This site usually has some good stories worth checking out.
This site usually has some good stories worth checking out.
I used to travel quite a bit for work and I would collect state themed magnets for my kids each time I visited a new state. Most airports have magnets for sale in the gift shops that are shaped like the state with some various references to the state. I visited Chicago multiple times, but I could never get an Illinois magnet because apparently Chicago overrides any acknowledgement that it is part of a larger entity…there is only Chicago.
But were there bread knives before bread? I’m not going to slice my bread with a butcher’s knife or a cleaver, that’s barbaric!
I’ve been curious about this too, but haven’t been able to find anything that puts a real price (including future profit margin) on GenAI. For example, having a chat conversation with a customer service agent in India might cost about $2-3. Is a GenAI bot truly cheaper than that once you factor in the energy & water costs, hardware, training, profits, etc.? It might be, but I’m skeptical.
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us
If you’re having problems getting support from a Telecom company, file a complaint with the FCC. You are more likely going to get someone who can/will actually help you. This mainly works when you have a concrete complaint that is running into process/policy roadblocks. For example, if you’ve been overcharged by an amount that the normal agents don’t have authority to credit or if you’re having chronic service issues that aren’t being resolved.
It is less likely to help if the issue is more subjective, such as asking for a large credit to compensate you for being inconvenienced by an outage (i.e. claiming the outage cost you business or work time). They’ll likely offer a prorated service credit and a courtesy credit (like $25-50) and the FCC will likely consider that reasonable.
Strange Horticulture…I’m probably fine.
Yeah, I plan to do in-person early voting rather than take my chances with mail-in voting.
I recently took a voluntary lay off from my job after almost 20 years with the company. I found out my dept was going to be reorganized and I was not very happy about the direction things were going, so I put myself on the severance list. I had been planning to look for a new role this year anyway, though I originally thought I would be looking for something in the same company.
It has been a couple of months now and I’m getting fewer interviews than I expected. I still have plenty of time to find something, so I’m not too worried yet, but I do question if I made a bad decision. Of course, I expect more layoffs within the next year, so it was reasonably likely that I would have been laid off eventually anyway.
Last year’s reorg for my dept, they broke into two rounds, the first round mostly got rid of supervisors and managers and kept more analysts than were needed long-term to get through all the work changes. Then, in December, they came back and laid off the extra staff. They knew that was the plan when everything was announced in April. They actually discussed telling people up front so they would have 8 months notice + severance, but decided not to at the last minute. I’m guessing they were worried those people would leave or not work hard enough through the transition.
I was only ever interested in these company’s services as a way to save money. They are no longer cheaper than a hotel, so I would rather stay at a hotel.
Apocalyptica is a symphonic metal band with 3 cellists as the core of all their work. Sometimes they also have drums, electric guitar, or vocals. It varies from album to album and song to song.
There’s a great orchestral version of “Animals” by Architects if metal works for you.
Going back to the 90’s Metallica did a concert and live album with the San Francisco Symphony.
It’s not exactly what you asked for, but Sean Townsend does great piano covers of rock/metal, especially Killswitch Engage. His music is very relaxing to listen to. Most of his material is on YouTube, which is a shame because I would buy his music if it were for sale somewhere.
I love their cover of Gasoline by Audioslave.
Long before Covid, the company I worked for started trialing work from home for some call center agents. They had a whole list of requirements for an acceptable work from home space: dedicated work area with a desk, locking file drawer (why??? I don’t know), first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. Someone would actually go out to physically inspect the space to make sure every box was checked.
My guess is someone from legal wrote up the requirements from a workplace safety standpoint. They probably could have just had the employee sign a statement agreeing that they met all of the requirements, but someone in the middle got overzealous about their role. During Covid, everyone got sent home permanently without any regard to any of those rules, so clearly they weren’t that important in the first place.
This is probably a good thing. I packed on a ton of weight when I was in college because fast food was really cheap. Things like dollar menu sandwiches, 5 for $5 at Arbys, $0.29 hamburgers on Sundays at McD, etc. I remember strategically buying bags full of fast food and putting them in the freezer because I couldn’t make food that cheap. Reheated from the freezer tasted HORRIBLE, but it was cheap and I was broke. At these prices I would have made better decisions for my health.
I love the games (haven’t played 76, but the rest are great). I watched the first 3 episodes and thought they connected well with the games thematically, but I never cared enough to continue. Every now and then I think I should get back to it, but I always have something that interests me more, including just scrolling Lemmy. To be fair, I don’t really enjoy watching TV or movies that much though.
We only feed dry food.
It’s been a long time since I worked in that space, but I think it is basically like a reloadable prepaid card you can get from visa or mastercard. I would assume there actually is a bank behind it, but the account is essentially being sponsored by someone else and there is less risk for the bank because you can’t write a bad check or overdraw the account. That makes it potentially useful if the reason you didn’t get an account is because the banks refused you or you couldn’t afford the fees. For people who are just anti-bank or worried about financial privacy, they would still want to go cash only.
On a side note, reloadable cards can also be useful if you have friends or relatives that you want to help out now and then, especially if they are not local and maybe make poor decisions. It’s cheaper than Western Union or a money order, more secure than mailing cash, and no risk of them having access to your bank account number from sending a check.
According to FDIC, about 4.5% of US households do not have a bank account of any kind, but that number is much higher when you only include low income households. Some choose not to have an account, some are denied accounts by banks for various reasons.
https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html
Also, most banks only offer free checking accounts with direct deposit or a minimum balance. I don’t know if this is still the case, but I worked for a payroll processor many years ago and, at that time, many small businesses chose not to offer direct deposit to their employees. Paying bank fees is very difficult for low income households.
One of the options the company I worked for had was to offer refillable debit cards to employees that their paychecks would be deposited to. This gave them the basic features of a bank without needing to create their own account.
The company I used to work for you could say “agent” or press 0, but you had to do it many times because it would keep trying to make you play along. At the start of Covid in 2020, the call centers were totally overwhelmed, so someone decided to change that path to say “sorry, I don’t know what you want, goodbye” and hang up.
Surprisingly, that change caused a marginal reduction in call volume, which was the goal. So, when the call centers stabilized later in the year, Finance balked at any suggestion that the decision be reversed unless someone came up with an idea to offset the cost of the increase in volume it would cause. It stayed like that for 2-3 years and was still very controversial when it was finally put back to the way it was before Covid.
I’ve noticed this with my kids’ schools. Many kids are open about who they are - LGBT+, neurodivergent, mental illnesses, etc. - and people are generally accepting of that. When I was a kid, people were bullied relentlessly for showing any form of difference from “normal”. It makes me happy to hear them talk about things like that like its no big deal…because it shouldn’t be.