More than 500 people were sent to hospital after the incident … 423 people have been discharged from hospital … 25 in serious condition

What is stupid is the headline, why not “500+ injured in subway crash” instead of using the number of one kind of injury. As stupid as writing “two people lost a tooth in subway crash”. Still one of the seriously injured could die, but of course I wish everyone a speedy recovery, from injuries but also from the shock of the accident.

Not so funny when it actually happens to you:

Because of really bad experiences with alcoholics as a child, I am afraid of people who drink. My psychologist and my doctor wrote that down.

When I became seriously ill and could no longer work in my old job, I had to retrain. To do this, you have to go to the German employment office and get an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, including what your doctor and therapist have to say.

They read the paper from my doctor and my psychologist, but just skimmed over the words and decided that because the word “alcoholic” was there, I must be the alcoholic. They told me that I could get paid retraining and benefits, but only if I attended a therapy group for alcoholics once a week - me, who is afraid of alcoholics because of the abuse I suffered as a child. … I immediately started crying and swore that I had no problem with alcohol, only with alcoholics!

It took 6 months to get someone at the job centre to actually read the papers word for word to find out that me saying “I’m not an alcoholic” was not me being an alcoholic in denial. I got a half-assed apology and my retraining 6 months after I could have started it because of this. Not to mention that every time I refused to go to AA meetings they threatened to take away my benefits and I was in such a bad mental state that I probably would have killed myself without the help of my family. Oh, and my family who tried to intervene were labelled as co-alcoholics, holding me back.

• selling cigarettes to children:
  https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press-releases/2023_12_08-social-media-report

“The findings of this report make it crystal clear: Big Tobacco is going all-in to target youth on social media and it has to stop,” said Yolonda C. Richardson, president and CEO of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “Tobacco companies are among the most sophisticated advertisers in the world – marketing that reaches millions of kids does not happen by accident. Governments need to urgently address tobacco marketing online and ensure that social media companies are held legally accountable for the tobacco and nicotine marketing appearing on these platforms.”

German here. A woman was starting to play loud music on her phone while I was sitting at a bakery having a cup of coffee, trying to relax from a bad morning. I opened Spotify, checked for this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBDtIOxUsI Every Maaaaaamaaaa I was singing loudly along. She lasted half of the song then fled the scene, even left her coffee on the table. My ears were bleeding, but it was worth it.

Fight them with the most terrible old people song you know in your country, be aware that it might hurt you too.

You made me understand what this was about, thank you!

Do Pee!

X-Men, it’s in the name. :D (also: Great reference!)

The biggest damage for Trump is that he will never be able to do it again. No banker in the world will accept him or anyone close to him telling them “it’s a 15-storey building” without sending someone over and counting the stairs, they will even start counting the holes on Trump’s golf courses. This means that he will no longer be able to get cheap loans or cheat on his taxes.

The banks may stay put, because otherwise their shareholders might ask why they did not get someone to count the floors in the first place, instead of believing a notorious liar. They will probably take the smaller losses and hope that Trump is still willing /stays capable to pay back some of the loans.

A large dyke is being constructed to divert potential lava flows around the plant

Lava, like water, prefers to go the easy route. You do not build a wall to stop it face to face, but offer a more easy route right and left of your “wall”, so the force of the lava is halved AND it will likely take the more easy routes and not bother to try and crawl over your construct.

A wall directly in its path only makes sense when you are already somewhat far away from the volcano, so the lava is very slow and not as hot as in the beginning anymore and then it is rather a pile of earth piled against a smaller part of the stream of lava for days again and again and not a real static wall. A video for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWbQOqaOxjg The scale of this … kudos to people who can live near a volcano, I am way to scared for that.

“the absence of a code has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules."

Who has misunderstood this? Oh, the justices of the Supreme Court themselves did. Good they remind themselves now, that they are restricted by ethics rules. Sad that they had to be reminded of it. Even more sad, that they can’t specify the ethics rules, because if they would they immediately would call out the ones who did clearly not follow them. That also does not speak for them, because it means the ones who did not follow ethics rules in fact are still unrestricted by them.

This is worse than ignoring the problem. It is admitting that they were and are the problem and admitting they were and are unwilling to do something against it. Well done. This will be teaching material for everyone in the justice system for years to come.

Germany:

Price indication regulation (Preisangabenverordnung)

All prices stated on the menu must include any applicable surcharges. In other words, the price of the meal is also the final price. The quantity served must also be stated for drinks.

I only know about this person, probably not who you think of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Harbisson

I am from Germany, our crime rate is very, very low. I doubt that many people here would think beating up or even killing a person is “as easy” as doing it to a funny looking delivery robot. Depending where you are from, that might be different though. If you live in a place where people actually see no difference between both and do one as easily as the other, then please stay safe!

… and they can get robbed or kicked, their sensors sprayed shut… and repair costs a fortune. I don’t think delivery without a human makes much sense, maybe except for a drone that delivers to the Australian outback or a small island at the German coast.

They want desperately to cut delivery cost by taking out the human they have to pay for it to do the work. To do so they spent billions they could have used to pay these people a decent wage and hire more of them. It is dumb.

From the article: “The act has been welcomed by child safety advocates.”

Same beeing tried for the EU.

The proposed regulation is excessively “influenced by companies pretending to be NGOs but acting more like tech companies”, said Arda Gerkens, former director of Europe’s oldest hotline for reporting online CSAM.

“Groups like Thorn use everything they can to put this legislation forward, not just because they feel that this is the way forward to combat child sexual abuse, but also because they have a commercial interest in doing so.”

If the regulation undermines encryption, it risks introducing new vulnerabilities, critics argue. “Who will benefit from the legislation?” Gerkens asked. “Not the children.”

“So it’s very clear that whatever their incorporation status is, that they are self-interested in promoting child exploitation as a problem that happens “online,” and then proposing quick (and profitable) technical solutions as a remedy to what is in reality a deep social and cultural problem. (…) I don’t think governments understand just how expensive and fallible these systems are, that we’re not looking at a one-time cost. We’re looking at hundreds of millions of dollars indefinitely due to the scale that this is being proposed at.”

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/

This whole article is worth reading despite its length. This is a mess and the UK is only the start, they are aiming for this being implemented world wide.

I wish they would make decisions after they are handed the report. Unfortunately many make a decision and then ignore the report that proofs the decision is wrong and then make their underlings try to make the wrong decision work out and then they blame it on them when it, of course, doesn’t and then they fire a bunch of them and try again the same way. Source: Check how Elon Musk makes decisions on Twix.

Or Tim Sweeney laying off 900 people and in his “apology letter” states first that the reason is too much spending on his Metaverse, which was clearly a failure of him to end the letter with: And now we keep on spending on the Metaverse! https://twitter.com/ShiinaBR/status/1707419347549896905

If for some magical reason it does work out, it was of course solely the CEOs decision that made it a success.

Probably because it has a lot more to regret, maybe? I mean, it is a goal in life to live your life so that you never have to regret more than not having that second slice of pizza. sighs Too late for me.

Or maybe the pink bird has a lot to regret, but is too stupid to ever understand, and the brown bird feels sorry for them.

That’s where the gun culture comes in. America has none, they just have guns and no protective, strict culture of do’s and don’ts around them. Not everything has to be restricted by law if a society decides that there are still rules. We have a social rule that when we sneeze or cough we put something in front of our mouth. It is not a law, but it is a healthy social rule that is helpful; everyone accepts that they are not free to sneeze in other people’s faces. You need either gun laws or gun culture, Switzerland chose more culture, Germany more law, both work. America chose … more guns and the “freedom” to shoot them in other people’s faces. That’s stupid and dangerous.

My brain: “I hope you don’t mint if I quit!”

and I didn’t keep vaping afterwards.

That’s the important part and glad you found a way to quit that worked for you!