Politics And Current Events

[DigitalGypsy66]

Someone posted about their home owners insurance going up for seemingly no reason. Now, car makers are reporting driving habits to insurance companies. Good times.

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors — the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score “for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage,” according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month.

“It felt like a betrayal,” Mr. Dahl said. “They’re taking information that I didn’t realize was going to be shared and screwing with our insurance.”

In recent years, insurance companies have offered incentives to people who install dongles in their cars or download smartphone apps that monitor their driving, including how much they drive, how fast they take corners, how hard they hit the brakes and whether they speed. But “drivers are historically reluctant to participate in these programs,” as Ford Motor put it in a patent application that describes what is happening instead: Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry.

(Free share article link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/tech ... =url-share)

[NTP66]

**** that ****, and **** those companies.

[Pavel Bure]

Boeing whistleblower was found dead of suicide…

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

where’s Michael Clayton??

[faftorial]

I'll keep my non connected to the internets car.

[NTP66]

r/LeopardsAteMyFace

[count2infinity]

https://apnews.com/article/florida-dont ... 8034746b6e

Much like Desantis's run for president... this was all just a giant waste of time and money.

[Shyster]

All the settlement does is say that the law doesn't ban something it never banned to begin with. It's not a loss for the Florida government.

[count2infinity]

Yes... people suing the government to fight against the law settled to allow the law to be exactly what the law was to begin with. I'm sure that's the true story here.

[Troy Loney]

Do they define “instruction” in the law.

Is that just what the teacher says, or something formally in a lesson plan. I feel like clarifying that is important

[count2infinity]

From what I've read, that's really what the win is for the groups that were suing here. The settlement clears up most of the vagueness (I would argue, intentional vagueness) around the law.

Should something come up in conversation, should something be seen in a library book, should a married individual want to talk about what they and their spouse did over the weekend, all of that is no longer under this law, whereas previous interpretations meant it could be.

The law does not allow intentional/planned instruction regarding sexuality to k-3 graders. Well done. They banned something that largely wasn't happening anyways.

[MWB]

Creating an unnecessary law that led to confusion and had to then be settled, wasting money, is certainly a loss on a lot of levels.

[Troy Loney]

https://x.com/carlquintanilla/status/17 ... 79307?s=46

[CBear3]

Correct. The ruling even says that if a math problem were to use "gay" characters that it is allowed, because it doesn't explicitly teach about sexuality.

[NTP66]

THANKS, BIDEN!

[Shyster]

Yes... people suing the government to fight against the law settled to allow the law to be exactly what the law was to begin with. I'm sure that's the true story here.

They got an official clarification that the law doesn't ban or prohibit things that the law never banned or prohibited. The plaintiffs argued that the law was confusing and that they didn't know whether, for example, a teacher merely mentioning their own gay status would violate the law. They got a clarification that it would not, because contrary to what the media labeled the law (i.e., "Don't Say Gay"), the law from the outset applied only to instruction, not incidental mentions.

You can read the settlement for yourself here:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... ebar=false

Note the recitals that the plaintiff's complaint was dismissed twice because the trial court found that the law plainly didn't ban the stuff the plaintiffs were saying it did.

[Kaiser]

Correct. The ruling even says that if a math problem were to use "gay" characters that it is allowed, because it doesn't explicitly teach about sexuality.

Ronda Santis has a bag of d*cks. If he eats 15, how many d*cks does he have left to eat?
a) 15
b) 25
c) 27
d) incomplete data

[Troy Loney]

Where are the dumb people at right now:

https://x.com/profootballtalk/status/17 ... 34052?s=46

[Pavel Bure]

So turns out Biden was never asked about when his son’s death was and it was made up that he couldn’t remember.

[faftorial]

Where are the dumb people at right now:

https://x.com/profootballtalk/status/17 ... 34052?s=46

Jesse Ventura makes sense for the "outsider" ticket.

[NTP66]

Co-sign.

[Kaiser]

I'd love to see him do concrete demo for about a week.

[tifosi77]

Sex trafficking victim Karla Jacinto Romero: Politicians like Katie Britt ‘only want an image’

CNN interviewed Karla Jacinto Romero Sunday, who was a victim of trafficking during the George W. Bush administration.

“I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image ....That to me is not fair,” Romero said.

Romero said she met Britt at an event at the U.S.-Mexican border between officials and anti-trafficking activists. She said she was never trafficked into the United States. She was not trafficked by Mexican drug cartels, but by a pimp forcing girls into sex work.

Mexican politicians have also used her story for political purposes, she said.

“I really would like them to be empathetic: all the governors, all the senators, to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear,” Romero said.

“People .. are really trafficked and abused, as she (Britt) mentioned. And I think she (Britt) should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude.”

Britt defended her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Sunday, including her story about a woman who became a victim of human trafficking at the age of 12.

Journalists, including former foreign correspondent Jonathan Katz, noted that the events in the story happened more than 20 years ago in Mexico, well before Biden took office.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Britt’s spokesman Sean Ross said that the senator was talking about Romero and disputed that Britt’s language was misleading.

[Shyster]

So turns out Biden was never asked about when his son’s death was and it was made up that he couldn’t remember.

Biden brought it up himself and couldn't remember the year before being reminded.



Biden also said, "Remember, in this timeframe, my son is—either been deployed or is dying..." in direct response to a clarification from Mr. Hur that Hur was asking about a 2017 to 2018 timeframe. Beau Biden had been dead for at least two years at that point.

[Pavel Bure]

So turns out Biden was never asked about when his son’s death was and it was made up that he couldn’t remember.

Biden brought it up himself and couldn't remember the year before being reminded.



Biden also said, "Remember, in this timeframe, my son is—either been deployed or is dying..." in direct response to a clarification from Mr. Hur that Hur was asking about a 2017 to 2018 timeframe. Beau Biden had been dead for at least two years at that point.

So special council is telling lies about lies?

https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch ... 6400069681