seymour333

Just wait until Amazon changes the content of your books without telling you

I worked in one of these call centers just after high-school. Not even a molecule of ethics existed in the entire company. My job involved getting yelled at by people who were sick of getting calls from dozens of different companies, and occasionally talking with someone gullible enough to come in for a sales meeting, who would then yell at everyone involved once they discovered they had been duped.

I can't remember exactly, but I think I eventually got fired because I started to deviate from the script. Sometimes being honest with people, and sometimes trolling angry people. It was a horrible job.

"AT&T Cleared by Judge to Buy Time Warner, Judge Buys Boat"

I had to read the title 10 times before I realized it wasn't someone asking: "how do dat?"

Gonna go ahead and chalk that up to reading comprehension fails. Good times

I guess I'm just overly eager to tell Americans how crazy the system they accept is

I think you're using an outlier to compare to an entire population, the argument doesn't really hold up.

(indeed, it's unfortunate for your friend and I'm sorry that they're in that situation)

For the average person though (which, when we talk about American healthcare, is largely who we are discussing), and a for the majority of the population, things work out very differently. Myself and the members of my family have had countless hospital stays, ER visits, surgeries, checkups, ambulance rides (approx $300 flat fee), assessments, scans and x-rays. All without any of us carrying any debt or dealing with any related financial hardship (lower tax bracket, so no special benefit plans or anything).

Friend's kid's appendix needed removal, multiple night stay at the hospital. No cost. What does that look like in America?

I had a deviated septum and didn't breath great. I breath just fine now after my totally covered septoplasty. What does that look like in America?

Kids recently got strep throat and needed a doctors appointment to get a prescription for antibiotics ($42 to cover the prescription) What does that look like in America? (honestly I'm curious about this one, would it be more than a couple hundred dollars for that?)

edit (spelling)

You forgot:

3. This is actually a good thing, because we get health care when we need it and aren't exposed to crippling debt?

(your system entirely indefensible from every possible view point)

This is super fascinating, thanks for the link.

The next time I go on a nature walk I am going to soak myself in a bathtub full of bleach first, I'll be invisible.

See the reply by tomkinstinch. It is likely that the combination of gases produced by your skin's microbiome are more attractive to mosquitoes than that of your wife's.

This seems more probable than increased amounts of CO2 floating around your feet and ankles, especially if you are laying next to you wife where the aggregate CO2 from both of you breathing will be distributed fairly evenly between you.

A quote from tomkinistinch's linked article: "...washing the feet with a bactericidal soap significantly alters the selection of biting sites...".

I wish we were at a point technologically where it would be simple(and cheap) for a person to detect and catalog things like VOCs that skin bacteria produce, or quantities of bacteria on the skin to determine how they correlate with something like mosquito attraction.

It would be pretty great to be able to say definitively that x bacteria concentrations on your skin are attracting mosquitoes to you, rather than simply conceding "mosquitoes love to bite me".

Fully agree with this. I got rid of any major debt almost a decade ago and it's the only way I keep myself afloat. No car loans, not furniture or electronics that I can't pay cash for, and I keep a credit card only for functional aspects (online purchases, credit rating etc)

Pretty much this. I can't afford to commit that level of income to investments, and even if I could, the impact on my financial standing would not be significant (probably? I have no idea what kind of % return you get on an index fund)

If you could go ahead and just outline that program in point form as a reply to this that'd be great

Well, yeah of course all of those things are important factors in what keeps people down. And all of those issues need to be addressed, and the solutions to those issues would probably help her situation immeasurably (aside from health care, we don't have to deal with that).

She is irresponsible though, and short of becoming deeply invested in discovering solutions to all the problems you stated, the best chance she has of helping herself is to become better at managing her own life.

I'm not trying to bust on anyone for buying a TV, I've been there. It's kind of a two sided problem. The really big side with all those societal and government issues, and the other side with the things that people can actually control

What, that's not how everyone decides to have kids? Weird

Not even remotely true. Getting a post-secondary education, learning to be financially responsible, and not fucking up in any major ways (debt, crime etc) are what helped me escape poverty. Also the support of government programs that helped to fill in gaps when I was struggling

Personally what I find the most frustrating is finally escaping poverty and getting pushed firmly against an artificial, middle-class, ceiling where it isn't possible to become more financially free because of constant inflation and the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family. Meanwhile productivity and profitability continue to increase

This is pretty true. I'm always watching my sister-in-law, who can barely make ends meet, buy stupid shit. Big TV, new furniture that she can barely get credit approval for, clothes that have brands and logos on them that are twice as expensive as plain clothes that are usually better quality.

A lot of it looks like compensation for being on the poverty line. Like her self-esteem can't take the hit of buying the sensible items that she needs so she can get ahead. Doesn't realize she's getting in her own way.

I think culturally we're taught to have nice things and that becomes the goal instead of acting sensibly and doing the right things. Would probably need a couple of generations of kids who value a healthy savings account and an on-track budget more than whatever shiny things they encounter in the media they consume. That's a tall order

seriously though, don't use soap. Just get a nylon scrubber or stiff bristled nylon(or whatever) brush and use salt. Soap is going to remove the seasoning and probably leave a soapy flavor behind

I bought one of these a year ago and it seems to do a pretty good job: https://grillbadger.com/

The bristles are a lot bigger than steel bristles, so if one did come off it would presumably be easier to notice in your food and likely less damaging than the stainless steel needles that come off of metal bristle brushes.

This one looks interesting as well: https://www.konabbqstore.com/products/safe-clean-grill-brush...

I also really like this idea: http://www.instructables.com/id/Quick-Bamboo-Skewer-BBQ-Brus...

But you would probably have to wear an oven mitt if you wanted to clean a really hot grill

fair enough, don't know why I lump all the "olds" together like that. There has to be a better name for them than the dial-up generation. I grew up with dial-up and I'm not that old.

And they probably saved millions in wages while they were at it.

Coming out of college as a mature student I saw so many of my younger classmates absolutely throwing themselves at the worst offers the local job pool presented.

I kept telling them just don't accept, wait for a better offer, look elsewhere. The problem is, at least in the market I'm in, there seems to be a practice of wage fixing. It's the same bad offer everywhere. I talked to a few recruiters at those companies, asked some pointed questions about compensation that more experienced employees tend to ask, and watched them just shut down. It was less about the "millennial advantage" and more about the benefits of naivety on their bottom line.

I get that having more work/life experience in general qualifies me for a slightly higher starting wage, but I held out and refused any offers from low ball employers and started $10k higher than most of my colleagues who graduated at the same time.

It's horrible that this older demographic is being discriminated against and forced out of their jobs, but this isn't only about age discrimination. The goal isn't to acquire "digitally native" employees (not entirely). The goal is to save money on wages and lower the wage expectations of an entire generation of people.

...unless I'm wrong and everyone who replaced someone who was forced out is doing great and all those boomers were just becoming stagnant dead weight and deserved what they got.