I think it’s more trying to win political favor by spending big with the company owned by a member of the incoming presidential administration.

Or it’s just wanting to market their ads on that platform and as you said, not having the balls to stick to their boycott

Credit balances don’t negatively impact credit scores as much as one would think. It’s ultimately a combination of factors that go into an overall credit score with the heaviest hitter being payment history. If one makes all of their payments they can have a decent credit score despite carrying a 10k balance. Carrying a balance of greater than 30% of the limit will detract significantly from the overall score, but it won’t knock it below “decent” range on its own.

I’m honestly not even sure how one actually gets their score below 500. My wife got a head injury and physically could not remember whether or not she’d paid her credit cards a couple of years ago, so they ended up becoming delinquent and going to collections. Ultimately it dropped her credit score to about 500 but then it started climbing back up from the car loan and mortgage that are in both of our names and is almost up to 700 again. I seriously want to know how people manage to get their scores down to the 300s (the floor is 300) because you basically have to try in order to get your score that low. A friend of a colleague managed such a feet and then had some identity theft which actually improved his credit score because it looked more like normal credit activity than his real credit activity

A friend showed me their workflow for piracy and it’s really incredible just how easy it all is. Literally just download an OVPN config from whatever VPN provider you subscribe to, connect to the VPN and search in qbittorrent (and use the link in qbittorrent to download the necessary search plugins)

Like obviously this is a few decades of software refinement, legal battles plus a fair amount of large companies turning a blind eye to the obvious. So it’s shoulders of giants and all but it’s still kinda jarring

You know what’s better than the bare minimum? Give your work more than they expect, but keep some of your potential to yourself. Only give work 70% and keep that other 30% of yourself for yourself. You get all of the benefits of being an overachiever with none of the drawbacks.

You know your job is as safe as it can be because you’re exceeding expectations, and you can reap the bonuses and pride that brings but you still have remaining capacity to do more in your personal time. Plus if you’re not completely applying yourself every day you can hit the grindstone on a really bad day when SHTF and really come out looking like a hero

I have personal goals in life I want to reach and I’m going to do whatever it takes to do so. Try laying out your life goals… What do I want to do 5, 10, 20 years in the future?

As a relatively young person but older than OP myself, this is exactly what I did to get out of the slump of knowing how the system is stacked against us all. I set myself goals, and kept updating my goals. I had a 6 month, 1 year and 3 year plan at any point. Longer than 3 years it’s hard to set specific goals because too much can change in that time frame. I always had goals to work towards and make myself a better version of me. If you can continually be a better version of yourself than you were before then you’ve won the game of life

Good question! I can’t remember.

I think I read a Microsoft blog or something like a decade ago that said they shifted from a Hyper-V based solution to Linux to improve stability, but honestly it’s been so long I wouldn’t be shocked if I just saw it in a reddit comment on a related article that I didn’t yet have the technical knowhow to fully comprehend and took it as gospel.

At this point I think it’s most telling that even Azure runs on Linux. Microsoft’s twin flagship products somehow still only work well when Linux does the heavy lifting and works as the glue between

I think for some people it’s more about killing multiple birds with one stone. One guy I know went to see a Dolphins game, bought a car and got some warmer weather during the coldest part of the year. Another bought a car while visiting family (and learned the hard way that radiators are sometimes refilled with water and therefore will freeze in the winter if brought north) and another had their 20 year old truck die while hauling their RV and bought a new truck from the nearest dealership. So maybe it’s not widespread, but every one has talked about the benefits of a car that’s never seen salted roads

For grapes, since they’re sold by the pound you can just take some of the grapes from the bag and place them into another bag of the same veriety if it’s too many

The true snowflakes are always looking for something inconsequential to have a meltdown over

You say that but there’s basically 0 chance I’ll buy it anytime soon because I wait for games to be down to about $20. If I really really want it I’ll snag it at $30-40 but I don’t think I’ve ever bought a title at $60

In the north there’s even people who will specifically head south to buy a car that’s never spent a winter driving on salted roads. Road salt corrodes so badly it’s nasty

Generally Republicans and Trumpists use “woke” to describe anything they don’t like that seems to slightly swing liberal rather than anything specific.

Originally “woke” was slang in the black community meaning to understand the risks of being black in the world and basically was an equivalent of saying “drive safely!” or a Midwestern “watch for deer!” in wishing one a friendly goodbye

My experience working in banking is that they’re extremely conservative. They don’t take big risks on new technologies or processes and don’t modernize their technology too quickly to be certain that everything works as expected and doesn’t surprise anyone

I feel similarly. I work in an office that’s heavily invested in Microsoft for everything and when you use Microsoft everything Teams fits in really nicely with great outlook integration, Microsoft Loop integration, etc. and the experience on Teams is fine

Clearly gotta start listening to truecrime podcasts and let some young kids muck up your YouTube algorithm and they won’t know anymore what your gender is

I started playing that one a couple of years ago but found myself horribly lost on one of the introductory quests (I think the first lockpicking was what did me on?) and kinda lost interest from there. I can see the appeal though and at some point I’ll certainly circle back to it

My wife and go on kicks of playing a bunch of Minecraft together which is amazing

As others have said loss of interest can happen and the interest can of course come back with a vengeance. I’d recommend picking up another hobby until gaming suddenly grasps your interest again.

Two types of hobbies that have lasting positive impacts on people are creative hobbies and physical hobbies. Your brain is wired to invent and create and your body is wired to move, so being able to do each for fun is brilliant for your mental and physical health. Hop on a bicycle, go for a walk and enjoy the crisp fall air, stop off at that gym you forgot to cancel your membership for, and start doing it regularly.

For creative hobbies you can get a pack of printer paper for a couple of bucks and a pack of Crayola crayons or colored pencils and just start doodling. If you suck at drawing make wierd geometric shapes to rebuild the fine motor skills that computers have killed. Or if you want something more in-depth model making is always great because it has elements of fantasy while having entry points at any skill level. Personally I’ve been getting back into model railroading which if that seems boring to watch a train go around in circles, consider it has its own table top roleplay scene in the form of operations

My 4 year old when we tell her something she doesn’t want to hear will do the same, except it always starts with “WELL,”