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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: March 7th, 2024

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  • I usually try to plan a few foot-based errands in the area while they work on my car: maybe the pharmacy for my meds or some toothpaste, the bakery for a couple of these cupcakes my daughter loves, browse the bookstore, talk with the tea shop owner.

    We’re always in such a hurry and complain about missing the ‘community feeling’ of ‘the old days’, yet we never spend the time to just walk about the community, doing errands instead of “running errands”, casually catching up on events and goings-on. I like to use my time for that kind of thing.


  • I’d visit all my old friends and loved ones; without letting on what’s going on, I’d tell them how much I loved them and the impact they’ve had on my life. Arrange the basics of my funeral. Get rid of a bunch of stuff that I like but will just be underfoot when they clear out my place. Organize and label family photos and videos. Stick post-its on things made by my grandparents, great-grandparents and other relatives who they can be passed on if desired. Put together that book of old family recipes. Give some things away to specific people to make sure they end up where I think they ought to go. Make arrangements for my cat, and tell her how much I love her and how much I’ll miss her, but that she’ll be okay.


  • Wikipedia:

    In late 2006, programmer Jed McCaleb thought of building a website for users of the Magic: The Gathering Online tradable card game service, to let them trade “Magic: The Gathering Online” cards like stocks.[13][14][4] In January 2007, he purchased the domain name mtgox.com, short for “Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange”.[15][16][17][18] Initially in beta release,[19] sometime around late 2007, the service went live for approximately three months before McCaleb moved on to other projects, having decided it was not worth his time. In 2009, he reused the domain name to advertise his card game The Far Wilds.[20]

    In July 2010, McCaleb read about bitcoin on Slashdot,[21] and decided that the bitcoin community needed an exchange for trading bitcoin and regular currencies. On 18 July, Mt. Gox launched its exchange and price quoting service deploying it on the spare mtgox.com domain name.[14][22]

    I’m not sure when people started to refer to it as Mt Gox.





  • One of my friend’s life ambitions was to own a Jaguar, and he finally managed to buy a used one. He called his insurance agent to add the car to his policy. The agent was like, “Oh, a second car, a Jaguar, no problem. How many miles do you think you’ll be putting on it each year? Five thousand should be plenty, yeah?”

    And my friend is like, "No! I’m fixing it up and driving it everywhere! I need lots of miles!. and the insurance agent is very quiet and then suggests starting with 5k miles and see how it goes. Whatever, my friend thinks, this guy just doesn’t understand the allure of the Jaguar!

    He fixes it up, gets it running, here about three blocks from the house and it breaks down. Pushes it home, fixes it up again, gets about five blocks. This goes on for months.

    Eventually, my friend changes his car insurance back to 5k per year, and acknowledges that he’ll never ever ever reach that much. It’s mostly a garage princess, not (entirely) out of a desire to keep the body fresh, but more because it constantly needs babying.

    I’m not sure your dad’s Jaguar is any better.


  • With that technology, no. But retailers track where you are in their stores. And even if you don’t bring your phone with you, they’re using facial recognition technology and will eventually try working with that.

    So they probably have a good idea who you are. And they also have your purchase history - what you bought and at what price you bought it. They have your frequent shopper card history, your online purchases, everything they’ve put together from data aggregators.

    They have all the pieces: they can track you in the store, they know the prices you’re willing to pay for things, and they can change the price as you walk down the aisle. Do you seriously think someone isn’t going to start putting all that together?


  • More than that. They have your frequent shopper card and your online purchase history and everything else they’ve aggregated together. They know at what prices you purchase things, they know how much you shop around, they know the days of the week and times of day your more likely to make an impulse purchase. It’s lunch on Tuesday and your favorite snack suddenly costs five cents more because they’re moving the Overton window on your price points. It’s after work Friday and suddenly everything costs 10% more because they know it’s the end of the week and you’re tired and aren’t going to go to another store.