The checkbox to “save credit card for future purchases/payments” should NEVER be checked yes by default. AND it should ALWAYS be a straightforward matter to access saved payment methods in order to update or delete them as needed.
Rants
Just….no
Ok look. I made it very clear what I thought of the 2020 shut down of the world. I think the whole PPP loan was a mess in the making and a bad idea with good intentions. I firmly believe that there are people who got PPP loans who shouldn’t have. And I also will be NOT shocked to learn that there are people who took PPP loans who used them for things they shouldn’t have.
That doesn’t change the fact that loan forgiveness was written into the contract of the PPP loan. You take a PPP loan, you use it to pay your employees instead of laying them off or firing them, your loan is forgiven.
PPP loans are nothing like student loans.
But apparently whoever is running the White House Twitter account isn’t aware of that fact:
I’m not a huge fan of student loan forgiveness. For a variety of reasons.
I did have student loans myself, though not tons thanks to my parents. And I’ll also admit that my parents helped me pay off the loans I did have. I empathize, A LOT, with the folks who are stuck unable to pay their loans. I empathize less with the folks who took those loans to pay for degrees that were extremely unlikely to turn into lucrative jobs. But lets be honest here. Society has decided that in order to be successful you must go to college. Teenagers want to be successful. College tuition has gotten stupid expensive cause they know people will pay it. Its a vicious cycle.
IF we’re going to forgive some portion of unpaid student loans it needs to be part and parcel of fixing the college degree cost system. No, I don’t know the correct way to do that, I’m not generally a fan of the .GOV getting into the middle of things and that holds true here. But without fixing the system thats causing those loans its going to make absolutely no difference in the long term.
And it pisses off the rest of the country who paid theirs, or avoided them completely, which really isn’t useful. Meanwhile farmers are paying astronomical funds to buy the equipment they need to feed everyone. Tradesmen are paying large sums for the specialty trucks they need, or other big equipement. All things needed just to keep the world turning, and all things being ignored.
But stupid social media posts by those, supposedly, in charge of things comparing apples to oranges doesn’t help either.
Dear NY, you suck
Not that this is new, but periodically they go out of their way to remind me.
I was browsing the news yesterday and this popped through my feed.
For those of you who don’t want to click through, basically it turns out that there’s a proposed bill that by 2050 the entire state needs to be no longer using natural gas. They want to switch all current natural gas users over to electric heat/cooking. The power company that supplies the gas an electricity for most of the state is, of course, not thrilled with this idea and the article is about their proposal to modify the bill.
The only GOOD thing (for values there-of) about this one is that it’ll affect the cities and suburbs more than it’ll affect the rest of the state, unlike the rest of this sort of stupidity. Once you get out of the suburbs most houses are heated with propane and/or wood or variations there of rather than natural gas.
But seriously, there’s a point where taking this whole going green thing to far. Electric heat, in this sort of climate, is expensive as hell. It’s fine as a supplement, but as the main heating source? People are going to freeze to death because they’re going to be unable to afford their heating bills.
And where do they think that electricity is going to come from? Oh right, all those solar farms they keep putting in while they shut down the nuclear plants.
And of course, this is on top of the requirement that by 2035 all new consumer cars in the state will have to be electric/battery. And the proposal that all lawn care equipment be switched to electric/battery by 2027.
Look guys, this isn’t California. Can we keep it that way?
And here we go
I grew up in eastern MA, currently living in upstate NY. I can honestly say I don’t EVER recall gas over $4/gallon before here. Certainly not since I started driving at any rate. And NEVER this sort of price jump. This was a jump in price of over 20cents in the space of 8hrs. Various news sites inform me that Cali gas prices have hit record highs.
Never mind the fertilizer shortages.
Never mind the raw materials shortages.
Never mind the shortages on basic ingredients for foods.
THIS ALONE would cause prices of EVERYTHING to jump through the roof. EVERYTHING depends on fuel in some shape or form.
And our PTB have gone out of their way for the last year to make the USA as dependant as possible on outside sources for our fuel.
I get that no one wants a oil or fuel pipeline in their backyard. I get it. But you know what? Freezing to death on the streets because you had a choice between food and rent, gas money to get to work and money to pay the heat bill, THAT sucks even more.
I’d love to be able to rely on renewable sun and wind and water based energy. But its not realistic. And shutting down the domestic power and oil sources is about to backfire on us hard.
Add in those fertilizer shortages? And those shortages of raw materials, and ingredients?
Oh yah.
Here we go.
Hold onto your hats people. This is going to suck hard.
Is this how you want to live?
Ok, my bias on the subject of the C19 response has been pretty obvious. But regardless of whether you agree with me, and especially if you don’t:
Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life?
You’ve allowed yourself to be terrorized into hiding your face, hiding inside your house. Minimizing, or even completely stopping, in person contact. You stopped exercising except for what you could do at home. As a result your health has deteriorated further than it was before. Your weight has gone up. Your joints object to serious work even worse than before. Your mental health has deteriorated. You have massive adrenal fatigue from the constant fear.
You’ve not seen some of your family members in person since March 2020. Maybe you even don’t even talk to them anymore because they didn’t agree with you on the seriousness of C19.
You panic and back away at the sight of an unmasked face. You can’t understand how someone who has other health concerns could be willing to risk going out in public, especially unmasked!
You catch a cold, the flu, or even the dreaded C19, despite your best efforts and decide its obviously the fault of that unmasked person you saw the other day.
Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life? Cause that constant fear alone is by god miserable. You’re missing out on family get togethers, hugs, meeting the new baby, birthday parties. You’re hurting your long term health prospects out of fear you might catch C19.
Life is risks. And I assume the reason you’re trying to avoid C19 is to live longer. But is it really worth it if you take away all of that? For however long the rest of your life may be?
If you found out you had an inoperable condition that WOULD kill you in 30 days, what would be more important? Huddling away from life in fear you might get sick and shorten that 30 days? Or being able to go to your final rest knowing you made the most of the time you had?
You never know whats going to happen.
A stroke or a heart attack could happen to just about anyone at any time. Car in the next lane spins out on the ice.
Sure would suck to die where the last years of your life you were voluntarily having hid away in terror of a respiratory virus, instead of doing all the things you wanted to do.
Or maybe it’ll be a relief, cause now you won’t miss it any more.
Getting sick is not a moral failing
A family member is all upset, her husband came down sick with covid.
CLEARLY this is the fault of some un-masked person who dared go out in public!
Meanwhile I’m here reading her description of how he was sick with a scratchy throat for less than a week and had a low grade fever (less than 100) for 3 days and thinking to myself “nice! Not only did he get off light, he’s now got legit antibodies from the current strain to bolster his shots!”.
Its a respiratory virus for fucks sake! Not ebola! Not HIV!
Even the various sections of the .GOV have admitted that the shots don’t stop transmission. More and more data shows that anything short of a properly fitted N95 mask is damn near useless for stopping virus transmission. And I swear to god the CDC keeps coming out with the stupidest research in trying to insist that masks work.
EVERYONE is going to get it. Just like the flu. Once it spread beyond that first town in where-ever (regardless of the actual source) it was never going to be possible to stop it. Infact, getting it now, when you’re recently vax’d, boostered, AND most likely to be exposed to the Omicron variant (which is mild mild in comparison to the original), is probably the best way to get it and the antibodies that natural infection brings.
Meanwhile theres also a growing database of the damaging side affects of masking and isolation on the public in general and children in particular. Both the damage masking is doing to the wearer, and also to people who see mostly masked faces.
The constant restrictions have fucked the economy and the supply chain (world wide!) to the point where its going to take years to fix even if we could actually get everyone to STOP FUCKING WITH IT FURTHER today.
The .GOV went out of its way to suppress treatments and discussion of things that mitigate symptoms and severity while the media does their damndest to make it all look as bad and horrible as possible. We’re going to be generations fixing the damage done to the public’s trust in the health care system.
Just stop. Its a respiratory virus. Your chances of dying from it were never all that high, and they’ve continued to drop. Just stop for fucks sake.
The more overweight you are the worse Covid is
I mean, we’ve known this practically since day 1. Overweight to obese people have been significantly more likely to get seriously sick and/or die from Covid-19 right from the start, even if they were otherwise healthy.
But instead of encouraging people to exercise and get more fit the .GOV scared people into hiding at home, shut down parks, beaches, play areas. Arrested people exercising alone or in household groups. Shut down gyms.
Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response in the body.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/health/covid-fat-obesity.html
Here’s a link to the actual study.
Instead of taking advantage of this to encourage people to get healthy the .GOV did their damndest to convince people to get sicker instead. Instead of making people healthier the .GOV scared them into huddling into small indoor spaces, spaces that might have well been designed to SPREAD respiratory disease. Forced them to avoid one of the very things that would make it less likely for them to get sick. And obesity has spiked hard during this whole mess. In both children and adults. Along with mental health problems. And its not getting better. Not to mention the damage done to immune systems by being terrified of sniffles.
People are STILL scared of being around other people. Terrified of being too close to other people while getting exercise that they NEED to stay healthy. So they’re choosing NOT to exercise, which in turn is making them more likely to get seriously sick from Covid. I see it every day on social media “I tried to go to the gym today but when I got to the gym there were more than X number of people there so I couldn’t stay away from people so I went home”.
The UK is looking at an expected 700,000+ extra cases of cancer JUST FROM MISSED APPOINTMENTS over the last two years. Because we terrified people into not going to the doctor, shut down “non-emergency” treatments, shut down urgent cares.
Everyones freaking out because people aren’t getting the Covid vaccine, and meanwhile children are missing out on their childhood shots because they weren’t able to get into the doctors offices for any one of those many reasons. Are we TRYING to get additional cases of measles? Cause it sure looks like it.
Deaths from TB are continuing to spike due to lack of treatment in the 2020 shutdown. Malaria.
And the .GOV is STILL freaking out at every rise in cases, regardless of actual hospitalization increase numbers. And at the same time is taking steps to REDUCE hospital bed availability across the country. Millions and millions sent to every state for “Covid relief” and how much of it went towards increasing hospital bed availability and nurse/doctor availability?
But on no, we have to shut down “elective” procedures, we have to spread out the number of patients seen in a day, we have to……resulting in people not being able to get treatment for cancers, heart problems, joint repairs….anything that is “scheduled ahead of time” rather than “has to be done right now to save a life” is considered elective. And yet here we are again, killing more people cause god forbid we chance exposing them to a respiratory virus they’re going to get ANYWAY at some point in their life.
Stop blaming the un-vax’d and the kids
In a yearlong study of 621 people in the U.K. with mild Covid-19, scientists found that their peak viral load was similar regardless of vaccination status, according to a paper published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal. The analysis also found that 25% of vaccinated household contacts still contracted the disease from an index case, while 38% of those who hadn’t had shots became infected.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/getting-vaccinated-doesn-t-stop-people-from-spreading-delta
The vaccinated are JUST AS LIKELY to spread Delta as the unvaccinated. And, while they don’t explicitly state it, since the vaccinated are less likely to get severely sick, they’re MORE likely to be out and about thinking that all they have is a cold, which means they’re MORE likely to be “asymptomatic spreaders” than the unvaccinated.
In addition:
Although peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type, it increased modestly with age (difference of 0·39 [95% credible interval –0·03 to 0·79] in peak log10 viral load per mL between those aged 10 years and 50 years).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext
So adults, especially older adults, are more likely to be spreaders than the kids. Vaccinated or not.
I’m SO DONE with all this “some unvaccinated person gave him Covid and he died!!!”. Considering the percentage of vax’d vs unvax’d that’s been BS for a while, and this proves it.
In addition, that fabric mask on your face does shit job at filtering aerosols. Anyone who wears glasses knows this whether they realize it or not. So blaming “some unvax’d person who didn’t mask” is even bigger BS. Cause it doesn’t matter.
And yes, despite the CDC’s insistence in 2020 that Covid was NOT in aerosols they finally admitted that it is:
Infectious exposures to respiratory fluids carrying SARS-CoV-2 occur in three principal ways (not mutually exclusive):
Inhalation of air carrying very small fine droplets and aerosol particles that contain infectious virus. Risk of transmission is greatest within three to six feet of an infectious source where the concentration of these very fine droplets and particles is greatest.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/sars-cov-2-transmission.html
The only mask that will filter aerosols that small is a N95. Please note that that’s not the same as a KN95. Also, unless that N95 has been properly fit checked it is likely leaking aerosols near as badly as that fabric one. Plus every time you take it off and put it back on you’d need to do a fit check.
If you’re a person with a compromised immune system who feels that you need to continue to mask for your health you’d better be wearing an N95. All that fabric mask is doing is holding onto bacteria laden moisture from your mouth and nose and holding it close to those mucus membranes for you to reinfect yourself with.
Vaccine passports are doing shit all except for discriminating against a portion of the population. A portion of whom were told by their doctors NOT to get vaccinated. A portion of whom have a VERY healthy distrust of the .GOV just based on their race. A portion of whom have a VERY healthy distrust of the media and the PROVE-ABLE lies of many of the people who are supposed to be in charge of public health.
In addition, not only are fewer kids GETTING their childhood shots in 2020/2021 (due to their parents having been terrified into canceling appts and Drs into having virtual only appts), I have seen multiple conversations to the effect of “I never questioned kids vaccines, but if they’re bungling THIS vaccine so badly maybe I SHOULD be questioning kids vaccines”. All this whole mess is doing is creating ACTUAL anti-vaxxers. Which means that we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet when it comes to the end results of this mess.
Does anyone running this have ANY clue what they’re doing to the kids??
Yes, lets have the kids eat lunch in the rain because god forbid they might be exposed to a virus thats less damaging to them than the bugs they’ve been exposed to for YEARS.
Following the negative reaction from concerned Californians, the Davis Joint Unified School district released a follow up email stating that children will be allowed to eat inside “whenever possible” and stressed that the district is facing “unique challenges as we seek to maintain our students’ health and safety and minimize the risk of COVID-19 infection.”
Following that email, Principal Bourguignon sent parents a third email reversing course and acknowledging that some people were upset with the decision to force kids to eat in the rain.
“Some parents are very happy with our decision to have students eat outside and others are concerned,” Bourguignon wrote. “Our campus is not ideal for eating outside due to the lack of a solid walkway cover. In collaboration with our District staff, we looked at all of the alternatives. If during lunchtime, we have a heavy downpour of rain it will be challenging to eat under the covered walkways. “
“During a heavy downpour, we will have a staggered lunch with one grade level at a time in our MPR for 15 minutes with all 10 doors open and 2 air purifiers running. After 15 minutes, students will be dismissed to their classrooms for inside recess. If you prefer that your child remains outside to eat please inform your teacher and we will make accommodations to support your request.”
Quote from here.
I swear to god, if today’s kids grow up to murder us all in our beds I won’t even blink.