This is how I feel. No matter what they do at this point it is moot as they cannot be trusted to maintain products into the future. So much so it is a meme at this point.

Ya at this point I mainly know Bambu from their adversarial behavior. Some friends and I put three new printers online this past month and proudly none are Bambulabs.

Does Ticketmaster not amplify prices and use perceived scarcity to drive up prices? They can due that because Live Nation is a monopoly in all but name.

If the tickets still sell out at the higher prices, than it is real scarcity, not artificial scarcity.

Each show has a set number of seats... it isn't an artificial monopoly, it is an intrinsic monopoly. People don't want to just go to A concert, they want to go to a SPECIFIC concert, and a concert venue only holds a set amount of people.

Then they build new stadiums that are physically larger but have fewer seats.

Similar vibes to a single, older, creepy gentleman telling a group of young school children at the park not to talk to strangers.

I swear it is like we stumbled into a real life PKD book.

Probably A Scanner Darkly but I’m also sure parts of The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer will come true too.

Police abuse of power in the US is a systemic problem. Your opinion is akin to thinking the Catholic church bears no burden for all the diddling they neglected to observe.

Do you make any distinction between sheriff's departments that are elected into their office (e.g. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office) vs commissioned LEOs?

I personally wouldn't, both positions are going to attract the same personality and be working in the same culture with the 99% the same influences. Maybe elected sheriffs are a bit better on average, but certainly not enough for it to show through ancedotaly or trust them in any capacity.

Honestly, a great question that I would have to think on. Whatever limits both their power, haha. Not really an answer, but I think what it boils down to is accountability. I work with a lot of state and federal cops. They are good people for the most part with good hearts. I am still incredibly weary of police on the whole. It seems that both commissioned and elected LEO lack the right level of accountability and we would do well to curb their immunity.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer and not kneejerk snark and downvotes like I'm getting elsewhere in the thread.

I think that I agree to a large degree, but with the caveat that elected sheriffs that don't serve their communities get voted out. Incoming elected sheriffs know well why their predecessors lost their seat. In theory, but to a much lesser degree, this should also apply to commissioned LEO, but often in large municipalities there's only one pool you can pull candidates from.

This isn't perfect, but it does largely function in places with sane government/electorate. Also it kind of just follows that in such cases abuse of power (and who it is abused against) is at the direction of voters.

These abuses happen because at some level, we want them to. Just not to us.

Aside: I would like to see more departments where the boss of cops is not just an appointment by politicians, but an elected position accountable to voters and not controlled by other political office.

The blind leading the blind. These companies and Sam are both devoid of any sort of ethical code aside from C.R.E.A.M.

protect ya neck is also one of their main ethical concerns

Hard agree. There was a time when I really enjoyed these packs of tan, grid moleskins that had covers you could also sketch on. Really convenient. But the pricing was too much. Paying a premium for what is essentially a designer notebook.

If Anthropic disappeared tomorrow due to running out of cash it would cause a great panic, no?

For who? A bunch of financiers that gamble with pension funds? The real panic is when they IPO and force 401Ks to buy into it.

Even so, it has a weird aftertaste that lingers on the palette. All sugar-free elixirs I have found to be subpar.

Some people are super tasters and they'll always have that problem. But most people stop noticing the aftertaste after a week or two of regular consumption. But I agree, when I started sugar free that aftertaste was nasty.

Now, the aftertaste of sweetened drinks is nasty, the lingering coy sweetness is vile.