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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 16th, 2024

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  • Not like they used to, mostly. They just replaced “contract” with “equipment payment plan”. Because $50/mo for 24 months is easier for a consumer to swallow than a lump payment of $1200, especially when the carrier is giving you a $10 or $20 (or more) “discount” on the phone.

    But as long as the EPP is active, the phone is locked to that carrier. And I think that’s fair. No different than the bank holding the title while you finance a car.

    The thing is that the plans that have these equipment deals are significantly more expensive than others. Namely big name plans like TMo or Verizon, compared to MVNO plans like Mint or Visible. So you end up paying more for the plan because you get “a deal” on your phone (but still end up ultimately paying more).


  • I’m reading (well, listening) to a book called “Trust me, I’m Lying” about the modern news cycle, and how lies and intentional outrage at lower levels (blogs and social media) get funneled up to traditional-media, and how that is driven by people like the author.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if causing outrage and later deleting the tweet and following up with a half-hearted non-apology was the intent all along.

    Really great book, IMO. Same guy (Ryan Holiday) had a book about the conspiracy behind the Hulk Hogan sex tape (“Conspiracy”) that was also real good.



  • JasonDJ@lemmy.ziptoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldStay Mad, Tankies
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    2 days ago

    The Republican party wouldn’t exist if everybody voted. That is a straight up fact. As fucked as our election system is, they are far enough the minority that if everyone got out, the EC wouldn’t matter.

    You want a “left light” and a “true left”, you aren’t going to get it by abstaining, or by voting for nonviable moonshot third-party candidates. You are going to get it by abolishing the far right party and making that tiny sliver of the whole population realize that their antiquated views aren’t welcome here.

    They need to be crushed.

    They only exist because people don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils, so instead they just don’t vote. And what do you know, a -1 for the less evil is just as effective as a +1 for the more evil.

    All of their success is brought on by feeding apathy in their opposition, making it more difficult to vote, destroying any faith in the system, and gerrymandering.

    So yes, in my opinion, the far left refusing to hold their nose for a few minutes may as well be voting for the insurrectionist.










  • This is bad practice.

    More accurately it should look something like this:

    # Load sys library for exiting with status code
    import sys
    
    def sayHelloWorld(outPhrase: str="Hello World"):
        # Main function, print a phrase and return NoneType
        print(outPhrase)
        return None
    
    if __name__=="__main__":
        # Provide output and exit cleanly when run from shell
        sayHelloWorld()
        sys.exit(0)
    else:
        # Exit with rc!=0 when not run from shell
        sys.exit(1)