In medicine they use a pain scale with faces when they need to find out from kids how much pain they are in. Something like that might be a better system?
Now imagine being on Elon's Mars colony and having your breathing rate limited out of the blue one day. Today switched my vision of that from wonder and hope to seeing it as volunteering to become one of the belters in The Expanse. I'm kinda sad to have moved from the 'let me in' to 'hard pass' on that dream. It was one of that last big future dreams 1990s me had for the 20X0's.
There's two ways to increase business income, extract more $$$ from a captured user base or create value to attract revenue. One is a sign of a healthy company looking at future growth, the other the sign of a zombie company that has to put a tighter squeeze on you quarter after quarter to keep their numbers up. The people making purchasing/vendor decisions take into consideration the risk of going with a 'zombie' company, so those that do pay are also likely to consider moving away as well.
As a commentors above pointed out, online market share includes Airline sites, etc, and Delta alone is a top 5 online purchasing site. Show me what “Amazon had 38% of online retail market share” actually means. That they have 100% of 90 areas measured and 0% of airline ticket sales?
Aren't most musical scores these days all done in MIDI? With the other option being to hire X number of musicians plus a conductor? So seems like a pretty AMAZING thing that this 80s technology is able to do what previously took a score of people to do, and a use case that was probably not considerated during it's creation.
You'd have to be on pretty shaky group to be ok with the optics of all this along with multiple aircraft and helicopters shot down as the tradeoff to 'see what shakes out'.
Also haven't something like 20 pilots been killed when their planes/helicopters were shot down? If something is for show you probably don't want to kill some of your more highly trained people for no reason while also damaging their surviving peer's moral.
You are required to take and pass paid courses to get a license in most states these days. It was a huge barrier to a lot of the guys in the halfway house. Just coordinating getting to these classes via the bus was a pain. Also, if you return 15 minutes late to the halfway house the US Marshals come pick you up and back to jail you go, so missing a bus has pretty steep consequences that make people avoid any additional bus trips such as getting to drivers training class (you are required to work so you have to risk the bus at least twice a day no matter what).
UNCIOR does CAD work for McDonalds remodels and such. You are paid more working UNICOR (sometimes over $100 a month). I did CAD in college but I sure as hell am not using my education to make the Warden/Cops a fat bonus. Lots of guys did it though, especially those with no savings or people. It becomes...interesting when your boss is also your prison guard, and your boss' bonus is tied to performance metrics.
Oh defining a framework that defines incarceration is hard so we should just have slavery. Got it.
Random anecdote. Slavery means NO days off. If you are sick, you have to get up at 5:30am and go wait in line outside in the freezing snow for sick call (you also have to do this for 'pill line' if you have any meds, though you aren't charged the $5 a pop for that). Sick call costs $5 a visit. You make $5 a month. Then the doctor says 'drink water and take an aspirin' and clears you to go to work. Aspirin is only available from the commissary in large overprices bottles about to expire. You are REQUIRED to throw the bottle away when it is expired or you will get a shot for 'contraband'. You can not share aspirin with others. Hopefully you planned ahead and saved your $5 for 2 months to afford a bottle of aspirin in case you got sick, and it hasn't expired before you get sick. When you get to work, sick, no exception is made for your physical condition. If you work HVAC you're still climbing ladders in the snow to the roof.
Slavery means I was forced to shovel the compound with a shovel with a broken handle so exposed fiberglass that cut me up. I was issued a 'navy uniform' which is what we wear in the feds. So short sleeve shirt, thin khaki slacks, thin socks. And you get a light non-waterproof jacket. You want long underwear? Commissary purchase (4X monthly pay, $20 pants OR $20 shirt). Gloves? Commissary purchase (2 months pay $10). Hat? commissary purchase (1 months pay $5). So I shoveled snow for hours, soaked to the bone, in whiteout conditions, no hat, no gloves, with my hands bleeding. That is slavery. And I had it good. I was able to get the shovel fixed through connections, boy was the cop that made me do that pissed when next time I pulled the shovel out of the locked tool closet and somehow it was fixed even though he kept 'forgetting' to put in a work order.
UNICOR at my spot did CAD work for McDonald's remodels (along with a textile sweetshop). With COVID they made UNICOR only dorms (something they are not allowed to do) with of course special privileges (which they are not allowed to do, they can't 'treat you better if you take this job that makes us money'). Also, the UNICOR cops got bonuses based on the local UNICORs performance. But yeah, that whole things doesn't get abused, people don't get forced into it. Why would a cop do that, just because his bonus depends on you 'volunteering' to work overtime... or in dangerous situations. His compassion DEFINATELY overrides greed for that sweet sweet bonus money. And if you quit you are still in his dorm until transferred, and of course he doesn't punish you at all for putting his bonus at risk.
Now do private companies providing the phone call service. Now do commissary. Now the computers where you pay per minute to write and read emails. Now do UNICOR (like forced labor for McDonalds Corporation who has UNICOR do the CAD work for their franchise store remodels all the way to CAD work being done on the new World Trade Center).
Just yesterday there was a post here not too thrilled about how Gandi is handling their latest price increases and their dropped support for 'free included' email?
I don't know. Before I went to prison (so I guess I was in a very poor state to make choices) I somehow gravitated to a bunch of conservative websites. Instapundit was the start. And I bought into it all. Having a 'nice' 5 year 'break' and then coming back I saw what total hateful/emotionally manipulative crap it was. But I think if I wouldn't have had that 'break' they would have been able to bring me along on their journey. I'm hippie love child love everybody libertarian (in the hippy sense) who is pro open borders and they were getting me to have hate over some straight up bullshit. I still have to have those sites in my NextDNS to prevent me from going there to 'just see' what they are talking about.
How did my grandfather bringing in the harvest, bailing hay, maintaining the farm machines translate into skills of storming the beaches in the Pacific, calling in the flamethrower to burn soldiers out, and finally MP work making sure US Marines used the correct sex workers in occupied Japan?
Ocean experience = 0
Having to initiate burning other humans alive experience = 0
Finally, keeping occupier Marines inline and only going to the 'approved' comfort houses (this really made my devout Catholic grandfather who enlisted to 'fight the good fight' sick to see which is ironically why he got stuck in the position) and arresting them when they didn't experience = 0
Maybe world travel, visits to the ocean, mandatory brothel visits, and boating would have helped him do better. Maybe we should send all children on foreign exchange years to seaside towns with brothels, and create mandatory local youth yacht clubs on the off chance they need to be shipped out interact with foreigners versus make them work in factories. About as strong as argument as kids working enabled victory.
This argument would have pissed my grandfather off to no end. Don't justify child labor in their name or off the back of their deeds.
And the airlift company sells me a coverage plan for $120 a year (which also covers skiing accidents), while there is nothing I can do to reduce an ambulance rides price that will be in the thousands.
Unless you had a Crow/Sioux type situation where your tribe was being eradicated by a neighboring tribe and you had been captured and enslaved, or your clan lacked power/influence due to a low number of strong males. But sure, if you were in the top it might have been like you describe.
FYI Butner might be a medical designation spot but it's definitely the 'where they send the crazy people' spot and also a higher security level (I think it's a medium). Would not have wanted to do time there.
I just bought a 75 inch TV and strangely HATED watching anything on it. Hooked up a soundbar (something I said I would never waste money on) and I can't stop binge watching.
Go watch Cuffani's testimony today. The IG is who watches the watchers. He admits he routinely just deleted the text messages on his government phone despite record keeping requirements because 'he didn't do government business on his government phone'. It is also pointed out to him that half of his staff feel it would be unsafe to be whistleblowers. He and his staff are the people that whistleblowers report to. But sure, let's trust them this time. The constitution is the highest law in the land. Government officials regularly break the law and violate our constitutional rights, and all that happens is a 'we'll try better next time'. Routinely break the highest law in the land and nothing happens. Try that with driving with expired tags, try habitually driving with that and respond 'my bad, I didn't realize'. Or try the 'I didn't know it was illegal' defense they use, or the 'good faith' defense they get. All to protect them from any consequence when they break THE HIGHEST LAWS OF THE LAND within the Constitution that all our other laws stem from.
I don't get houseplants. Inside they look stark, isolated, completely removed from their element. I love a good garden and outdoor flowers but houseplants seem ridiculous to me even excluding the ongoing maintenance and the inability to just leave home for a few weeks without having to setup someone to water. Why do I want to be physically tied down by my home decor? Or have the quality of my home decor dependant on the quality of my green thumb skills? Give me a Dali on the wall any day that invariably leads to a discussion on what a person sees in the scene.
Someone here came up with the idea of Government ownership. First fine, 5-10% non-dilutable ownership that the Government can't divest for 10 years. That punishes the owners and adds the headache of having the Government now in-house instead of outside looking in. Keep it up and ultimately the Government holds a controlling stake in the company to force compliance.
If you are 'learning' is nothing but taking existing drawings and storing them in an electronic format (no matter that it's a super lossy a format, for example an MP3 made from a CD is still a copy no matter how low you set the low bitrate.) then no, no you are not. Now if you learning involves training a human brain on actual techniques to replicate how someone else did something, then yes, yes you are.