Oh, I skip FB and IG ads completely. It's crazy: I didn't even have to install anything, and the ads just disappeared one day.
But seriously, the "your attention is being monetized" model makes for such an awful experience for me. I'm envious of people who can enjoy the world and the Internet when ads are everywhere.
It came from a speaker a few years ago at the Davos World Economic Forum. Davos is where the ultra rich gather each year to plot out how to be even more evil.
My BS, unprovable hypothesis: The Golden Age of Piracy was actually a successful Socialist movement, with Nassau being a disruptively successful enclave of Socialism in action. The pirates deeply threatened the budding power structures in the US (not conjecture) and the entrenched powers in Europe. While some powers, most notably royalty, were willing to use pirates as mercenaries (privateers), there was an excess of democracy and human concern (somewhat my conjecture) among the Nassau pirates. The Nassau pirates had pensions, a form of worker's comp, disability, democratic command structures at sea, and healthcare (such as it was given the era). According to the historical texts on the Nassau pirates, there were almost no written records, which strikes me as especially odd since they had so many long-running financial and governing processes.
Thanks for digging that up. The details in this article are a "refreshing" change from most of what we see when the FBI arrest a terror plot suspect. "Our agents befriended a quiet loner. They then cajoled, pushed, and prodded this reluctant teenager into making a bomb for them. QED, BITCHES!"
Now I'm just waiting for Conservative d-bags (such as my parents) to start screaming about how we need to shut down the legal immigration too. The real kicker: they're both immigrants.
The lessons for communication and non-reactivity will pay dividends in every aspect of your interpersonal relations. Work, friendships, romantic relationships, even dealing with customer disservice.
As a very young kid, I thought there was a very hungry monster that lived inside vacuum cleaners. The switch was just a lever to open a flap and expose the monster's sucking hunger.
I had a partner for eight years. We met when we were both 31. She was my first monogamous relationship theretofore because I decided to give monogamy a try. She was utterly, screamingly boring in bed. There was nothing else notably wrong with the relationship, except for her unwillingness to communicate on anything beyond household, workaday topics. No oral (give or receive), no anal, not into foreplay, and she would just lay there. But no conflicts either. There was the advantage of she was always willing and ready to go without any foreplay or lube. She got off and claimed she was absolutely sexually satisfied. Sex wasn't even fun in the context of Free Use, which is a kink I enjoy. I tried to engage her in all kinds of Gottman Method relationship work, but she bluntly and explicitly refused.
At one point early in our relationship, she moved and clamped her vagina in a way that was quite enjoyable. "Honey, that was great! Please do that more." And for the rest of our relationship, any such complement was a sure-fire way to make sure it would never happen again. After eight years of nearly daily, invariably terrible sex, I stopped approaching her sex for three weeks. She never said a thing. On day 22, I broke up with her, and she was absolutely gobsmacked, claimed that I was throwing away eight years of great history. She hadn't even noticed that there had been no sex for three weeks.
In most jurisdictions, a note could be put on the driving record. If a pattern on aggressive driving were to be established, a prosecutorial or civil suit effort would have an easier time of litigating against that driver.
In my case, yes, there was paint damage from my bike, which would be evidence.
Fear indeed. I went to college in a very... provincial small city. Riding my bicycle around, I was regularly harassed by insecure assholes in pickup trucks, and run off the road twice. The one time I managed to get a license plate, the police claimed that without witnesses, they couldn't do anything. ACAB.
I added my 1911 to the strap of my messenger bag, at the top of my left shoulder, where the stainless frame would be plainly visible. I was suddenly given plenty of space on the road and even got occasional compliments when waiting at stoplights. It's disgusting that I would be a target for bullying without my pistol, but suddenly I was an okay guy with my penis extension where douchebag drivers could see it.
So yeah, I'm living proof that non-military open carry is only for scaredy cats.
You misspelled "the very first time you use it." 😁