The price of very large publically traded companies is set entirely by supply and demand. Yes, those shares do represent a tiny share of ownership in the company, which means a share in the profits and assets of the company. But there is no law tying them together. Tesla’s market value is so high because there are more buyers than sellers, it’s as simple as that.

They do it because it works. Not only does it lead to more direct sales, but the app is scraping data that can be further used to generate sales, either to the user directly or sale of their data to third parties. And people who don’t like their habits being gamified will simply not install the app.

How many people are going to say “I refuse to go to Dunkin because they went too far gamifying their rewards program in their shitty app I never use”? Probably close to zero. So, the cost of doing it is whatever they pay their offshore contractors, who probably can’t afford to come visit the US, much less go to Dunkin for awful coffee every day.

Yeah, that is more incompetence than I am used to. When we get driving bans and other emergency declarations, the local news will put that crawly thing on the bottom of the screen letting us know what’s up. I bet they get complaints when it covers up the score of the game.

I live in an area that gets snow regularly. When we get a storm, there are precisely three things the news can report on:

• When they think it will stop
• Are the roads driveable
• Are there school or business closings

If there is nothing to report in those three topics, then it’s just another slow news day. Just be glad they’re not making TV news reports about trending Social Media topics, that’s what our local news gets into when they run out of Sinclair propaganda (or Bills highlights) to run.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/01/how-did-the-u-s-get-a-naval-base-in-cuba.html

The US took the area by force during the Spanish-American War, and then signed a “lease” with no end date with the Cuban government at the time.

I bet every time Cuba says they want to take it back, the US says “Yeah? You and what army?”

where air should be monetized

This is because you are not the customer. Your employer is the customer, they are the ones who get to choose the HSA provider for their employees. You are the goods to be sold. The HSA provider is simply harvesting profits.

It’s not entirely without risk. 2008 saw the S&P lose over 30% for the year, and 2002 was over 20%. But it is up more often than down year-to-year, and it is usually up by at least 10%.

I found some good charts here, even though it is a EU site:

https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/sp-500?currency=usd

If you are investing for the long haul , you will take the occasional 30% haircut if you can get 10-20% the rest of the time. But it would suck if you got that 30% haircut just before you needed to sell…

Have you ever looked at the makeup that theater or TV performers use? It is layered on super thick, so that it looks good from far away, but up close it looks overly made up.

Trump has been on TV so much that he knows all about that. He wants to project an image of vitality, so he layers that stuff on as thick as he can to mask his natural pallor.

I bet there is a hidden lower bound to the size of packages their Economy rate, so you are essentially paying the same rate for this Economy letter as you would for a small box. While the First Class rates have separate rates for letters vs. small boxes.

Yes, it is possible to be a “landlord” in this fashion and keep your ethics intact. Just don’t be an asshole about it.

Charge a reasonable rent for the other apartment, don’t harass them if they are a few days late with rent, keep the place updated and well maintained. And certainly don’t let an AI tell you what to charge. The best possible situation is to rent to a young person just starting out or a young family, who can use the time renting from you in a non-predatory fashion to build up savings to buy a place of their own, then rinse and repeat. Wouldn’t that be fulfilling?

On the other hand, though, look into the basic tenant law in your area so you know what you’re getting into, and make sure your lease contract is enforceable should it come to that. Some locales are notoriously tenant friendly. You might rent out your space to someone who signs all the paperwork saying that they will pay rent, and then when the time comes they never pay. This might persist even after their lease is up, and not move out when required to. But as a landlord, it will be totally your choice to decide what to do in that situation. While the law may allow you to evict that person, you don’t have to escalate that far on day 1. The choices would be up to you. You can choose grace and patience if you want. It may not always be enough.

Your relative is doing this to give you a sustainable path to a better, more stable life. While this path is not for everyone, it doesn’t automatically make you exploitative.

It’s simply because they are not paying attention. And I don’t mean that as a put-down, I simply mean that Trump has their attention, not the broader GOP, nor anything about the government. They don’t care about the GOP Agenda, beyond a few of Trump’s sound bites. Many of them have an inherent distrust of politicians yet trust Donald Trump completely.

The sad part is that the brunt of this will likely be borne by nationals from countries that the US President has officially deemed “shithole countries”. Or, in other words, not white. You only have to look at his “Muslim ban” from last time, and know that he will expand it, to see how bad things are gonna get.

You may think you have some protection if you are a permanent resident. And you may have some protection if you are in a state that will not assist the Federal government in rounding people up. But you will continue to deal with the hassle every time you enter or leave the country. Which state you live in doesn’t matter at the border (and the airports are technically borders).

In my uninformed opinion, if you decide to stay, you shouldn’t make any plans to leave the country, because you will never really know if your authorization to stay in the country will be arbitrarily denied while you are away. It is probably better to just plan that the next time you leave the country, it will be for the foreseeable future. We will, unfortunately, not be very hospitable to you for the next 4 years (and maybe longer). Unless you are white. Which is all sorts of wrong. But the way it is these days.

System 7 Ready!

Yes, the VP position can remain vacant indefinitely, or at least until the end of a term when another VP can be elected through the normal process. The only thing that is lost is the tiebreaking vote. Well, and the fact that if the President has a colonoscopy and is put under sedation nobody is available to be acting President. I don’t think the House Speaker is able to take that job for just a few hours like the Vice President can.

Kamala Harris was actually Acting President for 85 minutes in 2021, and probably at least once after that.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/politics/kamala-harris-presidential-power/index.html

(nope, she did it just that once. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_President_of_the_United_States )

It has never happened before, so we don’t really know. What I think would happen is that Vance would just get immediately sworn in as the President on Jan 20 if God exercises His Ultimate Veto on Trump’s second term.

But the Presidential Succession Act only covers vacancies for the Presidency. Once the office of the President is filled again, nothing else happens. It’s not like everyone else “moves up” a slot. Mike Johnson would probably see the VP position as a demotion honestly.

The Office of the VP would remain vacant until President Vance nominates a candidate, and then it must be approved by both houses of Congress in order for the position to be filled.

How is Mint internationally?

All my shit is in the Google ecosystem. I am fairly confident that Gmail is not going away anytime soon. However, I am more afraid that some obscure ToS violation will forcibly disconnect me from their ecosystem, and I will have to scramble to make sure all my contacts have my alternate info. I am doubly screwed, as a Google Fi customer. If we all get suddenly degoogled, I lose a phone number that I have had for over 20 years.

As good a deal that Fi is for me (I normally don’t use bandwidth unless I travel internationally), I may switch soon just to reduce my exposure to Google.

There is another point, at least for Americans. While I know a few people who have emigrated to the US and still maintain ties with their original homeland, I know others who have intentionally given up their privileges back home. While they may still be citizens of their home country, they owe them no obligations.

The US is different, they tax your income no matter where in the world you make it. if you are living in a country with a tax treaty in the US, you can fully deduct all foreign tax payments so you will likely end up owing nothing to the US. But you still have to file. And in return for that you retain the right to vote from the state you last resided in. Furthermore, it is quite hard to give up your US citizenship. It can be very costly, because we will make you pay taxes on assets as if you sold them before they let you leave, including any retirement funds.

Americans living abroad are much more likely to still consider themselves Americans first, because we remind them about it every April 15th.

Right, I think without the Open Internet, we would still be getting fast broadband, but likely tied to your Cable or Telco provider’s network, and things that are currently websites would have to arrange for a presence on each network they want to do business on. And they would probably meter access, just like they do with your electric bill, or your cable company does with a basic tier but then paid access to anything important.