My company can't even make a check that tears evenly along the perforation. Protection against fraud? Pfff completely unrealistic

We'll find out if the next set of new checks, which I mailed from the actual post office, are also stolen.

At this point it could be a local operator picking a lock or using a key copy or stolen key, or it could be a postal employee. Can't be sure yet.

Yeppers. Ppl be acting like this is a dead technology and not something that Regular Folks need to be able to interact with, and like "It's perfectly normal that in a functioning society your mail is just routinely stolen out of secure facilities"

Before someone tries to finger-wag "Well anyone can just walk up to your mailbox and take things out of it," my outgoing mail goes into a locked box with a drop slot. Either a postal worker stole it, or someone picked the lock or has a copy of a key.

Like, the problem here is not that I'm paying some bills with checks. It's that I MUST pay some bills with checks, and our postal service is now so insecure that these bills can go unpaid because the mail can just be stolen.

It's kinda wild that after having checks stolen out of my outgoing mail, washed, forged, and cashed, the #1 response from people is "Why are you using checks?" when:

1. Some services only accept checks
2. Some charge egregious fees for online payment
3. Some force autopay if you want to pay online

"I'm gonna need you to visualize the executive suite getting bigger bonuses this quarter."

Trying to report stolen mail to the post office so of course my phone just magically stops working part way through the call

Not the President, sadly

That they can do this should finally make it evident that U.S. government is not actually responsive to the will of the people, and it hasn't been for a long time, but people just aren't willing to believe that.

~Fin~

So low approval ratings? That might make them angry, but like any angry abuser, it just means they will become even more violent and more extreme, and then go online and taunt people and make wild claims because they're showing off that nobody can stop them.

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Just like abusers who relish having power over others, just like jerks who get online and yell slurs and abuse and sneer about "triggered, snowflake? go cry about it" they WANT to hurt people, they WANT to do whatever they desire and show off their power because nobody stops them.

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Keep seeing posts about "Trump approval rating craters" and "Republicans face declining popularity" and like, yes, that is the point. Fashies and authoritarians love public acclaim, but absent it they will just do what they want, by force if necessary, and revel in being unstoppable.

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Prejudice is an anti-resume.

I don't fear dogs, I fear negligent dog owners.

Now, this is not sugar-coated. I don't get to decide how your brand chooses to operate, and probably neither do you, person-managing-social-media-for-brand. But it is an honest answer, with good-faith engagement, in an internet filled with cynicism and haters.

I hope you have a decent day.

5. Do nothing. Pretend that this is the new normal and the status quo. Just shrug and say "everyone's doing it." Or "well Meta owns the platform, it's their fault." Or "we just have to accept this new technology." Just look over at the "A.I." apologists, they use these kinds of excuses all over.

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4. Lie. This is what most tech biz does these days. They just try to bury it in a lengthy end-user agreement that nobody reads, or confound it with obfuscating language. Can you sleep at night if you do this? Probably, on a pile of money. Selling others people's privacy is worth $$$.

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3. Warn your customers. "Your data is going to be collected and aggregated in data centers, potentially including information like internet use habits, favorite sites and products, personal identifying information, and financial information." Be ruthlessly honest. At least then they know.

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2. Put in aggressive blocks to prevent the use of your product for spyware. Are you going to stop everything? No, because you don't control the platform. But at least you can tell your customers that you tried to protect their privacy while staying on a spy platform.

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If your product depends upon spyware for its platform, you have a problem, and there are a few evident solutions.

1. Migrate to a different platform. Practical? No. Will executives and investors ever accept this? Of course not. But it is the somewhat moral way to continue to do business.

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Normally I am not one to engage with "brands" on social media, but today I will choose to be kind and address the person on the other side of the screen, typing from this brand account at me.

Note that I am not a bizdev guy. The solutions I propose are going to sound "naive" and "unactionable."

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Meta goes from software ("spyware") to hardware ("spywear")

ngl it's kinda hilarious that ppl are petitioning for Facebook, the app that relied on capturing user data so that dudes could decide who to hook up with (or "Zuck Fuck"), to not capture user data on ppl seen with its facial recognition eyewear

Like this is the whole point! It's stalkervision!

Depends on which game I'm running and for whom I'm running it. If one of my gamer chums tells me they deal with enough of this in their daily life and the last thing they want in their entertainment is more of it, that directs how things go.

I pointed out to him that Star Trek contains many instances of technologies that we can sort of squint and see how you might imagine them, even if we can't figure out how they would actually work, and this is just one of those in a social format. They figured out how to make a culture go without $.

I had a discussion with another designer on the Star Trek MMO one time who could not grok the notion of a society that didn't use money. Like he was unable to conceptualize that such a thing could exist, even fictionally.

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Trump wants it, and in his world, that's all that matters.

Already got one of those calls to my phone.

"Can you send us $20 to help?"