stop selling the item until the incorrect price is corrected
Not a lawyer but couldn’t they just refuse to sell it to you? We all know it would be bullshit but couldn’t a company say “Oh that minimum wage clerk made a mistake, but don’t blame them, just an honest mistake.”
Or is the law, if it’s on the shelf, it must be honored?
The US Penny.
I know what you’re thinking, but you mentioned legislation being on the docket so I had to bring it up.
Per https://commoncentsact.com/
Legislative Status Update - January 2026
Production Status: Penny production ended November 12, 2025 via executive action by the Treasury Department. [Treasury FAQ]
Legislation Status: The Common Cents Act (H.R.3074/S.1525) remains pending in Congress.
Rounding Rules: No federal law mandates cash rounding. Only non-binding Treasury guidance exists. At least ten jurisdictions restrict rounding.
Legal Tender: Pennies remain in circulation and are legal tender indefinitely. [Source]
Congress can not pass anything, it’s embarrassing. Production of the US Penny already stopped. Basically everyone is fine with it. But there are some edge cases that require federal law to actually bring an end to the penny properly and make actual law what we expect everyone to do as a result… And they still haven’t done shit about it.
So Congress is never going to address Daylight Savings Time. They can’t even handle the penny.
Grey’s Anatomy
As someone who still watches let me assure you we all want it to come to an end. There was even a moment a few seasons ago where Meredith left and it seemed like we were set up for a perfect send off.
But it just kept going. Meredith is weirdly sometimes back despite living in Boston. But next season is probably the last season, and I’ve watched it all at this point, so what’s a little more. Right?
(It’s also still fine as background TV, so that’s probably why I still keep up.)
You’re right that putting people in bubbles is probably one way some of these things get worse. If all you see is toxic, toxic is the norm, now you’re always toxic.
Maybe they can tricked.
Although really what we’re talking about is the algorithm that currently exists being focused on highlighting terrible people doing terrible things. Can we turn that same algorithm around and use it for good?
Interesting article and I think it really highlights how toxic some parts of the Internet are. My only issue is the conclusion,
A social media ban for under-16s might prevent young boys seeing endless content that treats women with contempt and hate. Boys at this age are very susceptible to the cool and funny framing of what is, in reality, relentless misogyny. A ban might not fix the problem, but it would help. If society can’t stop it, it can show it disapproves.
Emphasis mine. Having grown up in a different era I can confirm that boys of a wide variety of ages, including much older “boys”, can also be scumbags. Even if we had the perfect technology to ban under-16s from social media, once they hit 16 they’d still be exposed to it, still become terrible people, and the author of this article, although a but older, would still see it. I don’t know if that really is a better world, just a slightly delayed one.
I don’t know the solution, but I remember reading once that some online game would put all the reported and abusive players into a special category where they would be forced to play only with each other. Maybe we can do that in this case.
Oh absolutely. There are laws the restrict cigarette advertising as an example.
I just doubt you could 100% eliminate/make illegal all types of advertising for private business.
Whoops, I said Congress, but meant the US House of Representatives (since that is what AOC is).
The Senate has an even 100, so plus another 8 on their side.
Weirdly the law.
The federal government may have some level of legal jurisdiction. If the power company stops running the coal plant, in potential violation, they may incur fines or worse. In your example it could be argued as criminal/willful negligence.
Since the federal government is a powerful entity, the power companies have decided it is cheaper to just follow the potentially legal directive until the matter is settled on court. In fact their argument is that they have to charge their customers twice, so the cost for them is actually fairly minimal because they’re just directly passing the cost on.
I don’t know the specifics of the language being used here, but as an example let’s say the law is, “In cases of emergency, the federal government may require power companies to keep their plants open.” A reasonable law. Except “emergency” isn’t defined. So we go to the courts to determine what is reasonable, which takes long time.
Within the US, the states of Maine, Vermont, Alaska & Hawaii all have a ban billboards. The general logic behind it is, “They ugly, nature pretty.” So as long as you live somewhere where “nature pretty” fits, you can probably argue based on that logic.
However no matter how far you stretch that argument, it probably only goes as far as public goods. Once we get into private business I don’t think you’ll have much luck.
As you walk into your nearest grocery store the outside might be covered in ads. Buy Pepsi. Buy Coke. Half off generic cola!
You pop into your local diner and the placemats have advertisements for a dozen local mechanics.
Just for numbers sake, “Accommodation and food services” (which would include bartenders) is the third largest US workforce at ~8%.
Congress The US House of Representatives has 435 members, so at least 35 or so should have a background in bartending or similar work if we really are having a representative government.
Sounds like we need more AOCs.
I like this better than not arguing or debating.
I think you can absolutely have a good argument or debate online, but you have to be doing so in good faith, as does the person you’re discussing a topic with.
Trolls of course are not. Learning to not feed them is sometimes difficult. But if you ignore/block them you’ll be just fine.
I would love to ask and learn more about alien society and government. On Earth we have ~200 recognized countries with a wide variety of different (or similar) governments and even more different societies with all sorts of unique quirks.
Do they have a similar setup on their planet? Planets? Were they historically ever similar to our own? How long is their recorded history?
Basically if they’re visiting us, they’ve already proven they have better technology than we do, what else do they have that’s better? Or for that matter what do we have that’s better?
McConnell Stalls
It is an election year after all.
I want to highlight what I found to be an important part of the article and why this hack is important.
The journalist wrote on their own blog,
At this year’s South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Championship
And they include zero sources (because it is a lie).
But the Google Gemini response was,
According to the reporting on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Championship
(Bolding done by Gemini)
The “reporting” here is just some dudes blog, but the AI does not make it clear that the source is just some dudes blog.
When you use Wikipedia, it has a link to a citation. If something sounds odd, you can read the citation. It’s far from perfect, but there is a chain of accountability.
Ideally these AI services would outline how many sources they are pulling from, which sources, and a trust rating of those sources.
Just to add additional context.
This is Cory Thiesse, who won silver in “mixed doubles curling”, with her curling partner Korey Dropkin on February 10th.
Cory is also a member of the women’s standard (4 person) curling team, who at the moment have a chance of also winning later in the week.
I admire your bravery to admit such a thing. You’re a fool, but a brave fool.
I’m not surprised, but I agree with the hot take, so maybe it’s only warm.
I think they keep interest in ActivityPub in order to keep regulators concerned with Antitrust at bay. The Fediverse isn’t a real threat in Meta’s view and keeping an engineer or two on it in order to stay invested is worth the cost.
Threads can say they are making an honest effort to work with the larger open source community and open federated internet. As an added bonus, it isn’t actually a lie. Now the effort they’re putting in is the absolute minimum, but it’s there.
Now I still do think this is a positive. While most people on Threads will probably never leave, it does introduce them to the wider Fediverse. It makes the Fediverse a less scary thing.
You can install Debian on your Chromebook like you would any app, which I feel makes it a bit less controlling since you have access to a complete Debian install and all the benefits that provides.
Windows also has WSL, which gives you Ubuntu, although that process isn’t quite as user friendly.