Rekliner

Yeah, there was just recently a big scandal in my city where one guy bought 20 houses with 9 shell companies. Attempted to do shitty flipping jobs. Selling the houses from one company to the next so they didn't immediately jump up in price in the real estate history.

The sad part is: if he hadn't overpriced the market and sold more of them he would've gotten away with it, but he waited too long and got stuck. But until that point nobody knew one guy had 20 houses, it was 2 per company on paper.

The concept of the patent office is a genuine one if too idealistic. Having been through the process it did feel like they pushed back for revisions with the sole intention of squeezing some more money out of the filer. Perhaps like insurance companies rejecting every claim initially.

The protection it affords is questionable. It's really just a 1st place ribbon you can bring to court if you have the money to sue somebody copying you... A lot of that is glorified brand warfare: if you're too similar to WD40 they'll sue you regardless of what's in your can.

Though originally encouraged to be layman friendly it now strongly uses overly technical jargon to obscure the invention while still legally protecting it.

That said, it holds a lot of collective knowledge that us nerd types can reference when innovating. Otherwise that knowledge is locked up in private corporate data stores or college curriculums. It's the original open source repo. It eeks out a win in the big picture despite the abuses capitalism inflicts on it.

Which seemed to stay on the rails for many decades...but with a global capitalist economy there is currently no authority which can keep multinational corpo's and billionaires on the rails. They live between the rules of any one country.

I find that for most people who do it intensely it's a calling, whereas others are new to it and surprised how simple and easy it is to contribute. Don't overthink how to make the best impact, just schedule some time and search online for groups. For those looking to dip a toe in:

Trash pickup days are a great casual entry point. It's a good mix of "people are the worst" and "I helped". It's not that there's some volunteering culture that gatekeeps, but less organized groups will suck in an infinite amount of your free time because the potential work is never done. More developed organizations often have casual days for newcomers.

Tornado cleanup has been a next step though obviously disaster specific (America ofc). I suppose any disaster cleanup is equivalent. We're not a religious family but in America we found that churches were the rally points for cleanup efforts... Which led to a lot of junk mail later.

Soup kitchens & food distribution to homeless in colder months is an easy way to contribute some help to people who are immediately in need without committing to community service as a lifestyle.

I'm curious what queer Eastern values are unconventional to queer Western values? I assume her views are common to queer Chinese.

As in: fuck you Google, you're never going to be able to monetize this in any way and don't include it in your search results.

I'm sure Google is happy to put up with the small minority of people with private videos for their own use because they still get metadata from the uploads and plays.

WTF, that's your takeaway? She was one of the few voices warning us about security risks from the inside. Her point is that social media has one weapon: the streisand effect... But when instead there is silence then it is known there will be no accountability. The government will be emboldened by this. It wasn't a metaphor, she thinks they will really kill her now if she tweets more, and less people like her will be willing to post in the future.

Inevitably these discussions lead back to Nixon and his various paranoias.