Maybe I phrased it in a confusing way. Coffee does not smell like dog poop to me. It’s just exactly as disgusting. Can’t really compare it to anything else but it’s a very intense smell that I just can’t stand. I noticed that microwaving chocolate milk can lead to a similar smell but by far not as bad as coffee.
It’s not roasted stuff in general that I despise and also not related to milk.
The smell of coffee. I don’t know what’s wrong with me (or alternatively the vast majority of people) but it smells as disgusting to me as a steaming pile of dog poop. I learned to ignore it to some extend but I still hate it in all its variations: The powder, freshly roasted beans, freshly brewed coffee, cold coffee, coffee breath, …
I think this would be a lot cooler if there was a complexity modificator to make the solution appear as cryptic as now, but easier to solve for average people.
Back-up/failover instances for communities and users.
Every user and every admin of a community should be able to assign a failover instance in case the main instance goes down temporarily or permanently. All relevant data (posts, upvotes, settings, password hashes, mod log) would be permanently syched so you could just switch over in case of a downtime and most importantly, no content would be lost.
If you implement a feature to set the failover instance as your new main instance, that would also implicitly allow you to migrate users and communities elsewhere.
That works with Boost for Lemmy, so apparantly the data is already there in the backend (and at least one frontend).
I guess if we as humanity focused on producing only high quality and essential, basic products (food, housing, clothing) + the tools and processes that we need in the supply chain, we could massively reduce labor and reduce our ecological footprint at the same time. But our current economical system is depending on everyone doing something, everlasting growth and consumption.
That sounds pretty good indeed! ;)
I’ll never get why so many people see a need to peel potatoes, carrots, cucumbers etc. You’re cutting away the healthiest and most delicious part!
Amazing present for insert your own name here
WTF… Do people really think that they might get away with this? Or is the brain just fully shut down as they’re so full of adrenaline?
How the hell can one have patent of ‘catching a creature through aiming’ or even more crazy to me ‘riding a creature’ in games? Both concepts exist in so many games and even in real life. I mean did Nintendo never hear of horses?
I like this definition the best. If someone is making a super complex sandwich with many ingredients and passion, then I’m fine to call that cooking. Same with a cold soup, a cous-cous salad or a fancy appetizer. Many dishes in top notch cuisine are served cold. In molecular kitchen, there’s even stuff served below freezing. Still all cooking to me.
If someone just warms up a can of Ravioli, microwaves convinience food, etc. I’d consider that rather food prep. If using the microwave is just one step of multiple in a recipe, than that’s fine again.
For me cooking requires a minimum level of effort rather than a minimum level of heat.
Personally, I don’t like noticeable make-up. If it’s barely visible, it’s fine as well but in general I like ‘no make up’ the best.
It’s also not only about looks:
No make-up = Win-Win-Win-[…]
What is CSAM? It is an abbreviation for many things apparantly. Are you referring to ‘Child sexual abuse material’? Did you encounter such things on Lemmy?
So far I luckily didn’t come across anything like that but I also blocked all porn-related instances that I saw so far.
It’s not okay to take away useful tools and options from non-criminals on the basis that criminals use them. We do not ban cars on the basis that they are a tool for drive-by shootings.
Again, I would say that should depend on statistics. If a tool is misused for criminal activities in the vast majority of cases, I think you have to make some compromise on personal freedom in favor of security and law enforcement.
Not really. Marginalizing and oppressing non-criminals is not justified by a hunt for criminals. If your approach to hunting criminals harms non-criminals, you’re doing it wrong.
Isn’t that the case for many preventive security measures? I mean the baggage checks at the airport are time consuming and restrict everyone on bringing liquids, large batteries, forks, knives etc. into the plane. And I’m pretty sure, the ratio of ‘terrorists carrying bombs’ to ‘just normal people bringing their water bottle’ is significantly worse than the crime : non-crime factor in case of FedEx cash.
Same with routine controls at a border or on the highway. It’s annoying for many people due to delays just to catch some few smugglers, overloaded trucks etc.
A security camera in a bank will film thousands of regular customers before it ever (if at all) gets to see a robbery.
I fully understand that people criticise all of these measures but to be honest I have some doubts that getting rid of everything would be a smart idea.
Law enforcement by definition deals with suspects not convicted criminals. So even if we moved to a purely reactive law enforcement, your measures will still affect the innocent suspects.
The case at hand is even more perverse, as the civil forfeiture practice actually hinders enforcement of law. They do the money grab for the money. When you seize cash, you send a clear signal to criminals that they are being investigated.
That point I see as well. But wouldn’t the alternative be even worse for you from a privacy perspective? They keep the practice of scanning packages but rather than seizing the money, they send investigators after the intended recipient. That wouldn’t only dramatically increase the costs of law enforcement but also lead to innocents being supervised.
When you seize money from a tax evader a year before they evade tax by filing their fraudulent tax return, you actually sabotage the opportunity to catch them (it’s crime-prevention prevention). You can only catch them by recording the cash and letting it go, then auditing their tax using that information a year or two later.
Not all money transfers are taxable income. So if police knows that you received 10,000 in a box last year but didn’t declare it that doesn’t automatically mean you invaded taxes. The criminal could say, that it wasn’t their money and they gave it to someone else, declare it as a gift or a returned loan from a friend. They could also just say that the package was stolen from the porch and never arrived.
Furthermore, the recipient on the label may not be real person. Maybe the money is shipped to “Mr & Mrs Activist Punk” but the real criminal is waiting in front of the house to intercept the delivery.
All in all, I still think seizing big amounts of cash from deliveries is somewhat acceptable as long as…
Please leave some internet for the rest of us!
Regarding all the companies you’ve critized: isn’t that unfortunately the case for many if not most bigger companies?
I don’t live in the US, so I can’t guarantee that the following statements are all correct and up to date. However, after a quick research many of the issues apply to FedEx as well.
FedEx donates far more money to republicans than democats and did so historically (source).
FedEx critized Trump in 2018 on some specific ideas but couldn’t find anything like that in the recent past.
If you sign up with FedEx, they may share all your data with their partners. According to Reddit even including your including your credentials (wtf). (source).
FedEx may scan the ID of the recipient (source).
FedEx requires an ID when sending in store (source).
Cash shipments are officially forbidden as per the FedEx ToS, no matter if the package is insured or not. If money is shipped anyhow it is not covered by the insurance. (source .
Didn’t find infos on memberships but FedEx promotes digital payments and the ‘Better than cash’ alliance source).
According to this petition FedEx and Pfitzer are among the biggest funders of ALEC and Project 2025.
TBC. Just wanted to list a few of the quick findings.
Regarding acceptance of cryptocurrency or other forms of payments, I think that’s similar for sending cash in a box. Again, I don’t live in the US, but in Germany you’d be having a hard time to find a jeweler or other professional entity that accepts such a form of payment. First, they won’t want to have discussions if packages are lost or valuables are partly stolen from the package. Second, they don’t want to be associated with dubious businesses. Furthermore, there’s a legal limit for cash payments of 10,000€ to avoid money laundering.
I think to get back to the original topic, it’d be interesting to see some statistics on what percentage of the cases where police seized cash from packages were legal (although against FedEx ToS) and how many were related to criminal activities. If it’s like 90% crime and the 10% legitimate senders/recipients have a chance to reclaim their money after providing further details, then I’m fine with that. If the numbers are the other way around, I’m siding with you. ;)
Thanks a lot for the detailed answer! It helped me to better understand your perspective.
Regarding (1) I can somehow understand why it’s often a percentage. The more valuable the goods that you transport, the higher the associated risks. Insurance costs are higher and also the employees are more endagered of being robbed.
Regarding (3) I would say that’s only in very specific scenarios like international money transfer from/to sanctioned countries or if the recipient is on some kind of watch list. PayPal, Credit Card, Crypto Currency etc. should typically all process within seconds. International bank transfer also shouldn’t take more than a few days. And if we’re talking about delays caused by sanctions, then physical deliveries are affected as well.
What is still hard to understand for me is that people would send ANYTHING valuable in a non insured package, especially money. As you mentioned yourself in point (5), there’s a huge risk of it being lost or stolen. Also independent of (potentially unlawful) police officers. Therefore, my intuitive feeling was, whoever is willing to take that risk, has a lot of money to transfer and is willing to lose some in favor to stay invisible.
If you use a courier service that’s specialized on valuables which offers also insurance etc. that’s a completely different story to me. But insured FedEx packages full of cash are still suspicious to me and I find it fair to question the legitimacy.
Okay, valid point. But is the police seizing such packages? If we assume the police is stealing it out of greed, that wouldn’t be too profitable for them to steal 5 USD in Zimbabwe dollars.
I thought they’re confiscating cash with a higher value, like bundlSe of USD/CAD/EUR/AUD etc. In the article they wrote 6 million USD and on the picture I see only US notes as well. And if that’s the case, I somewhat agree that that’s a bit suspicious.
Still, they shouldn’t just take and keep it, but if they confiscate it and then contact the recipient to explain the background of the transaction, I’d be fine with that.
If you carry large amounts of cash on a flight you also have provide reason and papertrail for that.
Oh, where is that? As an inspiration in case I decide to emigrate one day. 😄