $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000. Low enough that if there's a real chance of adaptation or profitability that paying to extend to 30 years is worthwhile, but the majority just lapses after 10-15. While the $10 seems trivial, it puts at least a little onus on the copyright holder to submit for renewal.
Music and videos though? That stuff ages like a banana by comparison. How many people are really excited to bust out American Pie over seeing something new?
I'm not sure if you intended it this way, but your response really comes across as "fuck you, get a real job."
I won't lie, there is a little bit of that energy in there. But if it's any consolation, I think it's also fair to say that to most anybody who sits at a desk for a living, myself included. And while that sounds bad as a soundbite, stay awhile and listen:
I'd like to see a transition to career paths where everybody has several part-time jobs that replace the 40-hour workweek, averaged out over the year. I know this is possible now, but generally society expects you to have a single full-time job with a single specialization, and doing things in this manner will tend to punish you harshly because of your "lack of experience" or "lack of dedication to the job" or "not getting health insurance benefits because you're a part time worker."
Essentially, everyone works a total of 5 days a week still, totaling about 20-30 hours for 'the economy', and with 20 hours to take care of self and household. The important thing is that everybody pitches in with the "dirty" jobs so that we rub elbows with more people and have more perspective on each other, similar to the pitch put forth by nukeman's mom, but integrated throughout our regular lives.
Another reason to do this is that it is a more resilient system, being able to handle labor supply shocks due to things like sickness and aging populations. It will make it easier to transition to work different jobs during different times of energy availability (IE not doing heavy computing work in the winter when green energy is less available, not doing as much hard labor in the brutal heat of global warming summers)
Having less time at any given job also serves as a driver to not waste too much time on any given one of them. Betting there will be a lot less standup-meetings-that-run-too-long and a lot more status updates in Slack.
Don't get me wrong, I do think the arts are important. I mourn that most sidewalks are sterile and boring and not beautiful winding murals. However, I also think that art tends to be at its worst when your living depends on it. Having everyone take a bigger share of all the labor means that over time, it will be easier to lower the amount of time needed by the socially-necessary labor. And hopefully, that means we could foster a world of artists who are doctors, not doctors who buy art to hang on the walls of their homes that they're never in.
For the same reason people pay to use patents before they expire. For that decade, if you paid for it, you are the one making money. If it is successful, you could make a lot of money, and your competitors could not touch you.
Pretty sure that's some sort of super-exponential. Big-O nerds represent!
F it, tie it to the busy beaver number. Want to renew your contract a 5th time? better hire a team of mathematicians for a few years to figure out how much you need to pay first.
I would add an exception for uses in certain contexts - for instance, aerospace software gets 10 years from certification, and I'd happily bump that up to 30.
This is appropriate due to the realities of aerospace software - one mistake and people die. The certification can take decades for the same reason.
The biggest problem is if companies start releasing supposedly dual-use software to cash in on the copyright terms, e.g. "Windows 12 for Aerospace Systems", plus a weird context where if you travel on a plane maybe it's technically illegal to use your laptop midflight. This might be a non-issue due to the aforementioned certification, but I wouldn't underestimate corporate legal fuckery.
Why would that need copyright though? The testing process is so rigorous, the customer base so small, and the FAA could just mandate that any plane with an unsigned firmware (by them) is grounded.
Usually software in that vein is under continual support contract anyway, primarily because they want an employee onsite inside of 24h if something goes wrong.
I don't particularly care myself, if it doesn't crater the sector to abolish copyright then by all means, abolish copyright. But setting a duration shorter than the time it takes to certify is effectively abolishing copyright, for copyright on "non-artistic functional code" in sectors that mandate certification. Also I'd run the "abolish copyright in aerospace" past an economist, first.
More fundamentally, I don't think a flat copyright duration makes sense as the optimal system. Some systems are inherently slower in iteration and longer in tail, so a flat duration inherently shortchanges some groups and 'longchanges' other groups. I don't know if there's a better system though.
It's kind of a travesty that software is able to be copywritten at all. It's mostly a byproduct of uninformed lawmakers and judges making bad decisions with a lack of knowledge about how computers work. It's right there in the intro:
A computer program is almost always all of those.
Further in that document it states how you can't copywrite an invention. You can copywrite the specific paper describing an invention, but you can't prevent others from reading your paper and then implementing said invention. That's what patents are for. And software patents are their own nasty can of worms, however on the whole I've come around that software patents are less-bad than software copyright.
I'd be OK with more liberal usage of software patents if they're only applied within self-contained applications like games, with reasonably short durations (ala 10 years, no extensions) and not as tools to prevent interoperability. Software patents are why nobody has created a better game with the Nemesis system used by Shadow of Mordor. It sucks, but not as badly as nobody being able to create alternative protocol implementations.
Citizens of Tildes, I ask for your vote today, so that tomorrow the US shall be metric.
Seriously, I genuinely think standardizing the US on the metric system fully and getting entirely rid of the imperial system (I'm coming for you next, UK, once you're done with the post-traumatic-brexit-disorder elections) would be a huge gain.
I don't think it'd be a huge gain, but it'd be a small gain with almost no downsides. Plus after a generation or two we'd finally stop having Americans insist "no it's just more intuitive"
All showers must be able to drain water faster than they deliver water, and all water pressure must be high enough to be soothing against a scalp.
Simply remove the water restriction hardware from your shower head and problem solved.
Did this to 3 shower heads in the past year and it's like showering under a pressure washer now.
Simply increase your water usage by double, problem solved!
Just get a proper showerhead to begin with? Droplet size, pressure, and spray pattern can make up the difference easily.
I think many of the people with water restrictions on their showerheads are living in rented accommodation.
Just wire in a pressure washer after a thermostatic valve!
BRB gonna go invent an in-line powered pressure dial for showers. Get to choose between 'mild rinse' and 'rip off all the outer layers' while using far less water. Pretty sure you could safely take it to 500 psi with minimal risk of creating flesh wounds.
Me: Either free parks and museums (at point of use, obviously taxes would pay for it) or a bicycle for every man, woman, and child.
My mom: Six months in the military, six months retail, six customer service, six months teacher, and six months waiting tables. We’d all be nicer.
Im cynic. People will think: I did your job, I know your job, you did not good enough.
I think if you have to do it long enough, and it's not just a "stint" like "Dirty Jobs" or "Boss Swap" or some other PR stunt, you would have a hard time not feeling empathy, instead of just veiled sympathy.
But, maybe this is a USA centric-bias, I have no idea if these other service oriented jobs are terrible in other places. Throw in a gov't based position, civil servant, I suppose like DMV/Post-man/Health-care employee, and she's got my eternal vote.
I'm not sure how much of waiting tables is self selecting. If you're a jerk you don't get tips. If you won't change that, you quit and find something else.
I absolutely have relatives who worked in customer service back in the day who are still nightmares to eat out with. I don't necessarily think having that experience makes you much less judgemental.
Heck, doctors who've been through residency and have hard facts on how it's harmful and dangerous for both residents and patients will still refuse to get behind changing that system to be more humane out of a sense of "well I went through it, why can't you?"
Maybe instead of six months, you work the service job until you collect X amount of tips. Some people don't make it through for 30 years.
Rich people's parents come in and give them a $10,000 tip.
...wait, wouldn't this mean that shittier servers would be more likely to stick around, thus making service shittier on average?
I think people on the whole are capable of faking being decent for a while. Truly terrible will be fired from their service roles - employers are not obligated to provide jobs. Maybe they'll have to go work at more terrible service jobs like laundry on a cruise ship or something
Kids deserve better than mandatory teachers, that's a hard job.
Mandatory substitute teachers, like jury duty.
Enough to learn to respect the teacher, and not screaming at the teacher because they had the gall to punish your child for being a shit in class.
This would just make substitutes even more of a "let's stick the class in front of a movie bc I don't have a lesson plan" thing than they already often are.
I'm not entirely sure, because there would be a fair number of people getting drafted to be substitutes for their own kid's classes.
Also still better than having to cancel school because they couldn't get enough substitutes.
Love your mom's platform, make it 3 years in each, in this exact order:
No more roided up (on hormones) late teens/early20s with no fear of death in the military. Only people in their 30s with kids and at least 1 minor physical ailment. Bet we give peace a bigger chance.
Your mom's is wonderful, gives a whole new idea to "Conscripted Service"
Regarding your mother's point, waaaaaaay more people work service jobs and have worked service jobs in the past, yet we still have jerks everywhere we turn. There are approximately 13 million people in the US employed in the restaurant industry. Then add all the grocery store employees, then all the other retail jobs, then other customer service jobs and what you have at the end of the day is half this country works a customer facing job.
I'd love to vote for your mother but I highly doubt that would solve the problem she thinks it will.
Is your mom looking for a VP?
I weirdly like the military thing. I think it'd help instill some kind of social discipline, would make us more afraid of war / drafts, and (most importantly) I've heard it to be a means to socialize people of various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. I've wondered if we could use summer camps to do the same thing at a younger age.
What about non-military civil service with federal aid for educational institutions tied someway to make having that civil service a huge preference in acceptance. Civil service has more flexibility than military service which means that disability and the ability to fabricate one, wouldn't be a hindrance. There's probably a ton of logistical problems that honestly issues of personal freedom involved with that, but, I've always been mildly sympathetic to the idea of me being some sort of universal civil service or service for one's franchise. It's perhaps Heinlein's fault
Some countries with universal conscription have civil service options for those who won't join the military, so I don't think it's any less feasible than having military conscription to begin with. I'm morally opposed to military conscription, but I don't have the same opposition to mandatory civil service as long as it's fairly compensated.
Yeah I am not keen on required military service either.
The issue I see with the draft is that the people who actually make the decision can make themselves / their kids exempt. The general public doesn't have much say over wars.
Rice with everything has my vote!
My one and only policy: people who halt in the middle of a busy sidewalk will be disappeared by the secret police
Rice everywhere will lead to a strange world.
Or
Or
Strangely beautiful world.
"You can't have eggs, bacon, rice, and sausage without the rice."
"Why not‽"
"Well now, it wouldn't be eggs, bacon, rice, and sausage now would it?"
"I DON'T LIKE RICE!"
I'm not a fan of rice either. It's only good when you want to eat 5000 of something...
The thread reminded me of a certain Monty Python sketch about spam.
I'll have the rice, rice, rice, rice, eggs, rice, rice, rice, rice, bacon, and rice please
Lovely rice! Wonderful rice!
I see nothing wrong with this.
Nothing will be knocked until everything is tried
I would unironically eat a lot more sandwiches and pizzas if it came with the rice option.
For the pizza, rice-stuffed crust sounds actually pretty good
For the coffee, with rice and milk just sounds like you’re getting a caffeinated bowl of rice pudding! Also sounds excellent to me!
You can get drinks with rice at some boba places, I bet you could put the same rice they use for those into a coffee drink.
Now I want horchata
All property owners have 1 year to kill their lawns and replace them with native plants.
All dealerships are to be shut down within 24 hours and cars sold at factory value. Add policy to force manufacturers to build smaller and more efficient vehicles.
MANDATORY work from home policies for ALL office workers. No more driving to work just to have a teams call with someone 5 feet away.
Anyone caught abusing humans or animals to be broken on the wheel.
Cheap and fast internet for all.
You sort of get there with the next sentence about team calls, but there's office environments in which you might have airgapped systems and no external remote access / potential for teams calls from home.
Also, some people do enjoy being in the office from time to time. There are also some office jobs or certain types of meetings which, despite the prevailing online sentiment, do work better in person. That’s not even getting into the issues that some people don’t have home environments conducive to working.
Mandatory for companies to allow it where possible, sure. Mandatory for everyone to WFH? No thanks
I work a job I couldn't do effectively from home, but I also had a very isolated office one year and I hated it. There are perks to not ever being perceived but it was lonely and as an introvert I spent all of my time alone (or near alone) instead of getting some people time.
My dept doesn't allow regular work from home and I think there are good reasons for it, we act as localized first responders, but there are certainly some days where it'd be easier.
Ahh yes, the wheel. I love your mix of modern tech with ancient cruel and unusual punishment
shadow - turn signals will be enforced via death penalty
or at least a flogging
I like this. Somewhat similar, but as a pedestrian in a major city, my pet peeve is cars driving into the crosswalk, forcing pedestrians closer to the road / in harms way to cross the street. I kind of think you should have the right to deface a car that does that tbh. Spraypaint, stickers, keying it, feel free. If everyone kind of agreed "okay, that's karmic" I think we'd see cars stop sooner.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fc8.alamy.com%2Fcomp%2FWRHCYF%2Fcar-driving-over-crosswalk-in-the-loop-central-city-of-chicago-chicago-illinois-usa-WRHCYF.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b7f5e57c0f15c30d0390aad9203049d606d1994f6f4fafe7ddd08632a51c0db6&ipo=images
Okay that’s an absolute mess of a URL but yeah, of course there’s stock images of exactly what you’re talking about!
Driving on the sidewalk? I've never even heard of this. Your city needs sidewalk trees.
Crosswalk, not sidewalk. It's the designated place at an intersection for pedestrians to cross.
Passing a law that anybody who doesn't clean up their dog's shit will be force-fed it. I know I've got a locked-in vote of at least 3 elderly ladies.
For the darker, less popular one:
Any dog that's off a leash when a leash is required may be shot on sight. No more getting jumped on by the 'friendly dog that omg I swear they never jump on kids' that always jumps on kids.
Hey, dogs are just being dogs. What if we shoot the owner and rehome the dog to a dog paradise island?
Parade the owner around on a lead down a Main Street if their dog is not in lead.
To discourage some, ah, side effects, anyone may voluntarily join in on the parade.
There are dozens of us! Someone asked me "If you were king of <our city>, what would you do?" and I said "I'd make a law that leaving dog shit on the street was punishable by smearing it on the owner."
I kind of think some laws are not meaningfully enforceable (like, fining someone for something is so complex) so I kind of like the idea of petty street justice that encourages citizens to keep each other in line. Kind of like very toned-down caning (although I guess the poop can make you sick).
Street justice, if fairly applied in reasonable proportion to the crime, is best justice.
Kids learn best when the consequence of their mistakes are immediately apparent. And there's so many people denying climate change in part because the consequences are nebulous and hidden.
/u/DefinitelyNotAFae has my vote!
And if I can’t vote for them for whatever reason, other people have already hit on all of the initial thoughts I had. So I’ll go for something a bit different.
Electronics Ports Reform!
USB B, micro B, mini B? Banned. There is absolutely zero reason in 2024 why a device should have any of these. Lightning? Banned. EU beat me to it, but better safe than sorry. USB A? Banned. USB c is just so much better. I am tired of motherboards having 1 or 2 usb c and 8+ usb A. Barrel jacks? Banned. Now that we have 240w power delivery, everything should be able to use usb C. HDMI? DisplayPort? VGA? All banned. Your home theater system should have everything hooked to each other with simple usb c cables. And now for a controversial one. Headphone jack? Banned. For you headphone lovers, audio cables will now just be usb c shaped.
And now for some minimum required usb c ports. Phones? Minimum of 2 ports. Tablets? Let’s give them the same minimum of 2 ports. Laptops, let’s go with 4 minimum. Also all of these devices have to have at least one on each major side. For phones that is one top and bottom. Tablets one left and right (landscape). Laptops that’s at least one left and right. I should be able to shove my charger in anywhere I damn well please. Desktops? Minimum 6 in back and 2 in front. I am sure there are some classes of devices I am missing, but we can add to the platform later.
Okay, now for some nerdy stuff. We need to fix USB consortium’s shitshow of management. All of these devices names they have for different usb speeds? Banned. Let’s even remember everything and start from scratch. USB 1.0 and 1.1 is dead, let it die. USB 2 is now USB 1. USB 3 5gbps, 10gbps, and 20gbps are usb 2, usb 3, and usb 4 respectively. Thunderbolt 3/4/usb 40 gbps is usb 5. You get the idea. Cables must have a label of the version they support on both ends. Ports need a label for minimum and maximum supported versions. And let’s also fix the issue with cables that support 3A or 5A charging. Everything has to support 5A now. The 5A cables aren’t even that much thicker.
It's non-trivial task to convince USB-C PD host to increase the voltage. Doubled if you wish to charge through either USB-C port on your phone. Routers would be probably able to use the 15W budget of the simpler charging standard, though.
As for the management, renumbering is a no-no. Nobody is fixing old docs and it would only make the situation more messy.
Dedicate some Vendor IDs to open source community and allow it to run a public registry of Device IDs, that would help.
I think you are vastly overstating the difficulty. If you need more than 5v3a, you have to put one extra chip on your circuit board. Here is a ready made circuit for a usb c PD trigger board. All you need is a few resistors and capacitors, and that extra integrated circuit. You can buy it from digikey for $1.32. As soon as you get into the quantities needed for mass production, the price drops quickly to 48¢ each. If you are mass producing, you also may be able to buy directly from the supplier and get a much cheaper per unit price. I don’t know of any consumer device that can’t afford a 50¢ BOM increase. The only reason everything isn’t usb c already is that most consumers don’t know or care about the potential of the standard.
I’m quoting the only part of your comment that I wouldn’t vote for. Everything else, fantastic and I love it!
However, for headphones, I just don’t think this is a good idea. Everything else that USB does is digital but my understanding of headphones is that they’re actually analog, with the voltage being shoved down the line directly. I think having the “headphones jack” port on your laptop looking like the same shape as your 80W laptop charger is a recipe for trouble. In both cases.
I think that headphones plug type is largely a niche for the audio industry, so I’m happy for them to keep that. The rest of the world can switch to USB-C digital headphones rather than analog that’s currently used, to support your ideas and let “has a 3.5mm headphone port built in” become the same kind of niche as “has a SD card reader built in”
Honestly that’s the weakest part of my platform in my opinion, so as I campaign I would probably end up dropping it to cater to people like you.
However I do want to defend usb c to some extent. I think it could be just as good of a headphone jack as the TRS connector (TRS or TRRS is the technical name for the headphone jack), if not better (today it currently has some flaws though). This info comes from my memory, so some of it may be wrong or outdated.
First, the power issue. According to the spec, usb c NEVER supplies power unless the device explicitly requests it. This includes even 5v power which is why some non-compliant devices don’t work with usb c to usb c cables, only usb a to c cables. (Fun fact, those devices cheaped out by not including less than 1¢ worth of resistors. It’s just designer laziness or poor design). You can plug a 240w usb charger into your headphones without any issue. The worst possible outcome (outside of a noncompliant device) is that it won’t charge. It is not possible for a standard conforming to send or receive too much power. So go ahead and plug your headphones directly into the wall charger. The headphones won’t request power, so nothing happens.
Next for analog audio. This is the part where the current state doesn’t match with the ideal. Currently usb c headphones have to have a way to convert digital audio into analog audio. This hardware has become very small so it can be stuffed inside the connector housing, but audio quality can suffer. But there is no reason we can’t send analog audio through the usb c connector, except that it isn’t currently supported by the standard. In the early days of removing the headphone jack, Samsung did just this. With a supported set of headphones, the phone would dedicated certain pins to send analog audio just like the TRS connector. Unfortunately this wasn’t a standard and only worked with Samsung headphones. If this was built into the standard, any headphone could use this alt mode. Designed well, it would only require a few resistors included in the headphones to signal this alt mode. So a usb c headphone in my world would be functionally almost identical to a TRS headphone.
Finally, I think people often underestimate how powerful having audio and power over the same cable could be. It allows headphones to optionally have the DAC and amp built into the headphones. That opens the possibility of things like multichannel surround sound on headphones. As far as I know, this is currently only supported on certain Bluetooth headphones. It would also allow for noise cancelling headphones without having a battery or separate charging cable.
To sum it up: the existing TRS connector is very good. A well designed usb c connector can be just as good as the TRS connector with no drawbacks (except you can only insert 2 directions instead of infinite). Giving the audio industry more flexibility with an improved usb c connector could be great for innovation, and bring some of the features that are currently exclusive to wireless headphones to wired headphones.
Having experienced the sounds of my speaker while it’s audio cable is tangled up with a power cable, I’ve heard how much interference can be generated even when there’s gap between the cables. Is a USB-C cable capable of providing active power (e.g. for noise cancelling like you brought up) while also directly driving the speakers? I assumed there would be too much interference, but then I do know a little bit about phantom power etc, so maybe that’s not actually an issue?
Well as long as I remember correctly, usb c currently can’t directly power headphones at all. That was a Samsung custom implementation that only Samsung headphones and smartphones used. When you vote me president of the world, I can force the USB IF to make that part of the standard.
But if it was part of the standard, I think it would have the issue you mention. I think that can be solved with balanced audio cables. I don’t understand how those work, but I think they fix power coupling issues. There is no reason that couldn’t be built into the standard, but most headphones likely wouldn’t use it. I think balanced cables are primarily used to connect professional audio equipment together.
For the specific issue of NC power and audio, headphones with those feature sets will probably just use digital audio. For noise cancellation to work, you have to have a DAC and amp that are very high quality anyway. If you already have these in the headphones, you might as well just run the device digital audio through the same hardware instead of mixing it together. If you are the type of user who cares about analog audio and wants noise cancelling, you are probably spending hundreds of dollars on headphones anyway. So the DAC in those headphones is probably very high quality, possibly better than the audio source.
Eliminate First Class seating on airplanes, as well as premium boarding priorities for anyone except families traveling with small children and disabled people who require assistance. Seat passengers in order from back to front of the plane. Free baggage check for one bag less than 20 kg, and sufficient overhead storage for one carry-on per passenger. All seats should provide sufficient dimensions to allow the 95th-percentile passenger adequate leg room and seat width.
See also: https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/class-inequity-fuels-air-rage/
Edit: Generalize this everywhere - amusement and limited access public parks, entertainment tickets, health care, etc. No concierge services, no premium access. Treat everyone decently and equitably under the law, without any "cattle class". Mandatory lottery if there are seats or other scarce amenities that offer a better experience.
Punishment for violations: Back end of all lines, for life.
Wouldn't eliminating first class seating kill profitability for many airlines? That's my understanding at least right now.
Because to be honest I would much rather eliminate some predatory fees from low-cost carriers. The baggage fees being different (to the tune of 3x the price) at check in vs at the airport for example; or how the Ryanair website during check-in makes it seamlessly look like you have to choose your seat and pay the "choose your seat" fee. Unethical shit subsidizing the sticker price.
One price, the same for everyone on the plane (maybe a discount if you have to sit near the restroom), that covers the costs. And yes, adequate seating space means fewer seats per flight as well. No hidden fees for anything.
Yes, it's a higher ticket price. Air travel shouldn't be as common and casual as it is, due to the climate effects.
Raising the prices on plane tickets leaves more headroom for long-distance rail.
It's slower than jets, but can be a nice alternative to car travel.
I'm waiting for electric intercity buses. Rail is more efficient, but there still needs to be a low-cost option.
Yea ideally that'd be rail. lolol
Maybe someday when gas is $50/gallon we'll get serious about rail infrastructure again.
I'm still mad that at least one airline doesn't include a seat in their listing price. And they won't let you stand.
A ticket price should include what you need to travel on that flight.
Back-to-front isn't the best one though. May I point you to this CGP Grey classic for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo
I know, but it's an equity thing. No passenger should have to walk past anyone already seated (aside from disabled people and small children), just to avoid provoking resentment at someone else getting better treatment.
Meh, I'm not sure I agree. As long as it's clearly communicated as an efficiency measure and not a preferential treatment thing that shouldn't be an issue. The problem only arises once people perceive it as the latter. Even letting people enter the airplane randomly is on average more efficient than back-to-front entry. The random method would also lead to some people walking past others, but why would anyone get mad if they knew it was just a matter of chance?
The real problem is airlines actively presenting boarding groups as some great benefit that premium customers receive in order to be able to charge money for it. In the end boarding group membership is a rather arbitrary metric anyway, since the plane isn't leaving without everyone on board anyway. I could as well imagine a world where 'privileged' customers could pay for being let onto the airplane last in order to spend as little time as possible in there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
re: air rage, This was 100% the kinds of Freakanomics-esque suggestions I was also hoping to see in thread.
I'm tired of the endless ways that plutocratic money crowds out basic necessities, comforts, and opportunities for the less well-off.
Charged with a crime? Well-resourced public defenders for everyone, no exceptions.
Public pre-K through college schooling, the only exceptions for verified special needs tutoring, with adequate and equitable funding.
And so on... I don't know how much the average Trump voter is motivated by resentment that someone, somewhere, is getting "undeserved" special privileges that they don't have access to, but the evidence suggests it's a big deal for them. They're just being steered to look at the wrong end of the wealth spectrum.
This is going way beyond the scope of "one petty annoyance", but seemingly petty annoyances can expose much deeper underlying problems. A return to social egalitarianism would fix a lot of things.
But back of the line at the airport would have to get off first - meaning there's benefits to being last. If we force someone to be at the back of the line for life, they'll make all connecting flights and would have some extra time at the airport bar.
We should just make them ride in the landing gear.
Excluding a situation where universally everyone goes deaf & therefore needs to have sufficient visual space to communicate--
Toilet stalls should have no gaps between the door and the doorframe.
And if they do, any "accidental" eye contact by another bathroom user is lifetime barred from the good hand dryer.
And, if elected to second term, I will bring a bill to the legislature prohibiting flickering fluorescent lights!
I like your toilet policy, but I don't know if I can handle another moderate in this climate. Make those babies floor to ceiling and I'll donate, door knock, and phone bank for you.
Yes to toilet reform!!
I would totally vote for "auto-closing toilet seats for every toilet" and "sinks that operate on a 1 minute timer." I expect diseases to decrease sharply.
I found my people, I, too, would like to talk about peeing and pooping, if I may have a minute of your time: please see my referendum on "making toilet usage easier," which includes things such as "immaculate cleanliness, no cost, no line" restrooms!
We could be the PP Party - Peeing and Pooping Party. PP Party also sounds funny outloud.
Anyone who does not return the shopping cart to the cart return, except in cases of emergency, will be put against the fucking wall
In many european supermarkets you have to insert a coin into the shopping cart to release a chain tying it to the cart in front of it. Once you return the cart and reinsert the chain the coin pops out again. It's a pretty good incentive for returning the cart for most people, and for the rest there's still the social pressure of everyone else returning their cart.
Yeah, Aldi Süd's stores in the US do this just like grocery stores in Europe do, and it seems effective there too. It's just that it's seen as Aldi's specific thing and hasn't really spread.
That's a symptom of Aldi being a German supermarket chain I suppose. They simply took their whole concept, form how they manage their supply chain to how they design their stores, and exported it to the US. I've been to the US east coast for a few weeks a few years ago, and I was very surprised how familiar everything seemed when I stumbled across an Aldi store.
(On a related note it was also the only US supermarket I visited with reasonably priced, high quality cheese. Besides dark bread and unchlorinated tap water, good cheese was one of the major things I missed during my stay in the US.)
Yeah, it's honestly kinda funny because my family back home generally really love all of Aldi's "unique" things like the carts and bagging your own groceries... but it's really just Aldi not changing from how it is here in Germany. Though I live too far north to shop at Aldi Süd myself.
How do you submit an application for emergency relief, and does "the store doesn't have a restroom and I already had a 40% chance of peeing myself on the way home" count?
I'll bite. the cart return is five spaces away, they have paid staff for this already coming towards the cart, and I'm leaving the cart out of the way of other drivers. Why is this a big deal?
The person collecting carts has a much easier time grabbing a bulk amount of them rather than one at a time, why not just walk it over?
Against all that is bad!
For all that is good!
(I'll never define what is good and what is bad).
Aight Mr.Trump, we found you. Off to this padded room please...
Four day / 32 hour workweek.
Silly option: everyone is required to introduce themselves when speaking with someone for the first time that day. Penalty for violation is being forced to wear a name tag that increases in size with each violarion.
Serious answer: advertising reform
No ad can be more interesting than one made to sell ez-catheters or life alert.
That implies tracking people. No vote from me. Just make advertisements outside media dedicated to them (product magazines, shops) illegal and fine advertisers.
What if the micro transaction payment is made to a charity of your choice? You're "tracked" as a block and anonymized within that block maybe
Still no. "Somebody has to track you, but you can choose who" is only marginally better. Give me a button (inside browser) to report people who show me ads to the regulator instead.
Oh I like this a lot, report and money gets sent to a charity
/u/first-must-burn's idea with this option sounds nice.
I wonder what would happen to the internet if ads were illegal.
I think there would be a ton of turmoil, and out of the shakeup, you'd see a new world of pay for services offerings. If it's not free, it has to not suck.
Not true. Cable tv isn't free.
Good point. We'd need some better monopoly regulation too.
You would have gotten my vote for your first idea, but you just got all 100 of my less obviously legal votes for the other.
Use of personal audio devices on public land (beaches, hiking trails, etc) met with caning in real time at the site.
...except with headphones, right?
https://cdn.artstation.com/p/thumbnails/000/651/438/thumb.jpg
This is the best possible reply
In case the link breaks in future (and it has 'cdn.', so it might), it's a picture of Anakin captioned "right?".
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/for-the-better-right
I've run into this in the grocery store. I just don't get it.
Anyone wishing to hold ANY position of power (parent, teacher, landlord, boss, politician, oligarch, etc. If they can tell any other person what to do, this applies to them) must be put in a room with a sleepy little puppy or kitty until the animal stretches. If they don't reflexively say "ooh big stretch", they are barred from that position of power. If the position would have given them power of over more than 10 people, they will be imprisoned for a minimum of one year per person they would have been in charge of. This process will of course need to be kept highly secret.
*raises hand
Will we be given a choice between puppy or kitten?
Also, are unintelligible squees of delight acceptable?
Unfortunately due to the secrecy necessary there will be no opportunity to select between puppy or kitten, but the test protctor will be sufficiently cute as to overcome bias against cat or dog in all non-souless individuals.
In this case, we are looking for positive acknowledgement of a big stretch to be considered a complete pass. Squeeing will remove the possibility of any penalties, and the test taker will remain in the room until another opportunity for reaction arises.
Though squeeing is not considered a full pass, there are other possibilities. For example, if the test proctor yawns, positive acknowledgements such as "who's a sleepy lil guy?" or "aww look who needs a nap" will be considered full passes.
I have no rationale behind this but I feel deeply in my bones that it would lead to a utopia.
I throw all my votes behind this
Table manners.
Plain and simple. If you chew with your mouth open in view of law enforcement, we're talking about an expensive ticket. Twice in a year? Banned from eating in public for six months. Thrice? Straight to jail.
You can report others. Two reports in a year and you have to wear an ankle monitor that detects chewing with your mouth open. Penalties are harsher for those wearing monitors. They can get as severe as tongue removal.
If elected, I will immediately fix email by presidential decree. Questions?
Yes, you; in the back. Well, funny you should ask: we will fix email with a US government-issued a crypto currency for all email communications.
Another. Yes ... How does this fix email? Quite simple really: to send an email to a recipient at another domain, you must also pay the recipient with a cryptographic token with some small value; perhaps a few cents.
Will this be expensive? Hardly! For one, all value is exchanged between the sender and recipient. If my friend sends me an email and I send one in reply, then no value has been exchanged. However, if I want to send email to thousands of recipients, it's going to get expensive fast.
Our campaign will be releasing more details in the coming weeks. Look: ultimately, the taxpayer deserves a government that makes bad behavior expensive. Scammers use email to defraud taxpayers of billions every year. Isn't it time that we made them pay?
Thank you and God bless [CUSTOMER COUNTRY]!
NB: Not actually my idea, but a proposal from a friend of mine.
This would kill email notifications, even the opt-in variety.
Also, ransomware systems would start demanding you send them 500k emails.
So your telling me that I will be able to automatically disable all email notifications for a domain simply by removing an autoreply because otherwise it'd be too expensive?
I'm game.
But...why crypto?
You would want something that has low transaction fees, fast clearance, without double spending, and seamless operation across international borders. Crypto bills itself as fulfilling these objectives, and while the claims may not live up to their promises and there may well be alternatives, it would seem that crypt I currencies are uniquely suited to this kind use case.
Most crypto actually doesn't have low transaction fees. Honestly, if its run by the government anyway, they can just have a government bank account with 0 transaction fees for email. It'll be far less computationally expensive.
Have the main database email payment system run by the UN, and each nation's postal service be responsible for their citizen's implementation.
Meta: this topic lacks evil jinn answers for every proposition.
In agreeance with @vord (on this at least 😉) but also the pitch is politicians, there's a reason we're only promising and not following through.
We're a very results-driven group here at Tildes. We want the world to be a better place...though many of us disagree about exactly what that means.
In the UK I would be swept to victory by simply promising to repair all the road surfaces, and keep them repaired. I don’t even drive, but I can think of nothing more unifying. It’s something even cyclists and drivers can agree on.
Cycle paths cost ~1% as much as the same size car-supporting road surfaces (supporting 100kg is way cheaper than supporting 2-ton vehicles), you could dramatically reduce expenses by building out a proper extensive bike path system instead of maintaining all roads with multiple lanes.
Ditto for building out more rail. More frequent, less crowded trains that arrive closer to the destination will reduce car usage, and by extension reduce the need for roads.
Sure, I agree, but no one’s going to vote for that. Most folks are addicted to their cars and real angry about it too. (in the UK anyway)
Buses are so much better than cycling or trains for local travel, so I'm totally on board with pothole fixing.
It shouldn't be bus vs rail, it should be bus + rail.
I prefer trams and light rail over busses in any sufficiently dense environment, but busses with a dedicated bus lane (so as not to get stuck in car traffic) are also perfectly acceptable.
But I don't want to ride my bike in the rainy season.
Death Penalty for parking in the handicap spot without permission. Retroactive for anybody ticketed for it in the last 10 years.
Dark, but what if they just have both feet amputated instead. Then they can park there all the want.
This sounds like a reasonable compromise position. Very well - mandatory disablement for misuse of handicap spots!
I'm not sure this is what Hammurabi intended with his laws, but I'll allow it.
Heavy penalties for folks parking in regular spots but on or over the line.
Alternatively, simply zero liability from passers-by vandalising your car if you go over the line. Just snap a quick pic of the infringement and you’re free to take their wing mirror as a trophy, or slash a tyre, or key the door, or whatever
The downside of this is that "broke the law and are therefore not protected by it" is the definition of an outlaw, and outlaws are cool. We don't want to make shitty parking cool.
Uninsured vehicle damage and a dingy car ain't cool. In fact, I would even go as far to say it's uncool
My platform is built around tipping culture reform and the myriad benefits it will bring to our mighty country.
As president, I will ensure that tipping is ONLY allowed for non-organizational entities (read: individuals and small local bands).
Restaurants will immediately be forced to pay wages to all workers and tips will no longer be collected -- competitive pressures will quickly drive server wages up to where they should be.
Companies, such as Starbucks, who include a tipping mechanism in the transaction process, will be fined heavily and repeatedly.
No longer will you have to suffer through "now the screen is just going to ask you a few more questions" dialogue.
Citizens on both ends of the aisle will unite under me as we march toward this common goal. America can be a better place!
Extend the no tip policy to cruise lines which dock at any US cities? No more tipping on cruises please - just pay your people.
Question: how do you feel about restaurants, farms et al that import cheap seasonal labour instead of paying competitive, local wages.
End daylight savings. Worldwide. It's a dumb enough tradition on a local level, but when you have different places doing it on different dates it just gets dumber. (Is it five hours or six hours time difference between London, ON and London, UK this week? How about next week? Maybe it's four?)
I agreed with you in Florida, but now that I live in Sweden I see the need for daylight savings. Otherwise the sun is coming up only slightly later but going down insanely early to the point that you go a little nuts. Daylight savings is a bad solution but I can't think of a better one.
Change the schedule, not the time. Many stores near me already have "summer hours" and "winter hours" to account for the change in the length of sunlight; each business can choose to shift hours however they please. I'm even open to taking this to the extreme: use UTC everywhere and just have logical hours based on your physical location (e.g. in Seattle, businesses might be open from 1600-0000 if we kept the traditional 9a-5p schedule).
Shifting schedules might take a bit of getting used to, but no more weird timezone coordination is a huge win in my book.
This is just how timezones largely work now except worse. See so you want to abolish time zones
I think having somewhat different summer/winter schedules locally in areas where daylight really varies a lot throughout the year is not a horrible idea, though, imo.
In Sweden, even southern Sweden, our day lengths vary extremely wildly. June 19th is 18 hours and 19 minutes long, and December 21st is 6 hours and 20 minutes long. While we do sort of have different summer and winter hours, winter hours are "normal" and summer hours are "everything is closed because everyone is on vacation".
The only stores with winter schedules around here are ice cream shops. (Barring things with explicit summer "school is out" schedules) What stores do that near you?
Lots of places: coffee shops, restaurants, even chain grocers. Days are quite short in the winter (avg 8.5 hrs sunlight in december) and long in the summer (15.5h sunlight in july). It’s usually only slight adjustments of an hour or two.
Gotcha, just haven't seen that as standard anywhere I've lived. And we have similar amounts of time between sunrise and sunset. About 15 hours in June, more like 9 in the winter ish
I've never seen it as standard either, and I live further north than Seattle -- Berlin is at about 52.5 degrees north while Seattle is at about 47.6 degrees north. I honestly wish they did that locally here though, the sunlight (or lack thereof) in winter really gets to me.
Yeah I used a quick Google for Sunlight time in IL and I have no sense of whether that's Chicago or what part of Illinois it refers to but it was quite similar. And it's only 41°North
According to timeanddate.com, on winter solstice in Berlin the day length is a little more than 7½ hours, while in Cleveland (where I'm from, and probably not far off from IL), it's about 9 hours and 10 minutes. So I really feel the loss, even if not fully consciously.
But it makes sense, because latitude-wise Cleveland is close to Florence iirc. The weather in Europe is just much milder at higher latitudes so it feels like that wouldn't be the case. It's one of my fun facts because I think it's unintuitive to a lot of people from either side of the Atlantic.
On the plus side, on summer solstice in Cleveland the day length was about 15 hours and 10 minutes, whereas in Berlin it was just 10 minutes shy of 17 hours. So it does balance out, and I'll take the milder winter weather here over the extra sunlight.
Chicago says 15:14 hours of daylight on June 22 and just under 9:10 on the 21st of Dec so yeah pretty close and close to the poster ... Just not used to winter and summer hours outside of maybe some tourism locations and ice cream shops.
Yeah same, must be a regional thing in the Pacific Northwest or something. I'd be up for it though! I can see the utility for sure. I'll have to ask my wife if that's a thing in Norway that she knows of.
This could work, but if you want to talk to someone on the other side of the globe, it makes it even tougher to communicate what hours are appropriate. It's hard enough for my family to remember to add 6 to their time and see if that's appropriate. In thid case you'd actually need to remember a discrete set of hours for each location. That seems a lot more difficult to me.
Mandatory construction and reconstruction of all buildings to have soundproofing!
My humble platform:
TV/streaming advertisements can't add more than 25% to the length of the programming or, in the case of sports, anticipated time spent on field. Basketball games are around 60 minutes in length again, with ads. American Football isn't 3+ hours long anymore. And imagine how physically fit all the players would have to be to play more consecutives minutes on the field! They'd look like rugby players! Baseball games are, well, still baseball games.
And for TV shows, a 60-minute time block still has at least 48 minutes of content in it (which is still too little, imo, it used to be more). 30-minute time blocks have 24 minutes of content.
I don't know how hockey is doing with regards to advertisements. Football (soccer), rugby (all forms), and most motorsports do pretty good about not inserting too many ads.
I'll vote for you if you make include that recaps do not count for that minimum content time. Too many times I've seen shows pad multiple minutes of content just recounting what happened in the very last episode.
That's a great point. I never thought about it, but I probably stopped watching TV shows live around the time they started doing <commercials> <last episode recap> <commercials> <episode starts>. That was just inhumane. But then, I've never had much opportunity to watch a TV show regularly in my adult life. Still, you make a great point!
make the limit 10% and I'll vote you in.
Increase science funding 10x. How to pay for it: it pays for itself 8x by improving the economy with the extra innovations it makes possible, it's economically insane to not increase the funding.
Vote for Carrie!
I can't tell if that's evil or not, but in a less evil timeline:
The first one is evil unless they change the adoption restrictions. I have a feeling you haven't looked into them, each state has their own set. It also falls into dark territory on the body autonomy issue.
Perhaps I’m missing understanding your comment, but I meant like - why do adopting couples have to demonstrate they make X dollars or have Y resources to adopt a child, but a “natural birthing” family doesn’t ? There’s no interview to become a parent “naturally,” but there is to become an adoptive parent. The standards are higher.
Right but they're saying that imposing those restrictions on birthing parents is a huge violation of bodily autonomy.
And as for the restrictions, I won't claim they're always fair, but you know the rule about never giving away a dog because a fee keeps away the people who would buy it to torture it for fun? We don't give babies away with no restrictions for a number of reasons, but that is unfortunately necessarily one of them.
You have to be married to adopt. Not too long ago, this was used to keep same sex couples from adopting. With the way things are going, I'll be angered but not surprised if the SCOUTS overturns either of these.
I referred to body autonomy both because of the difficulties some women have with birth control and because of rape.
There used to be forced sterilization of mentally disabled women.
I don't trust the government because there's no telling who will be in charge in a decade or two.
I didn't want to spell these issues out in what is meant to be a lighthearted thread.
Hmm. I see what you’re saying, thank you for educating me on your point.
However, in the spirit of the thread- in my utopia - the adoption requirements would be “you can demonstrate you have the resources to raise a child and the know how of how to raise a child, and the commitment to work on those things if you don’t have them/lose them” It wouldn’t include things like “must be married. Must be straight. Must be Christians, etc.”
So I think you and I are in agreement - the current adoption polices are imperfect and would be poorly applied across the board. However, I still want to address the sheer number of unwanted born children and the subsequent trauma and suffering they undergo.
Totally fair. Maybe even the same requirements professional babysitters have, like CPR training. It would probably need to manifest as free classes.
The first one is eugenics. But I'm all for your next proposals! The bathroom experience can really stand a lot of improvement. And I unironically think that there should be widespread public drinking fountains everywhere. Moving to Europe radicalized me on that one, as public drinking fountains are more or less non-existent even compared with the US, and public restrooms that don't cost money are rare.
In the States, I would run for President with the express purpose of limiting the power of the President.
I think the president should be someone who can keep a cool head in a crisis. When time is critical they can make quick short term decisions to handle natural disasters, national defense, etc. any executive orders should be for emergencies only and expire after a set time period, maybe a month. Then Congress has to extend them or take other actions.
I don't think Presidents should set policy at all. They should be boring administrators, or at best guidance and leadership to help Congress set policy.
As president I would encourage Congress to set restrictions on what executive orders can do and how long they can be in effect. I would promise to sign any laws passed that restricted my power.
I'll give the FSF full and complete authority to legislate and enforce their will over all consumer software platforms (desktop, mobile, and everything else) as they see fit.
Not sure if that would actually turn out well but it would be a lot of fun to watch unfold.
My cop out answer would be to make Election day a federal holiday, require all states to allow mail-in ballots, and for anyone who ends up working that day to have a mandated 3 hour break to allow them to travel to and cast a vote (as well as set aside money to provide travel funds for voting purposes). I say cop-out because this absolutely would solve some deeper problems in the US.
My real answer is to enact federal legislation limiting HOAs from the ability to enforce any standards on personally owned property. Want to paint your house bright pink? You can do that. Want to hang a flag in your condo that is externally visible? You can also do that. Get rid of your lawn and put in native plants? Also allowed. There would need to be exemptions, of course, for issues that can spread to property personally owned by others - for example if your space is so dirty that rats have now infested it, or you have bedbugs in a condo and don't care, the HOA can take action to clear out the infestation. HOAs will also still be able to decide how to deal with shared property, such as external walls or interior corridors in a condominium complex.
Why does an HOA need to do the cleaning? If there are legitimate safety concerns with someone’s property, the local government can handle it.
The death penalty for spam and scam phone calls.
Get called about your car's extended warranty? Drone strike.
Get called asking your opinion about the latest political candidate? Assassination team deployed.
Get called to verify the $8,000 purchase you definitely didn't make with your credit card? Tactical nuclear launch from one of our on-call Ohio-class SSBNs.
Vote for me, L One, and the phone spammers and scammers will fear you.
Birthday is a paid day off.
Specifically: you get one day per year which is to be paid at triple your typical rate as a paid day off, which defaults to your birthday, but by statutory declaration you can request that day be changed. People whose birthday lands on Feb 29 default have non-leap-years paid day is March 1st.
If you’re required to work that day instead of having a day off, you get 10x your usual rate.
To avoid your workplace pressuring you to switch your days by statutory declaration, you can only change it once per financial year per employer, with at least 3 months notice. However, this still incurs the 3x rate to be paid immediately if this change would create a gap of more than 12 months between “birthdays”. Also, being terminated within 3 months of your “birthday” likewise incurs immediate payout.
If you’re casual or part-time or have inconsistent pay, your “typical rate” is the pay of your line manager, or if they’re also casual, keep stepping up the chain until you find someone with a consistent salary. Calculating this can include stepping outside of shell companies (e.g. if you work as a casual for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a shell company of Google, your pay rate for this might end up being Sundar Pichai’s equivalent rate)
If you’re long-term unemployed, then your rate is the previous “birthday” pay rate, plus inflation if more than 12 months unemployed, paid by the government.
Petty, yes. Relatable, I hope not.
Come Home Alaska.
By whatever means necessary, establish a land border connection to Alaska thus increasing the continental US to 49 states. (edit: sorry, AT LEAST 49 states)
This is a big part of my friends future campaign. That and "mind your damn business". I'd say he's got a shot.
Boo!
Despite being the capital city of Alaska, one can't even drive to Juneau from other parts of Alaska:
Kids from Sitka fly to other cities for their sports games. Folks in Alaska are doing just fine with sea and sky. The climate and geography will just make road building and maintenance as expensive as it is unnecessary.
Also, "by whatever means necessary" sounds entirely threatening to this Canadian. Mind your dang business, 'Merica.
Surely there are some bits and pieces Canada doesn't need. Who's gonna miss Alberta?
Look we’re willing to compromise and route through Quebec if that’ll make it happen
Right, right, .....we can even charge them a small fee to use the St Lawrence to get there. It's just one country, Michael, how many hours could it possibly take to drive through, 10?
idk if we take Quebec we'd get poutine and I don't think Canada can afford to give that up. I'm half convinced the only reason Quebec isn't independent is so Canada can take credit for Montreal's phenomenal poutine.
Wealth cap. After a certain point, say 100 million, you get a medal, a statue at the hall of heroes, and your name on a federal building for winning capitalism. You can't own a cent above that.
This isn't what I'd call a petty issue at all. It's a fundamental and wide-reaching problem.
My favorite version of this is the Pythagoras cup version. Same idea with a cap (100 million is pretty low, my version was a billion but we can figure out what the cap is later). But in my version if you become wealthy enough to pass the cap almost all of your wealth is distributed evenly across the nation. We would leave the attempted billionaire with the same amount of wealth that the average American owns including assets. We would of course have to greatly increase funding for the IRS and crack down on things like secret off shore accounts, but no one would be a billionaire in my administration.