Rov_Scam
23hr ago
Presumably game theory should keep that from happening. If one assumes that the cop is going to pull over the last person in line, then no one should want to be the last person in line, and the line shouldn't form to begin with. The correct way to do this is to wait until the speeder gets a couple hundred yards ahead. That way, if there's a cop he's just going to pull out as soon as the guy passes him and you'll be safely behind. You still need to keep him within sight though, in case he makes a turn.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
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If nobody is around it doesn't matter, though I do anyway out of force of habit. People learning to drive should always do it to develop the habit.
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Depends on your definition of a full stop. If you're technically still rolling but practically stopped, I'd say that counts if you're in an area with little to no traffic. To me a "full stop" would be to the point that you feel a slight jolt unless you know how to do a proper chauffeur stop.
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I don't have a problem with taking an extra five or ten, but I don't think you have a right to complain if you get stuck behind someone who is doing the limit.
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No. The left lane is for passing. It's also for letting people onto the road from a merge or from making a right from a side road. It's okay to ride the left if you're consistently going above the speed of traffic in the right-hand lane, as it's safer than constantly merging back and forth, though if someone wants to go faster than you you should move over and let them by.
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It depends on the situation. In urban freeway driving, it's not a 100% guarantee that someone is going to let you in, and you have to be ready to just move. Assuming it's safe to do so, cutting off one person is better than blocking the lane while you wait to be let in.
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No, the Categorical Imperative and all that.
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Per @gattsuru, you should turn your headlights on earlier than you think you need to, and if you have automatic headlights, set them to their most sensitive setting. I've been pulled over at dusk for not having headlights on when there was more than enough light for good visibility. Keep in mind that it's as much about being seen as it is seeing, and any time headlights would be noticeable above the normal glare of the sun helps with that.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Illegal immigrant workers are the market distortion...
No they aren't, at least not any more than importing any other economic input is a market distortion. Telling an employer that he can't use labor from Mexico isn't fundamentally different than telling him he can't use iron ore from Australia, or electronic components from South Korea. You can make public policy arguments for why certain market distortions are necessary, but they're only distortions if you presuppose some kind of Peronist ideal where the only economic activity that matters is that which takes place inside your own borders. As @AlexanderTurok says, MAGA Maoism.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Keep in mind that my analysis is based on the subset of people who applied for disability, and not the population at large. Further, blue collar workers with musculoskeletal problems accounted for 50% of approvals, not 50% of total claims. This number may actually be a bit high, since most of the death bed cases were sent to a special unit that I didn't deal with. As a proportion of total claims, I'd say they were no higher than 10%. For volume of total claims, the generally unhealthy accounted for the highest proportion, followed by psycho kids and complex cases. This is taking into account that death bed cases had enough volume to merit their own unit to expedite them, though since I didn't work there I can't comment on volume.
While I don't doubt that blue collar work is harder on the body than other work, disability isn't particularly common. In my current job, I defend industrial equipment manufacturers and contractors in products liability cases, and out of hundreds of cases I've handled, I've seen maybe three or four where the plaintiff was receiving disability, or had even made a disability claim, and this is for a subset of the population that worked industrial jobs for decades. You also need to take into consideration that while blue collar work is more likely to lead to legal disability, that likelihood is largely independent of whether it's likely to contribute to the underlying medical condition. People who work office jobs where they sit on their ass all day don't quit work and apply for disability because of bum knees, and even if they did they'd be denied. It's not that the jobs causes the disability so much as it is that the disability prevents them from doing the job.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
There is a farm near me that a lot of kids wanted to work at because they hired 14 year olds. Few lasted. You don't get paid by the hour, you get paid by the bushel, and it's well under a dollar per bushel. You aren't chatting with your friends because no talking is allowed. Sunup to sundown every day, and you can forget about taking a vacation. And this was a family farm with a grocery store and a pumpkin patch with hayrides, not some agribusiness with thousands of acres.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Iran has been weeks away from having a functional bomb for the last 20 years. It may sound like a joke, but I'm guessing it's their actual policy. There's currently a fatwah against nuclear weapons, and while Western ears may hear that as a half-hearted "we really mean we aren't developing nukes", the Iranian government violating its own fatwah would cause a loss of credibility that could be fatal to the regime. The goal appears to be "nuclear capable", meaning that if there were some existential threat, like a full-bore invasion, they could quickly produce a nuclear weapon, because at that point the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Unless Israel seriously ratchets up these attacks, I doubt we'll ever see Iran openly testing nuclear weapons or making public announcements that they have them. Because if they do that apropos of nothing, what do they have to gain? People get even more pissed off than they already are, and Saudi Arabia starts its own nuclear program.
The categories aren't really correct. 1 and 2 don't make sense because disability is a binary, and the benefit amount is determined at the financial qualification stage. This is the preliminary stage where SSA makes sure that claimants are legally qualified and has to be completed before they'll send it to adjudication. Once we start considering medical eligibility it's a binary; you don't get more money because you're "more disabled" or whatever. The sole exception would be that there's an optimization that can be made for people who continue to work but make below the financial eligibility threshold, but that really has nothing to do with the determination office. 3 isn't really a category because I had no way of knowing whether someone was using an attorney, what kind of advice they were getting, or whether they genuinely thought they were disabled. I'd break down the claimants into the following categories:
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The Classic Case: The first category consists of the typical 50+ blue-collar worker (usually) who has some kind of musculoskeletal disorder (back problems being the most common) that prevents them from doing heavy labor. When I was there, these probably constituted half of our approvals. These people were genuinely hurt, but may or may not have been disabled, depending on the severity of their condition. For example (real case, though my memory isn't precise), Larry was a 55 year old black guy who worked as a welder for most of the 20 previous years, no other employment. His back problems had been developing for some time, causing him to miss work. About a year prior he had back surgery and was off work for a while recovering, and felt good doing work around the house. He tried to go back to work once he was medically cleared, but he only lasted a few weeks. He wasn't having the constant pain he was having before, but 8 hours of bending over, kneeling, and crawling around exacerbated the pain, which went away with rest. The medical records were about what one would expect from someone experiencing the symptoms he described. Easy approval.
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The Generally Unhealthy: People with myriad legitimate health problems that don't rise to the level of a disability. These people are usually over the age of 40, can be male or female, and have significant employment history, though mostly at the kind of jobs that don't pay particularly well. They have HBP. They have diabetes. They have fibromyalgia. They have back pain. They have a heart condition. They're obese (usually, though not always). These tend to be the most annoying cases to deal with because the application asks them to specify the conditions for which they're claiming disability for, but if (more like when) we find they have 500 other problems we have to ask if it affects their ability to work, and of course it does, so now we have to keep requesting records from doctors that take forever to receive and don't contain any usable information. The worst part is that they are all on antidepressants they got from a PCP and they've never seen a psychiatrist. So when they tell us their anxiety and depression affects their ability to work we have to schedule as psych workup, which takes forever to schedule because these people always live in rural areas with one guy who's willing to accept the low rates we pay for them to fill out significantly more paperwork than usual. Once they actually see somebody who confirms that they aren't so anxious they can't go to the grocery store without freaking out, they get denied.
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The Complex Cases: People who obviously can't work but only due to complicated situations that are hard to qualify under the existing criteria. People with lingering stroke recovery symptoms, people with rare auto-immune disorders, rare diabetic conditions, people who are fine most of the time but have conditions that flare up every couple months and put them in the hospital for 2 weeks, during which time they lose their jobs. It's 50/50 whether these are approved or denied upon initial determination. If they get someone who looks at the big picture, they'll be approved; if they get someone who is a stickler for the rules, they'll be denied. All supervisors would tell you to deny these people. If they appeal, they'll almost certainly be approved.
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The Psycho Kids: These are people under the age of 30 who have never had a job that pays above minimum wage and no education beyond high school who are claiming disability due to vague depression/anxiety. Again, they're taking medication but it's unlikely they've ever seen an actual mental health professional, and if they did it was something like they talked to a therapist once or twice. They certainly aren't receiving any regular psychiatric treatment, and no suicide attempts or hospitalizations. These are almost always rural whites. They are invariably denials.
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The Accidental Cases: These are similar to the first type of case except the claimant is younger and is claiming disability not based on a degenerative condition but on the inability to due his job following a traumatic injury. they are usually misinformed about the law, however, and think that they're disabled because they can't go back to their normal job, and are usually under this impression because they worked with an older guy who got it. Unfortunately for them, as long as they're capable of doing a sedentary job, they aren't disabled. One guy, who broke his back in a motorcycle accident, told me his doctor told him he wouldn't be able to be a mechanic anymore and should do something with computers. He then jokingly told me that he didn't know anything about computers. Though he didn't realize it, this was practically an admission from his doctor that he was still able to work. These cases are almost always denials.
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The True Psychos: These are the real psych cases, almost always SSI, usually involving younger or homeless claimants. Mental retardation, schizophrenia, anxiety/depression serious enough to end in multiple hospitalizations, severe bipolar disorder. Children usually also have serious behavioral problems at home or at school. Usually approvals, with a few weird denials mixed in due to the occasional odd circumstance.
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The Death Bed Cases: These are people with terminal diseases who aren't going to survive for much longer. There's an entire division that deals with nothing but these to get the approvals in faster, though in some cases there's an expedited process where they can start receiving benefits before full approval. Always approved.
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The One-Shot Cases: People who have one weird condition that obviously doesn't qualify them, but they apply anyway on the off chance they're approved. One woman in her early 30s applied because of heavy vaginal bleeding. This also includes people who have already retired, get some condition, and apply for SSDI to top up their pensions before they qualify for regular benefits. One guy who had a desk job with the state Auditor General's office tried applying because he started having mini-strokes after he retired, though he was hard-pressed to explain how they would have theoretically prevented him from working had he not been retired. These are denials.
I hesitate to categorize them based on genuine cases versus those that are simply trying to game the system because, with the possible exception of the psycho kids and the one-shot cases, I don't really think that anyone is consciously trying to game the system. The rest of these people are either genuinely disabled or genuinely think they're disabled. The classic cases are actually disabled but will go back to work if they can. The generally unhealthy aren't disabled but are convinced they are, the complex cases may or may not be disabled but they can be forgiven for thinking they might be, the accidental cases think they are based on a misunderstanding of the law, the true psychos are disabled but might not know it themselves, same with the death bed cases. Even the one shot cases have a lot of people think that they're disabled based on the simplistic formula of medical condition + makes my job difficult = permanent disability.
And even if some people are consciously trying to game the system, their cases are so obviously bullshit that no one trained to adjudicate them would ever consider approving them. These articles can cite various doctors and lawyers all they want, but even with coaching, nobody who is willing to "retire" because $945/month is forthcoming is intelligent enough to keep up an elaborate ruse for decades. In my career since, I've had to prepare witnesses for depositions, and while I'm not going to say that witnesses never lie in depositions, I can say that it's not because of anything theur attorneys told them to say. Properly preparing a witness for deposition takes days, unless they're a corporate representative who has testified several times before. Even for a corporate witness, it's not easy to prepare them to answer questions in a way that isn't inadvertently damaging. And these are people with college degrees and careers at the highest levels of business. Some hillbilly who barely graduated high school isn't going to be able to effectively fake disability no matter how many doctors and lawyers talk to him, because he's not going to know how to answer the questions. I'd be more worried about a legitimate claimant being denied because they gave the answers they thought the adjudicator wanted to hear than someone who gets denied because they answered honestly. Unless they have a really sophisticated understanding of how the process works, they're not going to be able to do it, and the factors are complicated enough that they're not going to get such an understanding. Even the people here, or who write psych blogs, or articles from NPR, or who are physicians treating claimants, seem to have such an understanding.
Edit - Pinging @ThomasdelVasto
Rov_Scam
2d ago
There's an entire list of unskilled sedentary jobs as they appear in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles that "exist in significant numbers in the national economy". As long as someone is able to do one of these jobs, they aren't disabled (assuming they're under 50 and thus can be expected to adjust to new work). Most of these are obscure specialized jobs that involve some kind of industrial assembly that con be done entirely sitting down. An example:
Label Pinker
Tends machine equipped with pinking attachment that cuts strips of labeling material into individual labels: Positions roll of material on holder and inserts end in feeding mechanism. Turns dial to set counter for specified number of labels to be cut. Starts machine and observes cut labels to detect cutting defects. Removes defective labels and notifies machine fixer to adjust machine. Packs specified number of labels in box. May tend machine that cuts labels without pinking and be designated Label Cutter (narrow fabrics). GOE: 06.04.05 STRENGTH: S GED: R2 M1 L1 SVP: 2 DLU: 77
The relevant symbols below are that the strength is listed as sedentary, defined as:
Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally (Occasionally: activity or condition exists up to 1/3 of the time) and/or a negligible amount of force frequently (Frequently: activity or condition exists from 1/3 to 2/3 of the time) to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time, but may involve walking or standing for brief periods of time. Jobs are sedentary if walking and standing are required only occasionally and all other sedentary criteria are met.
And the Specific Vocational Preparation is 2, meaning that for the specific job, the typical worker would be able to achieve an average level of proficiency in less than 1 month. There are a ton of jobs like this you've never heard of, though whether or not they are actually realistic options for the claimant is irrelevant. From what I recall, the law specifically states that it doesn't matter whether such a job is actually available or whether they'd actually be able to get the job if it were available. A lot of people think this is ridiculous, but it underscores the point that disability is for people who physically can't work at any job they are qualified to do, not for people who physically can't work available jobs that they have a chance of actually getting. Saying "but there aren't any jobs as a label pinker" is basically saying that the reason you don't have a job is because you can't find one, not because you can't do one.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I wouldn't put too much stock in that article. The treating physician has very little say in whether a claimant qualifies for disability. Disability isn't a medical condition, it's a legal status based on ability to work, and ability to work can't always be determined by a medical diagnosis (and when it can, that's what the listings are for). The determination of disability is made by and adjudicator in consultation with a doctor employed by the state. This doctor does not actually examine the patient but reviews medical records to find evidence of limitation. He offers an opinion of what the claimant is capable of based on the records, but the legal determination is ultimately up to the adjudicator.
I would also note that it's incredibly uncommon for any treating physician to offer an opinion about a claimant's ability to work, or even to actively participate in the process. Protocol calls for the adjudicator to attempt to call the physician who treats the condition they're claiming disability for, and the only times a doctor was ever willing to speak to me were in cases where the patient was in such bad shape that their disability was almost a given regardless, with the exception of one where a woman had an unusual condition but no money for regular treatment and an ER doctor actually got on the line to explain it to me. Other than that, they aren't even willing to fill out the forms we send them, and take a month to even send the medical records. Occasionally they'll mention in the chart that the patient told them they were applying for disability, but that's usually as far as it goes.
What we looked for wasn't whether the doctor commented on disability specifically, but on their ability to work. Even this was rare, though. There were occasional instances of orders not to lift above so many pounds or walk too far or whatever, but the determination was made based more on clinical signs than on opinions. Even when a physician made a clear statement that the claimant couldn't continue to do their job, our doctors would note the opinion, say they gave it "appropriate" weight, and make their own assessment based on objective markers. If the objective markers weren't there, our doctor wasn't going to recommend disability based on the treating physician's say so.
As far as education goes, that's not something our doctor would touch, or even look at. If you're under 50 and capable of doing sedentary work, you aren't getting disability regardless of your education level. "Education" is kind of a misnomer anyway; whether or not you can do a job doesn't depend on your education level but whether you've done the job in the past 20 years, and the level of Specific Vocational Preparation required as defined by the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. At this point it gets complicated, and beyond age 50 we start looking at transferable skills and the ability to adjust to other work. So you can have a law degree from Harvard but if you're over 50 and did manual labor your whole career it doesn't matter. If you're a high school graduate and only have done office jobs your entire career it doesn't matter. If you're under age 50 and are capable of doing unskilled sedentary work, you aren't getting disability except in unusual circumstances.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I worked for the state disability bureau in 2011, and I can confirm that your theory is basically correct. There was a huge application backlog stemming from the recession, and a huge chunk of it was people in their 50s who were laid off from blue-collar jobs and claimed bad backs, shoulders, etc. from slinging sheetrock for 40 years or whatever. The reason the bulk of the beneficiaries are in their 50s is because the law makes it very difficult to qualify if you are under 50; you have to either have a condition that meets a defined listing (and the listings are for the kinds of things that if you have no one's going to question your ability to work), or to be completely incapable of doing sedentary work. If you're over 50, it's assumed you can't adjust to other work, so you can only be sent back to a job you've done in the past 20 years. In some cases, it may be determined that you can do lighter work similar to what you did before (e.g., an auto mechanic (medium duty grade) can work as a tech at a quick lube place (light duty grade)) but that's pretty rare. If you're over 50 and already have an office job you're also out of luck, since you're effectively given the same standard as an under 50.
So a lot of people who were laid off, especially from the construction industry, especially those who were close to retirement anyway, just filed for whatever injuries they had accumulated over the years and said that was the reason they stopped working. To be fair, though, a lot of these people ended up going back to work while their claims were pending, so I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. The difference between then and now is that people above 50 but below 62 were part of the largest generational cohort in US history, so there were simply more of them. In 2008 only the oldest boomers had reached 62m and the youngest were still in their 40s. By 2020, everyone born before 1958 was 62 or older, and the youngest were already in their mid 50s. This gives 6 years worth of people to make claims, with the number going down every year.
A lot of the Boomers who retired during COVID did so because they already had enough savings to retire. The ones who didn't weren't likely to be laid off either, since COVID unemployment hit the service industry mostly and didn't really affect much else. Car mechanics and pipefitters weren't getting laid off, and if they were they were the ones at the bottom of the totem pole, not the ones who had been in the union for decades. The 2020 recession was also sharp and brief, unlike the 2008 recession where the recovery seemed to drag on for years until the job market felt normal again. It wasn't until 2013 that extended unemployment relief was ended.
So yeah, now that most of these people are on regular Social Security, and there hasn't been a comparable recession to cause a flood of new applicants, and the generational cohort of people in their 50s is smaller than it was before, there's no reason to have expected claims to keep rising. The 2010s projections were hitting right as the flood of applications was already peaking and about to decline.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I guarantee you they would disappear entirely if that were the case, since cyclists don't ride on the freeway.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I don't entirely disagree with your general point, but metro stops don't have to be the big stations we usually associate with them. This stop in suburban Pittsburgh (and within walking distance of the home of wannabe Trump assassin Thomas Crooks) is pretty common and not too expensive to build. A lot of the country streetcar stops used to be like this before they were removed in the 1960s. The only catch is that the train has to have an additional door in the front to accommodate the lower-level of the station, and as a consequence, people who intend on getting off at those stops need to make sure they ride in the front car.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
tl;dr I need to get to work on time or pick up food for dinner, I'm not interested in being delayed or inconvenienced to accommodate some bum or some stranger's vanity hobby.
I can count on one hand the number of minutes per month I'm delayed by a cyclist. On the other hand, every time the Penguins or Pirates play a weekday home game I'm treated to at least ten minutes of extra sitting in traffic so a bunch of suburbanites can treat themselves to a night of overpriced disappointment. And I'm just trying to get home or the grocery store; I'm sure there are other people out there who have jobs at the hospital to get to, or something even more important than my convenience. So if people's recreation getting in the way of convenience is the standard to set, then cyclists on public roads should be way down at the bottom of the list of things we need to get rid of.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
And if you can tell me where exactly in the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code it says that the posted limits are only suggestions and motorists are free to drive whatever speed they want provided it lies within the engineering design speed then I'd say you have a point. But you seem to have missed mine. I'm not arguing that we should ticket everyone who takes five or ten miles per hour, just that those people can't turn around and complain when a cyclist does something that's technically illegal but otherwise makes sense and isn't particularly unsafe.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
The difficult position goes beyond basic safety concerns. No one wants them on the road, but no one wants them off the road, either. When Peduto was mayor of Pittsburgh, he went on junkets to Europe to look at their bicycle infrastructure and spent a lot of money and political capital trying to build it out at home. This earned him the derisive nickname "Bike Lane Bill", followed by endless bitching about how the lanes and trail improvements were a waste of money and took away valuable street parking and travel lanes. Some of the more astute opponents make the argument that roads are paid for with fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, and that bicycles should have to be registered if they want to use the road. I usually respond by pointing out that 1. None of the cyclists you're complaining about are going to put their bikes away due to an annual fee that costs less than a tank of gas, and 2. If I'm paying for the whole road, I'm using the whole road.
The second one is a bit of a joke, but it underscores the fact that the whole argument is bogus. People complaining about cyclists aren't really concerned because they're causing wear and tear on the roads or are freeloading. If all the bicycles that regularly use urban roads paid $50/year for the privilege, these people wouldn't suddenly stop bitching.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I would take this argument more seriously if there weren't a similar set of traffic laws that most drivers assume don't apply to them. A friend of mine, who is a retired engineer from PennDOT, said of speed limits that "they aren't suggestions; they're requirements". I've since decided I wouldn't exceed the posted limit if I could help it, though I admittedly often can't. This often results in such behavior as tailgating, honking, flashing brights, and passing in a restricted area, all because I have the tenacity to comply with the law. How many vehicles actually come to a full stop at an intersection when they don't expect to be waiting a while? How many people run red lights because they automatically gun the accelerator every time they see a yellow light, even if they can easily stop in time?
I hear a lot of excuses for this behavior, from the practical ("9 you're fine") to the absurd ("speeding is actually safer because a vehicle that isn't keeping up with traffic causes more accidents when people try to pass'). But people keep doing this shit and then complain about a cyclist who doesn't stop and dismount at a lonely intersection. I don't ride in the city regularly, and when I do I'm not going to blow through a red light or switch from the road to the sidewalk depending on what's more convenient. But I'm also going to coast through intersections with stop signs if I'm going slowly enough to see that there isn't any traffic coming and I can easily stop if need be. There's a general social compact that we're willing to tolerate certain rule-bending when it comes to traffic laws, and if you're going to insist on strict enforcement for me then I expect the same of you.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I wouldn't doubt that Abbott could win the nomination in the absence of a Trump favorite, but I don't see it happening if there's an Anointed One
Rov_Scam
4d ago
That doesn't really change the crux of the issue, which is 1. This isn't much different than other products that have been around decades, and 2. It isn't going to help you collect on the judgment. Honestly, a how-to on the subject published by a reputable company like Nolo (in the US) is likely available at a local library and will provide a broad based knowledge that can be helpful to understanding the process, especially if something unexpected arises. Filling out AI prompts can't help with that. It can answer questions, but the software already comes with disclaimers that it's not legal advice, though I doubt the AI knows the difference and will keep itself from answering if it gets into that territory.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
So what can’t these systems do today?
They can't solve any problems that anyone asked to solve. It seems like every piece of software is touting new AI-integrated features, except they can't do anything other than generate text I didn't ask for. I more or less write for a living, but I don't need AI to write for me, and it isn't even capable of doing the kind of writing I need it to do. The best case scenario is that it can generate pro-forma motions and the like, but it would take me just as long to input the information into AI as it would to just type it into the document myself.
On the other hand, there's a lot of stuff relating to the software itself that so-called "artificial intelligence" should be able to make easier, but simply can't. For instance, last week I was drafting a document using another document as a template. It had a numbered list. I deleted some of the irrelevant items and replaced them with other items I had pasted from a different document. Except this completely fucked up the numbering system so that it ended at 6 and then started over again at 1. It also caused this weird indentation mismatch. I just wanted to get everything uniform from the top down, and I didn't really care what the formatting looked like, so long as it was consistent. I tried to fix it on my own but couldn't figure out what was wrong, even after searching the internet. Then it dawned on me that this would be the perfect problem for the AI. I very specifically described the problem to the AI assistant and described how I wanted it to look. I was informed that it could not fix the problem. I was informed that it couldn't even tell me how to fix the problem. Same with the AI assistant in Adobe Acrobat.
This seems like it would be the biggest gain for AI technology, especially for complicated pieces of software that frustrate users to no end. If I could just tell the computer what to do in plain English instead of needing specialized knowledge, it would solve a lot of problems. But apparently this isn't possible. They're more interested in slapping a chatbot onto it and claiming it's now intelligent. Bullshit. UI issues are some of the biggest complaints users have, and coming up with an interface so straightforward would give any company a competitive advantage. Remember how clunky Word was before the ribbon? But instead we're supposed to think that because it can generate sloppy text it's somehow going to put us out of work. The truth is, it can't even format it correctly.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Grey vinyl plank should have been banned before it ever hit the market. I think it had to do with that farmhouse kitsch thing that was popular a few years back. The thing that pissed me off about the whole trend more than anything else was that, having grown up in a semi-rural area, it looked nothing like any farmhouse I'd ever been in. I'm guessing that the grey is supposed to look like weathered wood? Except wood only looks like that if it's been outside for years, and wood from inside a house doesn't ever look like that. Luckily my house was built in the 1940s and has real hardwood, but if I didn't have it and couldn't afford to put it in, I'd at least pick something that imitates real wood. If it isn't already obvious from the material that it isn't real wood, I'm not going to let the color just give it away.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Considering the same people aren't in charge, having declined to continue their leadership due to what you just posted, I don't think that's a possibility. It's also worth pointing out that Democratic leadership doesn't pick the candidate, the voters do.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Color isn't making a comeback any time soon, for the same reason that wallpaper and wall-to-wall carpeting aren't making comebacks any time soon. Millennials are old enough to remember to eerie feeling of walking into a house that hadn't been updated since 1977 that had orange carpeting in one room and yellow wallpaper in another and harvest gold kitchen appliances on top of a fake brick linoleum floor. We're old enough to remember bathrooms with pink tile and no one thinking this was something that needed to be changed. It didn't help that these houses invariably smelled like cat piss and cigarette smoke. When people started tearing this shit out in the 90s, everything seemed so much cleaner, even if the result would still be dated by today's standards. It also didn't help that all of this stuff was deteriorating by the time we saw it, so it didn't have the same look that a recreation or picture in a magazine has today. This isn't to say that nobody uses color, but it's really easy to fuck up if you don't know what you're doing. When I was in college a lot of people convinced their landlords to let them paint and a lot of times they'd pick something really bold that wasn't pleasant to be in for long, and it looked like the color was chosen by a college student.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I'm a lawyer, and I'm not impressed by this product. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in the US, debt collection in small claims court is without question the simplest thing you can do, to the point that it's one of the few legal things I'm already comfortable telling people to go ahead and do themselves. The service they appear to be providing doesn't seem much different from a number of commercial products already available in the US. I can't see how this is meaningfully different than a software package that completes forms for you, or books that provide forms for you to copy and fill out. Hell, these days most courts and some advocacy websites have downloadable forms for stuff like this.
Aside from that, though, I'm not sure who this product is actually for. Individuals loan each other money occasionally, but it isn't that common given how easy it is to get credit. The website makes it look like they're targeting small businesses with unpaid invoices, but how many small businesses have unpaid invoices to consumers? I don't think I've ever bought a product where the vendor agreed to ship it to me along with an invoice. Most of these unpaid invoices are from sales to other businesses, and if other businesses aren't paying, it's because either 1. They can't pay or 2. They have a reason for not paying. The AI product seems set up to expect a default judgment, and it is the case that most debt collection cases result in default judgments. However, most of these cases are consumer credit cases initiated by banks. They're worth it for banks to pursue because most individuals have jobs with money regularly coming into bank accounts that can be levied by court order (FWIW, the AI product won't help you with this step of the process, which is much more difficult than getting the initial judgment). Most businesses that aren't paying their bills and aren't contesting them are bordering on insolvency. The reason most of these claims aren't pursued isn't because of legal fees, it's because the judgments aren't worth any more than the paper they're printed on.
Do you remember the 2006 and 2008 elections? Republicans lost 14 senate seats and 52 house seats, plus the presidency. While there were certainly other issues bogging down the Republicans, their steadfastness in a losing war was the big issue.
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