> And yet we elected Jesus.

You mean that doctor?

> No, it was government mandates that played hell with peoples' social lives.

What did the government mandate about your social life?

Closing restaurants, bars, and movie theaters had a negative effect on social lives as a direct result of government mandates.

> Pit is also popular in my family when there's a gathering of us

We call Pit "The Yelling Game". For being over 100 years old, it's elegant, clever, and fun.

Concord grapes are pretty common in season in New York State, and I’m assuming the states nearby.

> A LOT of formerly pretty high quality brands have ended up getting sold off to brand management companies and the like.

That sounds fascinating... I'd love to read an article about that.

You make me almost curious enough to do some digging. So many "mom and pop" type shops end up having to sell out for various reasons. A few survive but it's not common.

I can hear the whooshing from over here.

> stop taking advantage of others weaknesses

What does it mean to have a weakness for purchasing T-shirts that read ”PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats”? That's not predatory; they're paying money for a t-shirt and (presumably) receiving said t-shirt.

Or for their Fanvue account, they're paying money to receive soft-core pornography, and they are receiving soft-core pornography.

This isn't a scam—they're paying money for a thing, and are receiving that thing. I could say "well, that's not a great thing to be spending money on", and it's not, but I don't think of sellers of off-color t-shirts as something that people need to be protected from.

I big part of the purchase decision making is attributed to the fact that they think they support a real person that is aligned with their ideology.

I'd wager most of them wouldn't have paid money on OnlyFans or purchased the hoodie if they knew the account was AI generated. So it is scam.

That's an assumption with no basis

I agree if the consumer is informed, clearly, that it is Ai, but based on the creator's comments, it seems the intention was to deceive. I suspect most people would not make the same purchases if they knew it was artificial.

> That is the funniest comment I have seen.

You say it's funny, but the rest of your comment makes me think you didn't realize it was a joke.

> the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something

What was the article about, again? Was it about respecting the rights of women?

We must make a distinction between the actions of the government (and the military) and the actions of some lunatic individuals, though.

I don’t think we do in this case. This is the very first line of the article:

> Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.

So here we’re talking about both the military and some lunatic individuals.

> I don't quite understand how its effective

It's the negotiation equivalent of rent-seeking, or parasitism. It requires deep relationships to have already been built, and it consumes those relationships in exchange for modest short term gain.

The authors of a powerful solver package were solving a different problem than the users of a powerful solver package, and so different tools may be appropriate.