Self-promotion: A number of years ago I made a little website which links you to a random review written by Roger Ebert. It isn't the cleanest of implementations, but it did what I needed it to do when I built it.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
I believe HackerNews ran an article that covered a similar situation but the product involved was baby diapers. That if you're buying in bulk, from say, Costco, you can save a lot of money on baby diapers. That's good for those that can afford it. But those on welfare (in the US) will never have enough cash on hand to make that initial bulk purchase and achieve those savings. As a result they have to buy the smaller packages which are significantly more expensive and eat up much more of their welfare check.
Disposable diapers are a luxury item. Buy cloth and reuse them a hundred times. I could afford disposable and still bought cloth to save a literal crap ton of money.
Cloth diapers are a luxury item. They are for people with access to washing machines and sufficient time to handle them. They might financially seem cheaper, but poor people often need to work multiple jobs to keep their heads above the water. They can’t afford spending extra time. (Same goes for junk food vs. cooking stuff that you cheaply sourced from a market, ...)
I believe people in developing countries without access to washing machines use cloth diapers, so it’s not lack of access to washing machines. Cultural issues probably pay a role, however.
We bought ours on eBay (third hand, and they did for 3 kids and still were good enough to sell on), they were more work than disposable but certainly cheaper. But, we had a washing machine -- again, second hand (fixed and plumbed in by me).
There's also the aspect that nice things require other nice, expensive things to keep them up. Having a nice set of boots isn't going to help much if it's sitting in the rain overnight regularly.
This all points to the lesson that wealth and riches aren't the same thing. Rich people are rich because they have wealth, even poor people can amass riches, say by winning the lottery, but can't be called wealthy until they actually have wealth.
A person can become wealthy off the efforts of other people, but if we want wealth for all, then it's society itself that must hold the wealth. This was Karl Marx's conclusion, but all attempts to build a society capable of holding wealth for all failed.
So we're stuck with trickle-down, the idea that the surplus wealth of the wealthy is good enough for all.
Upgrading to creators update Windows 10 got me started with text -to-speech.
Edge browser has a button to read eBooks (EPUB files) aloud. The voices resemble human speech but that's not why I use it.
Edge does something that make me prefer speech-to-text over audio books. I've got many unread Audio books because it's a passive activity. My body just itches to do something.
On Edge, the words are highlighted as they are being read. Thus I actively read as I listen. And most importantly, distraction is no biggie - just spot the flashing words. Also, it's easy to spot and make up when the voice mispronounces words.
*
I upgraded my phone to the Creators update hoping to use Edge to read on the go. However, the result was disappointing. They are definitely different browsers sharing the same name.
Luckily an eBook reader called Freda+ reads aloud pretty well. It only highlights paragraphs rather word-by-word like edge - better than no highlight.
Summary.
My eyes tire easily when reading on computer - eye issues, glare, sleep deprivation... Without speech recognition, I'll read far less books.
Note: Edge works only on EPUB files which is pretty disappointing as EPUB files are html docs.
I play video games from a young Turkish woman. She goes to gigs, nightclubs, drinks and socialises. She hits on guys and they hit on her. She is indistinguishable from any western 20something. I was on a voice call with her the night of the supposed coup, and listened to her and her family angrily lemmenting the administration. It seemed even on the night of they knew something was fishy. She lives in Istanbul, and is educated, so maybe I don't get a full picture of the Turkish opinion. Maybe others elsewhere support the government and its actions, blindly. She'd love to move to the UK, and would fit in well with our culture. Yet a part of the Leave campaigns was about how Turkey would one day join the EU, and then we'd have Turkish people flooding here too!!! Shock horror. It's becoming a self fulfilling prophecy by the west at this point, to turn Turkey from what it is, to what they think it is.
As a Turk, I'm actually happy that we were told that we can't join at all due to the referendum results. Not for me, I see myself similar to the friend you talked about, with a western culture, wanting to get off but failing, but for Europe. Allowing the 51% to roam around Europe would seriously damage the level of culture and freedom you have reached.
These people would leave turkey if possible, but they can't.
This is making turkey less western?
Wouldn't that have the opposite effect? The west is generally responsible for the brain drain in less successful countries. Throwing borders up will keep those people who share our views in those countries. It's a fair bet that those people will be the force for good change in their governments more likely within their country than outside it.
Most countries tend to have or quickly get rules to make constitutional changes hard to pass. E.g. requiring 2/3 majority or even multiple votes across multiple parliaments, or the like. Couple that with constitutions that limit the governments power, and you get some reasonable degree of protection of minorities.
The ability to enact drastic change with a minimal majority like in Turkey (or the UK...) is terribly dangerous.
That's a great thought - I believe this is how democracy in the US used to work with more magnanimity and cooperation. Maybe I'm romanticizing, but I will think on how I can do my part to bring it to fruition.
Yeah, that's the point. Everyone tries to re-invent 2FA or use SMS, both of which are bad for the end user. Even 2FA companies like Duo use some non-standard protocol which only their client can implement.
If it's illegal in the chosen jurisdiction(s), yes.
The question to this argument is particular is almost always "What constitutes hate speech?" Some people think it's literally anything that could make someone feel bad (whether it does or not). Some people think unless you are actively advocating for murder or genocide it's not. Most reasonable people are in the middle, but most reasonable people also disagree on whether or not putting a picture of a fat person online and making fun of it meets the standard.
I find it hard to believe Trump wouldn't, or hasn't, done exactly as Hertz has done. This seems like an all too common stratagem for upper echelons within a business to convince shareholders that the books are healing.
Trump does this kind of thing because he believes it's necessary to compete. For example, he makes neckties in China/Mexico/wherever because that's the only way one can do so profitably.
Trump is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game". While Trump has played the game as necessary in the business world, Trump claims he is running for office so that he can change policies such that offshoring American jobs is no longer economically feasible, and such that companies that do this will face punishment.
Though it seems counter-intuitive, Trump and Sanders are striking the same chord, just from different directions. There is a surprising amount of crossover support from Sanders to Trump, especially as evidence of DNC corruption against Sanders in the primary process continues to mount.
Tangential discussion: but change comes from within. There are plenty of companies out there who figured out a way to make a profit operating against industry norms, like making their clothes in the US -- Raleigh Denim comes to mind.
Trump could absolutely have (hired someone to) figure out a way to make a profit on artisanal ties. He was just too concerned with maximizing personal gain to care.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said the ONLY way to make money is by exporting manufacturing. But the usual way for sure.
Trump is about making it so that business as usual favors the American worker -- it shouldn't require special boutique retailers who are only ever going to be able to compete in a niche market for hyper-aware consumers.
http://randomebert.com/