Generally the ones that are on those plans are the most vulnerable. I’ve got a fixed TXU plan. The up front cost of being on it was a couple of hundred bucks because I had bad credit at the time. The pay as you go variable rate places don’t have that up front cost and when it’s not peak times they’re significantly cheaper.
Unfortunately they don’t always let people know in time when the rates spike. So these vulnerable people don’t even realize they should be turning shit off or they’re not home to do it or it’s a heat wave/ice storm where they could just fucking die if they turn off climate control.
It’s been a fucking mess down here in Houston. My electricity came up pretty quickly and I was able to head west and grab a hotel for a night so I didn’t get heat stroke. I’m lucky. I was able to come back and eat the brisket I smoked before Beryl came through (I’m a stereotype, sue me). But there are people who still don’t have electricity in this fucking weather and there are others who have to decide between their fridge and their AC.
I’m drunk, bitter, and pissed off tonight. So I’m gonna ramble.
Toss these guys a few bucks the next time your plan is up for renewal and see what rate you can get. Usually TXU is on the high side. www.texaspowerguide.com
I hate this so much. I had to call a clinic the other day to ask about medical test results. None of the options on the menu were for that. So I clicked 1 for appointments. Then my options were to reschedule an appointment or to cancel an appointment. No option to go back. I clicked 0 and it hung up on me. Called back, clicked schedule an appointment and it told me to hang up and go online. Fuck me.
Tbf in many countries you still get this. The Nordics is night and day compared to the U.K. where I live now. You get a local number, a local email and someone who works at that office actually responds and is enabled to make decisions.
Ask anyone who has lived through war: This is fine because it’s the closest you’ll get to peaceful activities.
You don’t get to pick and choose your disasters and turn them off at will.
Much more realistic than the original meme. The failures of society overall to be cohesive and care for everyone in society isn’t within the control of the powerless. What the powerless can do is control their own simple joys, that’s all.
So treating yourself kindly in the face of evil you cannot control nor stop is fine.
While I’ll definitely do what I can to try and influence the trajectory we’re on I’m just one person with very little power, and I’m not exactly optimistic about how things are going and figure that at some point something like this meme will be the best I can do
See, replication isn’t a problem if your entire field is vibes-based. A lot of economics papers I come across are like that (so much so that I am close to writing off the entire decipline as unscientific). The diff in the level of rigour you would see in e.g. particle physics versus in economics is baffling.
It used to be psychology as well but I am noticing they are more than aware of their replication crisis lately. Whereas economics feels pseudoscience with a maths clothing.
The problem is that a lot out economics relies on “models” that estimate the price of milk by assuming a frictionless cow on an infinite plane. There’s a distinct lack of attempts to actually test the models against reality, or simply study reality itself (the reason likely being that when people do study reality instead of models, the progressive economists most often turn out to be right)
Economics is tarot card reading for right wing pseudointellectuals, just like The Stock Market being the same as astrological horoscopes for the same crowd
Not all of it. But that’s what a lot of the mainstream has become.
For a better analysis than I can give, check out Unlearning Economics on YouTube. He’s an econ PhD doing a lot of excellent work dissecting the problems with the field as a whole.
The real issue is that anyone can come up with an economic model, but politicians and public figures get to pick and choose the one that fits their beliefs most closely. The model can be crap and barely hold up beyond an ELIF narrative about why it’s true, and people will base their careers around believing it
I think there are good economic models out there, it’s just the convenient ones that are spread… Ones that don’t generally hold up against actual observation
Also the fact that the economy is managed can mean things aren’t always testable. If you think there’s going to be a recession based on models and you prevent that by using policy, did you really prevent the recession or was it never going to happen?
The problem is that a lot out economics relies on “models” that estimate the price of milk by assuming a frictionless cow on an infinite plane
Reminds me of a great sarcastic comment I heard in a “Well, there’s your problem” podcast. It was along the lines of “Turns out that, if gas was free, contrary to what economists would have you believe, people wouldn’t be consuming infinite amounts of it”
I see the same issues also in computer science especially when looking into recent trends such as AI or blockchain/NFTs before that. There are definitely areas that are more rigorous than others but the replication crisis is a problem in many many scientific fields. If your results are not completely outlandish and don’t go against the vibe, no one will ever bother to check your results.
There are so many different areas of computer science though… Everything from pure mathematics (e.g ‘we found a new algorithm that does X in O(logx)’) to the absurdly specific (‘when I run the load tests with this configuration it’s faster’). The former would get published. The latter wouldn’t. And the stuff in the middle ranges the gamut from ‘here’s my new GC algorithm that performs better in benchmarks on these sample sets’ to ‘looks like programmers have fewer bugs when you constrain them with these invariants’. All the way over on the other side, NFT/Blockchain/AI announcement crap usually doesn’t even have a scientific statement to be expressed, so there’s nothing to confirm or deny. There are issues with some areas, but I’m not sure that replication is really the big one for most of these. Only one it commonly applies to IMO are productivity or bug-frequency claims which are generally hella suss
A field that definitely has a problem with replication is Computer Human Interaction. There are a lot of user studies in that field and you basically never see a study done twice. The setup of the studies usually doesn’t even allow it to be repeated as it hinges on some proprietary software written for that very study that is not released to the public.
Yeah that’s a very good point. I was kinda thinking of HCI at the end there but I’m a software engineer so I was only talking about dev experience 😅. Definitely the same ballpark though and 100% agree with you
The level of rigour you would see in e.g. particle physics versus in economics is baffling.
There’s no economic equivalent of a LHC, though. For a while, the high end physics really was confined to a blackboard and predicated on people’s faith in mathematics. And you can build convincing economic models rooted in a reliable mathematical formula. You can even back your way into a convincing mathematical model by compiling economic data and building a model around that.
Whereas economics feels pseudoscience with a maths clothing.
The economist Richard Wolff often comments on the curious distinction between Economics and Business as fields of study.
Na mate, you can’t replicate a single study. There’s never a chance to control all your environment and redo everything exactly the same. Even if you did, people get older and arguably wiser so they behave difference under the same situation.
In the mean time, all electrons are interchangeable and you can pick as many as you want and put in the condition that you want.
Almost every time I restart my Windows PC from an update, it sits on the “closing apps screen” or “restarting” screen then gives up completely and I have to force it to shut down/restart
And, just about every other time I restart with an update, it closes apps and then just fully shuts down after the update!
“restarting” for 15 minutes. Then crashes. Now I have to reinstall updates and go through it all over again. I hate how crappy the windows update process has become.
Except for the immutable versions I have, Linux almost never needs to reboot after an update. Upgrades, yes, but not standard updates. And even after upgrades, it just works [(except for one of the immutable versions I have)].
I usually close all programs before shutting down / rebooting, anyway (a habit I picked up from Win95 days, where it would crash if programs prevented it from shutting down), so I don’t really feel this SIGKILL issues.
Fedora is the immutable I was referring to that does need to reboot. Linux Mint and OpenSuse only need to reboot after an upgrade. I’ve never had to reboot them after updates. Mileage may vary, of course, as different people have different software, tools, and libraries installed.
I was talking about regular fedora. It’s not that you have to reboot, but you don’t get to use those updates until you do. The most obvious example is updating the kernel and its modules.
You’re correct. A kernel update would fall under the umbrella of a system upgrade, where the system needs to shut down to allow underlying components to be reloaded.
Right, but Fedora failures allows me still to boot. Windows failures forces an uninstallation of the update, killing even more time. There are good and bad things to each approach.
As Microsoft adds ads in more places more and more, I consider moving over to Linux but I just have too many files and weird Windows only programs that I use that I can’t
I also haven’t really found a desktop environment I really like yet, so I’m open to suggestions for dual booting!
I pretty much always recommend Linux Mint Cinnamon for anyone entering Linux for the first time or anyone who wants something to just work 98% of the time. I use Mint Debian Edition (testing it out. So far, so good, and it’s quickly entering first place in terms of recommendations, as it seems just as stable and uses Debian packages instead of Ubuntu’s), OpenSuse with KDE (less for beginner’s and more for those who want “eye candy” and some nostalgia), and Fedora Silverblue (currently have an update issue with its certificates, so can’t really recommend it yet). I’ve found very few Windows programs to not work within WINE (more complex, system file dependent programs generally are those that fail), so you may find that all of your Windows-only programs work perfectly fine under WINE.
With Mint (and others, I’m sure), you can install multiple DEs and test them out, then remove those you don’t like. Or keep them all and play DE roulette I guess lol
I’ll definitely check some of those out, thanks! I have a little experience with Linux since every self hosted server PC I’ve built has always had Ubuntu Server, but even then I was tempted to try and dual boot Mint
Yes, personal finance is important to teach in school, but teaching this gives young people the ability to keep the sense of wonder they’re born with. It’s the deepest answer to, “When will we ever use this?” for topics that don’t (seem to) have an immediate use. You never know what learning you’ll use in your life.
They’ll use it when they take a deeper look into something because their curiosity that we fostered was piqued and they discover something new and interesting about our world, adding it to our collective knowledge.
And for those who have kids that don’t. That’s fine too. Not everyone is born exceptional or super interested in this kinda shit. That’s fine too. Most of what makes a person themselves is genetic anyway.
Parenting can try to dull or hone those edges to something wicked or calmer if needed though. Even then, brains are different. Don’t be surprised when they are.
People advocating for teaching of personal finance and taxes in schools were always the ones not paying attention.
I know this because I’ve seen them say that, I’ve also seen them not pay attention when the topic was addressed when they were in high school. Many of these topics are mandatory in Scottish High schools and have been for most millennials and younger.
Anyone that can comprehend the most basic algebra and statistics a secondary education would give you can understand taxes and finance from free accessible websites/library books. Best practices for personal finance and tax laws may change, so your likely to have to learn some of it again. It’s vital schools provide the more abstract but timeless skills of maths, reasoning, reading and comprehension.
For the record, that would be an illegal order and should be refused by everyone involved in the military chain.
(Whether or not it is refused is a different matter.)
They sent back the question of what is an official act. And when the judge comes back with something like “official acts are those in which a president is acting in an official capacity as the president to fulfill obligations and duties of the president.” (IANAL….so there’s probably some anal retentive detail that is super critical in missing)
In any case, when challenging the election, that is not an official act- that was something done by Trump-the-candidate.
Inviting foreign dignitaries, however frequently is. (But probably not when selling out America and other spies to keep compromat from leaking)
Organizing an insurrection in the US never is, however.
I’m alarmed by the alarm in the dissent- they probably know where this is going, but POTUS has enjoyed some immunity anyhow as far as official acts go. And when it’s kept to a reasonable understanding… that’s more or less good.
Their alarm suggests that the majority here is not going to have a reasonable understanding when that gets appealed.
He’s the commander in chief, ordering a seal team or the CIA to assassinate someone is an official act and legal now. What you fail to mention in your haste to try to downplay this is that they also made it impossible to present evidence of crimes by the president, so any non-public action by the president is de facto legal. It would be impossible to prosecute because even if you gathered evidence he ordered the hit, you couldn’t use it in court.
Yes, it’s that bad. No, it’s not that people are over reacting.
Read Sotomayor’s dissent, she says explicitly that this gives the president legal immunity against assassinations.
Why not? He could make the argument that the election was stolen and ignoring it is in the best interest of the United states.
because that act is not POTUS’s job. He’s making the argument as a candidate. he’s not supposed to be part of that process because he’s biased.
as for whose to say what’s reasonable… that is the problem. right now a dangerous number of SCOTUS are bought and paid for, or are absolutely partisan hacks.
His job is to support and defend the Constitution of the United states. You certainly can argue that protecting the integrity of the voting system is part of that job.
But that doesn’t sanction military members to break the law or the UCMJ. And that’s the point. They do not have immunity, qualified or otherwise. The order would be unlawful simply because of the issuing parties bias and personal gain from the act.
I’m not saying there are not people in the military who would follow this type of order. I’m saying that they don’t have the protections or immunity, qualified or otherwise, and honestly, a presidential pardon doesn’t do anything for them if the state decides to prosecute them. Plus military members are basically the only people in the US subject to legal double jeopardy because they can be tried by the military separately from state and federal law.
The supreme Court is specifically saying the order is legal. He could say it’s part of his official duties, in which case the order itself would be legal. His official duties include commanding the armed forces. If the president gives an order, a marine or a Navy SEAL cannot choose to not follow that order on legal grounds. They can choose to not follow on moral grounds but that refusal in itself would be illegal. Should it come to that, I would hope the vast majority of the armed forces would refuse the order.
In her dissent, justice Sotomayor specifically said that the president could order an assassination and could not be prosecuted for it. I am assuming she knows more than you are I about how the legal system works.
That conflicts not just with other established law, but also with what I actually said and what the ruling says. The problem with it is that the order can’t be considered lawful regardless of what the Supreme court ruled because it doesn’t fit all the criteria of a lawful order.
“What is considered a lawful order in the military? It must not conflict with the statutory or constitutional rights of the person receiving the order. Finally, it must be a specific mandate to do or not to do a specific act. In sum, an order is presumed lawful if it has a valid military purpose and is a clear, precise, narrowly drawn mandate.”
One other thing is that you’re quoting dissenting members of the SCOTUS, not the ruling itself. That’s a single interpretation of it, and one deliberately intended to alarm people so that they push back against it.
That not what I said. What I said is their comments aren’t legal precedent. That’s not the same thing. Or are we taking everything that’s ever come out of Clarence Thomas’s mouth as legal precedent now?
Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He’s in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.
To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.
That’s the internet pop-psychologist interpretation, but the people actually writing him often have him doing his best to better the Gotham around him. A lot of the petty thugs he catches are given chances to redeem themselves via Wayne based welfare programs.
Plus being able to figure out a semilegitimate excuse to blow stuff up. “This could be very dangerous so we’re going to do several things to make it safer. That’s teaching safe lab techniques, so it’s educational!”
This is the right attitude more people should have. But all too often, when people are proven wrong, they genuinely believe that it must be the other person/group, because they cannot accept the emotional consequences of being wrong.
I know that I’ve had a hard time learning this because growing up I was never held to account for my actions on an emotional level. It was the 80s and 90s, and adults at that time would either shrug it off, or go straight to the nuclear punishment of corporal punishment. Never once would they sit down and talk to you about why what you did was wrong and how to do it better next time. I, anecdotally, believe that a lot of genx suffer this same way. They simply haven’t learned that there is a better way.
Also, you have to know what a better way to handle a situation is. If someone’s the type of person who hits a kid for misbehavior, maybe they don’t know how to do better.
My husband and I are in our mid thirties, and are actively holding off on kids until we feel like we’ve gotten better at managing our emotions. Our parents had kids much earlier, and ended up exercising their emotional dysfunction on small children
I could be completely wrong, but my life experience so far suggests that the best way to get better at something is to put yourself into situations where you have to actually practice the skill. I’ve been fostering cats and kittens for a few years, and I think it has really pushed me to learn how to manage my emotions better.
I’ve got a two year old, who drives me absolutely insane sometimes. I think if I grew up in my parents culture, where it was acceptable to smack kids or shout at them, I probably would.
That’s a horrible thing to say, but I’m glad I’m aware of the fact that it’s counter-productive. I’m almost jealous of my child, to know they’ve got someone like me as a father, as opposed to my father.
What is the use case for PayPal in the US? Here in Brazil we pay everything with credit card or bank transfer with a QR code. People can transfer money to you from any bank 24/7 instantaneously with just your email or phone number without any fees. Is that different in the US?
It gives businesses a very easy to way to set up monthly payments, one-time donations, accept forms of payments other than e-transfer (which many people don’t want to use), allows for international purchases without being penalized, and more.
Other options are available, but they are neither easy/cheap/convenient for the business or any better for the customer.
I see. From that list the international purchases is a good reason to use PayPal in Brazil. I only have an account there because like 6 years ago I needed to pay for a TOEFL certification and without an international card the only way was PayPal so it worked pretty nicely. Never had to use it after that tho. Hope you guys get a better alternative so PayPal can die a horrible death.
The banking system in the US is a legacy mess. Transfers still take business days to go through and making your bank account # and routing information available is actually a security concern, honestly I don’t even know why that’s still a thing.
Products like PayPal and Plaid try to provide something that is slightly more usable, but with this underlying obsolescence their functionality is very limited.
When paying for services, credit cards are still the way to do it. For P2P payments, people use PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and others. Nothing even close to a unified system like Pix in Brazil.
There is Zelle, which is instant bank to bank. It’s fairly widely available from one’s financial institution, and it doesn’t cost anything, but it’s not terribly well known yet for some reason
They named it after gazelle, which is a herd prey animal. That causes it to slip away from attention when it’s mentioned.
If they’d called in Bonko or something it would stand out in people’s memories more. Bonko, bright orange icon, it would spread by wildfire. Nobody would forget that name.
There are no hard consonants in the word. Synaesthetically, it’s a blue-purple word. Cool, muted. It’s a word that, even before the “gazelle” reference, is hiding there. Your mind slips over it without friction. It enters and leaves your mouth and your mind like a fish passing under the sparkling water, nearly unnoticed.
Terrible brand name. I mean, it does convey a little more safety than “Bonko” but the whole point with the unsafe sounding name is it causes the person to consciously ask “How safe is it?” and if you can answer that immediately with “Safer than Ft Knox” then it becomes part of the brand consciously.
Zelle is non-threatening, but that’s not the same thing as safe when it comes to business or finances.
What’s a good safe, energetic, competent, orange word for this service? Hmm. Bonus points if it’s intuitively self-descriptive.
How about “Paytag”. It’s yellow but whatever. Still might not be better than Bonko.
Zelle works pretty good, the main problem is the security limits.
Let’s say you hire somebody to build a shed for $5,000.
You can’t just pay him $5,000. The first day maybe you can pay him $1,000, then the next day you can pay him another $1,500, then you’ve reached the 30-day maximum for a new contact so you have to wait till day 31 to pay him the other $2,500. After that if you want another shed you can pay the $5,000 instantly.
It is until you end up having to blacklist zelle because your banking information was used to defraud someone. I actually had my account broken into, funds deposited from zelle and then all available funds removed from my account in the space of about an hour. Went to pay for something the day after and had to call my bank’s fraud department. They tried the same thing with a second account of mine but it was flagged immediately when they tried to use the same login credentials (they weren’t remotely the same). So no zelle for me. It’s permanently disabled by both my banks for security reasons.
In my experience, their consumer protection is great.
PayPal has been absolutely instrumental for me in issuing refunds with obstinate vendors. Once or twice they’ve issued me a refund after being refused a return/refund when an Aliexpress vendor either sent the wrong item or nothing at all.
I even got them to secure me a refund against the Australian government after they refused to issue a refund after directing me to apply for a tourist visa with the wrong visa process.
I even got them to secure me a refund against the Australian government after they refused to issue a refund after directing me to apply for a tourist visa with the wrong visa process.
I love this result. It’s really damn hard to protect yourself from government failure, especially in cases where you are owed money. It’s awesome that you not only got your money back, but also got to play the “fuck you, if you take my lunch money you can fight my big brother” card.
I felt the same way. I was VERY happy with that outcome. I won’t say PayPal earned my LOYALTY with that, because loyalty to ANY company is stupidity, but at the very least they earned my respect for the time being. Of course, I reserve the right to revoke it at any time.
Aussie here. One reason I use PayPal is for subscriptions (streaming services etc) to avoid the headache of updating credit card details in multiple places when I change bank, credit card renews, etc. just change it in PayPal once and every subscription keeps working.
Why would any one use bank details that can’t be cancelled for online services? Pay pal is worse. Will hold your money ransom. Being able to cancel payment method is very important, best is unique payment method for each service.
Agree, where I live for recurring subscriptions most people use “digital credit cards” that you generate on your banking app and they have expiration dates or you can cancel them and generate a new one anytime you want. That’s good because there are so many services that make it a pain in the ass to cancel a subscription so you just delete the card from existence.
I’m looking squarely at Adobe and other companys who fraudulently represent services, because nothing is a product any more and extorting money by charging rent or stealing IP is the new white collar crime.
Edit: I get you. You mean multiple cards within PayPal itself per vendor. Yeah, that seems like similar effort but at least you can see everything in one portal. I have a single card linked with just enough limit to cover subscriptions and the odd internet purchase.
Good luck with that. Its got no guarantee of working and can be ignored and it does.
Paypal is cancerous middleman. You do not need and on those rare occasions where you want to risk the transaction, never link it to your bank account. Use disposable prepaid services.
PayPal passes most billing information to the store where you purchased from. Card info is excluded, but in most cases PCI compliance checks ensure that card info is stored securely (or not at all).
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