That’s alarmingly low - it suggests that it doesn’t take much for any given influencing campaign. If there are fifteen discrete such campaigns in play, that’s just 1/100 of everyone. Now imagine that there’s tens of such campaigns, and the numbers look even more reasonable. Also, it’s probably cost-effective at this scale since this has been with us a while, which is terrifying.

What I want to know is: what percentage are human users that ate the onion metaphorical tequila worm¹ and are now parroting these trolls?

1. Follow me here: drink a bottle and eat the worm inside. You’re not thinking straight and did something you wouldn’t do if you had your wits about you, or maybe a friend nearby that is thinking clearly. Propaganda has a way of forcing you into a phantasm by emotional manipulation, making it easy to jam all kinds of nonsense into your head. Extending the metaphor, said propaganda also lays out how to defend your worm eating habit as though it’s totally normal to do.

I’ll preface this by saying this shady shit gets all my hate.

It’s tempting to opt for telematics/black box insurance because of the initial cheaper prices but the privacy violations and potential downsides make it not worth it.

The overall problem here is that human psychology tends to frame this difference as a loss not a gain. Given the choice, people will see the cheaper option as the baseline, and then ask “can I afford to pay more for privacy?” instead of affirming “my privacy is not worth this discount.”

Also, those of us that have paid for insurance without such a “discount”, are likely keenly aware of the difference. For new drivers, from now to here on out, the lack of past experience presents a new baseline where this awfulness is normalized. Competition between insurance providers won’t help us here since the “privacy free” option is still profitable and is enticing for new customers (read: younger, poorer). So it’ll take some kind of law, collective action, or government intervention to make this go away.

Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record. […] If I had spyware insurance they would’ve dinged me for it.

I think this is the bigger problem. If someone has the data an insurance company wants, you probably agreed to an EULA or signed something that makes their ownership, and its sale, legal. With the “yeah go ahead and use my data” option on the table, the machinery to do this without your knowledge is already in place. All the insurance provider has to do is buy the data from someone else. When the price is right, 1st party spyware isn’t required at all.

I forgot about the smells. My sense of smell shifted to be way more sensitive to sugars and starches too - it was tough.

I didn’t bother trying to track fat intake and wound up losing 2+ lbs a month that way; not bragging, but my goal wasn’t all that big. I probably could have done things faster by cutting more fat, but it was already hard enough.

I was educated by another user on how the process actually works.

Fascinating, isn’t it? It’s like each of us is just full of survival mechanisms.

That’s awesome. Glad that’s working for you! If you have any tips on building willpower for the rest of us, please share, and thank you.

I agree on those stats. Don’t forget: Atkins himself died from heart disease. But hey, at least you have the pics to prove it.

Were it me, the potential for humor would be impossible to ignore:

Me: “This diet is miserable, don’t do this.”

Also me: shows pics looking more shredded that a bowl of mini-wheats

That’s basically the Atkins diet (Keto) without enough nutrition. It’ll function like a very short, very uncomfortable, malnourished crash diet.

You’ll spend the first two weeks craving carbs and sugars like your life depends on it. It’s awful. After that “break in” period, the cravings mostly go away.

But that’s not all. So much as lick a piece of candy or chew on some bread, and you’ll get a large dopamine rush followed by carb-craving mode again. If sheer willpower and deferred rewards are at all a problem for you, this might feel like one of the hardest things you’ve ever tried to do.

Edit: now that I remember, my grandma tried a “cottage cheese and grapefruit” fad/crash diet back in the 80’s. Turns out that one has been doing the rounds for almost a century. IIRC, it doesn’t work since it’s easy to underestimate how insanely difficult this is to do.

My favorite was the hostess who didn’t want to clean the bathroom so she would just fill the soap and and paper products and fill a spray bottle with Lysol that she would spray around to give the smell of a clean bathroom.

This is exactly the kind of BS I’m talking about. I once knew some pool lifeguards that had to rotate through bathroom cleaning duty. I overheard that their MO was to just get everything wet with a hose, splash pinesol on the floor, and call it a day.

Did not know that was possible.

Same, but I’m starting to think you need a pretty sizable infestation in a nearby wall for this to be a thing.

I’m one of these people. I can smell an apartment roach infestation from the front door, every time.

And yes, restaurants always get the “sniff check” before we sit down. No-go odors are:

• bleach
• pine-sol (amonia)
• heavy perfume (think “Glade plugin-in”)
• insects (roaches, etc)
• pet odor (wet dog, litterbox)
• sewage (usually a dry floor drain but that’s still not okay)
• dingy carpet (think: “old movie theater”)

The first two are obvious attempts at covering up something worse with “clean” smells, and/or the staff has no idea what “clean” actually means. And they obviously don’t care what olfaction means to someone trying to enjoy a meal, which says heaps about what they think food service actually is. Everything else just speaks to the “I don’t care what you smell” part, or there’s something very wrong with how the kitchen is run. /rant

An example of a top-shelf dining odor experience? I once went to a Japanese restaurant at opening time. The only smell in the dining room was that of the specific kind of imported cedar in the cutting boards. This is traditionally cleaned with boiling hot water, and nothing else. This released a gentle woody and pine-y scent that just filled the space and invited the senses. I came hungry, but I sat down ravenous. The meal to follow was something I will never forget.

Edit: some clarification since this got some traction. I know that bleach and ammonia are s-tier disinfectants and absolutely necessary for food prep, health standards, and the rest. I use this stuff at home. My issue is with establishments that utterly fail at ventilating these odor and spoil the dining experience with strong chemical odors. Looking deeper I find very strong cleaning odors (long after opening hours) suspicious since it’s very easy to splash stuff around, giving the impression of cleanliness, but not actually clean anything. Strong chemical smells also make it impossible to detect sewage, rot, mold, soil, and other things that would easily flag a restaurant. I’d rather not take the chance.

I’ll do you one better.

Not only is the language itself evolving, but we acquire more and more idioms and jargon as society moves through the industrial age. Right now, english has this playful mishmash of nautical, railroad, and now computing idioms reflecting each technological epoch’s mark on speech over the last 200+ years.

I honestly love this approach for eye-grabbing titles to otherwise dull topics.

If there’s a problem, yo I’ll solve it: Application of Large Language Models for resolving deep problem sets.

Critical levels of thirst detected!

Glove and Boots did a fantastic take on this very concept. https://youtu.be/75nBenOWul0?si=4lTY2at2aHtaqN-F&t=144

can also get a gun and blast these things before it gets out of hand

Honestly, I get the distinct impression that everything in the hunting section at your local Walmart is going to be woefully ineffective. May I recommend a defensive position with difficult to traverse stairs?

Adult? Well… that’s Uncle Charlie. He smokes a lot of some funny smelling tobacco, but he’s cool! He knows a lot of things like how to fix cars, how to collect baseball cards, how the government is spying on everyone, how to get lucky with the ladies, and he helps us with our math homework. He also says our neighbors are “commies” but I’m pretty sure their name is “Connor”. Right now he works at the meat packing plant, but he plans on going into management (whatever that is) once the right opportunity comes along. He says the secret to his success is growing a real thick mustache. Really, more of a big brother, yanno?

In this paper I will explore the premise of misinformation and it’s impact on coursework, specifically long-form essays. This work will be self-illustrating in support of this thesis, as the author will take on the voice of someone that has a minimal and flawed understanding of the paper’s core concept.

Also: sometimes, a mathematician just has to invent some concept or syntax to convey something unconventional. The specific use of subscript/superscript, whatever ‘phi’ is being used for, etc. on whatever paper you’re reading doesn’t have to correlate to how other work uses the same concepts. It’s bad form, but sometimes its needed, and if useful enough is added to the general canon of what we call “math”. Meanwhile, you can encapsulate and obfuscate things in software, sure, but you can always get down to the bedrock of what the language supports; there’s no inventing anything new.

Do rabbits need a companion, especially if their owners can’t match their energy level? Also, is keeping an indoor rabbit with cats a bad idea?

You’re the hero we need. Thank you for your service.

PS: how much trouble are we in, out here in the non-nazi segment of the population?