College. It was so much easier paying for my college education as a broke kid, then it is trying to pay for my kids college education at what’s supposed to be my prime earning years
Well past the age or inclination for a kegger, but last time I wanted plastic cups for something, red Solo cups were the least expensive choice.
It was ok for my use but I tried to give a short stack to my kid for college and apparently they’re banned
E-Rate and other Universal Service Fund (USF) programs are paid for by fees imposed on phone companies, which usually pass the cost on to consumers on their monthly bills.
Let me guess, they want to save government money …… errrr let large companies keep more of the money from their ratepayers?
Seems great in theory and am pretty sure mine could. However the first thing I enabled was “no remote control”. It’s a dangerous idea to allow anyone to turn on the oven when no one is home. It’s a dangerous idea to trust the security of an appliance vendor with the safety of your family
Actually I’m annoyed that it is a binary choice. I don’t want to let anyone turn on the stovetop/oven unattended. But I would prefer to be able to turn it off remotely if someone does. But disabling “burn down the house” mode also disables “stop it before it happens”
It probably helps that this oven preheats very quickly. I don’t see being tempted to save a minute or two
Alerts can be good
Sure you can live without any of these. However from the number of times my cleaner turns on the stovetop, if I had little kids i might call it important. From the number of times my mom has left the stove on, if she lived here I might consider it important
Continuous or short term reporting is a privacy issue. It can go a long way toward monitoring where someone is going all the time. Definitely something to be avoided.
While the trickle charging idea might sound good, there is no requirement to use a charger and many people do not. This seems like the biggest gap of any option. And even with public chargers, the infrastructure act charger funding included provisions that you can pay with cash, no account required. Those chargers would intentionally not have a way to track.
Reporting at annual inspection
Yeah, oven is the only one I have, by accident, and it’s disappointing - my goal was induction stove, double oven with air fryer, and ST was the only choice. It’s WiFi only, cloud app only, but there’s an HA integration to the cloud app
Currently I get both ST and HA alerts when my oven is on but that’s the only useful feature. However neither interface works works well with the double oven feature
There’s already the risk of fraudulent inspections, possibly more of an incentive. A failed inspection could result in very expensive repairs, giving a customer lots of incentive to offer a bribe.
In addition to enforcement efforts, supposedly a loss of income is a significant incentive for a garage to stay legit. Each inspection may not cost much but it’s a regular stream of guaranteed income that shops do not want to lose
Usually they want my name to try to sell me something. Usually solar panels. Sometimes cell phone service
Unfortunately still requires the social bit. I’ve been doing a lot of cooking, especially outside. I’ve made meals fit for a dozen or more …… but I don’t know how to find someone to eat it
Never seen them, but I’d try one of if I did.
The closest we have are mini potatoes that come in a tricolor bag including white, red, and blue. But the interior is mostly white
Just like it would be against the personal interests of republicans in Congress to rubber stamp the executive branch when it clearly violates constitutional checks and balances. We’ve always depended on personal greed for power as part of what makes checks and balances work. What congressman would give up his power to allocate funding, for example, and just let a tyrant have it?
But we live in a time when that no longer works, when leadership is so craven they would rather bow before their orange idol, and willingly give up the power they’ve been working toward their entire life.
Would the Supreme Court be any different? Will they care about their unique power to interpret the constitution, if they can accept motorhomes, private aircraft services, luxury resorts without fearing consequences?
Martin BormannMike Johnson (Head of theNaziRepublican Party Chancellery): Capturing the dogma of the Führerprinzip (leadership principle),BormannJohnson stated: “All depends on him, he alone sustains morale, he is invariably right, he is our hope and trust.”
I was just planning to do some sort of write up on this topic, although it will be internal only.
Of the three projects I’m currently on
There’s definitely distinct conditions where ai can be the right tool and can succeed vs when it can’t. In managements blind rush to vibe code everything, they need to better understand where it works and where it doesn’t
In particular, functionality I’m working on this week
We all saw the Regressives cut Medicaid without caring that it meant millions of citizens losing their health insurance. With universal coverage we’d see similar but on a bigger scale. Regressives will always play up spite and self-righteousness , will always find a scapegoat who is “cheating”, will always play up high taxes being “bad for business”, plus of course we’d all like to pay less in taxes. We would still need the “face eating leopard” meme. Even then, it would be better for the rest of us, but it would still be the same fight
I disagree with HSA being a retirement plan, but yes, they give the person more control, something for the long term. There are some tax advantages to building it as retirement savings that streamers like to focus on, but that really should be a second priority to covering a lifetime of healthcare
Last time looked closely, the tradeoff in my company was that for an identical cost for me, I could choose
That made it very compelling: the coverage should almost always be equal for equal cost. But unusually we don’t need that much medical care so I’d have something left over to help pay for next year. If we were able to start with just a couple healthy years, it would really make a difference in health costs. If you started young, it’s true that you build up a lot of savings for retirement, but it would only take a few healthy years at any age to cover, say a major operation (always in conjunction with HDHP). Or I don’t know if you could use it for COBRA if between jobs, but if you had enough you could cover even uninsured healthcare. The trick of course is how do you keep making an optional contribution when money is tight?
I would also argue the Vision Pro was never expected to sell in volume or make a profit. It was always a test. If it established a market of content, it was a prototype and they win. If it was just a curiosity, the loss was budgeted and they never spent the money to scale up
It worked for the last generation of Xboxes. Personally I was prepared to buy an x series for each of my kids two christmases in a row. However I refused to pay scalper prices and was never able to find them in stock.
I hope scalpers rot in hell for ruining things for the rest of us, but it directly lead to my kids building their own gaming rigs, so that’s cool. More quality time with my kids plus they learned that I actually know something about computers
You said people should be allowed to cash out of their employer provided healthcare, but you can already opt out. My ex has a smallish employer with expensive plans, so even after the employer contribution, it wasn’t clearly better than marketplace plans. We already are at a place where you can choose the public option.
Or do you mean specifically bringing the employer contribution with you? That would destroy the marketplace for people who can’t bring their employer contribution. It’s also likely to result in employers very quickly giving up those benefits
There is also the HSA which arguably could be called a step in that direction. Employers providing much less of an insurance plan but in conjunction with savings that can be used for medical care. The problem with the current implementation is it doesn’t serve well the people who need it most. People with existing conditions can not afford them without savings and people with lower incomes can’t save.
But yeah, thinking about that more, that may be a path. Allow/define a bare bones high deductible insurance plan which can eventually become universal, then encourage employer HSA contributions, including with fairness tests. Now basic and catastrophic care is covered for everyone universally and the employer benefit is on top of
Best option for coverage. Best option for “not as sleazy as other phone services”.
Very much not best for price
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But i can’t decide if this is good behavior or bad behavior …