Many fines are just a tax on the poor and would fall under this.

I had a buddy who was rich, like fuck-you rich. He’d park his hummer wherever he felt like it (handicapped spots, up on the curb, etc), and every week he’d take his stack of parking tickets and write a cheque.

A lot of wealthy people are like this. They have no concept of what $100 is worth to an average person, and if the only punishment for something is a monetary fine, it’s effectively permissable for them.

Yeah, you tend to see the best of humanity during a shared struggle (and sometimes the worst too, but seems more often the better).

In 2003, there was a massive power outage over a big chunk of the midwest. Power was out for about three days. My entire city just kinda… shut down and took a break.

It wasn’t all great–a few elderly folks even died of heat stroke (it was hot, in the middle of summer if I remember right). But there were some positives: the city functioned as a community in a way I’ve never experienced before or since. It felt like we were all on a broken elevator together–a sudden sense of camaraderie in the face of a shared experience.

Most businesses couldn’t function, so everyone was pretty much outside in the parks and at the waterfront, and everyone seemed pretty welcoming to everyone else (they kinda had to be, there were a lot of people out). My dad had a portable generator, so we went around town taking turns at friends’ houses to run their fridges and freezers for a while, and got to just spend time with them.

I don’t expect that the world could function like that all the time, but it was kinda nice for a few days.

This is worse than Stevie Wonder’s brief stint as an orthodontist.

Roasting aside, I’ve seen much worse, and in professional spaces. Do some practicing, try more or less heat, get some flux, and give yourself time to work.

Yeah, in Eternity, they show up as thumbnails and you have to click them to see them properly. Better than nothing, though!

Note that I’ve had some issues with images from some hosts not showing up, but the “big” ones (e.g., giphy) seem fine.

Any time I’ve tried uploading them, they are converted to jpg files. The only way I’ve been able to include them is by referencing images that are already hosted somewhere.

For reference, the way to include an image is:

![alt text](http://link.to/image.gif)

As another commenter mentioned, it does get easier. You may want to put off big trips for a few years (or arrange solo or couple trips with just your partner if you can). Otherwise, you’ll need to go into it with different expectations for the time being–vacation with a toddler is often more work and stress than being at home. You can work with your partner to ensure each of you has some actual vacation time, but most of the trip will feel like work.

For a toddler, most things in the world are new. New sounds, smells, sights, people… it gets overwhelming for them very quickly. As adults, there’s less “new” for our brains to process, and we’re better at relating to things from a broader range of experiences. But if you’ve ever gone somewhere you don’t speak the language for an extended time and felt the weariness that comes with that, you’ll have an idea of how your toddler feels any time you leave the hotel (which is likely the most familiar place to them).

Try to keep that in mind when planning vacations. Going with familiar people, like their grandparents, can be very helpful–both for having them watch the kids here and there, and also to have additional familiar faces. Bring a box of their favorite snacks, and some familiar toys and activities they enjoy at home. It’s still a lot of work, but it might be marginally better.

I die cleaning a bicycle chain.

Canadians also use “cheque”, but I’ve got a foot in both countries. Consider me your Bri’ish/'murican translator.

I’ve had others correct me the other direction (specifically decrying the use of “refund” because it wasn’t money owed in the first place). At some point it’s just semantics.

I’m aware, I was simply translating for our colleague across the pond.

You might be getting the wrong idea. We have tax withholding on our paychecks, same idea. Then when you file your taxes, you either send a cheque (if your withholding was less than you owed) or you get a return (if your withholding was more than you owed).

I had looked at those, but the hat alone is over $70. Plus they need an RPi5, because earlier ones don’t have a PCIe interface. For that much, I could get a Beelink or something similar.

The hat is a cool idea, though.

I hadn’t looked at any ODROID stuff, and the HC4 is a cool looking solution! I’m actually even more impressed with the M1S, which has a built-in M.2 slot. Can’t use my existing spinny drives, but for the price of the M1S, I could pick up an NVMe drive to go with it.

A SBC with SATA ports, to use as a Plex server. I’ve only ever found one (the Zimaboard), but it’s a bit pricey for something that I’d still have to find some way to house with an external HDD.

I did, but I already paid for two years (plus did a bunch of work to migrate files over). So I’ll be here for a bit.

I switched to Proton about 6 months ago.

Wish I had waited. Ah well.

Stepped on a rake, smacked me right on the forehead. More plausible than you might think.

My other “dailies” include Rogule, Mazelle, and Hexcodle. Sometimes Decipher as well. Check them out!

Ah, that would definitely make a difference. A debit transaction uses some form of “password” like a PIN or the data embedded in a card chip. A credit transaction technically only relies on easily available data and sometimes a signature, much more common for fraud (it’s pretty easy to read and replicate the data from a magnetic strip–one of my classmates did a project to read magnetic strips, and they had to stop letting people swipe their own cards on it because it popped up tons of confidential data).

My CU’s website definitely looks like it’s from the early naughts, but they at least kept things up to date and security practices seemed legit, and I don’t think I ever tripped the fraud detector. I guess everyone’s mileage will vary a bit.