Though that last paragraph does apply in many places outside the US. Sometimes it’s even the US military responding outside of the US (I mean I assume they protect the airspace around their bases, but I guess I’m not really sure what kind of jurisdiction they’d have just because they have a military base).
At this point, I don’t generally give trust to brands but products. Too many companies that used to be a name to trust have decided to monetize that trust (or get acquired by another company that doesn’t see the value in maintaining that trust), but they might still have good quality products in their lineup along with the cheap ones.
Though I’ve also done well with the “just buy one to see how important it is to have quality in this particular thing”. I just sold my old cordless drill after owning it for about a decade. It was weak but I didn’t even really notice that until I wanted to drill a hole through a stone counter top. A bought another cheap corded drill for that, but have since also bought a quality cordless drill set that might even allow me to sell the corded drill.
And if you need quality, look for stuff marketed to professionals. People who use their drill every single day aren’t going to be using the ones that can’t hold a charge or break after 20 hours of usage. Booster Juice doesn’t have shitty blenders where the connection between the motor and blade wears down with each use such that the motor spins but the blades do not before 3 digit uses, or even 4.
It’s all a spectrum. Our minds, in some ways, are brute forcing ways to approach survival. Each individual’s brain settles on some patterns that they determine work for them, and when you look at the collective, we can end up with very different ways of thinking but they are all based on balancing the number of neurons devoted to various tasks like visual processing, audio processing, social skills, various physical skills, etc. ADHD is based on how attention is tuned, both how long you can pay attention to something you might not want to and also how your attention is divided between tasks you’re focusing on vs other things going on around you.
Personally, I don’t really give that much attention to things going on around me. I’m usually either actively doing something or lost in my thoughts. This has the advantage of being able to think through things, but at the cost of missing things around me, which can include someone addressing me. It’s pretty much an always on thing. I do hear it and my brain can often process it after I realize I’ve been addressed. But I’d guess that most people are like that when they are actively concentrating their full attention on a task. Or thinking, I’m sure non-ADHD people do that, too, but the balance between time spent focusing on thoughts vs processing general surroundings might be different.
Though tbh I have no real idea. My entire experience is inside my own head and I can only guess at how different things are from brain to brain (and to what level other organs contribute to that, since they’ve all got neurons, and chemistry that they all play a role in can have huge effects, too).
It’s not the legal status (fraud is already illegal), it’s proving that it is indeed a scam rather than some dumb shit they actually believed, as well as knowing that it’s more likely to trigger a persecution complex and doubling down than improve the lives of the victims (because if it’s a plot to harm their religion, they don’t have to feel like idiots for giving the scammer money).
It’s a different story if the religious scammer openly admits that it was always a scam and just doesn’t care what anyone thought of it. Easier to prove and the victims are already angry and feeling like idiots for falling for it.
As the other commenter mentioned, things could get violent. Being wrong about a prediction means that the leaders look as dumb as the followers, but saying outright that you scammed the followers means you deliberately made them look stupid.
But even if they aren’t mysteriously angry about it, it’s still illegal. I wonder if the prosecutors going after Trump plan on going after him again from that angle once they prove his election steal claims were fraud because he used those claims to solicit donations.
That gives me an idea for an invention. Hollow chopsticks so you can pump ketchup onto your sushi as you eat it. You could even stab it into it and do a ketchup injection!
If it makes you feel any better, it’s probably hard to figure out when to get out. You’ll always feel like you can do just one more because the last one worked out so well, but each time you cash in, more people will see the truth and might want in on it until you find yourself in a situation where you can’t stop even if you wanted to because then the others who you are propping up will turn on you.
Yeah the MS support forums are very hit or miss. And even the hit ones usually start with a response that doesn’t appear to understand the question very deeply, followed by a “that didn’t work”, “I said in my post that I tried that and it didn’t work”, or maybe a “that’s not what I’m trying to do, I want to do x”, and then a reply with useful links.
Though to be fair, problems can come from software the user installed or fuck ups they’ve made to settings along the way. Or quiet sabotage from another user.
Once upon a time I provided phone support for Comcast and had a caller call in unable to access Facebook. I did the usual script and found her internet was otherwise working. Narrowed it down to a dns issue. I was aware of the hosts file because I was using it for ad blocking at the time so had her open that up on a whim (which I would have gotten in trouble for since it was off script). Sure enough, it was there. Someone didn’t want her accessing it.
Who knows what kinds of methods people have used to discourage other things on shared PCs. Is edge really broken or did the user’s kid get tired of everyone clicking “make it the default browser” when it begged each time it was opened so they wrote a small program that kills it as soon as it starts?
Yeah, and with the way social media works, there’s a decent chance that after establishing a pattern of being able to predict trends, you’ll be able to choose them. You don’t even have to be a social media manager to make money from that. Sell celebrity status. Or don’t when someone comes to you but you can’t predict them going viral.
Or on a different angle, you could predict stocks that are about to go viral. Depending on how far in advance, you’ll also be able to predict future events and things like election outcomes. If you use your power to become well known on social media and can get stuff about yourself trending, you’ll be able to predict your own life. And if you can set trends with self-fulfilling prophecies, you could start revolutions or bring down regimes (or at least generate popular opposition).
Oh ok, that makes sense. Thought he might have meant that at first but second guessed because I only see them in strip malls or other buildings they didn’t build themselves these days but thinking about the aisles does make me think fire hazard now. At least they usually keep the lighters by the cash, though I wonder if someone learned that one the hard way.
Knife works better, since it’s a flat surface. A spoon would push it to the side instead of crushing evenly. Mortar and pestle is overkill unless you’ve got a lot of garlic to press.