Gotta also point out, if they were things he ‘wanted for years,’ he already knew about them, knew he wanted them, and would have bought them. The ads were of no value in that situation.

But the big thing I have to question in this is, does this person have anyone they care about? It’s not all about them. Do they want those they love to be tracked and manipulated based on the data? Would they be comfortable with a system that tracked their daughter’s menstrual cycle based on the data they collected? If so, would they still be okay with it if the companies used that data to push unhealthy options on her when she’s being hit with PMT and feels like shit? What if the ad space was bought by a group who wanted to push her into a religion? Or an abortion? Or a political position they disagree with?

And let’s say they don’t have any problem with the people who they know have access to it now. Do they think the people who have it now will be unwilling to sell it? Is there someone out there they wouldn’t be comfortable with having access to their data? Because basically anyone can buy info from a data broker. Would they like it if their porn history was shared with potential employers? Or their health history? Even if they don’t put in anything they aren’t comfortable sharing, do they think no one else might put in info they don’t want shared? What about just plain misinformation? Do they want the data on them to be available to employers after someone with a grudge has had a chance to order BDSM gear in their name and create a profile for them on a fetish site or twenty? How about someone with no grudge, just who taps into his wifi because he hasn’t updated his security firmware in a bit? And all that info would be delivered to anyone who asks and is willing to pay <$20. He’ll never be told, ‘you didn’t get the job/loan/invite because of what we found on you.’ It’ll just be a silent wall between them and the other things they want, just because they liked that one time the company, which didn’t actually care what he wants, convinced him to buy something he would have bought anyway and spent the rest of the time selling access to him and his information, benefitting him not at all.

Check out Andy Ward’s stuff. If people in precolumbian America could do it, you probably can.

There’s something of Daniel Weyman in the eyes/brows. Maybe a bit of Richard Kiel/Ron Perlman in the jaw. The sunken cheeks are less common in modern/wealthy-home-country men, though.

Hmm, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it but my general impression is one of ‘it’s a symptom, not a disease.’ It’d be best if it didn’t exist, but not through prohibition, whether legal or moral. I’d like to see a society where people and the institutions can be trusted enough that people feel safe in just having sex when they want to, without it being transactional. It’s pretty well known at this point that men and women desire sex at approximately the same rate; it’s just that women don’t feel safe enough to say yes as often as they might like to. I suspect that prostitution could almost, but not quite, be thought of as a metric. The more safe and secure people feel, sexually, the less need there would be for prostitution.

Haven’t seen Chef! mentioned. It’s that particular style of sitcom that is essentially lots and lots of little jokes all leading to the big dramatic monologue the lead can chew on and rip into.

Great show. Not enough fans of it out there.

Good morning, that’s a nice tnetennba.

Deichkind?
Halcali? Jovanotti?

I don’t have much for this one.

Food for thought:

Regarding prices, PC gaming has a MUCH higher up-front cost but MASSIVELY lower ongoing costs. A gaming PC, especially these days, is going to cost as much as or more than two or three consoles. However, console games are damned expensive and never get any cheaper. PC games often come in bundles that can make them cheaper. Humble Monthly is ~$1 per game most months. Indie games are often released at <$20 and get cheaper if you want to wait. PC games generally get cheaper if you wait. Epic has a free game every week, and steam parapetetically has games go free or into steep discount too. There are also many great FOSS games, all priced as free, most with the option to kick back a bit of cash if you like them. Modding is also generally free, and can turn one game into effectively 50. (e.g. Minecraft is one game. Modpacks turn it into almost a completely new game. TFC based modpacks affectively do it all over again. And a few others do it again. One copy of MC effectively becomes multiple games, possibly dozens.) All that means to get 100 games, you could be looking at a difference between paying ~$6,000 for console games and paying less, but possibly even literally nothing for the PC, depending on what games. It will basically never be more expensive for the PC version, though.

Consoles only win out in two places. 1. You will never get a PC as capable as a console for the price of a console. (At least not unless Valve does something truly amazing with the Steam Machine) so the upfront cost is far lower. And 2. Consoles let you hit the power button and spin up more or less straight into the game. If you are a child, or have one, having access to the system outside of games can break your ability to play games, so a console is locked down to prevent that. That’s not to say they will run perfectly, just that you/your kid won’t be the reason things are breaking.

Mostly just toys.

If you can’t rely on them more (not ‘just as much,’ more) than the people who would do whatever the task is, you can’t use them for any important task, and you aren’t going to find a lot of tasks which are simultaneously necessary and yet unimportant enough that we can tolerate rolling nat 1s on the probability machine all the time.

Sort of.

Billboards are not owned by stores. They are owned by marketers and rented to advertisers. An additional element may be needed to require ‘own space’ advertising to only advertise products and/or services available at that location. (i.e. within ~100meters)

Sign spinners are being paid to display their sign. They’re gone.

Flyers are not delivered with explicit consent and request. They’re gone.

Door-to-door is tougher to classify because it has variance in form, but probably would be allowed on the condition that the first thing the potential customer sees is a person requesting consent and not some piece of media.

Also, I think I’d have to simplify the start to ‘issuing or accepting payment’ rather than targeting a single party. Advertisers and marketers should both face punishment.

The best definition I have come up with so far is to ban ‘Party A compensating party B via money, goods, or services for displaying and/or broadcasting media to party C, in particular and/or in general, without party C’s specific consent and request.’ The only exception might be to allow it for companies that both A. have an annualized revenue less than 10x the median wage, and B. are not making a profit. That would be just to allow small businesses to get the word out at the start but would cut off anything getting to the point where it should be self-sustaining.

If only…

Regulatory: Ban advertising.

All of the worst elements of the internet are ad supported. There would be no downside.

The point was not that empire is not villainous, simply that the ‘history will not be kind to’ sentiment is mostly pointless ressentiment. All it does is mollify the slave with the pretense they will get their reward after death and the oppressor will get their punishment. The empire does not care. The ones that care about history will write the history they want the world to remember after their death and live the life of the wealthy conqueror until they do.

A certain subset of people do. There are still lots of Brits who not only don’t hate the idea of empire but think it should come back. There are even people in the former British colonies that romanticise that history. There are people now, and will continue to be, who look at the history of empires, conquerors, and tyrants, and cheer for the ‘great men of history.’ Maybe one day that might change, but it’s going to be a while, if ever.

Sure. Just like how we all villainise Rome, the British empire, the Khanates, and other violent militaristic cultures of conquest… and, of course, no one would look back fondly on governments that enacted policies of hate and murdered their citizens and others… Oh, wait… /s

It’s important to understand, there is no ‘feeling the waters’ with ideas. The response to half of an idea is always separate from the response to the whole idea. e.g. ‘I will’ is understood differently from ‘I will kill, tonight’ and both differently from ‘I will kill, tonight, on stage at the comedy club.’ If you want to know how people will react to the whole idea, you have to express the whole idea.

Not a good metaphor, though.

Then you’re not trying hard enough.