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“When we all have pocket telephones”

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Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#131

Post by bena »

guhidalg wrote: post #126
sumtechguy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is US federal taxes. Now go grab your check and see how much you are paying in taxes that are not called that. Then remember you also pay taxes when you buy things too. Also remember your must carry insurance (3 of those). Also in some cases just for owning something. Plus state and local. My theory is We did not really lower taxes that much. We just itemized the bill to make it look smaller.

[flagged]

Yes, it is tiring when someone posts something with absolutely no evidence is taken at face value as truth. But when someone offers evidence to the contrary, it gets argued to death. "What are taxes?" "Insurance is a type of tax." "Sales tax counts now."

None of these people are making the same arguments to the poster who offered nothing but a claim. Because "of course it's true, everyone knows it". Well, everyone is quite capable of being wrong. As those self-same people will happily tell us when it's time to enact some very mild preventative measures for the health and safety of the country that the vast majority of health professionals recommend.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#132

Post by atourgates »

hammock wrote: post #81
superchroma wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comedians weren't lining up to do college campuses 20 years ago either.

College campus is never the preferred venue however as I said, it’s a money maker. Similar to corporate gigs. The difference is now they’re not worth the trouble. Seinfeld (not even who you think of as “anti-woke”) has a good take on it you could search for. https://ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically... >“I don’t play colleges.” Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it mean…

I think maybe the teens and college age kids DO understand what they're talking about, and the Seinfeld generation doesn't.

The difference is that many in the Seinfeld generation (and other generations) think of "Racism" or "Sexism" as terrible evils that they must never commit.

While likely the "teens and college-aged kids" he's complaining about recognize that we all engage in some level of racism or sexism in our daily internal or external lives.

So, if someone accused Seinfeld of racism or sexism, his reaction might be to defend himself, and say, "No! How dare you!"

But if someone told one of the "woke kids" they were racist or sexist, their reaction would more likely be, "yeah, probably."

To Jerry, being "a racist" is synonymous with being a bad person. The "woke kids" recognize that we're all racist and sexist and prejudiced to some degree, and (hopefully) trying to be better about it.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#133

Post by abeppu »

warner25 wrote: post #97
alistairSH wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's a new one for me (only app payments accepted). In the US, at least.

I haven't encountered that yet, but I'm starting to encounter mobile apps as required proof of membership for things. My family got a membership to a children's museum a few weeks ago, and the expectation is that my wife and I have their app on our phones to get inside. For our second visit, I brought our printed receipt, but my wife had to stand there downloading and installing their app so that we could use our gue…

I think the worst part of this is businesses that do this all have different crappy apps. My gym has their own app that must be scanned upon entry. But their app is often slow and unresponsive, and unpredictably logs out. Often at the entry, a person will be stuck trying to reload the app, possibly hindered by their phone having switched to the gym's questionable wifi. Multiple other people will be stuck behind them, having preemptively loaded the app and QR code while walking to the door.

This replaced keychain fobs with a barcode, which had none of these annoyances.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#134

Post by josefresco »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #84

> Now, increasingly, cellphones are * day-to-day life* . Far from the literal “pocket telephones” envisioned a century ago, they’ve worked their way into nearly every aspect of human existence, including those Haselden could never have considered. It is now essential to be considered part of the society, to the point that someone who does not want to or cannot carry a cell phone is sneered at. Anecdotally, I was in t…

> I was refused service at a hair cutting chain because I did not have a cell phone

I don't believe this.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#135

Post by superchroma »

atourgates wrote: post #132
hammock wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College campus is never the preferred venue however as I said, it’s a money maker. Similar to corporate gigs. The difference is now they’re not worth the trouble. Seinfeld (not even who you think of as “anti-woke”) has a good take on it you could search for. https://ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically... >“I don’t play colleges.” Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it mean…

I think maybe the teens and college age kids DO understand what they're talking about, and the Seinfeld generation doesn't. The difference is that many in the Seinfeld generation (and other generations) think of "Racism" or "Sexism" as terrible evils that they must never commit. While likely the "teens and college-aged kids" he's complaining about recognize that we all engage in some level of racism or sexism in our…

Having talked to trans and bi youth, they're cynical, well-read, yet simultaneously naive and emotional, use slurs copiously and ironically, and like any generation, are politically all over the map, including fashy. I would not dare to try and paint these people a certain way.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#136

Post by glowingly »

abeppu wrote: post #133
warner25 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't encountered that yet, but I'm starting to encounter mobile apps as required proof of membership for things. My family got a membership to a children's museum a few weeks ago, and the expectation is that my wife and I have their app on our phones to get inside. For our second visit, I brought our printed receipt, but my wife had to stand there downloading and installing their app so that we could use our gue…

I think the worst part of this is businesses that do this all have different crappy apps. My gym has their own app that must be scanned upon entry. But their app is often slow and unresponsive, and unpredictably logs out. Often at the entry, a person will be stuck trying to reload the app, possibly hindered by their phone having switched to the gym's questionable wifi. Multiple other people will be stuck behind them,…

Better than a gym I turned down: that one required a fingerprint, then handprint scan. WTF? I didn't buy any of the excuses for it.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#137

Post by Buttons840 »

enedil wrote: post #110
Buttons840 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wondered, as wealth inequality grows, perhaps the poorest among us simple won't have enough money to exchange for goods. "Sorry, you don't have enough money to make a haircut worth my time, but if you let me invade your privacy and show you ads until the end of time, that will be valuable enough to exchange for a haircut. Read and sign this 200 page contract and I'll go get a chair ready." See also essential sof…

I doubt that if somebody cannot afford a haircut, their data would be that pricey.

I'm thinking more on a macro level.

Someone at Google has said "people want to pay us money to have better support and be treated like customers instead of products", and the response was "no, not worth it". On a macro scale Google was not interested in the money of individuals.

Facebook / Meta is one of the richest companies in the world, and they didn't make their money by taking money from individuals.

Politicians aren't swayed by the donations of common people, but by the donation of wealthy special interest groups and wealthy individuals.

The poorest 50% of the United States controls 1.2% of the wealth. One day they'll look around and collectively ask "what can we do with our money?", and the answer will be "buy cheap consumer goods, pay rent, and not much else". More and more companies don't want the little money they have, instead they want their attention, their votes, and their time and labor. Going after their money alone just isn't worth it.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#138

Post by danudey »

darkwater wrote: post #9

I think the joke is still good, because it's still a bad manner to have your phone ringing and buzzing in many situations (a concert, at the opera etc). I mean, it's actually an impressive comic, it imagines a possible future tech and correctly identifies some real misuses, 70-80 years before it became reality.

When cell phones were in their infancy, I remember reading an article, some kind of op-ed, about how they were ruining society.

His primary example, his primary complaint, was a situation where he was at dinner with his wife and his own cell phone rang. A friend was calling him! On his phone, at dinner!

How incredibly, unimaginably rude could someone be? To call someone while he was in a public restaurant, at dinner with his wife! Can you imagine the audacity?

I remember thinking what a complete asshole this man must be. A friend called him while he was at a restaurant, the ringer went, it embarrassed him at this nice restaurant, and he went on a tear blaming everyone but himself.

Meanwhile, we now have people who get on the bus blaring music from their cell phones or hanging a portable bluetooth speaker from their backpacks while walking down the street, and people miss the idea that hey, the problem isn't the technology, it's that the technology enables inconsiderate, rude people to be inconsiderate and rude in new and exciting ways, as though boom boxes didn't exist before bluetooth speakers.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#139

Post by danudey »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #56

That comic got one small detail incorrect: in 2022, phones are rarely in pockets, because most people can't stop using theirs long enough to put it in a pocket.

If my phone is in my pocket I can't watch billionaires destroy society and the planet in real-time, and then I'll have to catch up on /r/outoftheloop later that week.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#140

Post by robocat »

bmicraft wrote: post #117
jsrcout wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be stunned if there aren't well-funded groups working on this as we speak.

It was deployed 80 years ago and called Panzerschokolade

Internet myth. https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2022/11/melting-the-myth-of-panze...
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