GreenBeard

Yeah. Has been for a long time friend. ICE stopping charter or even city busses to round up working people and make them prove they’re citizens just because they happen to be within 100 miles of a border is practically a cliche at this point. Any international airport, shipping port, etc. works the same way. They operate on guilty until proven innocent, and if you are proven innocent, they’ll invent a reason you’re not anyway.

We thought we were signing up for libraries. We forgot the “Public” part of how libraries work.

I was always more angry about them editing digital publications after the fact. That’s some Grade A “Ministry of Truth” BS right there. Dead Tree Media forever.

Samsung are the same, and even more aggressive with the adware. There’s really not a lot of decent consumer hardware these days that aren’t just obnoxious ad pipelines.

We get that the people who work for a jerk, are not responsible for the bad decisions of that jerk, and it’s a shame that they will suffer for his bad decisions, but that’s part of the risks you take as an employee, and there are a great many risks you take working for anyone, most of which the owner class refuse to acknowledge. We all recognize that it’s a struggle to find new employment, but they always have the option of finding a new company to work for.

The owner is the primary beneficiary of any capital investment. Collateral damage for their decisions is their responsibility, not the consumer.

Sort of, but this is slightly different. It’s an active obfuscation of an externally imposed identity element. A justifiable one in this case, but an external imposition in the first place, and external identity elements should always be held at arm’s length because they tend to get abused.

Incorporating it into your material identity dulls your awareness of the fact this representation of you, isn’t “you”, and how it’s used isn’t up to you. Creating an attachment to it has risks, risks you are inclined to ignore if mentally it’s just another personalized bumper sticker in your perception.

Look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be registering cars I’m just saying a licence plate is intended as a vehicle tracking ID. That’s the whole point. I always considered licence plate customization at best tacky. If I want to add some decals and bumper stickers and such, I’m not going to put it on a state issued ID tag.

For the record, I think customized graphics on your credit/debit cards, check designs, etc. is just as morbid. You don’t “own” these things, they’re not part of your identity, and letting them trick your brain into pretending that they belong to you and are an extension of your “self” by adding fancy designs is kind of gross. They are symbols that reference you, they are not a part of you.

That’s like embellishing a prison camp number with a fun design. That’s not self-expression that’s morbid.

Holy hell yes. It’s actually alarming how many security holes are out there simply because management had no clue what people did and canned the last guy responsible for maintaining something. Zombie functions that are holding up the whole stack, but no one has had a clue what they did in 15 years, and we all just look away and hope they keep holding until they’re someone else’s problem.