Even there though, what is the actual point of a phone app controlled smart toilet, even if you open sourced the whole thing? Unlocking one’s phone and tapping the app icon, and then presumably a button on the app, is going to take more time than one press of a lever that one is right next to anyway, and the latter doesn’t present as many points of failure.

Screaming is just as exhausting and meaningless as not screaming.

My cats start 2 full hours or more before their feeding time, so that would be quite inaccurate

If the violence actually stops that and doesn’t just become a symbolic victory where the fascists get to keep the laws they passed at the cost of a punch at the legislative floor, sure. But that wasn’t my point. I wasn’t saying “violence in politics is a bad thing to consider under any and all circumstances”, but “if a country has reached a level of polarization where even the members of its governing body feel the need to resort to that with eachother, things have already gone wrong”. It’s a symptom of a serious problem coming to light, not the problem itself, in other words.

To be fair, there is precident for things to escalate to physical violence on the floor of the US Congress. It was just in the lead-up to the civil war, is all. Arguments getting so heated that legislators can’t resist the urge to just beat up the other guy probably are a bad sign for a country.

Time for them to quit? It may be harder to make something that is clearly satire, but times like these are exactly the times when mocking authority is most valuable.

To be fair, if they really were just living lavishly and not using their wealth to amass more wealth like some kind of wealth black hole, then the extreme expenditure of such a lifestyle would one day drain their money dry, since they couldnt possibly actually earn enough to live like that. Were it not for the effect of wealth begetting more wealth, the issue you refer to would eventually solve itself.

Personally I enjoy pizza this way, hot such as to very very slightly burn the roof of one’s mouth if one is not careful with it. Adds sensation, like, physical spiciness

I assume that the whole “Stalin starved his people” thing isn’t talking about the average conditions of the Soviet Union during more “normal” times, but rather specific events of mass starvation like the Holodomor. That being said, famine caused by accidental or malicious management of agriculture is something hardly unique to any single economic system (I imagine a comparison could be made to the Irish potato famine there, for an example of a similar type of disaster under a different economic system), so I’m not sure if it reflects entirely on the kind of system the Soviets were going for as much as it does mistakes in the process of transitioning to that system, and malfeasance on the part of those in charge in pushing the consequences of those mistakes upon disfavored groups.

As a former cashier (grocery store not walmart admittedly, but I doubt things are that different), I dont think weird uses for the items are the way to go, the cashier is barely even going to notice or care what you’re buying. what I bring to freak out the cashier, are some item that needs ID to buy, some big heavy item with the barcode removed so that it will take a bunch of lifting and turning in a hopeless effort to find it before someone eventually has to go find another one and bring it over, and a propane refill if walmart does those (at my grocery store the process to go find a full one was a pain, especially in the winter since they were outside). Further, I try to buy these items with the help of a ton of expired and unexpired coupons mixed together, several gift cards, and a stubborn half-deaf old person who wont take no for an answer.