You’ve bought the image they’re selling. If you think they’re idiots, it just gives them another mechanism to manipulate you.

I’m no fan of Bush Jr, but go watch some of his speeches.

Sometimes he says “nuclear”, sometimes he says “nuke-u-lar”.

That’s someone putting on an act. No one says it both ways.

Go watch any politician’s speeches, look for the subtle variations in their behaviours.

They’re not morons, they’re Machiavellian. Appearing to be a moron is just another tool in the box.

(That said, some genuinely are morons, but I’m not dismissing any one of them so lightly - even morons can be Machiavellian).

And in the end, all politics is about manipulation (or said more positively, inducing groups of people toward a shared goal). And politics exists in every single group of humans, no matter how small.

They read, a lot more than you probably realize, and probably a lot more than the average person.

They also have access to teams of analysts.

You need to read Machiavelli

Sophistry has always been king. We’ve at least been moving away from divinely chosen, but when most people can’t be bothered to understand sophistry exists…

They’re not all morons - some are, for sure. Those are the ones being manipulated by the smarter ones.

This also holds true in any group of people.

They get the moat hate? What’s your source?

Yes.

Fine is a general deterrent, restitution is separate.

Think fine for running a stop sign - that’s a deterrent for running the stop sign.

Yea, I don’t know how you drown in one, they’re very shallow. So shallow canal boats have a draft of 2-3 ft and still often have to stick to the center to avoid grounding or dragging along the bottom.

So yea, something in this story doesn’t add up.

I will often not mention my company in conversations, as it’s well-known and I don’t want anything I say or do associated with the company, just in case (risk management is a primary driver of the business).

So “Independent Contractor” is good enough, and vague enough.

That’s why you hire a caulkender!

Hahaha, oh, yes, compare an ideal system to reality.

Sheesh

Clearly you’ve never heard of plurality

This is already covered by existing laws

It protects everyone

Or are you OK with someone yelling “I’m going to kill you” and you have no legal recourse?

Define “hate speech”

Jealous!

Haven’t seen one in forever

No.

1. Use proper capitalization

2. Don’t attack people when they state they’re trying to understand what you’re saying, like you just did here with HikingVet.

You’re the issue here, as you demonstrated the exact same behaviour here with HikingVet, and are looking to blame others.

This isn’t about restrictiveness - it’s a problem of RCS being ass-backwards garbage.

This isn’t a an Android issue, it’s a Google and cell provider issue. And that RCS (like SMS), are based on ancient technology/concepts, and both need to just die.

SMS is based on the physical architecture of cellular networks, and has no error handling whatsoever - it’s a Best Effort transmission.

RCS uses a hardware-bound ID, something we decided was a Bad Idea 40 years ago, and is wholly dependent on cell provider support.

We have a protocol, TCP-IP, that eliminates all these issues. It’s been the networking standard since the mid-90’s when even Netware decided it was a superior solution to IPX/SPX. It’s wholly hardware independent (it’s not tied to a physical device’s ID), so you can transmit/receive from any device without having to update everyone else that this is your new device.

We have numerous IP-based instant messaging systems today, with one in particular (XMPP) being open, flexible, extensible.

There’s no use for an archaic solution like RCS, except keeping your messaging in a system controlled by Google and carriers.

Now that’s just mean!

(Enjoy my upvote, haha)

My pronouns are fuck you AI