In the early days of smartwatches I ordered one from the manufacturer directly. The price tag and its features all sounded too good to be true, and it was. I don’t even remember their name but I was so hyped that I didn’t even do basic research.
I waited and waited and after a few weeks I did a search online. Turns out the whole thing was a scam, I found tons of blog posts about people either not receiving theirs or getting something that barely worked.
It was too late to do anything about it but I learned my lesson the hard way.
This is why we always use a credit card to purchase anything, right?
Post office: box was sliced and someone stuck their hand in and removed contents and successfully reclosed. We learned: 1. do not bring attention to your box
We learned: 1. do not bring attention to your box (stickers and cute doodles? = Fun stuff inside) 2. Insure your boxes and contents 3. Never send anything irreplaceable, like family heirlooms 4. Use those boring, same as every other Flat Rate boxes as much as possible.
Technically, Mugg & Bean from South Africa. But that’s the chain they used to be, they changed their menu in major ways at some point between 2019 and 2023, and now it sucks :(
Fun fact: Saturday morning flights out of New Orleans are the most missed flights in the United States. I was told this by a gate agent when my flight out on a Friday was cancelled due to weather.
“Just come really early tomorrow morning and you’ll get on that flight. They always have room because of that.”
Idk man, I’ve never gotten married and it’s been fine for me. My girlfriend and I have been together for 14 years, have 2 kids, and our family is all that has kept me going through this shitty world. Never married though, so many there is some truth to the advice.
Our cities would be compact, walkable, jam-packed with quality transit, and nearly car-free. Cargo would be transported with cargo ebikes, barges along rivers and canals, local freight rail, and cargo trams. People would move by foot and bike and trams and metro and high-speed rail.
The surrounding countryside would be home to ecological, sustainable smallholder agriculture, preferably with plenty of technology for efficient precision agriculture. Instead of massive monocultures of corn, we’d have diverse polycultures of dozens of different crops, both annuals and perennials.
Nature would be abundant, protected, and rewilded. We would remove most roads into wild areas and replace with trains and velomobile trails, which would be much lower impact on wild habitats. Every city would have easy, rapid transit access to natural areas by rail, so anyone can go hiking or exploring or whatever they like.
Our economy would be centered around productivity, not rent-seeking and speculation. We would use policy to reduce barriers to entry to create highly competitive markets. We would heavily tax externalities like carbon emissions and fertilizer runoff and PFAS contamination.
We would tax people on what they take, not what they make. Income taxes? Nah, you did the labor; that value should belong to you. Carbon emissions? That materially harms others so you should pay tax on that. Hoarding valuable god-given land? You didn’t make it, so you should pay taxes on the land you deprive from the rest of humanity.
Our democracy would be reformed with a much better voting system like mixed-member proportional representation (MMPR) or single transferrable vote (STV), so we could have healthy multiparty systems.
Our society would publicly invest more in research and development, open-source projects, infrastructure, and anything else that generates positive externalities. You rewilded 100 acres of native grassland? Society should pay you for your valuable labor.
The balance of power between labor and employers would be balanced. A citizen’s dividend or universal basic income, subsidies on positive externalities (like rewilding), and the economic general growth spurred by elimination of rent-seeking would allow for an empowered working class that could capture its own productivity gains, demand better pay, and demand shorter hours. Much like how the professional class can demand good pay and good working conditions currently.
In short, the economy would be centered around Georgist principles, environment and agriculture around permaculture, and democracy around technocratic and representative democracy. A shared, sustainable prosperity for all.
Some great comments below, but i also wanted to add that i think it depends on how open and honest one is. For example, it happens quite frequently that i change my view on something, because someone (usually one of my adult kids) points out certain things that i didn’t know or thought about. And then i can just apologize and tell them they are right. It keeps me humble and open to other viewpoints or scientific facts that i didn’t know or consider. If someone just kindly points something out to me, that makes it easy to apologize. But if people are hostile and tell you you’re wrong in an aggressive way, then it would be pretty hard to admit you hadn’t thought of that.
But from what i see, there are a lot of people who just don’t want to seem dumb, or are extremely set in their ways, and they will never admit that they were wrong or that there are different ways to see or understand something. Rather, they become angry, or grumble, or change the subject.
Add to this, I don’t know how far back but the Boomers, Silent and Greatest Gen all were brought up on a strict “respect your elders” mindset which by the time it got to the boomers is “I am Older therefore always right by default and how DARE you try to correct me!!”
This is also why world governments especially USA is full of geriatrics because old people don’t vote for anyone younger than them (if there is a choice) because they don’t want a goddamn whippersnapper telling them what to do. The most stubborn kind of old person that is.
And man, they got pissed when the rest of us collectively learned that just being Old doesn’t mean shit. The boomers had to bend the knee HARD to their parents authority or they get insta slapped. So they expect, or demand their kids/young people in general treat them the same as it’s their Turn now.
But instead we learned they can be wrong and being Old doesn’t mean infallible. And they hates it… BIG MAD they are!. They cope and seethe and mald all over the internet and at the polls. We are literally living in a Baby Boomer tantrum cuz young people will not “respect” them as they were forced to do their parents. Yeah just growing old doesn’t mean shit you gotta back that with experience now. Like Nazis whom only thing to be proud of is being Pale.
I’m not that young myself anymore, and i definitely recognize my very strict upbringing you mentioned, but in my view respect needs to be earned. And not once, but over and over again because people change. Seeing most political leaders being very old white men makes me cringe. They often just don’t understand the modern world. Just an example; they make decisions about cybersecurity while i’m convinced they don’t know the first thing about it. They probably rely heavily on their advisors and just echo what they say would be best.
deeper than that. a lot of people's entire identity/value gets wrapped up in patently false beliefs. and being wrong about that means they are wrong as a person.
that is why so many yahoos have this 'or die' dedication to complete nonsensical beliefs and become violent when those beliefs are challenged.
Yes, definitely. Another thing that comes to mind, reading your reply, is that people surround themselves with like minded people. That can be a good thing, or very bad.
You always have a choice. Just stay informed, surround yourself with wholesome people, and be willing to change your views if needed. I don’t think you become a certain way just because you age.
I’ve become MUCH more of a twat as I get older/ now that I’m over 40…
I just don’t have patience for the sillyness anymore. You wanna be a unicorn furry? Sure, whatever, I dgaf just gtfo my way so I can go about my life without your bullshit interrupting me. You wanna spend all your time talking about immigrants or your culture, i’m going to walk away…if you follow and annoy me as that type tends to do, i’m going to take the gloves off and bury your stupid ass with facts based in the reality you insist on avoiding.
People are individuals, all going through their own journeys. You might grow and change for the better if you're able to figure out how to be the best you, or you might change for the worse if made bitter by a life where it feels like no one is on your side and you have to take your due since it will never be given.
The important thing is: (1) People are twats for a reason, and (2) You can't fix those reasons for other people and make them less twatty, so the only thing you can control is how you handle less than ideal interactions. (Tip: most well-adjusted people don't jump to "lose hope in humanity"; the fact that you have means there's work you can do here.)
Everyone has a bad day now and then. It sounds like a lot is eating at you. You might be dealing with more than your fair share people who haven't gotten the help they need to learn why they're twats and how it hurts them and everyone around them. I know I was a worse person until I figured out how I got the way I was a few years ago; it took me til the back half of the 30s to start to be better.
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