• 2 Posts
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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: April 12th, 2024

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  • They don’t come around anymore, but I used to say that I was disfellowshipped/excommunicated, whichever was fitting for whatever religion they were selling. If they ask why, which they basically never do, just say “I’d really rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind…”

    They don’t actually want to waste time talking to people who were kicked out of the church for “bad behavior”, and in many cases aren’t even allowed to, so they blacklist your address.

    No soliciting signs typically do the job, too, though.



  • Ngl, the more this happens the more servicers are confused about what they should be collecting and from whom, and that’s actually a win for the borrowers (not as much of a win as this shit going through but still).

    For example, due to the slew of challenges, I’m still on $0 repayment through October and don’t even have to certify income for that. And who knows if they will actually move forward with resuming charges for it; this is the second time it’s been delayed for me.

    I hope the system does get thrown into complete chaos if it doesn’t all get forgiven or at least restructured. That would be better than people having to pay for worthless and/or overpriced degrees, and not being able to do shit with their lives.





  • I tracked down the house I lived in until I was 5-6. I have lots of pictures of it in its glory and I remember it fondly.

    It was an old 1800s school building that my parents converted into a house. Very cool building, lots of old-school charm (hehe).

    Finding it was a huge mistake. The present owners don’t even live in it, they built a house just to the side of it and use the old structure as support for solar panels, and probably storage for the junk sprawling over the property. Which… I’m down with solar but it’s so sad to see something with so much history, charm, and character… absolutely ruined in under 30 years.



  • I find this wholly unsurprising.

    All ai projects should be forced to show the entirety of their training data. I don’t give a flying fuck if they want to call it proprietary, they don’t own most of the data in the first place. Even if they bought it, it doesn’t belong to them, just like we don’t own digital movies we buy.

    And if even a single piece of that training data doesn’t have proper licensing for that specific use for that specific model, or they are ever found to have withheld any of the data, the model as a whole should be immediately scrapped, along with everything even tangentially derived from it, and the company should be fined fully double whatever amount of money that model generated or one years revenue for the company as a whole, whichever is more (no I don’t care if this leads to bankruptcy, should have thought about that before you stole data), and like use if for affordable housing programs or public schools or something, whatever.

    They can try again with clean data, also subject to review. One time. Second time they do the same shady shit, permanently banned from the entire sector.

    But regardless, we need to stop rewarding them for this behavior. And we need the consequences to actually hurt or we can expect it to get worse, not better.






  • I’m legitimately upset about this one. It’s one of the first “company does something bullshit” that’s actually been actionable for me… and the first that was something I’d done a lot of work to find the “best place” for.

    I get compressed wood pellets (sold for horse bedding or pellet stove fuel) there to use as very cheap compostable cat litter, 40lbs is $6, and if you have a good system one bag will fill 4 cat boxes about 4-6 times, so really cost effective and environmentally friendly. It’s like feline pine but not ridiculous expensive.

    Next best option is almost twice the price… which is still ok, but man it still hurts…


  • Considering the super shady practices involved with plasma “donation”, and the fact that it’s used to make very expensive cancer drugs, take your text and good vibes. That’s literally the better outcome.

    Most of the world won’t even buy US plasma because of the really lax collection regulations and super sus conditions of most of the plasma centers (basically the fact that it’s paid and on such short turnaround causes a lot of people to game the system, it’s dangerous, and potentially unsanitary/risky.)