The licence over 100 pages long, with deliberately convoluted language no one ever expects you to read. Some services even block you from accepting if you haven’t scrolled to the end, but then most give a “Skip to bottom” button!

And since most EULAs are not grounded in reality and as such unworkable, they’re pretty much just a scare tactic.

I have to say, I have my doubts about that.

This is the way. Take their words at face value - but just the ones that you like. Repeat them like a parrot. Embellish them. Make up stories.

Facts truly don’t care about felings. But a lie repeated oft enough effectively acts like the truth.

Use their weapon against them.

To convince idiots, sometimes you have to play by idiotic rules.

And for the bootlickers out there: No, I’m not saying OC is lying or an idiot by any means. I feel like I have to spell this out precisely because of the unreasonableness of the times we live in. Some bootlicking facehugger is bound to come and take the most unreasonable interpretation of my words and sink thei facehugging claws into my mouth. Maybe not right here or right now, but inevitably time and time again.

It’s easier to screw over consumers than businesses.

Busunesses like to complain. They have long-term contracts. They have a lot of purchase power. They’re more likely tp swotch to a competitor. When they threaten, they’re more likely to go through with the threats since they have both money to burn and employees to blackmail with pay cuts.

Among other things.

There’s a lot of consumers, so those that do jump ship usually don’t cause a big dent in profits when they do. Consumers are also less likely to jump ship in the furst place since they have only their extended family and their family lawyer to look out for them (if). They usually have “bigger” problems than the electricity bill: car payments, mortgages, school bills, you name it.

Again, among other things.

It’s probably due to legal requirements. It’d be unisex if it could, but if not, pick a random gender for the bathroom to identify as. Pretty ironic.

Bee if you want to get stung, bird if you want to get shat on.

Either way, you’re fucked.

And here I thought it was almost at boiling point!

Honestly, advertising is very dystopian. Online tracking being the obvious first example.

But that’s not all. How should I block physical ads in the city? Not only does it ruin the view, but roadside billboards surely caused at least one death by distracting a driver, and ads can get quite distasteful.

Also, it’s not just roadside - they’re plastered everywhere! Buildings, bus stops, right in the middle of the sidewalk. Some are classic paper, some are of the TV screen type. Some are quite small and inconspicuous, but a lot are huge enough to be seen from at least half a mile away.

Physical ads don’t finance anything. They’re just obnoxious. I don’t know how succeptible to ads other people are, but for me it takes an actually good offer to entice me - and usually that’s heard on radio or seen on TV (as far as ads go).

Some economist please corrcxt me if I’m wrong, but: Trickle down may not work. However, trickle up should.

If you do say, UBI, people will spend the stuff. And the money will go to the big players. They’ll buy their food at Walmart. Or meds at Target Pharmacy. Or get a loan at JP Morgan.

Unlike, say Walmart, who won’t buy their huge private jet collection from the swathes of less-than-well-off people across all of America.

So even if UBI made people lazy, even if it made people less productive, the money will still disproportionately end up in the hands of the rich.

Equally serious (and just a bit more deranged of an answer):

Humans are not meant to do work. Physical or otherwise. This slavery thing where everyone, regardless of race, gender, orientation (and almost even age) we have going on is just degrading and nonsensical.

Humans should live in tightly-knit families and tribes. Of course, the woman should do the simpler housework like cleaning, cooking and tidying, while the father should do the more manual stuff like fixing things, growing plants, keeping animals and hunting.

Women should likewise be seperated from books because they are more likely ro succumb to the words of the devil. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is. Therefore men must educate their heirs (male, of course), while the wife should teach her daughters how to domthe chores.

If you can’t see how exposing a frail woman to the harsh reality of being the man of the house, try thinking of your own daughter.

Because historically (and for the most part today as well), it costs money.

Sure, today stuff like ChatGPT and the somewhat older Google Translate exists, but that doesn’t solve the cost issue. (And I’m skirting on the huge elephant in the room called quality for a bit of brevity).

There’s a huge chance someone paid a good chunk of money for all the books you find dirt-cheap at a flea market, check out at a library or happen to find in your own house.

Printing physical books is expensive. Publishers also want a margin, and a lot of authors want royalties.

In the end even if the publisher and author are both good souls demanding nothing, someone needs to foot the cost of printing. But before that, you’d need to go through non-trivial talks with most authors’ publishers and/or authors themselves.

Then you need to arange for translation, typesetting and printing if you’re not doing it yourself. That takes both time and money.

And if you were to do all that yourself, it’d be a huge time investment, with a potential lawsuit if you don’t do those damn talks. So most just don’t bother.

Businesses are incredibly inefficient, even though some are “successful” and have a lot of cash to burn. They need to pay workers, bills, buy and fix equipment, and of course, a cut needs to go to the top people. Usually the “golden” 80-20 rule applies to almost everything: 20% of books make 80% of money, 20% of employees make 80% of money, and a different 20% of people do 80% of the work, etc. And of course, in this world, it’s all about the money.

A translation is usually initiated by a publisher that has a manager who wants to get his section’s metrics up to go cry to his own manager about how good he is to get a raise or not get fired. This is a daily grind. Sometimes (but quite rarely), that leads the manager to the decision of publishing a new book. Usually such actions are guided by things like bestseller lists, reviews and personal biases of the manager and the company as a whole. Sometimes the publisher hires an agency to try to approximate the demand for such a book (even more money spent). Then they do the talks. This also costs money, and the result is also a cost of money (the royalties to be paid). Then comes translation, then printing, then distribution to bookstores, and finally advertising.

These are just the steps that come to mind. All cost money, and all the books you see for sale in a bookstore went through all of these steps. For a library, not as much (but still the vast majority) did.

Sure, not every situation is the same, so there are companies that specialize in providing translations of well-known works or companies whose manager at one point said they need to publish 25 translations yearly (instead of one individual one), so they kind of “flood” the market.

But sometimes it’s just the whim of a newspaper whose management thought printing classic works of shorter length and bundling them with their newspaper would drive up newspaper sales.

It’s incredible how each document (edition of a book or otherwise) has multiple stories (of the author, publisher, translator, seller, advertiser, buyer, worker in logistics/delivery driver,…) that shaped the life of it. Some lasted a few hours, and some took hundereds of man-hours. All of this somehow translates to money.

That’s the long answer.

The short one is: 80% the economy and 20% human laziness.

My main gripe with this travesty of a “Start menu” is that it isn’t the Tom Hanks movie of a similar name.

The other is that even if it were, it won’t just play, but rather send you to the shiniest new subscription service to subscribe.

It’s a both-ways situation.

They allow only the Fisher-Price version of phones so less-than-power-users don’t do something stupid.

They also allow only Fisher-Price so power users can’t beat Celebrite as easily.

Unlawful detention, obstruction of justice, overstepping bounds,…

Wait, qualified immunity.

What a joke.

Nor does it “read” its input. It doesn’t even process it.

It’s built/tuned using it. Or as AI techros would say, trained.

But a “backdoor” which is swung wide open if you don’t secure it isn’t really a backdoor. It’s more akin to an open window.

Wearing a pink blouse and skirt, complete with rainbow-colored nails.

One is too little.

Our Glorious Leader needs at least three.

Ideally, he’d retroactively get one for each year after his International Debut in Cinema (Home Alone 2)!

They should change their name to Antitethical then.

To me, the peak in “peak 18-year-old” to me sounds like the Urban dictionary definition of peak than anything else.

We’re @ peak 18 yo rn & its LIT AF🔥