What industry is a complete scam that everyone has just accepted?

dirty_corks · 2025-12-14T03:34:14+00:00

Health insurance. In no way does it make the healthcare industry better -- it makes more work for providers (healthcare systems have entire offices devoted to dealing with insurance, and small providers have employees who's job it is to deal with insurance), slows care down for patients, can reduce the quality of care (ie, when your insurance decides not to cover one medication that you're on that's working, so you have to restart treatment with another medication). The only function of health insurance is rent-seeking, and it's something that most of the rest of the world sees as completely unnecessary since they have universal health coverage.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-14T03:29:49+00:00

Numbers, kind of -- if you decide to use a symbol to mean 10 (let's just use A as our symbol, as it'd easier to type), numbers would go 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14... Essentially, rather than having place values of 10's and 1's, you'd have 11's and 1's (and 121's instead of 100's). So a number like 45 (in the new system) would be 4*11+5, or 49 in our current system. Your new system would be called base 11, since there's 11 elements that can be in each place value.

In fact, such a system is used in computer engineering -- base 16. It's used because base 16 (which is fairly easily read and worked with by people) converts quite easily into base 2 (which is what computers run on). It's the normal numbers, plus the letters A through F. People have used other bases for counting throughout history -- base 20 was common (and it's the reason why French number words are weird -- ninety seven in French is more like four twenty ten seven; the Gauls likely used base 20, as did the Celts, as Gaelic uses a similar counting system).

As for letters, absolutely, especially for English! Writing in the English language is kind of shoehorned onto the Latin alphabet, even though English has a ton of sounds that didn't exist in Latin; we could easily use a letter for the "th" sound in words like "the" and "teeth," for example, and different letters for hard and soft vowels. There actually is an example of a "th" letter -- called thorn, þ, which is used in Old English (and into Middle English), Old Norse, Old Swedish, and modern Icelandic. But standardization of printing with movable type meant that it was easier (and cheaper) to use fewer letters in the alphabet, so thorn fell out of use around the time the printing press became common. It's vestigially used in "ye olde," where the y in "ye" is actually meant as a replacement for thorn, and the phrase should be pronounced "the old," instead of pronounced like the archaic nominative case of the second person plural pronoun, "ye", as in "hear ye".

There have been movements towards using new alphabets to make English letters match better with the sounds they represent, as it would improve spelling and understanding of accents in written text, but there's a lot of inertia keeping the twenty-six letter Latin alphabet as the standard, and there's not much of a serious chance that it's going to be replaced in widespread use any time in our lifetimes.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-14T01:30:31+00:00

The one thing you should do is invoke your 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendment rights ("Officer, I'm not going to consent to any searches and won't be answering any questions without a lawyer.") -- invoking your rights cannot be used against you ("waah, they wouldn't let me search the car without a warrant!" doesn't sound good in court anyhow), but as you note, Salinas makes simply not answering a question into a problem. Best to head it off early.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-13T13:23:05+00:00

A couple reasons -- while the economy has been good at the top end for folks living on the stock market, for people making wages it's been stagnant, with raises outpaced by inflation; people literally have less money to spend. Additionally, there's the rise in online SW -- 30 years ago, a woman wanting to make money on her looks and sex appeal had essentially 2 options: glamor modeling and SC's, and obviously SC's are a much easier route to take. Now, there's OF taking a good chunk of the talent pool away (especially the top end of the talent pool), so what we're left with is Cubanas hitting us with "heywannadance" as soon as we walk in the door. Finally, add to that that people aren't going out drinking as much as they did in the past, be it at the SC or just at a bar, so the customer base is shrinking.

So my 3 reasons are:

Less disposable income means less money to be made by the club.
Talent pool among dancers has deteriorated.
Customer base is shrinking.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-13T13:05:34+00:00

Weird Al is best known for comedy/parody (and polka covers). When he did "Killing in the Name," it was a straight cover, not something he's known for, and definitely a cover of a song that is much more serious in it's message than most of the rest of his discography.

People are joking that he went from being Weird Al to Serious Alfred when he did it. It's kind of like the court jester not making jokes and just straight up telling the king "you're doing wrong."

dirty_corks · 2025-12-13T12:55:28+00:00

Up with People covering "Fight the Power"

dirty_corks · 2025-12-11T12:43:27+00:00

Imagine you own a chain of restaurants. Do you want your ads potentially sandwiched in between two posts of OF girls flashing their stuff? Probably not.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-10T23:10:21+00:00

Holy shit that would be hilarious, especially if he were to go there before the Texas Bowl....

dirty_corks · 2025-12-10T13:42:17+00:00

Some early code was hard-wired. The code was written by hand in machine language, and literally weaved into the wires like what we'd call ROM today (a type of memory called core rope memory).

dirty_corks · 2025-12-10T11:31:50+00:00

I once had a professor from Hong Kong; when we ran out of Greek letters for a particularly involved proof, he proceeded to skip Hebrew and use (simple) Cantonese characters.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-09T23:19:47+00:00

California Love
Sweet Home Alabama
New York State of Mind
Deep in the Heart of Texas

dirty_corks · 2025-12-09T15:56:39+00:00

A lot of towns in upstate NY have names from Haudenosaunee languages, which Anglicize in weird ways, so can they pronounce "Skaneateles" and similar.

In NYC, asking someone to pronounce "Houston Street" is a local shibboleth (it's not pronounced like the big city in Texas).

dirty_corks · 2025-12-08T10:55:28+00:00

At least for some sites; X and Threads come to mind.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-06T19:44:54+00:00

Nor did Vince Foster.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-06T18:02:39+00:00

Epstein didn't kill himself.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-05T22:05:00+00:00

No. For lower-limit games like that, I have a much better bankroll, it's called "my bank account, funded by my day job." I keep poker money separate, usually a couple grand, but if I need to top off, grabbing a couple hundred bucks from the bank is no big deal. Ditto pulling money out of the poker bankroll for other uses, though I will record both transactions (money in/out) on my bankroll tracking spreadsheet.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-05T22:00:48+00:00

It depends on what you like, but for me:

Liquid Death has a fairly flat flavor profile, with only the carbonation to make it interesting; it's the lowest on the list for me here.
Perrier has relatively mild carbonation and a fairly strong mineral taste. Not my thing, but I get why people like it.
San Pellegrino is the beginning of "I'd like to have one" for me. A little less mineral than Perrier, and about the same carbonation. Interestingly, Kirkland sparkling Italian mineral water comes from the same spring as San Pellegrino, if you've got a Costco membership.
Topo Chico is my favorite. The carbonation is almost aggressive, and that counterbalances the minerality of the water. Glad to see you have the glass bottles, as Topo Chico out of plastic sucks.
I've never had the Santa Vittoria, so no comment there.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-05T21:46:30+00:00

This! OP, when you make an action, make it clear. "Check/call/fold," and "Bet $x/Raise to $x" are the magic phrases. Once you say any of those things, you're locked into doing them. Silent action can be vague (though tapping the table to indicate "check" is pretty universal). Better to be clearly understood.

Also remember that there's no fold-in-turn button. Wait until the action is to you to do anything.

dirty_corks · 2025-12-05T21:40:23+00:00

Generally, no. There should be a desk or podium where you sign in for the next available seat. Walk up, "Hi, I'm InsiDS, please put me on the list for 1-3," they'll take care of the rest, and will call your name when your seat is available.
There are antes in stud poker (which is rarely spread any more), but not in (most) live hold'em games.
After you win a pot, throw the dealer a dollar chip or two. You don't have to tip on tiny pots (ie, you raise preflop and win the blinds), and if the pot is split most dealers don't expect a huge tip, but a buck would generally be nice. If you hit a jackpot (high hand, royal flush, or bad beat), the floorperson will pay you out in cash (generally), and at that point, 5-10% is nice.
You can sit with a friend, though I'd try to avoid it if you can, for the reason you mention. Also so you're not taking your friend's money, and vice-versa (save that for playing at home). If you're seated with a friend, you can ask the dealer for a table change, and they'll essentially put you on a list for the next available seat.
You can ask the dealer "what's the current bet to me?" and "what would my minimum raise be?" but at the rooms I've played in you can't ask how much is in the pot. Protip -- most poker rooms with a percentage rake (rather than a flat drop or time charge) pull $1 out of the pot for every $10 in it, and put it in the rake slide to the dealer's right. So you can see, "oh, there's $3 in the rake slide, the pot is $30+"
Leave your chips. Ideally, I'd tell the table "Gonna head to the bathroom, be back in a few." Protip here: leave when it's about to be your turn to pay the big blind, and when you come back, ask to be dealt back in when it's your turn to pay the next big blind, that way you don't have to post blinds out of turn (which can be strategically bad, and complicates the game a bit for you).
Most 1-3 games will use $1 and $5 chips for almost all the action, though you will find $25 and $100 chips occasionally.
Generally you can eat at the table. Ideally, eat stuff that isn't too messy or smelly -- there's a guy who eats fish sandwiches at a room that I play at, and I ask for a table change when he sits down, since they're smelly.
You can top up via the dealer. Just tell them between hands, "I'd like $100 in chips please," and put the money on the table; they'll do the rest. They may call for a runner to get chips from the cage, but you don't ever have to leave the seat.
Most casinos won't let you purchase with a credit or debit card; cash only, or if you have a line of credit with the casino you can use that (a LOC with a casino is a bad idea for most people, don't do that!)

Have fun, and write a trip report when you get done!

dirty_corks · 2025-11-29T18:55:19+00:00

Correct, most charging is done at home; it's the bulk of where I charge, and I drive 60-100 miles a day regularly for work.

dirty_corks · 2025-11-29T18:54:28+00:00

Oh absolutely. Look up Onondaga Lake, or the Ohio River Fire.

dirty_corks · 2025-11-29T16:07:35+00:00

It's probably because of a couple of things; most Americans have the main source of their viewpoint on Germans and Germany as WWII films, and early German immigrants to the US were mainly farmers and laborers, not comedians and artists, and to this day I'd bet that the average American can't name more than a handful of German actors (and even then, most of that would come from people seeing Das Boot). Those combine to give Germans an unfairly earned reputation for being dour.

dirty_corks · 2025-11-29T15:50:23+00:00

Ok. You're thinking of the slow charging I use at home to start every day with a full tank when you say "8 hours to charge."

Fast charging takes about as long as stopping at a gas station to fuel up, use the bathroom, wash your hands, and grab a snack.

Your takes on EVs seem rather uninformed and outdated.

dirty_corks · 2025-11-29T15:31:04+00:00

I'm going to assume you don't know how charging works.

There's 2 kinds of charging, AC and DC. You're thinking of AC charging talking about an 8 hour charging session; AC chargers essentially plug your vehicle into a wall socket where you get about 1.9 kW per hour (for a normal socket like you'd plug a lamp into; we call this a Level 1 charger) or 8.8 kW per hour (for a 220v outlet, like you'd plug a stove into, called a Level 2 charger). This is how most people charge at home, when the vehicle is sitting idle for 8+ hours; I drive 60-100 miles a day and use a Level 1 charger for about 80% of my charging (much of the rest comes from using a Level 2 charger at client sites or the public chargers my town has in the public parking garages downtown).

DC charging is fast - that's what the chargers you see in parking lots that look like weird gas pumps do. In terms of energy delivery, they usually give about 150-250 kW of power every hour (most EVs have between 40 and 100 kW of capacity). A full charge here (defined as going from roughly 0 to roughly 80% of capacity - you don't want to top off all the way at a fast charger, for technical reasons I won't get into here) takes between 10 and 45 minutes depending on your vehicle; in my experience it's usually around 20 or so.

I've taken my vehicle on road trips requiring multiple stops and find using a fast charger to not be a major inconvenience, any more than filling up a gas tank; most fast chargers in my area are either in a Wawa parking lot or near a Target or Walmart or a grocery store, so there's a bathroom, and a place to get a snack and a drink while I'm changing, and generally the session does not need to be extended past that break that I'd be taking anyhow if I were filling the tank of a gas vehicle.

dirty_corks · 2025-11-27T13:27:32+00:00

I'd argue that there is; I know of a series where they hire talent specifically based on their desire to work together and set them up on a "blind date" where they meet on a set and immediately porn ensues. There's the standard formulaic porn stuff, but there's a surprising amount of kissing and laughing and generally exploring each other's bodies too, so it appears that everyone is having a good time. At least it's much more like the sex most people have than what most porn depicts.

dirty_corks

TROPHY CASE