What do you think are scams?

[roadman65]

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can't be enforced and a society that don't follow rules.

[Max Rockatansky]

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can't be enforced and a society that don't follow rules.

I tend believe the opposite.  As someone who has managed safety programs for the better part of two decades I know full well a lot of employers would put their employees deliberately at risk if permitted to.  Most accidents and claims I deal with now are born out of the stupidity of an employee, not the employer.  The fear of OSH laws keeps a lot of employers in check.

[triplemultiplex]

Some more scams:

astrology
The wedding-industrial complex
privatization
acupuncture
past life regression
Myers-Briggs "personality types"
any product with the word "smart" in it
public financing for privately owned sports venues
antioxidants
bottled water
"super foods"
"premium"
"gourmet"
flushable wipes (they are NOT flushable and will clog your sewers!  Look up "fat berg" and learn.)
homeopathy
psychics
I saw this stupid thing on TV once; it was literally a baseball hat with LED lights they said helped with hair loss somehow.  So obviously a scam.

Extra shout out when people combine two or more scams.
like multi-level marketing for essential oils
or psychics who talk to ancient aliens
My chiropractor recommended non-GMO, free range superfood antioxidants to help with my Havana Syndrome.

[kalvado]

- Voting at locations and times other than your local polling places on election day

You can pry my mail voting from my cold, dead hands.

I am not waiting in line for hours to vote in a rushed manner when I could fill out my ballot from the comfort of home with plenty of time to actually research candidates and their policies. Mail voting increases turnout and makes it more accessible than polling stations ever could; in a truly democratic society, we'd all be using it.

Ok, and how about $50 for that ballot so I can take the burden of research from you?

I'm not Bruce, but I am from Washington State.  If anything less of the BS administrative time of walking down to a polling place, waiting in line, marking the paper, and then waiting in line again to feed it into the machine leaves the voter with MORE time that they might use to research candidates.  Having your sample ballot and computer in the comfort of your home before election day saves time and lets voters work in comfort.  It also saves time to drop off your ballot at any of many convenient drop boxes within the county.

Voters must still show their ID in order to get registered to vote or to change their address.  If a hypothetical bad guy intercepts the ballot, 1. they still have to sign it, and County elections will check it against the signature under which they registered.  2. the voter will probably notice, hey, my ballot hasn't come, and request a replacement.  Then Elections will hold them both for close examination and probably discover the signature mismatch.

Moving the counting away from hundreds of separate precincts to a single Elections office in each county means every verification and counting operation is subject to examination by observers from both parties and the press.  In that way it is considerably more secure than having every precinct count their own.

Lines are definitely not a designed part of an honest process (although someone here in NY found a way to use lines to engineer the vote, but that is a different story).
And there are several aspects. Most people on this forum seem to be willing to play by the rules.  It's not universally true across the population, though. Poverty, addiction, indifference can play a role.   Protecting voter from having their honest vote changed is one thing; protecting process from less-than-honest voters is another. Keeping everyone honest - even despite their will - is the way I am looking at it.

[roadman65]

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can't be enforced and a society that don't follow rules.

I tend believe the opposite.  As someone who has managed safety programs for the better part of two decades I know full well a lot of employers would put their employees deliberately at risk if permitted to.  Most accidents and claims I deal with now are born out of the stupidity of an employee, not the employer.  The fear of OSH laws keeps a lot of employers in check.

Do you think anybody ever reads the MDDS or whatever that large binder book is they require all restaurants and plants to have?  Heck the MDDS says that Fantastic or Formula 409 is illegal to use to clean in a restaurant despite its ok to clean your own household with.

[kalvado]

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can't be enforced and a society that don't follow rules.

I tend believe the opposite.  As someone who has managed safety programs for the better part of two decades I know full well a lot of employers would put their employees deliberately at risk if permitted to.  Most accidents and claims I deal with now are born out of the stupidity of an employee, not the employer.  The fear of OSH laws keeps a lot of employers in check.

Everything is good at moderation. Did you ever have people spend a day before OSHA inspection bringing things up to standard and another day bringing them to usable condition? I saw people who openly said that is what they are doing...
Does OSHA overstep the threshold?...

Do you think anybody ever reads the MDDS or whatever that large binder book is they require all restaurants and plants to have?  Heck the MDDS says that Fantastic or Formula 409 is illegal to use to clean in a restaurant despite its ok to clean your own household with.

I certainly read MSDSes more than once. And more than once a month, actually.  They became nearly useless after "improved and harmonized" SDS replaced MSDS... Talking about "overstepping"!
Those books are not so much for normal operation as they are for emergency use. I never saw anyone using a fire extinguisher....

[Max Rockatansky]

^^^

Of course I've had people try to bring up to compliance at the last minute.  When I do announced visits I call that "polishing the turd."   Stuff like that is the primary reason I do most of my site visits and inspections unannounced. 

My own observation is that OSHA generally doesn't overreach at first.  But if you end up on OSHA's shit list you're on for a hard time avoiding being fined for nominal violations.  That's not the right way to do things, but it's best to not even get on the radar of OSHA to begin with.

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can't be enforced and a society that don't follow rules.

I tend believe the opposite.  As someone who has managed safety programs for the better part of two decades I know full well a lot of employers would put their employees deliberately at risk if permitted to.  Most accidents and claims I deal with now are born out of the stupidity of an employee, not the employer.  The fear of OSH laws keeps a lot of employers in check.

Do you think anybody ever reads the MDDS or whatever that large binder book is they require all restaurants and plants to have?  Heck the MDDS says that Fantastic or Formula 409 is illegal to use to clean in a restaurant despite its ok to clean your own household with.

Of course not (it's actually SDS now, not MSDS) outside of safety managers.  Yeah sure, something like an SDS binder has no value to a non-safety person.  All the same the fact that you are required have such a binder and maintain it somehow or risk a surprise OSHA visit where you could be cited/fined gets a lot of other safety items by extension into compliance.  By no means am I defending every OSHA regulation, but the body does need to exist. 

[kkt]

Expiration dates that are set Way Too Soon so that manufacturers hope their goods will just be thrown away and new ones bought.

Laundry care tags that prescribe excessively cautious care of clothing.  Preshrunk solid color cotton T-shirts really are okay washed in "warm".

[roadman65]

Yes the binder is like your appendix. Even though it’s a formality and it doesn’t help, it’s got to be there for show.

Just like flying the flag has to be flown on the left when indoors like on a stage or church altar.  It serves no purpose to be solely on the left side of a room, yet congress once passed a bill that you can’t have the flag on the right.

Whether a flag is on the left or right doesn’t change the fact it’s there or not. Be glad you have the flag instead of creating protocol.

[jeffandnicole]

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can't be enforced and a society that don't follow rules.

I tend believe the opposite.  As someone who has managed safety programs for the better part of two decades I know full well a lot of employers would put their employees deliberately at risk if permitted to.  Most accidents and claims I deal with now are born out of the stupidity of an employee, not the employer.  The fear of OSH laws keeps a lot of employers in check.

Do you think anybody ever reads the MDDS or whatever that large binder book is they require all restaurants and plants to have?  Heck the MDDS says that Fantastic or Formula 409 is illegal to use to clean in a restaurant despite its ok to clean your own household with.

There's lots of things you can do in your own house that you can't do in a restaurant.  You're not allowed to dry dishes with a handtowel in a restaurant, for example.  There's no sprinkler system or Exit signage in my house. And I'm not paying anyone to cook dinner tonight.

[kkt]

But handtowels are made of terry cloth and leave lint behind.  Not very pretty, or tasty.

[Max Rockatansky]

Amusingly when I mentioned hand washing dishes at home last night in a road group chat a lot of the commenters told I was being unsanitary. 

[Big John]

Extra shout out when people combine two or more scams.
like multi-level marketing for essential oils
or psychics who talk to ancient aliens
My chiropractor recommended non-GMO, free range superfood antioxidants to help with my Havana Syndrome.

Smart water

[roadman65]

I think we can do without OSHA. Too many rules that can’t be enforced and a society that don’t follow rules.

I tend believe the opposite.  As someone who has managed safety programs for the better part of two decades I know full well a lot of employers would put their employees deliberately at risk if permitted to.  Most accidents and claims I deal with now are born out of the stupidity of an employee, not the employer.  The fear of OSH laws keeps a lot of employers in check.

Do you think anybody ever reads the MDDS or whatever that large binder book is they require all restaurants and plants to have?  Heck the MDDS says that Fantastic or Formula 409 is illegal to use to clean in a restaurant despite its ok to clean your own household with.

There's lots of things you can do in your own house that you can't do in a restaurant.  You're not allowed to dry dishes with a handtowel in a restaurant, for example.  There's no sprinkler system or Exit signage in my house. And I'm not paying anyone to cook dinner tonight.

If you don’t know where the nearest exit is in your house, then your in a lot of trouble.

[Max Rockatansky]

^^^

People are creatures of habit.  In almost every fire evacuation/drill we have about 90% of the employees will walk away from their nearest exit back to the one where they clock in at. 

Extra shout out when people combine two or more scams.
like multi-level marketing for essential oils
or psychics who talk to ancient aliens
My chiropractor recommended non-GMO, free range superfood antioxidants to help with my Havana Syndrome.

Smart water

Herbalife is a lot of scams rolled into one (which my brother is big into).

[thspfc]

Maybe all of the hundreds of people I have met who smoke the stuff were all naturally dingbats anyway (so smoking it truly had no effect)

everybody has their own unhealthy coping skills.  No need to break your arm jacking yourself off just because alcohol and marijuana aren't on your list.

I'm not sure which part of his post prompted you to write this. Ad hominem and strawman arguments, at the same time? Impressive.

[roadman65]

Red Bull is a big scam. You’re paying a lot of money for the same stuff you get in coffee.

Plus you eventually lose the energy you started out with before you consumed it. You gain more energy added to your original energy and later on you loose more energy, plus a few more bucks out of your wallet.

Blame the Yager Bomb for its popularity.

Also spell correct sucks again. Can’t figure common words out to use.

[J N Winkler]

I am not a safety person, but I have read the MSDSes for the motor oils I use.  It's one way to find out the API group classifications of the basestocks in a name-brand oil, which is otherwise a proprietary blend.

I have never been a user.  I don't smoke anything, and I don't drink.  Every person I have ever met who habitually smokes marijuana always:

A) Tells me they are not addicted and can quit anytime.

B) Gets mad at me for not trying it (I still don't know why they even care).

C) Goes on and on about how safe it is.

D) Then proceeds to space out constantly, and the ones I worked with, would need to be told several times how to do the most menial tasks.

I have heard people say cannabis aggravates their anxiety and paranoia, so I'm willing to believe there is a spread in response to it, but my own was pretty much like your (D).  My secondhand exposure to it was in Amsterdam, which I visited without knowing that cannabis-free lodging has to be searched for specifically, and by the time I left, I was still able to function normally--I got to the airport without incident--but had completely lost my ability to pick up on small deviations from normal procedure.

When I checked in at Schiphol, I put my backpack on the conveyor belt, and the ticket agent had to say about five or six times that he wanted me to put it on a luggage cart behind me.  When I finally understood what he was trying to say, he gave me a look like he would lose it if he had to handle yet another pothead.

It also had effects on my mood.  Superficially, I think I would have come across as more mellow than usual, but that wasn't what it felt like on the inside.  It was more like an amping-up of indifference and dismissiveness.  So that's another reason I've decided it is just not for me.

[kalvado]

Expiration dates that are set Way Too Soon so that manufacturers hope their goods will just be thrown away and new ones bought.

Laundry care tags that prescribe excessively cautious care of clothing.  Preshrunk solid color cotton T-shirts really are okay washed in "warm".

Expiration date is a complex one. On one hand, I don't expect most things, especially food, to last forever. On the other hand, I don't expect a tuna can to be like Cinderella carriage and turn  inedible once the clock strikes. Yet something has to be said about expected lifetime, and it better be clear directions. Hence the date...
My rule of thumb is "critical examination between 1 and 3 shelf lives"...

[Max Rockatansky]

Red Bull is a big scam. You're paying a lot of money for the same stuff you get in coffee.

I like Red Bull, I don't like coffee.  I do prefer Monster and Rockstar over Red Bull, they also happen to be cheaper.  Even still, Red Bull usually is less to buy individually over something like coffee shop coffee.

[abefroman329]

Blame the Yager Bomb for its popularity

There's also the lesser-known sake bomb.

And before either one of those, there was vodka and Red Bull. 

[kalvado]

Red Bull is a big scam. You're paying a lot of money for the same stuff you get in coffee.

Plus you eventually lose the energy you started out with before you consumed it. You gain more energy added to your original energy and later on you loose more energy, plus a few more bucks out of your wallet.

Blame the Yager Bomb for its popularity.

Also spell correct sucks again. Can't figure common words out to use.

Store bought food is a big scam. You're paying a lot of money for the same stuff you can pick up in the field.

Plus you eventually lose the energy you started out with before you consumed it. You gain more energy added to your original energy and later on you loose more energy, plus a few more bucks out of your wallet.

[abefroman329]

Maybe all of the hundreds of people I have met who smoke the stuff were all naturally dingbats anyway (so smoking it truly had no effect)

everybody has their own unhealthy coping skills.  No need to break your arm jacking yourself off just because alcohol and marijuana aren't on your list.

I'm not sure which part of his post prompted you to write this.

The part I quoted, but really it could have been any of the other parts where he was, you know, about to break his arm jacking himself off because he doesn't drink or smoke pot.

[formulanone]

Extra shout out when people combine two or more scams.
like multi-level marketing for essential oils
or psychics who talk to ancient aliens
My chiropractor recommended non-GMO, free range superfood antioxidants to help with my Havana Syndrome.

Smart water

I bought Smart Water once at an airport and it's the only time I felt thirstier even after consuming it. Probably from whatever added minerals they put in it. Nowadays I just refill a stainless steel bottle, but not every airport has the fountains to fill them.

For that matter, water with pH values above 7.5 can take a hike. Do that many people require their stomachs to produce extra acid to compensate?

Blame the Yager Bomb for its popularity

There's also the lesser-known sake bomb.

And before either one of those, there was vodka and Red Bull. 

Actually before those, there was just Red Bull. Or just vodka, to be more precise.

[Max Rockatansky]

Maybe all of the hundreds of people I have met who smoke the stuff were all naturally dingbats anyway (so smoking it truly had no effect)

everybody has their own unhealthy coping skills.  No need to break your arm jacking yourself off just because alcohol and marijuana aren't on your list.

I'm not sure which part of his post prompted you to write this.

The part I quoted, but really it could have been any of the other parts where he was, you know, about to break his arm jacking himself off because he doesn't drink or smoke pot.

What other kind of jacking would apply here?  Foot jacking?