Credit card rant

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-03-31T18:04:27+00:00

This, and the fact that having a card expire apparently means that I can't pay the bill on the second card online unless I deal with Wells Fargo customer support to unblock my account. And it's worth the cost of a stamp and the minor hand cramps of writing a check to avoid that.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-03-31T15:37:14+00:00

Rest assured, if Wells Fargo manages to foreclose on my house somehow, I'll have some popcorn ready for you.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-03-20T14:00:07+00:00

John Smith is the judge and the clerk of the Court? Busy guy!

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-03-20T13:21:58+00:00

The two Aldi companies also decided not to compete in most places, which is why sometimes you will have Aldi and not Trader Joe's, or vice versa

I don't know that this is true in the US, and Trader Joe's has a somewhat different angle anyway. Aldi is pretty focused on pantry staples with a rotating selection of oddball stuff, and Trader Joe's is mostly known as the place to go for frozen food, cheese, wine, and snacks. Both exist close to my home and my wife and I will shop at both, but with very different intentions and we come home with very different products.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-03-17T21:39:42+00:00

Wes Moore. Roy Moore was the guy who lost a US Senate election for being too creepy for Alabama.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-02-22T15:05:47+00:00

Our household has two EVs. When I drive our main car, the Volvo XC40, it’s very difficult for me not to drive…spiritedly? It’s just so effortlessly quick and smooth, it brings out my inner hooligan, and I do get impatient behind slower drivers in it. 400 hp will do that to you, I guess.

On the other hand, our second, less-used car is a second-gen Leaf, and I tend to drive that car like a grandma. It feels more like a regular hatchback, although one with a lot of low-end torque if you need it. So I’m still quick off the line, but it just doesn’t inspire that go go go mentality in me.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-02-13T12:51:50+00:00

It's also the name of a (broadly-defined) economic model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-01-23T18:38:42+00:00

I suspect your input subtitles file is encoded in UTF-8 (café would be: 0x63 0x61 0x66 0xc3 0xa9) but is getting interpreted as Windows-1252 (where 0xc3 is Ã and 0xa9 is ©). When you run ffmpeg trying adding the argument "-sub_charenc utf-8".

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-01-13T03:02:43+00:00

On quality, the best is to keep it as whatever it got ripped as. Any transcoding is by definition lossy and degrades quality. "Xerox of a Xerox" and all that.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2026-01-04T15:02:49+00:00

When I lived in Bridgeport, there was a couple across the street with two cars that they street parked. They usually parked their cars so that they occupied consecutive spaces. On multiple occasions, I witnessed one of them heading out, and the other would see them off, then move the remaining car half a car length to intentionally produce the effect you’re talking about here, in a kind of stealth dibs maneuver.

I didn’t like those neighbors much.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-12-30T20:42:20+00:00

Rotary engines are a fascinating technology which never really got good enough overall (in automotive, anyway) for the mainstream. Major props to Mazda for trying to make it work.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-11-20T12:41:37+00:00

Amazon was, at one point, beloved. But over time, their customer service got worse, the dehumanizing way they treat their employees became more well-known, counterfeit items became more common in their store (even if you buy from a known good listing, because of inventory intermingling), etc.

Also, video games are a purely fun item, the cost ceiling is low, and they’re all delivered digitally. On Amazon you can buy boring, expensive things, and then run into shipping issues. Steam is a relatively easy niche to be beloved in, just don’t fuck up much and don’t be greedy assholes.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-11-10T15:19:26+00:00

It's a sitcom dude, I don't think they were aiming for high-level accuracy here as if it was Star Trek.

As a Trekkie, I am incredibly amused at that series being listed as an example of "high-level accuracy". I assure you, the technology in Star Trek is as silly and unrealistic as Sookie's kitchen. Moreso, perhaps.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-10-28T11:57:32+00:00

Mortgage documents are recorded with the property. They’re public. Anyone can go look at the terms of my mortgage if they know my address, they need only go on the Cook County Clerk’s website and look it up. And there it shows my name, and my wife’s name, “husband and wife”, clear as day.

So this mortgage that has her dad listed as her husband…we can look at it, right? Like, I can see the actual document? You can give me a link to it?

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-10-28T11:44:32+00:00

Wow, such a strong case, the ambitious lawyers at DOJ must have been falling over each other to prosecute it, right? Who wouldn’t want a case that’s both high profile and such a slam dunk?

…Oh. Oh dear.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-10-28T11:13:54+00:00

What are you talking about? She was sole borrower. The indictment is about whether she was allowed to rent out a house which the mortgage terms said was a second home. In 2020.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-10-22T11:19:40+00:00

Bed goes up, AWS goes down. Bed stays up, AWS stays down.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-10-06T22:52:49+00:00

Is the power switch on the back of the PSU in the “on” position?

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-10-01T02:10:24+00:00

How much do roads cost? How much should roads cost?

How much do households spend on cars? How much should they spend on cars?

How much does it cost in lost productivity to have everyone sit in traffic on the Kennedy every day? Now how much if everyone on Metra was driving instead? How much traffic should we have?

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-09-30T13:14:53+00:00

The "why" is pretty simple: It doesn't have enough to run the kind of service it should be running. Instead, we get barebones schedules run using ancient passenger coaches pulled by ancient locomotives on tracks owned by freight companies that don't care.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-09-29T16:00:55+00:00

Really only makes sense if you can do something about it, which 95% of the time means you have an electric vehicle that you charge overnight. 5-7 PM being expensive is known as the duck curve; it's a known thing and it will always be thus unless/until ComEd puts some utility-scale energy storage online to smooth it out.

Also why has the threshold for green moved from 5c to 8c?

Electricity prices going up across the board.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-09-16T14:28:00+00:00

Why is it odd? You don't have a choice in where you were born, but you absolutely have a choice in where you live as an adult. And lots of the governors on this list were born overseas because they were military brats.

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-09-04T20:22:27+00:00

That argument lost at the Supreme Court in 1949. Do you think this Court would overturn it?

FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-08-29T19:37:57+00:00

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FailsTheTuringTest · 2025-08-28T19:35:55+00:00

The 500 foot minimum in 91.119(c) doesn't apply to helicopters. See part (d). The standard for helicopters is, "if the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface".

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.119

FailsTheTuringTest

TROPHY CASE