I was at a family party where this guy with the largest pickup I’d ever seen constantly complained about how expensive gas was and how it was Biden’s fault. It quickly became apparent that he only drove the thing the hour drive back and forth from his office job. Truck looked like new despite being a couple years old, save for highway tire wear.

Why on earth does he think we should all subsidize his absurd and impractical vehicle’s fuel? And I’m sure he complains about entitled people on welfare.

Technically, yes criminal conversion is certainly a thing. If the laptop was expensive and you lived in a really low crime area where the cops were bored that might get pursued. My experience is that cops are practically more likely to say, absent a court order, to sue the person because it’s he-said she-said. It’s just too much effort for a potentially muddy situation.

You’d be surprised how often things that are theft/technically theft are not actually pursued by police in the US. The property crime clearance rate (resulting in at least arrest) is <15%.

Holding onto a rental car, on the other hand, is both expensive and cut-and-dried enough (contract states definitive end date ahead of time) to be a bad idea.

No, at least not in the US. It does not meet the legal definition of theft because (I believe) the property was initially acquired legally.

Otherwise, the police would be doing repo for things like delinquent car loans, which is dystopian corporate hellscape stuff.

In my experience, transplanting within the US has more to do with a significant shift in culture/region. You’re a transplant if you move from Maine to Texas. You just moved if you relocated from Maine to New Hampshire.

McDonald’s stopped using beef tallow for fries in 1990. I suppose that might be relatively recent if you are an elf.

Part of the issue will be convincing the decision makers. They may not want to document a process for deviation x because it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t occur, and you don’t need to record specific metrics if it’s a generic “manual fix by CS” issue. It’s easier for them to give a support team employee (or manager) override on everything just in case.

To your point, in theory it should be much easier to dump that ad-hoc solution into an AI knowledge base than draw up requirements and budget to fix the application. Maybe the real thing I should be concerned with is suits using that as a solution rather than ever fixing their broken products.

I think there’s good potential where the caller needs information.

But I am skeptical for problem-solving, especially where it requires process deviations. Like last week, I had an issue where a service I signed up for inexplicably set the start date incorrectly. It seems the application does not allow the user to change start dates themselves within a certain window. So, I went to support, and wasted my time with the AI bot until it would pass me off to a human. The human solved the problem in five seconds because they’re allowed to manually change it on their end and just did that.

Clearly the people who designed the software and the process did not foresee this issue, but someone understood their own limitations enough to give support personnel access to perform manual updates. I worry companies will not want to give AI agents the same capabilities, fearing users can talk their AI agent into giving them free service or something.

They are almost certainly not actually working that much though. Look up the recent Massachusetts state police overtime scandal.

There is a reason that as long as Hellfire Citadel has existed, the first Google auto complete suggestion is “Hellfire Citadel entrance.”

Viruses and prions fall under the umbrella of germs/pathogens. They did not disprove germ theory. They still align with the idea that pathogens cause diseases. That’s still true.

I’m pretty sure this is just how people try to manipulate Trump. He responds to flattery, and this almost makes it sound like Trump would be weak to do nothing.

What is interesting is how non-vocal many of these “concerned citizens” are when the criminal justice system does the same thing to normal people. It is why I have a difficult time believing the concern is really about justice and due process in many cases.

There are certainly stories of overzealous enforcement, but the context of Loi 101 and its amendments is worth considering.

Québecois is really interesting. It has a lot of old, outdated French in it due to the colonial connection with France being severed hundreds of years ago, where it evolved distinctly and the locals made different decisions on what to change and how to adapt to new concepts.

One could argue the French government has been obsessive about policing language much longer with the académie française.

From what I’ve read, 65+ was about evenly split Harris-Trump in 2024. 40-64 broke decidedly Trump. If the markets (and 401ks) manage to bounce back by the time the 40-64 cohort largely enters retirement, I fully expect they will have learned absolutely nothing.

It also speeds up the games a bit. I simply do not have the time as a full adult to sink 10+ hours into a single game. I have actually finished every game of Civ 7 I’ve played so far, which has never happened with any prior Civ installments at my current playtime.

He is from the Cincinnati area, which borders Kentucky, and he spent some of his youth in Kentucky. Not a proper southerner, but from the gradient where North becomes South.

I saw a local restaurant with its branding on it the the other day. Well, there’s one restaurant I never need to try.

Yep. He wasn’t really reviewing the nuts and bolts, just the drive experience. I didn’t get the impression he got a ton of time with it and only spent an afternoon puttering around. It felt below his standard honestly for thoroughness.

So this is what Cardi B was talking about.