leadore

Fine with me. What's the point of sticking to some lofty principles at this point? Trump's filling the govt with his family members and loyal supporters for the biggest grift operation we've ever seen. It'll be the most blatantly corrupt administration in history, and not a thing will be done about it. Biden pardoning Hunter is nothing compared to that. I say let him do even more stuff before he leaves, he has immunity. I wouldn't mind if he ordered a little Seal Team 6 operation or something.

You're making the assumption of one person per apartment and one deportation = 1 vacant apartment which is highly unlikely. Probably a whole family in the apt. so it may not even be vacated at all if one member is deported. Even if the whole family is deported that's only like 1 vacant apartment per at least 4-5 or more deportations. So yes, more housing will become available but not as much as you are estimating. IMO the effects will be felt much more in the labor shortage than in housing surplus.

Do some people go to the movies just to see the movie? Is the bigger screen that important?

Maybe they want to see it as soon as it's released instead of waiting for it to be available to stream. Also yes, some movies are definitely better and more immersive on the big screen with the big sound systems, like space or adventure-type ones with special effects.

I mean, she had a remote (US) job and lost the job, and is now having trouble finding a new job at age 55. She'd still be in the same situation even if she was still living in CA except she'd be worse off in CA from the higher cost of living. So this story doesn't really have anything to do with the implication in the headline that moving to Panama was somehow a mistake.

This is the letter of reference Hegseth presented to Trump to clinch the job.

I mean your hands have teeth who could beat that

It’s not like you have to give your SSN to a carrier to get a phone

Actually it is like that, if you are getting any kind of deal where you're paying off the phone with your service plan and/or commit to a term contract. They use it to run a credit check on you. Most companies where you're committing to a length of service do this. It happened to me when I was going to get some kind of cable or internet service one time, where you got x number of months free if you promised to keep the plan for two years. They asked for my SSN and I refused, so they wouldn't complete the transaction. That's how I found out about why they want your SSN.

On a side note, I don't discuss anything with gmail users that I don't want indexed and stored in Google's dossier of me.

You can buy a prepay phone at Walmart or similar, then just buy cards to add airtime. You don't have to register your name anywhere. I had one like that for years.

Nice summary! I've been here through that whole time period. If it had stopped at the stage around 1995-2000 (before FB & web 2.0 took over the internet, before every business model became about bombarding us with ads and spying on us), our lives would be much better today.

Yes you are correct, it's worse now. At first it was creative, innovative products that made things more convenient or fun, or at least didn't harm its users. Now all the new things are made by immature egotistical billionaire techbros: generative AI which has ruined the internet by polluting it with so much shit you can't get real information any more, not to mention using up all our power and water resources, the enshittification of Web 2.0, Web 3.0 that was pure shit from the get-go, IOT "smart" appliances like TVs, doorbells, thermostats, refrigerators that spy on you and your neighbors, shit "self-driving" killer cars that shouldn't be allowed on the roads, whatever the hell that new VR Metaverse shit is, ads, ads, ads, ads, and on and on. It's a tech dystopia.

I can only hope that nothing ever happens to where I'd have to use Windows again. (been using only linux for over 10 years and the latest Windows I ever used was win 7 at work).

If that happened, the shock of all the last 10-15 years' accumulation of enshittification hitting me at once might give me a stroke. The boiling frogs of today have gotten used to their OS serving them ads and spying on them by now, but I wouldn't be able to deal with it.