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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2037 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 9, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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More than once, I've received an email with a link that goes to a PDF with a QR code, which leads to a website for usually making reservations or a payment or some such thing. Why would anyone want that??? I understand why someone might print a QR code for a paper poster, or in-person presentation, but in an email link?!? Multiple people have done this since Covid, including multiple school administrators.

When I receive these emails, I open up my computer and phone, load the PDF on my computer, scan the QR with my phone, load the site, copy the URL, email the URL to myself, then open it on my computer. Am I missing something essential about how this is supposed to work?

Relatedly, the schools around here have gone cashless. I can see how that would be convenient. But instead of using Square or something that charges 3% or so, they use a payment processor I've never heard of before that charges $1 per transaction, mostly for transactions of $5 - $10. Is it providing a real service of protecting the schools from liability somehow?

Am I missing something essential about how this is supposed to work?

You are supposed to dispose of your desktop computer and do everything on your phone. Age of computer is over, modern youff computer skills make average boomer look like hacker wizard.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I do not want to give my children phones, I hope by the time they are teens this nonsense is past, and I can give them boring phones where they can only call, text, and use maps. Things seem to be heading back that way among the people I know and read, which heavily overlaps with the sort of person who reads Jonathan Haidt. Unfortunately, it seems about as likely that by the time they are teens we will be living in an oligarchy ruled over by AI systems.

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