Have you ever watched Caleb Hammer's "Financial Audit?"
People in dire financial situations very often have a history of making bad decisions with money.
Personally I do not struggle with money/budgeting but the only time I will ever use something like InstaCart is if I am sick and can't leave the house.
You are privileged enough to be ABLE to make good decisions. Some people are victims of the boots theory of economics and better choices aren't actually an option.
Lifting yourself by your bootstraps only works if you can afford boots in the first place.
Pratchet said:
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness." [0]
You make dangerous assumptions about me in order to justify your preexisting view of poverty and socioeconomic mobility.
My background is very poor. Food stamps, raised by single mom, whole nine yards. For most of my 20s I existed in the very same cycle of bad financial decisions that many other poor people engage in.
My situation had approximately a 0% chance of changing until the behavior changed. That doesn't mean behavioral changes are always enough, but they are the absolute bare minimum and an excellent starting point.
People I still know in bad situations refuse to acknowledge this and refuse to critically examine their decisions. They do nothing but avoid, avoid, avoid and hope for a miraculous windfall.
You arent wrong that some people just stink at finance. Thats not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about those who WOULD make better decisions if they were able. What is sometimes referred to as "the poverty trap."
> You make dangerous assumptions about me in order to justify your preexisting view of poverty and socioeconomic mobility
You said that you don't struggle making good financial decisions. I am claiming that you were lucky to be in a situation that allows you to make good decisions.
I believe that to be accurate, regardless of your history.
You must remember that the legitimately poor often do not have many choices to make at all. Poverty can constrain choice to the point of irrelevance. EG - Somone with a thousand dollars has more options than someone with a hundred dollars.
In your case it seems that you (now at least) have enough to be able to make choices. If you only had $50 to your name you would have far fewer options to choose from and most of those options would be bad.
Imagine a single mother working for minimum wage with a flat tire she cant afford to fix, and needing groceries. Instacart might make her problem worse, but surviving is all she can hope for sometimes.
Similary imagine an elderly widow on fixed income who is injured. Or a 17 year old who had to flee an abusive home situation, and is lucky to make rent on a weekly rental room.
For any of them it is easy to imagine they might have enough money to eat, but not enough to buy a car or even a bicycle. They will starve long before the situation improves enough to make that happen, regardless of their choices. So they make ends meet and they survive.
Its not Instacarts fault, any more than it is Dollar Generals, but it is also true that the service often worsens their long-term well-being.
Exactly. Two bits is a quarter because the US silver dollar was modeled on the Spanish Pillar Dollar, also called pieces of eight. Hence 2/8 (two bits) = 1/4.
And why wouldn't that be plausible given effectively all available cognitive data support this conclusion?
Of course I'm being facetious. I know why. No one wants to ponder that because of the stigma, so everyone puts their head in the sand and avoids the uncomfortable.
You can't police people into not being racist. People have always been racist/xenophobic to some extent and always will be. It's cultural conflict and tribal in nature.
You can police the execution of people's racist intent, and we often do. Freedom of speech and freedom of association mean racists aren't guaranteed a platform. Many countries (not the US, notably) police "hate speech" on the premise that such speech inevitably leads to hateful actions.
Arguing from human nature isn't compelling. Rape and murder are part of human nature as well, and people have always done both, yet it isn't controversial to police such behaviors. Racism is no different. We aren't mere animals entirely beholden to our base instincts, after all.
Of course I wasn't talking about or advocating jailing people for offensive memes, but I understand this is one of those subjects Hacker News can't approach in good faith and I take the downvotes and shit-eating snark in stride.
"Don't take Tylenol, don't take it. If you just can't… I mean, it's just fight like hell not to take it. There may be a point where you have to and that you have to work out with yourself. So don't take Tylenol."
That's what they said, which is fucking stupid.
The existing guidance is to discuss use with your doctor and to take the minimum necessary. It is not "fight like hell", ostensibly through fever and significant pain, to avoid it.
There is no good evidence to substantiate this belief, and if there were, then it'd be part of the guidance and we wouldn't need somebody who learned acetaminophen == Tylenol at 79 years old saying things like "Don't take Tylenol" on national TV.
That is what Trump said about the FDA decision to update labels. I agree it was stupid and misleading. The actual action taken was as the original commenter said.
The FDA decisions to update labels said:
>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today initiated the process for a label change for acetaminophen (Tylenol and similar products) to reflect evidence suggesting that the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women may be associated with an increased risk of neurological conditions such as autism and ADHD in children. The agency also issued a related letter alerting physicians nationwide.
Yes, you're right that the FDA had to downplay pretty much the entirety of the ignorant fearmongering done on national TV by the sitting President and the head of Health and Human Services.
This is stupid and bad, actually, and absolutely should be viciously criticized.
No that supports what I'm saying. They already made the decision. Yes, Trump announced it then they filed the paperwork. They didnt decide to relabel the next day just based on some comments Trump made the night before lol
The claims are that Trump gave people the impression that Tylenol causes autism, which is a claim we've failed to substantiate 100% of the dozens of times we've tried, and that FDA put out guidance that is much, much softer in direct controversion of Trump’s claims.
In other words: Trump’s statements weren’t in response to the FDA decision nor was the FDA decision in response to Trump’s statements. Both were distinct responses to the head of HHS (a scientific illiterate and world famous grifting conspiracy theorist) deciding that vague gesticulating about Tylenol could help him meet his self-imposed September deadline to solve autism.
I have seen comments on HN posting this narrative as well. It defies comprehension. One of the pieces of evidence used to spin this story is the suspect wearing a Trump costume for Hallowe'en, as a 14-year-old, in 2017 (the year that this costume was popular; the entire point was to protest Trump by treating him as a literal boogeyman).
(But of course, it is only seemingly all of Bluesky; and of course it's very easy on social media to start filtering for this content once you first encounter it.)
> People are calling for violence against left wingers at large
I have seen nothing of the sort, and I have access to beyond-the-Overton-window right-wing sources. What they have been doing, instead, is pointing out the Bluesky users that TFA concerns itself with.
I don't think we can conclusively say what his motives were yet, even though it is leaning towards him being leftwing. Everyone assumed the Trump shooter was a leftist, but it turned out he was just an incel loser trying (and failing) to make a name for himself.
People in dire financial situations very often have a history of making bad decisions with money.
Personally I do not struggle with money/budgeting but the only time I will ever use something like InstaCart is if I am sick and can't leave the house.
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