Adam Block

It’s been twelve days @noom and you still haven’t solved what should have been a very straightforward issue. Single worst customer service experience of our lives. Totally infuriating.

@Hertz I did that @hertz, and because I rented in 🇮🇹 you said the Italian FNOL unit would have to take care of it. The problem is they have not replied to emails for the last month and since July have ignored the video I have that clearly shows the claimed damage was present at pickup.

@ablock Hi, Adam. Thank you for taking the time to reach out to us regarding your experience. Please send us a private message with the name of the primary renter, the reservation/rental record number, along with further details of your situation so we can further assist you today.

Totally fed up with @Hertz. They claim I damaged a rental car in Italy, charged my card $700, and refuse to respond to emailed pictures showing the damage was already there when I picked up the car. 🇺🇸 customer service says “Not our problem 🤷🏻‍♂️“, even tho I booked through them. 😡

@ByrneHobart @ylecun And is completely valid under French election law.

@ylecun I think he's referring to stuff like this, which is a legitimate tactic for winning elections but which also reduces voter choice in order to keep RN out.

Funny how the American Far Right feels the need to claim that every election they lose is rigged, even outside the US, apparently. The French Far Right was not "denied a victory." It just did not win because most voters did not vote for them, thankfully.

@IlliniProgrammr @mental_ephemera @jkarsh Risible nonsense. Go read the recent Vanity Fair piece on RFK Jr and then come back here and argue how he is remotely fit to be POTUS or would have any chance of winning.

@mental_ephemera @jkarsh You laugh. But if it's two kooks running against each other and everybody who has TDS shows up to vote, RFK wins. RFK is polling at 10% and isn't going to quit the race. And if he gets to 25% as this credibility crisis drags on for the DNC, he gets to 50% pretty fast.

The political press seems dug in. The trade-off they seem to want is, ‘Give us a brokered convention—or at least another nominee so we can cover the chaos or we’re going to ignore the Republican effort to end democracy all the way through November. Your choice.’

@kroosevelt93 I don’t understand his final point about Trump trying another January 6 if he loses in November. He won’t be president this time, so how will he be able to hide behind SCOTUS’ presidential immunity finding?

Bruce Ackerman raises the very good question of why Roberts didn’t join Barrett to write a narrower opinion the three liberals would have joined. project-syndicate.org/commentary/tru…

@NOMalreadytaken @AnthonyLoPresti @GenMhayden Except those presidents weren’t making decisions in the knowledge that nothing they did would put them at risk for criminal liability.

@ablock @AnthonyLoPresti @GenMhayden In other words, the same thing that's happened with every impeachment in history

@NOMalreadytaken @AnthonyLoPresti @GenMhayden Perfect so nothing a president does is illegal if his party controls the Senate. Gotcha.

@AnthonyLoPresti @GenMhayden Agreed, and I've said as much.

@LivFaustDieJung And anyway press just makes paste, not pieces, right?

@ablock We have a garlic press but I prefer to hand cut

Hand mincing garlic makes me happy for some reason.

@deadeyebrakeman Went though this yesterday. Called, couldn’t even get past the prompts in the voice system. Finally discovered: say “missing delivery” when they ask whats wrong, follow more prompts to enter your tracking #, wait for the BS update, then press 0 lots of times: you’ll get an agent.

my package is missing and conveniently the only buttons on your website that don't work are "report missing package" and "chat with representative" and I'm becoming the joker soon

Sorry using twitter to another corporation that has made it impossible to file a complaint or speak to anyone @FedEx will you talk to me here

@royllovians @ChaosRocket @hardquar @twinkophrenia @windcomecalling Nope. It actually shows up in the last stanza of this Babcock poem from 1849: tinyurl.com/jsbabcock-the-…

@ChaosRocket @hardquar @twinkophrenia @windcomecalling No. The sentence you are quoting was written by an anonymous user on Wiktionary only a year or so ago, and it has now been deleted from Wiktionary for inaccuracy but still shows up on auto-generated web pages that copied Wiktionary content.

@RepMGP How stupid do you think your constituents actually are? sawstop.com/news/sawstop-t…

A new rule mandating finger-detection technology in table saws could raise costs by hundreds of dollars and result in a government-mandated monopoly. I introduced a bipartisan bill to protect consumer choice and block this mandate until the patents for this tech are made public.

@mattbaran How does a GC / window installer forget the sill pan? Nobody noticed as they set this huge slider directly onto the plate?

Don’t let anyone tell you that real estate development is an easy way to get rich. It entails great risk, and one bad break can take you out. This is a single family spec home I designed and helped build, it was ground up on an empty lot in Oakland. Shortly after breaking ground it ran into trouble. 1️⃣ Construction was delayed by a zealous architect neighbor reporting minor plan deviations to city officials 2️⃣ The delay meant the sale occurred during an unexpected lull in the market 3️⃣ In part due to the lull, the home was sold to a lawyer (the best offer) 4️⃣ During construction, a sill pan was omitted from the large south facing sliding door 5️⃣ Water infiltrated and created a small amount of water damage at the floor 6️⃣ Additional flooring material could not be located to replace the damaged area 7️⃣ The new owner wanted the builder to replace *all* of the flooring. 8️⃣ Owner files suit In the end it was settled out of court for some portion of the cost of replacing the entire floor. I can’t say what the profit was, but I’m pretty it wasn’t much if it was anything at all. Once again, say it with me: Real estate development is NOT an easy way to get rich.

@jmsteiner8 @austinrealtor @SN_Weekly_ Yes but in my experience in those situations the sellers were providing an inspection report as part of the disclosures. So perhaps not “independent”, but there was still an inspection done around the time the listing went up.

@austinrealtor @SN_Weekly_ Happened a lot 2020-2021 when houses sold in a day and people were paying cash. No inspection no appraisal.

My buyers went under contract on a house We had an inspection Inspection went reallllly bad The current owners/sellers had just bought the house a year ago. Here is the agent’s response when we let them know we were going to back out (the agent is amazing & did not represent them when they bought) I know what I think the seller should do in this situation…. What do you?! #seller #austinrealtor #austinrealestate #atx #realtor #realestatelawyer #errorsandommissions

@biologistimo @SkinnyGrunt Shutting off main breaker (or pulling meter) will completely de-energize anything connected to the main panel, allowing safe removal of the xfer switch. Only exception I can think of is if you have solar PV connected to an inverter. Unclear why electrician is confused by this.

@SkinnyGrunt Ok this is helpful, thanks. This particular fact seems to be up for debate between both the energy rep AND the electrician at my house.

Quick someone help me: The energy company does not understand that I need to shut down all electrical current to a house. I discontinued service/shut down the account, they are going to remove the meter box BUT apparently there is still current coming down the wire.

@MiMiLooLooTx @tribelaw Yeah presidential transition NDAs are awful. politico.com/blogs/donald-t…

So, when Obama made his transition team sign NDA’s that wasn’t “manipulating or distorting the information”? “will hold in confidence any non-public information provided to me in the course of my duties with the Obama Transition Project and ensure that such information is used exclusively for purposes of the Obama Transition Project” presidentialtransition.org/wp-content/upl…

1. The criminal trial that begins April 15 has a theme almost nobody has yet fully appreciated. It’s the through line of illegally manipulating elections by distorting the information on the basis of which those elections are decided. 2. Now, for instance, with his nonstop efforts to delay the trial’s opening, Trump is doubling down on that strategy by trying to keep voters from seeing, before they cast their ballots in November 2024, how a jury of twelve ordinary citizens would evaluate the Manhattan DA’s charge that Trump tried, on the eve of the 2016 election, to keep the voters from learning that the Access Hollywood Tape was just the tiny tip of a sordid iceberg, one he feared would melt down all over his then teetering presidential campaign with the facts about his sex affair with Stormy Daniels, an affair that seems trivial in hindsight but that loomed large at the time in that cliffhanger-close election. 3. Think about it: Using the legal system — or, more accurately, abusing it — to cover up, in order to win in 2024, how he covered up the truth in order to win in 2016!  4. That double-layered coverup, if successful, would more than make a mockery of our constitutional system. It would shred it, all the more so because the one thing Trump hasn’t even tried to cover up is his dictatorial plan to wield unlimited power over us all.

@mattyglesias Surprised no one has mentioned Journey to the Missouri by Toshikazu Kase, a firsthand account by a senior member of Japan’s foreign ministry during the war. Title refers to the signing of the Japanese surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri.

Recommended reading on the politics of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s? I know about the immediate decision-making that led to Pearl Harbor, but curious about how the longer-term trajectory arose.

@pinpulleddrmf @markbrooks Nah. seriouseats.com/sous-vide-barb…

@markbrooks Smoked pulled pork needs to be cooked to 205 internal.

You have one sentence to establish the maximum amount of trust with a total stranger. What do you say?