I only use audio books for pleasure reading, so I don’t know if that counts as ‘anything important’. As for focusing on the actual book, I’ve got decent dual focus, but I tend to aggressively pause my books when distracted to minimize that, and the app has an auto-rewind feature so it can roll back a bit (I have 30s) after a pause to cover anything you may have missed. Listening to a book or a podcast while driving/doing chores/anything that doesn’t require much brain power is pretty normal for me.
They spent 1500x more on enforcement than they could have ever recovered from fare evaders. Just like every single other monitoring and enforcement program for public services.
Has there ever been a single program like that which is actually a net positive? Fare enforcement, food stamps means testing, public services with drug screens, “welfare queen” check ups, means testing, etc. I’m not aware of a single instance where it wouldn’t have been cheaper just to let a few people get benefits that “didn’t deserve them” than putting these restrictions in place
But God’s forbid we let poor people have nice things, or just to do good things for our society. Goddamned toxic puritanicalism. …