mick

Hmm. Aren’t the Great Lakes in North America connected to each other and then to the St. Lawrence River via Lake Ontario, which eventually leads to the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe the map should include those large bodies of water too.

I’m guessing they’re upset because it involves same-gender sex. If they had committed normal white collar crime, like embezzling a million dollars, nothing would have happened to them.

It was just my crass humor. I used the noun version of the word “use” because you said you couldn’t figure out how to use it.

What’s the use of giving you the answer when you can look it up on the internet?

Haha, and they will flower too. I have a few pots with hostas and I leave them out year round. They’re perennials, so there won’t be any leaves in the winter, but they’ll grow back in the spring.

Hostas grow well in shade or partial sun. Look for varieties with variegated leaves.

For the money. From 1986 to 2003, there were 9 stock splits and MS handed out stock options to almost all employees. Many employees who started there in the early 90s are now multimillionaires.

I don’t even understand what the issue is. I was always under the assumption that credit card fees were already passed along to consumers. Don’t vendors pad their prices by an extra 3-4% to cover these fees? And if customers paid in cash, vendors actually make a little extra since they don’t have to pay the fee.

Glad you found someone to share your life with. My wife and I have been married for 30 years. Prior to marriage, we lived together during college, had a long distance relationship after graduation due to jobs, moved back together and bought a house.

One night, during a girls night out, they were chatting about our relationship. One of her friends drunkenly told her to shit or get off the pot. So she did a little thinking and one night, while we were watching tv, she turned to me and said, “Let’s get married“.

I thought about it for five seconds and said, “Ok”. We resumed with the tv show and life went on. A couple of days passed before we actually sat down and discussed why she asked me to marry her. We knew we loved each other and didn’t need a wedding or rings to prove it. Marriage was just a formality but we did it anyway. It definitely made our parents happy.

Ah, so what would the Internet look like if it were built by altruistic, honest people. Sadly, I must be really jaded an cynical because that’s so hard for me to envision.

Commercial interests were always exploiting resources within their spheres of influence, even before the Internet. As technology improved and new pathways emerged, they ran full speed ahead.

Your example of a news site that didn’t push their algorithms never existed. Even pre-Internet, when news was printed, every newspaper had a certain slant. In New York City—back in the 70s—there were four major papers, NY Times, Wall St Journal, NY Post, Daily News. They all had their biases.

But the one thing they couldn’t do was collect user data. Ads were static and we had a choice to either read or ignore it.

As I’m typing and doing this brain dump—it’s 1:18am, why am I not asleep—I’ve come to realize that the thing I hate most about the current state of the Internet is the vast collection of user data how companies are mining and exploiting it. If we could stop it, I would be fine with most everything else.

That’s hard to answer without qualifying “commercial interests”. I think of banking and other financial institutions as commercial interests, and I like having control of my finances online. I don’t have to wait until the end of the month to see credit card charges (charge notifications that pop up on my phone are nearly instantaneous). I don’t have to make a phone call to my broker to place a stock order.

A lot of people disparage Amazon, but I like the convenience. No more driving to two or three stores to find what I need.

Other commercial interests like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X—yeah, they can disappear and I wouldn’t miss them.

Same here. His recipe is my baseline and I’ve made many variations of it, most to great success. I’ve only used Guinness for beef stew. Why didn’t I think of this? It’s so obvious, haha. Thanks for the suggestion.