> The second half was garbage, but the first half was so good

so you had the same reaction?

But I think the shenanigans of ICE are making people more aware of the importance of privacy. Look at the backlash Ring (lost dog superbowl ad) and Discord (age verification) and Nest (Guthrie case) received just this year.

i bought an expensive 240hz qd oled and i kept coming into my office with the damn thing on without the screensaver, just burning in after having left it asleep.

i’m so paranoid i just turn the whole computer off now.

i’ve only ever hit debit card limits when trying to buy like a car. if you’re hitting cc limits, i dunno, maybe you have more liquid cash where smaller interest rate increases are worth the squeeze.

edit: ok i totally forgot i moved the bulk of my ally savings into an ally invest account holding a vanguard money market fund bc the rate was higher. this is a little less work than opening an account with another bank at least. the rate was 5.4 and is now 4.5. ally savings account is at 3.8. cds, ibonds, money market funds, these are all vehicles i never used prior to covid but have since. chasing it all around is annoying, but i only take stock maybe every 6 months. there’s diminishing returns here since everything past the efund gets invested in an index fund anyway.

if you ask the insurance company you’ll never get an answer. providers are usually more helpful about what “should be covered”, but that’s not guaranteed.

seems like prior authorization is the only way to really make sure charges are covered but takes forever. but even then, if your insurance covers $x and they bill $y, you might get a balance bill in the mail.

point is, the market is heavily skewed against the consumer.

a basic heart ultrasound cost me over $1k while my vasectomy cost me a $60 copay. i was expecting those prices to be flipped.

and don’t get me started on labs. i’ve gotten bills for basic screens years later for thousands of dollars.

you can’t shop around if you don’t know what you’ll pay until months after it happens. if you call the insurance company beforehand you wait on a static filled line with a call center in india, and even with the CPT code they can’t give you a straight answer.

lol what? where does he say anything about needing special treatment? everyone's in the same overhead bin lottery unless you paid for business class or whatever.

i do exactly what the parent comment said as well. you're allowed a carryon and a small backpack. you put the carryon overhead and stuff your backpack at your feet. you either sit on your jacket or stuff it in your bag before you board. important stuff (work laptop, house keys) stays in the backpack and always with you. sometimes they force you to gate check your bag, which is not ideal but fine. keep the backpack.

i traveled a medium amount for work and ended up getting a soft sided duffel. for full flights they start calling for gate checking carryons before they even start boarding. i think this is mostly to save time though, even if there was enough overhead space. i noticed you get preferential treatment with a duffel and several times where they'd let me through but make the person in front of or behind me gate check their bags if they were rollers, even though the bins were "full".

if work was paying i tried to only book direct flights. then i could gate check my bag, board last, and spend as little time crammed on the plane as possible. but my preference was to do carryon as well to save time, especially if there was a connection.