Count Or Spam?

[MetaKnight0011]

Infernape.

[Ruby]

Blaziken

[Manqoba]

Emboar

[MetaKnight0011]

Ruining Security.

When you're at an airport, do you ever feel nervous? Feel safe with TSA since they protect you and stop terrorism? Well, sorry. The TSA doesn't protect us from terrorist attacks. Almost everyone knows that TSA screenings are annoying and they stop terrorists. Actually, there's very little evidence that the TSA has ever stopped a terrorist, let alone one with a bomb. A person will say "Wait, wait, wait, they haven't stopped an attack?" Not that we know of. They didn't stop the shoe bomber. They didn't stop the underwear bomber. Heck, they probably won't stop the crop top bomber. So what did stop all those bombs? Oh, easy. All the other security measures we added since 9/11. Like reinforced cockpit blast doors. The increased number of air marshals. The heightened awareness of passengers. And intelligence agencies that work to stop attacks before they even happened. But the TSA does nothing. For one thing, they straight up suck at screening. When the Department of Homeland Security tested them, the TSA failed to find mock weapons and explosives 95% of the time. "Really? Hey! You can't bring this knife here." A TSA agent confiscating a knife. "Here are your other knives back. Now, if you wouldn't mind, real big smile, pose for Instagram." Instagram? Yeah. They post everything they confiscate to Instagram and it's really embarrassing. Most of the stuff they confiscate is just novelty crap. Confiscating fake weapons and stopping people from saying the word bomb, it does nothing to stop terrorism. They just created the illusion of security. It's a concept called security theater. Security theater is a show the agency puts on to make it look like they're protecting us even though they aren't. As far as screening goes, what we had before September 11th is actually quite adequate. Taking your shoes off and putting your liquids in a separate bag doesn't make you safer. It just makes you feel safer. A person will go "But if we feel safer, isn't that good?" Well, first, the illusion of security isn't worth it if you have to give up essential freedoms and privacies to get it. And secondly, it's dangerous to present the illusion of security when the system is actually quite vulnerable to terrorist attacks. A person will now say "What? It is?" Oh yeah, even if this screening worked, it would only protect us from the last way we were attacked. It does nothing to stop terrorists from finding new ways to hurt us. The terrorists can see our security. They can figure out how to get around it. So instead of trying to make airports impregnable, we should take the money we're wasting on the TSA and spend it on things that actually work -- intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. Face it, the TSA does nothing but violate your privacy and waste your time. I'll tell you about the tamper-resistant seals. More security theater.

So, virtually every pill bottle has a "tamper-resistant seal". Why do you think that is? A person will go "I don't know. I guess people who tamper with medicine a lot." Who would do that? " I don't know. Lot's of people evidently." Nope. It was one weirdo in 1982. In 1982, seven people were killed from cyanide placed inside of Tylenol bottles. We don't know who did it and we don't know why they did it, but let's make the educated guess that it was a crazy person. There was also a few copycats. The world went nuts over this story, which left Tylenol with a wee bit of a PR problem. "Gentlemen, and one tough lady who we don't respect because it's the early '80s, what do we do?" The woman said "Make people feel safe, sir." The man next to says "Make people feel safe, sir." "Good idea, Brian. I love your male brain. Let us make people feel safe!" The boss ignores the woman and pays attention to the man.

And that's what they did. They yanked Tylenol off the shelves and a few months later introduced the world to the first tamper-resistant seal. The public was reassured, Tylenol sales completely rebounded, and every other medicine soon did the same. But the tamper-resistant seals is just more security theater. "It is?" Yeah. It may make you feel safer, but it doesn't actually protect you from murderers. Think about it. If a real whackadoo really wanted to hurt you, you think a little piece of plastic is gonna stop him? He could poke a syringe through the seal, or put contact poison on the outside of a bottle, or he could break into the factory. Why would the person limit himself to Tylenol? He could hurt people in any number of ways. He could put rat poison in a salad bar, hide barbed wire in a sandbox, or put arsenic in a Super Soaker.

Luckily, serial killers are rare. You don't need to worry about them. While we focused on a fluke incident, we ignored the hard truth that 150 people die every year from what's in the bottles. Is it asbestos? BPAs? Little bugs? No. The pills. Yes, the pills. It's crazy. For years, Tylenol was advertised as if it were one of the safest drugs on the market. "My son has a fever. Should I give him aspirin?" "I'm a doctor and Tylenol is the number-one pain reliever more doctors give their own kids." Statistically, you're far more to be hurt by a family member than a stranger. Tylenol has an incredibly narrow safety margin. The company says that 6 pills is a safe daily dose of Tylenol, but the FDA says that 10 pills is a dangerous daily dose. "That's four more pills. I pop that many at dinner." Yeah, well, you really shouldn't. Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is the number-one cause of acute liver failure in America. In one year alone, it sent as many as 78,000 people to the hospital. Maybe all those Tylenol commercials should've gone like this: "My son has a fever. Should I give him aspirin?" "I'm a doctor. Give him Tylenol. But be careful. It's one of the most dangerous over-the-counter pain relievers available." "Tylenol. Use as directed, or else." Now a few people will go "My god-- how is that legal?" A lot of doctors don't think it should be. The medical journal, "The Lancet", said that if the drug were discovered today, it would certainly never be freely available without prescription. Now, people will say "Well, I'm sure the FDA is on it." Yeah, 31 years late. That quote was from 1975. But the FDA didn't even require them to put a warning label on the bottle until 2009. And even that wasn't enough. Not only is acetaminophen the leading cause of acute liver cancer, but it exceeds all other causes combined. A physician served on an FDA advisory committee that voted to overwhelmingly lower the maximum non-prescription dose of acetaminophen, but for the past seven years, the FDA leadership has effectively ignored their important recommendation. The FDA has essentially failed to protect people from preventable liver toxicity. Look, the point is, sometimes we overreact to a small problem while ignoring the bigger one. That's the problem with security theater. Don't use aspirin, use Generic. It's exactly the same, but much cheaper. I'll tell you about signatures.

Anyone can commit fraud when signing another's signature. I can buy something with someone's credit card and when asked to put in a signature, I'll tell the owner of the credit card I'm committing fraud and put in the signature. Now, they will go "The bank is gonna know that's not my signature." No. It doesn't work that way. This is what you think happens when you sign a receipt: "According to my 30 years of handwriting expertise and an intimate knowledge of [credit card owner's name], I don't believe this is the way they dots their "I's"." One of the bank employees looking at the signature. "Shut down the account! This is all for you buddy." And this is what actually happens.

...

Nothing happens. No one ever compares your signature on the receipt to the real one. It's more security theater. Nothing secures your credit card. You might not know this. the credit card system is a pre-Internet relic with virtually no built-in security. Back in the '50s, a retailer would just copy down your number and phone it into the bank. "The credit card number is five! Four! Two! Fiver! Zero!" People will now say "But things are way more advanced now." Yeah. Because now, a machine copies down your number and send it to the bank. The truth is, all a thief needs to purchase something as you is a string of numbers, also know as your credit card number. I can expose a credit card number of anyone and they will say "Hey, that's private information!" It isn't. It is one of most public facts about you. You give out everytime you but something. And in the Internet age, it is impossible to keep a single 16-digit number a secret. But how does it get on the Internet? Any number of ways. A cashier could just write it down, it could be phished from an e-mail, it could be hacked from a vendor like Target or Wal-Mart. A card skimmer could harvest our from an ATM. A sneaky teen could snap a pic with a selfie stick. An NSA satellite could spy on you while you buy shaved ice at the beach. The fact is, if you have a credit card, you should just assume the number's already been stolen. In fact, there are so many numbers out there in the big Internet sea that getting defrauded just means your number was randomly chosen from a pile of millions. It's like an awful reverse lottery. Credit card fraud is so persuasive, banks have started just covering charges so people don't freak out and cancel their cards. There is nothing you can personally do to stop credit card theft. You don't believe me? Let me explain.

The truth is, there are so many stolen credit card numbers out there that thieves are buying and selling them as commodities. There's a website where you can buy credit card numbers for $5 a piece. Crooks buy these by the tens, by the thousands, and it isn't even a dark website. It is a website that everybody can easily search for and find. It's grade school level stuff. There is nothing you can do. It's a systemic problem. Credit card numbers are static and unchanging. Good security is dynamic and it changes everytime. Is there, any, like, technological solution to this? In Europe, they have something called chip and PIN or chip and signature, and this is a much more secure way of handling credit card transactions. It's only just now coming into the United States, which means for the next few years, we're still gonna be vulnerable. Look, this is a long way of saying that signatures on credit card receipts are just another form of security theater. Hackers already have your credit card number, and there's nothing you can do to stop 'em.

You and your family have nothing to worry about. Look, we have weak, imperfect security everywhere in life and it's totally fine. Like, I'll give you one example. A padlock on an old shed. Locks like that are insanely easy to pick. You can take a class, and learn how to do it in a day. You know that no one's gonna go through the effort to get into your old shed, so you don't have to stress out about it making it perfectly safe. You can take that off of yourself. That means you trust other people. And trusting people is an essential part of security, beause it's how you make an accurate assessment of the real risks. We're fortunate enough to live in a pretty safe country. And we make it safer when we build our security systems rationally, based on trust rather than fear. So relax. Trust each other. Almost all humans are good people.

[Manqoba]

Thanks for telling me about a bunch of stuff that I already knew.

[Schrödinger's Anbu]

MOAR SPAM

[MetaKnight0011]

Spammer.

[Manqoba]

Yuppers

[MetaKnight0011]

Ruining Christmas.

Historically, Christmas is actually a very raucous holiday, and most of our traditions have really un-Christian origins. The real story of the holiday season starts over 2,000 years ago during the Roman Empire. In December, Romans celebrated a holiday called Saturnalia to mark the end of the harvest. It was a wild party involving gambling, singing, and even cross-dressing. And in Northern Europe, a drunken festival called Yule celebrated the birth of the sun. Families would burn the biggest log they could find and celebrate around evergreen trees to ward off winter depression. Actually, no one really knows for certain when Jesus was born, but what we do know that when Christianity took hold of Europe in the 5th Century, some common folk refused to part with these pagan parties, so Christian leaders gradually transformed these popular traditions into a celebration of Jesus's birth. Inserting Christ into these winter festivals was basically a civic compromise--make the party and Jesus and you can keep getting jiggy with it. Sounds like that's when Christmas became the nice, family-friendly holiday we know today? Nope. It stayed a debauched violent, booze fest for a long time. For over a thousand years, Christmas was more like terrifying Mardi Gras. In England, drunken mobs would take over the streets, and a beggar would be crowned the lord of misrule. The mob would bang on rich people's doors and demand to be served the best food and drink they had, and if they refused, they were threatened with Christmas violence. It wasn't very Christian, which is why, when Puritans came to America, they decided Christmas had no place in a Christian nation and banned it. Christmas was illegal. In some communities, if you exhibited Christmas Spirit, you were even forced to pay a fine. Thanks to the legacy of these rules, Christmas ended up being pretty unpopular in America, but all that changed in the 19th Century. As immigrants flooded into America, they brought with them a love of Christmas and their own traditions. These seeped into the popular culture and a new, American Christmas began to take hold. And now, we treat Christmas like it's always been a sacred Christian tradition, but the historical truth is, these winter festivities have pagan roots with drunken traditions that a lot of Christians straight up hated fire like a thousand years. Now, look, celebrating Christmas as the birth of Jesus is a wonderful tradition, but it's just as historically accurate to get drunk in the woods or bang on a rich person's door and threaten them with violence. So, instead of worrying that Christmas isn't Christian anymore, why don't we just let people celebrate the way they want. Christmas gifts make no economic sense. I'll tell you why.

Ever wonder why "It's a Wonderful Life" plays on TV every Christmastime? Now it's a holiday classic, but it didn't used to be. When "It's a Wonderful Life" came out in 1946, if was a massive flop. So much so that when copyright came up for renewal in the '70s, no one even bothered to extend it. When the copyright lapsed, the movie to into the public domain, and it became free to air on television. So cheapskate TV stations started writing it nonstop during Christmas. And thus was "It's a Wonderful Life" cemented into the imagination of a generation. So, thanks to the public domain, we have this beloved Christmas classic.

Gift-giving may feel nice, but it makes no economic sense. Now someone will say "But getting gifts is great for the economy. Everybody knows that." Yeah, everybody 'knows that' but they're all wrong. Gift giving actually destroys up to $20 billion dollars in value every year. First, let's define economic value. The value of an object is the maximum amount that its owner would be willing to pay for it, or simply put, how much it's worth to you. Add all these amounts together, and that's the total value of everything you've bought. Let's say you have something that's worth $100 to you and you only paid $50 for it. Well, if it's worth $100 to you and you only paid $50, then in economic terms, when you bought it, you literally created $50 in value. You're fifty bucks richer. All of this has a lot to do with gift giving. When we buy gifts, we do so with the best of intentions, but while we're really good at knowing what we like, we're really terrible at guessing what other people would value. Now sometimes, we get it right and buy the perfect gift, but on average, gifts are worth 18% less per dollar spent to their recipients than things we buy for ourselves. And statistically, spouses are actually the best gift givers. You know who's worse? Parents. It's not much worse than the dreaded aunt. And when you add up the waste across all the gifts in the economy, we're destroying more than $20 billion per year. Should we a getting gifts? No. No one wants that. We should just give a lot smarter. We should just be extra careful in those situations where we're giving to people whose preferences we don't know. And we can make more use of tools like online wish lists and gift cards that enable the recipient to pick the gift that they want. That way, we can all have a more economic efficient holiday.

Ever wonder why no two snowflakes are alike? Well, you shouldn't. Because that won't strictly true. Back in 1988, cloud scientist Nancy Knight did some research high above Winscon. She studied a bunch of high-altitude snow crystals and found two snowflakes that looked completely identical. Turns out snowflakes in their earlier stages are simple six-sided prisms, and these boring flakes can look really similar, but as they fall, they travel through different atmospheres. And that's when the snowflakes really become different. Depending on temperature and humidity, a snowflake can drastically change its shape and style. So, by the time the snowflake hits the ground, it looks nothing like it did in the clouds. So, while you may never spot two identical snowflakes down here on the ground, up there in the clouds, snowflakes aren't really that special at all. I'm gonna tell you all the true story of Santa Claus. Yup. The true history of Santa Claus. Some people might think that Santa was invented by Coca-Cola, but they're wrong. In the early 20th Century, Coca-Cola was going through a series of P.R. scandals, including the fact that the cola was made with cocaine. To appear more loveable, Coca-Cola advertised using a rosy-cheeked, red-suited, family-friendly St. Nick, but they didn't invent him. They just used his image to make a buck. A person will say "Man, that's gross how commercial Christmas had become. It's sad they pervert Santa's image just for their ad campaign." Oh, Santa's been used for weird campaigns throughout history. In olden days, he was portrayed as a boozer. But the temperance movement made him sober to promote Prohibition. One version of Santa was used in 20th Century socialist campaigns. "The top 1%of the children gets 99%of the gifts while the working-class elves get virtually nothing. The naughty and nice list is rigged. We need a political revolution at the North Pole." While in 1874 Mississippi, there was actually a Santa-themed KKK rally. "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." A few people will say "Okay. Santa's been used for some weird causes, but so what? He's a wonderful idea." Sure, maybe now he is, but earlier Santas were way weirder. Before 1880, Santa didn't even live at the North Pole. That is was invented by Thomas Nast, who drew Santa recording kids' behaviors from a giant telescope. "Ho ho! Someone's being very nice." It is disturbing. And the European precursors to Santa even more messed up. Germanic nations replaced St. Nick with baby Jesus and a demon named Krampus, who dragged bad kids to hell. The Dutch believe St. Nicholas himself brought the presents. That doesn't seem so bad. No, it's not. But instead of an elf, he was accompanied by an literal slave named Black Peter, often protrayed by white person in blackface. Why do we celebrate this dude? Was St. Nick even real? Oh, yeah. St. Nicholas of Myra was the patron saint of gift-giving and children. Why was he the patron saint of those things? I'm gonna tell you but it's gonna be creepy. Jolly old St. Nick loved giving gifts, especially to young girls. He would sneak into their houses in the middle of the night and leave gold in their stockings so they wouldn't become prostitutes. And the reason he's the patron saint of children is even stranger.

"A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away.... St. Nick found a pickle barrel, but it wasn't just any pickle barrel. It was full of dead, dismembered children. St. Nick, through the power of a holy miracle, brought all those chunks of dead children back to life. So, even though Santa may not be real, remember that the real story of St. Nick is just as cool and more magical."

All traditions started somewhere, and all traditions have changed. The true meaning of Christmas is whatever you want it to be. Because it's all made up. Make your own traditions.

[Manqoba]

You already posted that

[MetaKnight0011]

I know. Don't care.

[Manqoba]

Yeah, I didn't think you would

[xWickedNekox]

1...

[Manqoba]

Game is dead rest in Patricia

[xWickedNekox]

Why are you trying to ruin my fun?...