Fist time I got an AARP flyer in the mail I wanted to punch the mailman.

Lots of scams involve getting people to download unverified apks that are used by scammed. That’s the nominal reason for Google’s new bullshit.

Pretending restrictions are good for you is how these companies operate. Telecoms have been doing it for over a century. Why should we suddenly trust them to NOT be evil?

But if you leave that process in the hands of CLEC (telecom providers) they have a financial incentive to make the process impossible and expensive to drive customers away from cheaper alternatives like VOIP.

And the spoofing has become an endemic part of the system. Years ago, there was a separate system for phones, which is why phones kept working even when power an internet went out. That also meant the phone companies knew exactly where a call was coming from because the wire could be traced to its physical location and verified for CallerID. It was also accurate because all landlines were published unless you paid to be excluded.

But none of that is true anymore. Even when you make a call from most “landlines” these days, there’s no actual landline phone system it’s coming through. It’s VOIP. And the same system that’s used to identify your number can be used by anyone, and the phone company giving priority to certain carriers and customer as “trusted” while denying it to others raises net neutrality concerns.

It’s the ongoing security vs freedom debate. You can’t say the phone companies should block calls from unverified numbers while at the same time saying Google shouldn’t block download of unverified apps.

There’s legitimate uses of spoofing. If I need to make a work call from my cell phone, I don’t want to share my number, so I use an app to send the call from my office number. If you work in a call center, you need the CID to point to a main line, not your desk phone. If you’re working from home, you want to send the company’s number - not yours. You don’t necessarily want phone companies able to determine who can and cannot use CID spoofing, because they won’t use it for good.

In fact - they’ve used it for evil in the past and are now actually prohibited from blocking spoofed CIDs. The Madison River Telephone company blocked Vonage back in the early aughts in what turned into one of the first big Net Neutrality cases when the FCC stepped in.

Essentially, they had been using the spoofed CID that’s essenially a necessity of VOIP systems as an excuse to ban VOIP users from calling their customers. So the FCC ended up prohibiting telephone providers from from that practice.

And with public figures there’s also the actual malice requirement, which requires the defendant to have evidence they were telling a lie and, or have shown so little interest in checking the facts that the only reasonable explanation is they were actively avoiding the truth.

It sure is a good thing Trump hasn’t been even worse when it comes to Israel’s aggression. We sure fixed things by allowing Trump to win!

When the only 2 options have bad positions on Israel, then Israel is no longer an issue to consider in the election.

I don’t think it’s necessarily evil to become a billionaire. But remaining one absolutely is.

Biden didn’t stop Israel. That was bad.

But otherwise, he did well. The economy recovered, he pulled out of Afghanistan and started no new wars. He tried to forgive student loans but the GOP stopped him.

One thing to understand is that the Dems haven’t had fillibuster-proof control of the government in DECADES except for about 2 months in 2009. Al Franken wasn’t seated until Ted Kennedy had left for the medical leave prior to his death, and the Tea Party took Kennedy’s seat, halting all progress.

When the Dems have nominal control, the GOP is so obstructionist Mitch McConnel fillibustered his own bill when the Dems agreed to go along with it.

Allowing Trump back into office fixed their problems how? It’s worse than ever, and worse than it would have been under Biden. Ignoring everything else he’s done, just the tarrifs and invasions have gutted the working classes through skyrocketing cost of living.

And in 2020, we didn’t elect a fucking Nazi and things were better than before and way better than now. Was the world magically made perfect? No. But it was better.

And when the current batch is kicked out, things will still be bad. It will take decades to fix what’s been broken. And that sucks. But just because the repairs are going to be slow, painful, and inefficient doesn’t mean we should just let the wrecking ball keep swinging.

We have literal, actual fascism here. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of “Not a Nazi”

So, eat the bullet?

I get that things are bad, but harm reduction is better than just bitching about the Dems.

That’s still not a reason to refuse to vote against the GOP. Why should we accept the worst of the worst immediately when they can be delayed?

It’s like saying that since medicine won’t make you immortal you should just eat a bullet now and be done with it.

The ratchet is awful, but in this moment it’s still the lesser of 2 evils.

These “both sides” arguments are like saying you refuse to walk across a shitty floor because you want to keep your shoes clean when the alternative is being fully immersed in sewage with your mouth open.

It’s more about the time. The closest fast chargers to me are pretty far, and as it is I regularly leave home at 5:30am and get back to my place after 10pm.

If I didn’t live alone it would be a much rougher life.

I drive 30,000+ miles a year because of a shitty commute and driving a couple hundred miles out of town most weekends to help my parents.

And since I rent I really can’t go electric.

And the handles are on shafts that are long enough you wouldn’t want a handle.

I loved my S10. It was the best vehicle I ever had.

I bought it in 2005 for $3,000 with 42k miles on it because the previous owner’s dad was a drunk and kept rubbing the side of it pulling in and out of the driveway. I didn’t care that the paint looked bad, and I drove that truck for 11 years. I sopd it when the engine gave up the ghost, but kinda wished I’d just paid for the repair instead of buying the Colorado, which I was never really pleased with.

I’ve loved the NV200 though. I teach scuba as a side gig and it makes a great dive gear hauler.

If a company is publicly traded it’s evil because their business model depends on infinite growth for investors and doesn’t care about the workers.

Can we save scum?