I use NewsBlur and subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds, as well as using Google Apps scripts to modify some. Right now, however, there's a problem with setMimeType (it's in the issue tracker) and that broke two of my scripts.
Bulletproof glass will protect from all attackers regardless of their race. It's really reading in too far to say it's anti-Black; this feels like it means to pit Asians and Blacks against each other.
After my mom passed I had all her mail forwarded to my house. She donated to a couple of charities, but they all sell their mailing lists to each other so there was so.much.charity.beg.crap with the little trinkets. And a lot of political donation stuff. The charities were pretty all right, honestly. I told them she was deceased and some even offered condolences and took her off. The political stuff, if there was a prepaid envelope inside I would return it with "deceased, pls remove" written on whatever silly survey they enclosed. So they would have to pay a small amount each time I had to tell them to remove her. That took about 2.5 years, but I no longer get anything.
And some dentists are straight up charlatans wanting to line their pockets. When I moved across the bay I left my dentist of 10+ years and went in search of someone closer. I admit to delaying a couple years, but found a place, got cleaned and x-rayed. The dentist told me I had 13 cavities that needed to be tended to. I was pretty shocked; I don't have great teeth, but to have developed that many cavities in such a short time seemed wrong. I went back to my old dentist for a second opinion and he told me that I had 2 genuine cavities at the edges of old fillings, but the rest of it was pretty much nonsense: amalgam fillings that could be replaced with porcelain for appearance but were still perfectly good, and some slight discolorations that were not actually cavities.
That was wonderfully silly. But some comparators are vague, like "a can" or "a teabag" (used vs unused is a lot of weight difference). But making things more specific could detract from the silliness.
I play a lot of Japanese escape the room games, which typically involve decoding puzzles and finding tools to use. Most of them offer a hint system where you "pay" by watching an ad. The games are otherwise free, and given how little a dev gets per adview I don't mind supporting them in that way.
My mom went a similar way. Low speed fall right after her bath, no obvious damage, but she was on the floor for over 48 hours. Life alert was not a waterproof model and so she had not yet put it back on. The weakness induced by lack of food and water then being in a hospital bed for weeks rendered her unable to walk (she had used a cane prior, though would have been better with a walker). While in hospital and the recovery facility she was not allowed her medications for breast cancer, and within 5 weeks of her fall, cancer cells were found in some pleural fluid buildup. At that point it was hospice. These things just pile on top of each other, and at a late stage in life recovery is much harder.
I've seen one that asks the last 3 digits of your phone number. Not sure how useful that one is but it could probably positively ID someone with a reasonably unique name.
My feed has become littered with these things because my friends are replying to them. Which encourages me (or, rather, the hypothetical FB user) to reply to my friend(s).
I used to get a booster every 10 years because I was a hunter and went to places that might have wildlife and lots of junk to get cut on like bundles of old barbed wire.
I was chronically dehydrated for much of my life because I can't tell when I'm thirsty - my mouth doesn't send me the right signals. About 8 years years ago I bought a 48-oz Nalgene bottle which I fill up in the morning. It's big so I have a constant visual reminder right there on my desk in front of me, and I have no problems finishing it off and often refilling it in the early evening. It's absolutely improved my health.
I'm not talking food, but items like automatic watering bowls, nail clippers, pet carriers, still in package, some sealed in that plastic that is really hard to cut open.
Some items were new in box and sealed. It's the same situation as Amazon, except Amazon is at a vastly larger scale. The manufacturer isn't going to repair it and doesn't want it back.
Trashing returns of perfectly good products is unfortunately nothing new. I had a friend who worked at a transfer station in the early 2000s that got sent returns from PetSmart. The return reason was written on a label. Some stuff was defective of course, but others, it was some trivial reason like the customer didn't like the color. The item was in otherwise perfect condition and going to the landfill. I name PetSmart only because my friend was on the lookout for pet stuff; it would be no surprise if other retailers had the same policy.
I think in the past it was more likely they would have you keep an item. It seems to me (also anecdotally) now they don't want to take back just food items.
I think there's a correspondence between the COVID-19 reduction of their real-human chat line and having us return everything except food now.
Back when they were popular there might be a "help me" message posted in arg-related forums or even emails sent directly to people who played args. Replying would take you to the trailhead, an entry point to the game. Unfiction.com was one of the major forums but it looks like the discussion section is completely gone now. argn.com seems to be a more 21st century looking site.
It's quite possible. According to https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/generation-seabirds-wiped-dr... , while a news crew was interviewing the environmental scientist in charge and a DFW officer, a third person brought and began flying a drone, sending it directly toward another tern colony. I suspect that being buzzed by drones has been going on for a while and perhaps the crash was just the last straw.
It was more than just "a single predator sighting." The article says it was two drones and one of them crashed, which is a lot more dramatic. They didn't say how close the crash was to the nesting birds. And they didn't say how long the drones were flying around and how they were flying around before the birds decided to abandon. We don't know, perhaps they were buzzing the terns at a low altitude, or hovering for a long time in a way that looked like a falcon.
There's a big difference between a dangerous looking person passing you by on a busy street, and one that's standing on the sidewalk in front of your house, staring at your window for an hour.
Some birds are very neophobic. And some types of birds have less commitment to eggs than chicks -- a new nest and new eggs can be laid, but actual hatched chicks are much harder to abandon. Terns are very social, so a few abandoning their nests might easily lead to a mass exodus.
I guess if you're into living in a picture perfect neighborhood and don't want to have to look at anything especially weird or different, and have a "council" you can complain to if there's a problem, you'd buy into that. A lot of condo complexes have them as well. HOA fees also go to gardening and other people involved in exterior maintenance.
I had a similar experience after writing a poor review for a down comforter. They offered to refund about 40% of the purchase price if I adjusted my review. With purchased items I've also gotten cards offering a freebie if you send them an email with your order # - some vendors are honest and just send the free item, but others want a (good) review before they send the bribe err gift.
I took the same path. Smoked for 30 years, switched to vaping, mixed my own e-liquid and tapered down to zero. Each time I dropped the nicotine level, I would get a headache for a couple days. But once it was down to zero, I picked up the vape a few times out of habit then noticed I was picking it up less and less. Like yours it sits on my desk and I might take a drag on it once or twice a week for the flavor, but there's no need like there was when nicotine was part of the equation.
I know one of the people who worked alongside Klein (and Unidan) at Binghamton U. She says wild crows are highly neophobic and it's hard to train them to accept the presence of a big machine and do stuff with it. (Our conversation was quite a few years ago so I'm a bit vague.) There was a lot of academic disagreement and fallout when Klein went forward with his Ted talk and made the experiment out to be much more exciting than it was.
This comes down to your metrics. If you're suggesting that quality of life here is lower because of computers I would argue that it's tech companies that chose to establish themselves here, which increased the number of highly paid people wanting to live here, which drove up housing prices, traffic, and income disparity. The computers themselves are not the cause. It would be the case with any industry where there is one major physical center, such as Milan and art/fashion. As we've learned with the COVID-19 pandemic, work from home could allow tech companies to headquarter themselves elsewhere, or employees could live where they want.
As it is, I wouldn't mind seeing some level of tech exodus since I live in the area of one of the shittier Bay Area commutes. But computers tell me when traffic is especially bad and gives me alternate routes.
It's a tool. You take a hammer, you can use it to build a house or you can bash in someone's skull. I estimate more houses have been built than skulls bashed in.