Our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) passes rules preventing big telecom corporations from throwing a bunch of surprise junk fees in their “all-in” subscription plans. That the FCC’s two Republican Commissioners of course voted against it should remind us that Presidential elections matter – we may find the Biden Administration working a bit too slowly on junk fees for our taste, but there’s no way a second Trump Administration would have done a damn thing about them. And pay no mind to the corporate whining at article’s end – it’s “micromanagement” to make corporations stop lying to us about their prices? Pimps, please.
Hard to believe, Harry, but women are apparently ditching birth control pills after getting bad/wrong advice about them from social media. Even if birth control pills caused weight gain (they don’t) or infertility (ditto), we would do well to stack that up against the very real threat of far more easily getting pregnant and being forced by the state to give birth. Too many folks hear one thing that surprises or impresses them and think they know everything after that; if we weren’t all so susceptible to the sin of pride, we’d make better decisions and we’d suffer a whole lot less.
Ho hum, an educational nonprofit plans to expand its deployment of an AI “teaching assistant” to thousands of students next year. Why, that doesn’t sound at all like part of a plan to replace unionized public school teachers with unpaid robots that never get sick or go on vacation! And Thomas Jefferson is literally the father of American racism, so playing up his alleged hatred of slavery means even less than the on-one-hand-on-the-other-hand argument the AI tool makes. Machines are good at washing clothes and keeping food cold, not teaching kids. But their continued deployment will enable more Americans to congratulate themselves for knowing things when they don't.
Hedge fund corporations move into the autistic services field, and surprise, surprise! Autistic service centers start delivering worse service before closing down en masse. Banksters really do ruin everything – why, they even cause or enable abuse of autistic children, no doubt by breathing down everyone’s neck to CUTZ ALLZ TEH COSTZ!!!!! But let’s not let pass that chains of autistic service corporations shouldn’t exist, either, because the downward pressure to cut-costs-no-matter-who-gets-hurt comes from that direction, too. The solution to most problems in America is small businesses creating jobs, not big corporations creating “efficiency in markets.” I can barely type that phrase without throwing up.
Ho hum, NBC News wonders why the public thinks the crime rate is going up when it’s going down, which is a little like Donald Trump wondering why people think he shouts so much. The public think it’s going up because our “liberal” media always cover it like it’s going up. They’ve done better reporting actual facts about crime lately, but they still cling to local crime stories like grim death, reporting on them repeatedly over days and weeks, showing the same clips over and over again until it’s like all you see on the news is crime. How bad is it? Last week one of my co-workers saw a story about an arrest for a recent SEPTA bus shooting and asked if another shooting had happened. I’m pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug.
Finally, another day, another right-wing punditoid opining that New York seizing Donald Trump’s property so he can pay off $450 million-plus in civil fraud judgments would “create the greatest victimhood of 2024” and “elect Donald Trump.” My immediate response would have been: so, you’re saying we should not enforce the law? As for “let’s not talk about whether it’s justified or not” – Jesus Mary and Joseph that is literally the only thing we should talk about! Americans hate political “analysis” because they hate having their lives reduced to a horserace, but our “liberal” media punditoids have nothing else to offer.
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