I write all my expenses and incomes down onto app called Wallet by budget bakers. I don’t set any monthly budgets or anything however, because I find that keeping track alone already makes me much more mindful consumer. I already have records of my finances for almost 3 years so it’s pretty interesting to get to monitor my spending across a long timeframe.
I’m over it now, but for 5 years I was anti-public transit. After working a 12 hour OT shift I took the train home. Sherriff was on the train and started checking peoples tickets. I opened my bag dug around literally 30+ other tickets, found my day pass and turned it over.
But I didn’t get a day pass that day, I got a one way because of my OT plans was supposed to be an Uber home.
So I got fined $250 for it. The crazies would just get pushed off the train but normals would get fined I guess. Pissed me off so much I just stopped using the public transit for half a decade.
I just use my notes app and the letter “x” Two denote whether that thing has been paid already. I use a method called the Dave Ramsey every dollar method where every dollar has a purpose and you budget in such a way that absolutely every single dollar you get has a job. So, I get paid, and then my bank account is nearly empty two days later, but every dollar has done its job. I know that there are unexpected expenses, so a few dollars are miscellaneous, and their job is just to cover the $5 subscription that comes out quarterly, I forgot, etc.
As for the US and Europe, things are too interconnected for that to work. That said, the Internet as a whole is more centralized than you might expect from its history as a network that was supposed to be nuclear war proof.
I suspect that colonizing Mars (or wherever else) will turn out to be much more than just an engineering problem. If we get things like food, water, atmosphere, and even gravity right, I think we’ll still find an endless list of requirements that we didn’t know were requirements… and some mystery problems that don’t seem to have any cause at all. Those problems will be because of factors we never thought of, or don’t even know how to detect.
There could also be surpluses/deficiencies in our diet or environment that will take years (or perhaps generations) to show up. Again, that would be because of unanticipated, and maybe unsolvable, problems.
I could still see people trying to make it work for generations for some reason, many early colonists in the West died before stable states could be founded.
I remember sitting in on a briefing from the Biosphere folks when they reached out for collaborating institutions. One of the things that stuck with me was that they discovered that trees that were not subject to wind failed to develop a healthy trunk and tended to fall over and die. That’s not something that the researchers had even thought of.
Can I ask what year that was? We’ve known that greenhoused cuttings need an oscillating fan in order be able to hold themselves upright once they start to gain height for the 30 years that I’ve been growing that way. It’s like a little work out for them.
It would have been something like 2005 or so. It may have been a known fact at the time, but they mentioned specifically that they were caught by surprise by the phenomenon. I didn’t fault them for it - the whole project was kind of a mess. I’m a biologist and I wasn’t aware of that, so it wouldn’t have occurred to me, either.
That’s weird though. You’d think they would have had multiple botanists on the design team who could have pointed that out.
Also there’s that documentary where the group that organized it was kind of cult adjacent. They weren’t scientists first. Still very interesting and impressive they did what they did.
I’m sure it was just that no one realized it would scale to trees, since that hadn’t been done before. As far as I know you don’t have to do anything special in that regard with small seed-grown plants in a green house, only cuttings that root from stems, and so have weaker roots at first and stalks that were previously branches. I’m sorry I sounded critical, I was just curious.
Interesting! Plus, that’s exactly the sort of weird, unanticipated thing I’m talking about. How do you plan for everything? You can’t.
The first human colonists (who are just ordinary people) won’t be the rich. They’ll be desperate people who are sold a dream of the future and treated as human lab rats.
You can put small things like socks and undergarments in those mesh laundry bags so they are easier to get out of the washing machine.
You can buy phone cases that have mirrors on them which can be helpful if you find yourself in need of a mirror but the one in the restroom where you are is too high.
Because it’s not “real” work. You gotta get paid up front and put a limit on changes. You’re either good, or you’re not. Let the market sort it out, but don’t work for free.
The best thing you can do is bill by the hour, give a quote and get half of your quote up front. It works for pretty much anywhere customers suddenly disappear after the job is started.
Meta
Chick-fil-a
Hobby Lobby
AT&T
Eden Foods
Twitter
Tesla
Apple
Johnson & Johnson
Any company that includes a bible verse on it's product.
NRA
Salvation Army
They had lead in baby power at one point. I also think they did some unethical stuff with baby formula in South America but I might be wrong. Someone correct me!
They are also accused of knowingly having asbestos in their baby powder. As to the baby formula, I know Nestle had a major scandal with that stuff, but I didn’t know about J&J doing similar.
Correct asbestos. Women use baby powder with talc to keep things dry down under, this can cause cancer. You cannot remove asbestos from talc 100%. Don't use or consume products with talc.
HP. This one is easy. Low hanging fruit. For me, I bought an expensive gaming laptop that arrived defective. I asked for a replacement, they denied and required I send it in for repairs. Waited a month for them to tell me there isn’t a problem. Asked for a refund instead of having it shipped back. They said that’s not how it works, they have to send it back first. So I get it, with the defect still, and call to get a refund. They initially deny a refund due to being outside the refund period and offer a “buy back” credit. I had to spend an hour explaining why that’s not happening and why they’re going to give me a refund or expect to see me in court. Keep in mind, I hadn’t used this laptop more than an hour or two and it’s been shipped around and forth for two months. I did get my refund at least, but the headache was insane and I refuse to even look at HP products.
Adobe: Already said by others. For me, it’s because they charge an insane amount of money for barely-functional software. I used Affinity products instead.
Google: They cancel their services so quickly, it’s more like they’ve blacklisted ME. I refuse to pay for anything they offer in the event it will be discontinued in a year or two. RIP Play Music.
Amazon: Prices increase, service quality decreases, value decreases exponentially. The product I paid for at $79/year was far more superior to whatever Prime costs today. Mostly third party cheap trash. Unfortunately, and most likely by design, there are just a few specific reasons I’m forced to give Amazon money every so often. But at the very least, I’m making the highest conscious effort to avoid them.
I’ll update this if I come up with more.
Edit 1: Netflix: They keep removing quality content and increasing prices. Anti-consumer shit. They are both the reason I stopped pirating and considered starting again.
I wish we could throw the Adobe executives into the sun. They have the worst anti-consumer business model ever for the most bloated, unusable software.
To this day, Adobe CS5 is probably the best all-encompassing software package they’ve ever released. CS6 added a few things, but was buggy AF. Then CC came out and it’s been in eternal-beta since. So many lost files and sometimes even OS-destroying updates.
Google Play Music still stands as the best commercial music app I’ve used, I miss it, and whatever marketing person got them to change the glorious branding of Play Music, Play Movies, and Play Store for YouTube music, Google TV and Play Store should be fired with extreme prejudice.
Maybe a bit basic but at the beginning of every month I clone this Google Sheets template, set goals in each category, and manually log receipts as I spend. Then at the end of the month, I “audit” my budget against my credit card transactions, pay off credit, and create the next month’s budget with any adjustments learned from the previous one.
For bigger view, long-term, I just linked all my accounts into Quicken and look at it sometimes.
I own an IBM Selectic II, dual pitch, with the extra wide platen. I bought it, spent a long time diagnosing it and cleaning it before it ran properly.
I use it for one specific thing: letter writing. I'm an Aspie and can't always convey my emotions and thoughts properly, but I sure as hell can write. But not actually write with a pen, my handwriting is horrible.
When I want to say something heartfelt to someone else, I break out nice stationary, high quality paper, and one of my good typing elements, and I type it. I do have corrective tape, but my typing accuracy is pretty low, so I have to slow down. That extra effort is noticable: the type is sharper and blacker than any inkjet or laser printer, the paper is heavyweight and feels good in the hand... It almost commands respect from the reader, to pay attention to something like that.
I used it most recently to write my mother, to thank her for some things she helped me with, but didn't turn out. I knew she felt her effort was wasted or misplaced, buty words of reassurance didn't reach her. So I wrote a letter and sent it her way. Even though we're still in the same town, I mailed it. That made a difference to her, and I know she held onto it... Better than any email, or throwaway text message, and imo better than any printed document composed neatly with a word processor.
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