A social security number/card is not exclusive to citizens. Green card/permanent residents, for example, usually get them - particularly, if planning to/already working.

Any kind of national/citizen id would need a whole new process and require it be provided to 100% of existing citizens. Time-consuming and certainly a cost associated with the process.

It’s one of those “in theory” easy things, but a lot more difficult in practice, I imagine.

Difficult to tell if this was a joke or autocorrect. Being forced to play a game (sudoku) as a loss, sounds… odd.

Seppuku is the Japanese word for a type of honorable suicide by cutting your own stomach in a Z shape (or at least attempting to).

Yes, thanks for clarifying. I typed it out that way because “reserve” was in my head for the remaining sentences. As we both noted, there is a reserve, but it doesn’t back all the minted fiat.

There was a gold standard. Current fiat money in the US is based on an imaginary “base” that the Federal Reserve (itself, an institution notoriously based on an imaginary base). There is a reserve of gold, but it no longer matches the amount of minted coins/printed bills.

Edit: reserve->standard as noted in a reply

While the lucid dreaming comments may work, there is a lot of trial/error/luck to it, I think.

I had accidental lucid dreaming as a kid but have failed to do so as an adult. I have tried numerous times, even with considering suggestions from people online. Therefore, I will come at this from experiences I have had without intentional lucid dreaming. (Possible that I reached a point of accidental lucid dreaming during these, but hope it helps, nonetheless!)

Finding “perfect” hiding places after/during a chase.

Recognizing that waking up from a similar/the same situation very recently (eg the movie Inception) is basically impossible. Even if you have brain damage, the duration of a day and night are fairly difficult to ignore. Brain damage or medicine/drug use is more like losing chunks of time that feel lost vs waking up repeatededly and/or in short order.

I (at least once recently) had a scare that felt like sleep paralysis and/or attempted demonic possession. Basically, I was sleeping but “felt” awake but couldn’t move/make sound and felt like darkness was “hunting” me. It was scary af. I just kept trying to scream or yell “ahhh”. I think I tried it about 8+ times before I woke up finally. Each time I screamed, it got louder…slowly. I knew I was breaking free slowly, but it was extremely scary and I felt like if I didn’t escape, I would be trapped/taken forever.

Depending on the feeling of the dream, you can sometimes play in/with it. This touches on the accidental side of lucid dreaming, I think, but I have had variations of feeling afraid and then treating it as a game, such as hide’n’seek or even flipping it to start finding/hunting the thing that feels like the agressor. Not sure I recall enough details to explain specific examples, but hope this general explanation helps!

Edit: typo

I grew up elsewhere but lived in Canberra (the capital in ACT) for about 4 years. I heard about all the scary, deadly things and was a bit worried also. Long-story, short - it’s very unlikely to be an issue unless you live in certain areas.

The big funnel-web spiders are mainly an issue in an area north and a bit south of Sydney and reasonably close to the coast. I never saw one of them while living there (except in photos). My understanding also is that the spiders tend to live outside of the urban areas and more in the suburban/rural areas.

You’re more likely to get into a car accident with a kangaroo than have an issue with those big-ass spiders, from what I was told. They’re somewhat like deer in the US. But less of a joke because they are known to slash people with velociraptor-like foot naila/claws after being hit by cars and assumed to be dead by drivers who get out and check. Death by disoriented/injured kangaroo is scarier than death by spider in Australia for most, and I say this seriously!

The scariest spider stories I had… 1. out of town for several months and my bicycle had a black widow-looking (the redback, I believe) spider under the seat. and 2. one day, there was some sort of spiders born and sailing on the wind event where little spiders where everywhere (but they weren’t the Sydney funnel-web or redback spiders, luckily).

Running Android 14 and somewhat disagree. I have had 1-2 games running in the background after “exiting”/“quitting” the game and dropped from 80-90% battery to 30% in less than 2 hours. (GPS and Bluetooth both disabled). Battery dropped as though I was actively playing with the screen on during that time.

Killing apps has helped me with this issue, in general. However, for the offending game, setting “app battery usage” (specific to Android, not sure of iOS equivalent, if any) has helped better for this issue. Seems a lot of games are trying to load unmecessary stuff and/or sell usage data, despite exiting the game…

Various websites suck in one browser or the other or simply don’t work in more than one single browser. We’re not that far away from the days when Internet Explorer (IE) was the only thing that loaded a site (often for something work-related… groan)

That said, if you need Chrom(e/ium) and want a non-data-sucking version, I think Ungoogled Chromium is your best bet currently.

For the Firefox side of things, there are already several forks that aim to do things differently/better. Floorp is one I see recommended regularly. There seem to be a larger number of Firefox forks focusing on security/privacy than Google forks, but this is the most well-regarded from my research.

Simultaneous post-enshittification from both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox is probably (hopefully) leading towards more active development/contribution to these (and other) forks!

There are cases other than what you mentioned where the carrier refuses to unlock. During 2021, AT&T forced a phase out of 3G and provided allowed customers to get a free upgrade phone in the process. As a prepay customer, I took the phone but jumped ship to a different carrier. I tried to get them to unlock the phone earlier this year and they refused. There was no contract/lease involved, but they didn’t like that I didn’t remain a customer with them for (I think it was) 180 days after that.

What I think you are failing to understand is that this book doesn’t just mention their school board… no. It lists them!!