jubilationtcornpone

Past poor decisions have taught me this:

Don't do anything you're going to have to lie about. If you do, don't lie about it. If you do, make it right as soon as possible.

I have plenty of problems in my life but a guilty conscience isn't one of them.

On December 15, 1953, led by Paul Hahn, the head of American Tobacco, the six major tobacco companies (American Tobacco Co., R. J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, Benson & Hedges, U.S. Tobacco Co., and Brown & Williamson) met with public relations company Hill & Knowlton in New York City to create an advertisement that would assuage the public's fears and create a false sense of security in order to regain the public's confidence in the tobacco industry.[12] Hill and Knowlton's president, John W. Hill, realized that simply denying the health risks would not be enough to convince the public. Instead, a more effective method would be to create a major scientific controversy in which the scientifically established link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer would appear not to be conclusively known.[13]

The tobacco companies fought against the emerging science by producing their own science, which suggested that existing science was incomplete and that the industry was not motivated by self-interest.[11] With the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, headed by accomplished scientist C.C. Little, the tobacco companies manufactured doubt and turned scientific findings into a topic of debate. The recruitment of credentialed scientists like Little who were skeptics was a crucial aspect of the tobacco companies' social engineering plan to establish credibility against anti-smoking reports. By amplifying the voices of a few skeptical scientists, the industry created an illusion that the larger scientific community had not reached a conclusive agreement on the link between smoking and cancer.[11]

Internal documents released through whistleblowers and litigation, such as the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, reveal that while advertisements like A Frank Statement made tobacco companies appear to be responsible and concerned for the health of their consumers, in reality, they were deceiving the public into believing that smoking did not have health risks. The whole project was aimed at protecting the tobacco companies' images of glamour and all-American individualism at the cost of the public's health.[14]

A Frank Statement

Putting aside all the late stage capitalism going on here, I still can't get over the fact that Alphabet (Google) spent billions of dollars developing self driving car technology only to arrive at, "Oh shit. Someone left the car door open. What do we do now?"

I used to use our states Farm Bureau Insurance for property and vehicle insurance. They were the most competitive provider around for a long time. Until about five years ago anyways. Now their premiums are a joke and they're trying to demutualize so they can merge with an out of state competitor because they're on the verge of financial collapse.

Too many catastrophic wind storms over a short period of time.

Edit: kind of ironic that an organization which spent years denying the existence of climate change and lobbying to prevent legislation to address climate change is now suffering the consequences of climate change.

Eons ago, I had a guy bring me a non functioning Compaq desktop and say, "Wull the fan was makin' a lotta racket so I greased it."

What he actually meant was, "I sprayed the entire motherboard with WD-40 because I don't know shit about computers OR lubricants."

I gave it a bath in electronics cleaner and it actually fired right up after that.

You forgot the incredibly expensive scam that is American "healthcare".

Back in the days before cell phones, when landlines were ubiquitous, people in more rural areas had what they called "party lines." It was a single telephone line shared between multiple houses. You knew which house an incoming call was for based on the ring pattern. Your neighbors could also pick up the receiver, very quietly, and listen in on your phone calls if they wanted too.

Party lines are long gone but Internet communications have their own ways of being "listened in on." A lot of traffic transmitted over the Internet is encrypted; with TLS for instance. But, some of it isn't. If you use traditional DNS -- UDP over port 53 -- everyone in between you and the DNS server can see which websites you're visiting.

I'm not concerned about my privacy because I have something to hide. I'm concerned about it because my personal business is my business. Not anyone else's.

You're not still living high on the hog with your stimulus funds?

/s

When it's the right tool, it's incredibly useful. When it's the wrong tool, and it often is, it racks up tech debt at an incredible rate.

Don't even need to spend that much. Trump accepts fake peace prizes.

Understood. My experience deepthroating N64 controllers is ...uh... limited.

Better have a long tongue to reach the "Z" button with.