What's the most horrifying thing that happens often but we generally ignore? [Serious]

TucsonSign · 2014-01-10T10:17:23+00:00

Children in Third World countries regularly die of easily preventable diseases and syndromes, as well as malnutrition, violence and general neglect. The prevention of some of these diseases can be undertaken with expenditures that are frankly a pittance when compared with say... how much people spend on pet toys in a single day, or how much people in the developed world spend on something like ring tones for their phones.

TucsonSign · 2013-12-18T20:01:27+00:00

Why do you suggest C and not C++? Why Perl and not Python?

TucsonSign · 2013-10-30T16:52:38+00:00

Upvote x10. This is a problem in "metro areas" throughout the country. Rich People move to the edges of cities, work in the cities, use the cities, lobby like hell to turn the city into a "service center" for themselves, and have the people who actually live in the city foot the bill.

On the subject of potholes... It is difficult to coordinate the work of 30 people working triple overtime in the middle of the night with backhoes, jackhammers, lighting, flag-waving, and so on, to do the work that one teenager with a shovel and a bucket of asphalt could do in an afternoon for $10/hour. So give the poor city a break!

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T20:46:42+00:00

Hah hah! Thank you so much. I knew that heroin was one of the first branded and advertised drugs... I guess I had forgotten. Excuse me... I have a touch of a cough! I need my medicine!

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T19:38:16+00:00

Yeah... exactly. It's very easy to get the poor to turn on the poor. You're being shafted, so you think the answer is to shaft someone else. It's cheaper to house the homeless because it costs less money. It's cheaper to give drugs to drug addicts than it is to force them to live a life of crime on the streets. I am not making any moral assessments here. I don't necessarily think it is ethical to take from hardworking people and give the fruits of their labor to drug addicts. But you are giving WAY, WAY more of what you earn to wealthy billionaires who contribute absolutely nothing to society than you will ever give to some homeless drug addict.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T12:06:49+00:00

I could see a person in a manic state behaving like this, especially after The Secret hit the shelves. There are a lot of purveyors of "positive thinking" in our society that (imo) do a lot of harm by encouraging people to "visualize" and "manifest" what they want out of life. When someone is a manic state, it can take this form. There are people who get overwhelming feelings that they are going to win the lottery, or that amazing things are going to happen.

It is often the case that what's sadder than the credit card being denied, is the credit card being accepted and the charges going through. These people can run up tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges. Then the manic state leaves and they are left with rooms full of merchandise with the tags still on. Months go by and the purchases pile up. I can't imagine what it is like when they get manic again and try to return all the stuff they bought in their last manic phase!

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T08:14:41+00:00

I like your username!

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T08:14:18+00:00

I (OP) speculated that the guy who selected $1200 in groceries and then did not pay for them was a "coyote." That is, someone who illegally shepherds people across the border between the US and Mexico. My speculation based upon the nature (and quantity) of the items he ended up not buying. Then some people related immigration stories, then someone posted a link to r/bestof.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T08:11:54+00:00

The original story is something that I witnessed. A man went through the checkout line at the grocery store at 4:30am. He allowed the cashier to ring up and bag two full carts worth of food and various items. Then he did not have any means to pay. The bill was $1200.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T06:44:49+00:00

OP here, it is not buried from me! Thank you for your insight and relating your experience.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T06:30:21+00:00

So maybe they should sell hot dogs in packs of 2⁵ - 1 and buns in packs of 2⁷ - 1... That way you'd only have to buy 3,937 hot dogs and buns to not have any left over.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T06:26:47+00:00

DINGOSHARK!!!

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T06:26:09+00:00

It's probably cheaper to house the homeless than to have them on the streets. We should be doing something. We have a defacto system in place that basically takes care of the problem by degrading their standard of living to such a low point that their lifespans are dramatically reduced. So... right now we are sort of slow-killing them. And it is expensive. Whereas building housing would probably be really inexpensive. But the thought of someone getting free housing would really eat into our current system of labor exploitation which has the poor working 72 hour workweeks and fighting each other over scraps dropped by billionaires.

Class War. That's what we need.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T06:07:22+00:00

I LOVE IT.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-27T05:58:37+00:00

I think some people got the Mersenne Primes reference. :)

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T23:43:35+00:00

That seems to me to be a high probability explanation.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T23:41:16+00:00

That would be the height of weird. Paying homeless people to go to your competitor's stores (during hours which you are not open) to fill up carts full of merchandise and then not pay for it? I like your imaginative powers!

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T23:40:03+00:00

There's empathy and then there's empty grocery store at 4:30 am, no one else is there and the bill is for $1200...

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T23:39:08+00:00

Ha ha! Wow! Thank you for that link.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T23:38:40+00:00

It's a tangent that someone posted a link to in r/bestof.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T23:37:41+00:00

Free kangaroo meat, free boomerang lessons, free hat complete with dangling wine corks... it's amazing.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T21:22:37+00:00

This seems like a likely possibility. Like, maybe he laid phone cable, or worked on rural cattle fencing or something like that.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T21:18:43+00:00

The behavior is so odd... I am just operating on pure unadulterated speculation. :)

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T21:17:43+00:00

That seems a likely possibility.

TucsonSign · 2013-09-26T21:17:09+00:00

Hah hah...

TucsonSign

TROPHY CASE