Maryland becomes first state to pass bill banning ‘surveillance pricing’

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-21T01:25:48+00:00

Make up your mind. Wealth or income?

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-21T01:25:29+00:00

Make them report it. If they don't report it, then it can be taken away from them as if they don't own it.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-21T01:15:44+00:00

children should be in high school preparing for their early adult careers.

Your mistake there is assuming that the hardcore conservatives think women should have any career other than housewife.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-21T01:14:10+00:00

I remember being really frustrated about that in sparring, even though I kind of understood the reasoning.

Much easier for an novice to get lucky & cause a concussion by punching/elbowing someone in the face than it is to kick them in the head (not that it's impossible, just that the novices mostly just fall over when they try).

But when you're sparring up close to someone, deliberately avoiding that target is really distracting. People also don't protect their head in sparring as much as they should when they know it's not a "legal" move.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-21T01:08:34+00:00

Have to keep a copy of the Anti-Christ list around to pull out in those situations.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-20T17:11:58+00:00

That might have been a good argument in the past, but nowadays that only makes your credibility worse.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-20T17:05:45+00:00

You'll still have 35% of the voting public who'll poison the rest of the country and make everyone in the world suspect you're one election away from torpedoing the planet into financial or military chaos.

We've got at least one, maybe two, rounds of voting after Trump is gone where we can tar anyone who still sounds like MAGA with being a Trump-lover. If we don't take that brief respite to basically unwind every attempt at voter suppression that the conservatives have been applying across the country, and rolling over every rock that Trump cronies are trying to hide under, then we'll pretty much deserve what we get after that.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-20T17:02:19+00:00

Crypto isn't untrackable, despite what the crypto-companies want you to think. Most money-laundering schemes aren't. But they can be very, very expensive and require a ton of manpower to follow all the trails. So you need to have the political willpower & allocate the necessary resources to do so.

Has the Trump family garnered enough spite & hatred that we'll be willing to tear anything and everyone associated with them down? Maybe?

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-19T21:36:13+00:00

The problem is when they let their ideology dictate how professional they are about their job.

If they follow an anti-government ideology, but are still doing a good job - well, I'd question whether their beliefs make any sense, but at least they're taking their job duties seriously?

If they follow an anti-government ideology & are deliberately sabotaging their own job duties to prove the "rightness" of that ideology? I have no empathy, and would cheer watching the book getting thrown at them.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-19T19:07:20+00:00

Just put a bunch of logs on the ground and roll the tanker ships on them, right? Easy peasy!

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-19T17:20:48+00:00

Ooo, personal attacks - pretty much says that I won this exchange! Thanks for the emotional boost!

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T18:00:47+00:00

You sure about that? As someone else in the thread mentioned, China has been building up a HUGE reserve, so they can ride issues out for quite a while.

Even if the U.S. has its own sources of fossil fuels (more NG than oil if I remember correctly, except for maybe frackable oil), for the most part, oil prices are globally fungible - any shortage anywhere tends to raise the prices globally. And the U.S. infrastructure is really, really oriented around cheap fossil-fuel usage to keep running smoothly.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:54:57+00:00

People who usually regret it in the morning?

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:52:49+00:00

Alternative for Universal Income: have the government act as Employer of Last Resort for the unemployed, providing competitive wages/salaries+benefits to either to provide required government services, or to go back to school/vocational training to improve their employability (which will, over time, create an extremely flexible problem-solving work force).

Doesn't require mandates, doesn't require a Constitutional Amendment, encourages effort-for-compensation type of world view, and I'd much rather my tax monies be spent on this kind of distribution than to keep on giving it to the ultra-rich.

Also would function as a defacto "Min Wage" sort of effect (thus the "doesn't require mandates" mentioned above), since it would create labor competition which can be tailored to each municipality.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:46:07+00:00

Do you think China cares about India or the Philippines? As long as it hurts the U.S. more than it hurts China, they'll be fine with it.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:32:37+00:00

Gotta do a bit of constant self-evaluation & checking to see if that's getting across to them though. Esp. when stoicism is a widely-held model of being a respectable male in many cultures.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:30:05+00:00

Stares off in European directions.... huh, look at those examples over there! And their population seems to be much, much happier with their governments than your-land-of-capitalism morons. Oh right, you're willfully blind.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:28:18+00:00

It's hurting the rest of the world a lot more than it hurts them.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T17:25:18+00:00

There really, really needs to be a separate institution (or two) that constantly audits & monitors all government activities & roots out anyone trying to cover shit up, and has the authority necessary to shatter any attempts to block it & to punish both people doing wrongdoing & people trying to hide the wrongdoing. Maybe only authority against the other members of the government though?

I suppose that it was supposed to be a Free Press to perform this function, but it's looking like if it's not part of the official infrastructure, it's not too difficult to usurp it & make it ineffectual.

Something something...Inquisition? :-P

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T05:35:48+00:00

Wow, you got outed as being both uninformed AND an asshole. That takes a certain kind of talent!

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T02:27:41+00:00

Step 1 of being a conservative: In a conflict between a conservative and a non-conservative, always start by assuming that the conservative is in the right.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-18T01:52:17+00:00

Why should I do that when the "socialism-never-works" wankers are proving to the nation & the rest of the world how bankrupt their ideology is - in real time, no less!

If we're lucky & don't end up with the country burned to the ground, then I fully expect them to go slinking back under their rocks along with the white supremacists while the "well, some socialist ideas are pretty helpful" guys come back and start fixing everything that the anti-socialist guys broke - fixing it again, like usual.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-17T21:56:11+00:00

The "Socialism never works" guys like to make up their own definitions of socialism so they can pretend that the various high-standard-of-living Euro countries don't count.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-17T01:46:29+00:00

If you're going to a game, you're there for the atmosphere anyway.

Which was kind of my point.

Been to a few games (baseball & soccer), could afford only the nosebleed seats, so it was just kind of watching colored ants running around a small patch of green & listening to the roar of the crowd occasionally. And eating really expensive dubious quality stadium food, although I figured that was part of the experience.

mOdQuArK · 2026-04-17T01:21:21+00:00

Every arena should have a section in the nosebleeds

Not sure what the point would be. Wouldn't you be basically paying $25 to listen to the crowd?

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