Dónde está Santa Claus by Augie Rio

I hate Christmas music from years working in retail but this one really jams!

No thanks! I’ll take housing that only costs me property taxes. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed so I’d take that certainty today.

$208,063.88

This would pay off our mortgage and we could dump that monthly payment into saving for retirement.

However, if the question was how much do we need then it would be $0. We are far more fortunate than many.

If there was a line of all the people in this comment section waiting to get whatever amount they need I’d be one of those continuously moving to the back to let others go first.

I hope you all find improved quality of life, even if it’s not through some financial windfall!

I’m always reminded of finding and playing the midi files from the game music on my 486 as background music.

Apogee Software for Rise of the Triad, Blue Sky Productions for Última Underworld and Bullfrog Productions for Syndicate.

For sure! The only reason I upgraded is because the OptiPlex costs a lot to run in terms of electricity.

For stuff I pretty much run 24/7 I really wanted better power efficiency.

I’m on board with this. I did something similar putting a Synology 920+ and an Asus NUC style machine running Ubuntu in place of my old OptiPlex and WD MyCloud setup.

I’m now the primary content provider for a bunch of my family!

I’ve been struggling with gout in my knee and ankle off and on. When it gets bad I’m almost immobile and I broke down and finally bought a cane to help me hobble around when it’s at its worst.

Mine also came from Ukraine and like you I wanted something with personality. I got an oak, ball top style stained cherry and I love it!

Good thing you read more of it than I did. I just searched the document for the word “salt”!

I was surprised to hear the claim too. I thought I had read years ago that it was metal fatigue at the welds. Akin to a paper clip being bent to many times some of the welds fatigued to failure due to years of flexing.

Edit: As plantsmakemehappy@lemmy.world pointed out, the below is not, in fact, for the I35W bridge.

Page 96: “ The investigation identified the source of the failure as corrosion of the L8’ gusset plates, which had resulted in significant section loss and had penetrated completely through the plates at some locations. It was determined that a leaking joint above panel point U9’ had allowed salt-contaminated water to run down diagonal U9-L8’ to the lower chord gusset plates. The years of corrosive runoff had resulted in crevice corrosion, the byproduct of which had manifested itself as thin sheets of layered rust. Additionally, oxygen-rich corrosion cells had started to take root along the vertical faces at the insides of the gusset plates. The result was a line of section loss that rendered the gusset plates incapable of handling the additional loads created by the maintenance project on the day of the incident. The investigation revealed that the blooms of oxidation concealed perforations in the base metal such that the extent of corrosion could not be, and had not been, adequately assessed through visual bridge inspections.

The hexbear and lemmygrad users/posts I run across in All mostly remind me of those street corner preachers. I don’t care one way or another about their ideologies but it’s tiring that they always feel the need to shout it in your face.

I don’t hate them but find them to be obnoxious and mostly cult-like.

Maybe they’re just bad at math and don’t understand how averages work.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

-George Carlin

No, I’ll have to take a trip to the store for a can of expensive goose grease.

I can get you exotic meats. Hippo steaks, giraffe burgers…

It’ll all be goat.

Stopping was the easy part, I drank myself into liver/kidney failure. I’ve stayed sober one day at a time.

Getting counseling, a psychological evaluation and a prescription for my anxiety helped me learn about the root cause of my drinking and how to manage it in a healthy way.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Those aren’t APRs, they are the fixed loan rates. Whatever amount is borrowed is repaid plus 4.125% or 4.375% interest depending on the term selected.

It’s like a reverse bond. The government has established that those rates are a fair return on money they “borrow” from citizens in bonds, it seems fair to give the same terms in the other direction.

I’d be in favor of that too. My point was to highlight that it’s not the loans themselves that are the problem.

Why make it illegal? Why not offer only federal loans?

How about:

20 year loan, 4.125% fixed rate 30 year loan, 4.375% fixed rate

No early repayment penalties and maybe interest returned incentives for full repayment return before term at certain benchmarks.

The average debt for a 4-year Bachelor’s degree is $34,700. At the end of 20 years the total repayment amount would be $36,131.375, 30 years would be $36,218.125.

Looks good to me.

It wasn’t trying to diminish the atrocity, sorry if it came out that way.

You did not, not to me at least.

I just keep the aggressor out of my head when thinking about the victim, they don’t deserve the attention.

That’s a great way to approach it. I was only speculating on the original commenter’s intent because that’s how I think about it too. I’ve had trauma in my past and it’s shaped who I am today; I reflect on it often. When I see stories of trauma for others I always have the thought about how their trauma is now going to shape their life going forward.

I guess I’m a little triggered by this specific theme

With good cause for sure! Harm and trauma don’t take away your agency or humanity, that happens by how others react to you after.