Hell, I’ll take someone who wants to be a billionaire, as long as they do it without exploitation. It’s just that that’s nearly impossible to do, since very few people actually individually create a billion dollars worth of value.

Look at their actions, not their words specifically.

It’s a culture where being unkind is particularly unacceptable, not specifically where you’re not allowed to be honest or forthright.

You’re allowed to not like someone, but telling someone you dislike them is needlessly unkind, so you just politely decline to interact with them.
You’d “hate to intrude”, or “be a bother”. If it’s pushed, you’ll “consider it and let them know”.

Negative things just have to be conveyed in the kindest way possible, not that they can’t be conveyed.

Brian Acton is the only billionaire I can think of that hasn’t been a net negative.

Co-founded WhatsApp, which became popular with few employees. Sold the service at a reasonable rate.
Sold the business for a stupid large sum of money, and generously compensated employees as part of the buyout.
Left the buying company, Facebook, rather than do actions he considered unethical, at great personal expense ($800M).

Proceeded to cofound signal, which is an open, and privacy focused messaging system which he has basically bankrolled while it finds financial stability.

He also has been steadily giving away most of his money to charitable causes.

Billionaires are bad because they get that way by exploiting some combination of workers, customers or society.
In the extremely unlikely circumstance where a handful of people make something fairly priced that nearly everybody wants, and then uses the wealth for good, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being that person.
Selling messaging to a few billion people for $1 a lifetime is a way to do that.

That might just be a growing up near water thing. I think that on average, Canadians live closer to larger bodies of water than Americans do, since more than half are within day trip distance of the great lakes waterway, and then there’s Halifax and Vancouver.

Growing up in a place with water, basically everyone I know also has at least a passing knowledge of recreational small watercraft.

Where I live basically every location is some combination of “French, native American, English, Scandinavian”, “pronounced natively or not”, and “spelled like it’s pronounced or not”.

The fun ones are the English pronunciation of the French transliteration of the native word.

Yes, but that’s the case regardless. My message going through has always depended on someone else’s cell towers, all the random routers and switches in between, and the other person’s device.
My server likely has worse uptime, and if I’m hosting from home it probably has more hops to transit through it.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy#products

Statistically you’re unlikely to have lasting issues as a result of getting them removed. It’s a very common outpatient procedure.

When you go in, they’ll likely give you nitrous oxide, which will make you relax a little, and they’ll let you sit and breathe it for a few minutes. I’d recommend bringing headphones since some nice music will help.
Then they’ll give you an IV that will make you not worry and likely barely remember what comes next. Basically a big dose of super valium.
Then they’ll give you some pain killers and local anesthetic and remove the teeth.

Your memory and orientation will start to come back in about an hour, by which time hopefully the person who transported you has gotten you home. You will not be able to care for yourself during the intervening time. You will be uncoordinated and of poor judgement.

When you get home it’s best to try to sleep until the meds that the dentist gave you wear off, or just watch TV. Take ibuprofen or Tylenol mostly, but an occasional opioid will help since there is some pain that the antiinflammatories don’t help with as much, although they take care of most of it.
Soft foods for a few days, and no straws.

All in all, you should be back to normal within two weeks, and you’ll get to feel nice and excited to eat something crunchy or chewy.

If you’ve had pain associated with your wisdom teeth, I’d recommend going forward as scheduled. The pain may have gone away temporarily, but it’ll come back.
I let mine go too long, and one of the wisdom teeth cracked open because of pressure on it from another tooth, which also damaged that tooth which was fortunately able to be repaired.
The pain from waiting for outstripped the discomfort of the procedure.

In this case the helicopter came because they blocked a major highway.

A helicopter coordinating police movements during civil unrest is pretty standard anyplace that can afford helicopters. That’s definitely not just an American thing.
Do you think France is eschewing using helicopters to coordinate police movements with their current unrest?

Is it? All I saw was a helicopter with decent optics, but nothing particularly special, and cops talking on low bandwidth radios.

Even when we get to actual behavior, we see the cops starting with the assumption that they’ll be just telling people to leave and planning routes to do so, before it changes to arresting people for blocking a freeway. They make sure people are notified that they’re under arrest early, and the make sure they have adequate transportation before they begin the arrest process.

Like, there’s plenty of scary and shitty things cops do, but this wasn’t one of them.

Where do you see it telling you you need precise location to see emergency alerts?

Your phone has two sets of things that could be called “emergency alerts”. One is the emergency alert system that’s controlled by the government and managed by your phone company. That one doesn’t require precise location.
The other is “crisis alerts” which is Google basically running a search for crisis near you and then telling you. This one may require more precise location.

It’s entirely possible for your phone to just not get the cell network based alert. You can be connected to a tower outside of the alert area while someone right next to you is connected to one inside. Or you can just not get it because cell communications are imperfect. The issuer will typically resend several times to try to ensure it gets through to people, but it’s not perfect.

It’s not nearly as nefarious as people seem to think. Effectively all applications that access web resources send along what they are and basic platform information.
This is part of how the application asks for content in a way that it can handle
It does a little to let you be tracked, but there are other techniques that are far more reliable for that purpose.

Yes, that’s sorta why I picked that example. It’s a symbol that’s been used in other contexts and is almost entirely associated with a specific negative use case.

If you see a guy walking around with a swastika arm band, do you really think "oh, look at that man showing pride in his Hindu beliefs”?

Actually, I think that the opposite of a bad example. If I see you flying that flag, I’m not going to assume your an enthusiast of finish WW1 aviation.

I chose the swastika specifically because some other people used the symbol at some point and had it ruined for them. That’s a thing that happens to symbols, they get associated with shitty stuff and you stop showing the symbol, convince people to drop the objectionable meaning, or accept that people will think you endorse the shitty one.

They can have whatever they want, but you’ll have to forgive people for thinking that you align with people who display the same symbols as you.

I assume anyone flying a swastika is antisemitic, when to be fair, they might just be a fan of the Nazi stance on affordable housing and infrastructure.

If you have a problem with symbols you identify with being co-opted by people you don’t, take it up with the people you disagree with who took your symbol, not the people who also disagree with them.