How are you preparing your family for the inevitable, life insurance/will/etc?
I know I've heard that it was something one could basically do themselves, but with legal stuff I'm leary of the DIY approach. Like you said, I'd be worried about screwing something up.
Without kids, we basically don't want to lose stuff to the state if something should happen to us together.
The summary I got was she had this insurance for a 18 months maybe, so they said they aren't paying, let's say 50k, they're just refunding her payments for those 18 months, say 1500 instead.
It does sound a bit scummy to me but I have no clue how the rules of this stuff work, hence my question.
Ok, updated the title and reframed some things. I think we should be good now.
They are dealing with the attorney already, as her mom had rental properties and a business in the middle of being sold, and a special needs dependant, so there is a huge list of things we need professional help navigating. I didn't seem like they figured anything out different about the life insrance though. I know that was one of the topics they were going over yesterday and it didn't sound like they got anywhere with that other than her coming home and say "F- Mutual of Omaha!"
I read the interview as a 380 page paper on a subject I don't really understand seemed a bit ambitious. I linked it, as I didnt know who did the report, and I wanted to hear her summary in her own words.
The comments here are full of people defending one side or the other, but no one seems to be providing any sources. This seems to be a difficult subject to approach if one isn't seeking to affirm an existing stance. Both sides just seem to say "show me the proof" back and forth because neither will acknowledge the other.
You seem to be at least leaning in favor of the report. If you have any noob appropriate links to supporting info, I'd look at them.
Wait...does that mean he...does intend to fix prices then?
Is this Opposite Day?
I mean...is this not Opposite Day?
I'm so confused!
Reading this BS from McConnell made me ask if a face eating leopard could eat its own face, and if so, would it even realize it.
Then I pictured an oroboro with his face instead. I'd do a mock up, but I don't want to look at his face that long. I feel McConnel has been playing this game with "not supporting" Trump for far too long now.
I don't think Mitch has surpassed Kissinger for biggest bastard overall, but he's tried damn hard. He's always gloated about what an ass he is, and nothing he says now is ever going to redeem him.
She makes it hard to feel out what her actual position is, which in a way is probably what she should do, but is also very frustrating because being on neither side feels disingenuous as a default these days. I don't know enough about her to really feel I know for sure.
We had decades (centuries?) of people not getting this care. There were definitely negatives to that. We've had maybe now a couple decades of increasing HRT/puberty blocker stuff. I've heard positive stories. Everything makes it sound reversible should the need arise. Everything against it seems to not be evenly distributed across the political spectrum so walking it back feels political based on what I've heard cumulatively.
Keeping it as research seems it would greatly reduce its availability, and if it causes people to suffer or die, that's not something that can be taken back, unlike stopping hormone treatment or puberty blockers seems to be. That's the part that concerns me.
I don't know much about the issues, but I try to stay informed, so I don't want to go trashing this lady's report. From all I've read though, a lot of doctors already have to sign off on patients before it comes to these treatments, so canceling that now seems to overrule a wide range of medical and mental doctors for a dubious position.
I don't know about the issue enough for me to comment on if she is biased or not, but I found this NYT interview (archive.org link) and she really seems to try to be playing both sides to me. Her main arguement seems to be don't treat this as an issue to resolve gender, that makes you ignore mental health/depression/other things, but with there not being the best care of that nature available for trans individuals, what avenue is left for them?
It sounds like she wants to go on about a lack of enough proof for her to stop treatment, but it also doesn't sound like she has enough proof to say it's harmful, but that doesn't seem to discourage her helping eliminate it.
Spent a year working at a dry cleaners. The first time I opened that machine and got blasted in the face with perc vapors I imagined it must be like being exposed on a planet with a methane atmosphere. That is some harsh stuff. After that job I inventoried hazardous chemicals at a pharma research site, and nothing they had hit my lungs and eyes like perc. The labs at least had good ventilation. Dry cleaning is a harsh business. It was disgusting and dangerous in all kinds of ways no other job I've had has been.
I don't use diatomaceous earth as I don't want to harm helpful things like spiders.
The things I've used to deal with ants that refuse to stay outside are cornmeal and Borax. They take both back to the nest. They eat the cornmeal and it blocks their digestion. The borax is mixed into a thick sugar syrup and I put it outside in a bottle cap. It will poison the ants but not your pet in the amount used.
The hardware store used to carry a tea tree oil spray (Hot Shot Natural) which actually worked very well, and I have a poison spray (Ortho Home Defense) that is supposed to be animal safe after it dries. Those both work on stuff which just refuse to be dealt with by the food remedies.
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I forgot the emergency updates. My gf will send me links of that stuff well before it ever hits the news, if it even makes the actual news.
Like I mentioned in my comment, I think that it still has a huge user base and it's free makes it still be the default tool for casting a quick message to the most people for free.
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I have the Messenger app since some of my best friends still prefer it. It also seems to be useful for occasions where I run into problems sending something to someone via RCS. Not sure if it's an occasional hiccup since I'm on Android and they're all iPhone users, but Messenger never has that problem with us.
I don't use the Facebook app, but I am on there for an extended time every day. I use it to get the bulk of my content for !superbowl@lemmy.world since all the animal rescues use it. It's free and still has a huge audience, so it makes sense for them to share their content there. I take the hit and subscribe to every rescue, rehab, and wildlife photographers I come across, filter through all the fake stuff, scams, and privacy violations, and bring the best of it here to share with you all so you don't need to do it. No need for us all to suffer.
They share important info, but I get why most people here want nothing to do with it. It's the only practical way to get info for a large group of charities though, so it's still a necessary evil for some niche purposes like mine.
I am a big fan of most zoos too, so I wouldn't want anyone to write them off completely. As I've gotten to learn more about the animals, when I get time to talk to staff now, I've been getting more info on the regulations and licensing they have to navigate, and transitioning from a place helping animals to one that also displays animals is a pretty big leap, and that is going to require much more overhead. While many cases won't be as extreme as a huge zoo like OP was looking at, that would seem to be what leads to larger and larger zoos starting to look more like a typical corporation on paper like that.
A female Air Force officer was targeted because of “multiple woke posts” on her X feed, including a tweet about LGBTQ rights, one about “whiteness” and another about honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on a stamp.
Talk about sensitive snowflakes! Trying to ruin someone's career because they talked about a stamp with a liberal on it...
The whole list is worth a read for the poor excuses, but the stamp was the weakest of the weak to me.
I suggest donating to your local wild animal rescue/rehabber. They're all volunteer based. They receive $0 public money. The public rarely sees the work they do. They're doing physically and mentally taxing work purely for the love of animals.
They typically all have a donation page, and many have Amazon Wishlists where you can send them cleaning, maintenance, or medical supplies directly if you're worried about the money going to something you might not intend.
Nothing will go to people. You won't have to question if you're really help an animal that may or may not exist in a country you'll never see. They're your neighborhood animals.
As the !superbowl@lemmy.world person here, I look specifically for a raptor rehabbers to donate to, and I share links to those rescues worldwide.
I can't find my link to the world rescue database, but for a US based one, you can look here or just Google up "wild animal rescue near me" and you should get some options.
They go into more nuance in the comment they linked within the comment I shared which addresses their experience with some of the things you mention, where publishers will change/add things, and that new material changes the public domain status, but others will change minor details and and try to call it a new protected work.
I've seen many guitar tab sights get copyright noticed out of existence, but now playing piano and learning about IMSLP, they seem to be very above board and respectful of the law, so it's interesting to hear of the challenges they face even in trying to comply with established rules.
Things like what IMSLP provide are at least as much educational and historical materials as they are entertainment, and I'm glad they're trying to legally preserve it all. I'll have to look more into their difficulties, it was very interesting reading these 2 posts and their content is very much of interest to me.
I see IMSLP has been a regular supporter of the IA. They are somewhat of a Project Gutenburg but for public domain sheet music and recordings, and they are a great source for music students. I imagine they have deep interest in these results. Their comments really highlight some potential difficulties with determination of copyright that can cause digital libraries unnecessary problems.
I haven't followed the case too much, as I suspected the big money side was going to win somehow, but sheet music publishing has always been contentious between those selling it and those providing it for free. Sheet music was and is targeted as a form of piracy by record companies and publishers. Even Nintendo gets in on the action.
If someone can make a buck off of it, they'll beat you up for giving it away for free.
We agree that the court case sets a very ugly precedent for libraries like archive.org (and ours). Before you go banning and taking down tens of thousands of items in mad rush, please do seriously consider our comment made shortly before the attack that took you down for two weeks:
https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/21/lending-of-digitized-books/#comment-492068
When a publisher reprints something in 1975 that was originally published in 1885 it does not grant a new copyright on any pre-existing public-domain material. There are countless examples (many thousands) on this site of the type of thing mentioned in the above post. When a new edition of a public domain original is issued, the only thing covered by the copyright claim is the new material added which must be at least somewhat original in nature to qualify. This should be made clear in the copyright registration (though they sometimes fail to do so). It should not be solely for a new typeset (in the US and many countries) but only for new additions such as commentaries, annotations, illustrations, prefaces, afterwords and the like. If someone redacts the newly-added material the 1975 print is fine as its reduced to merely a new typesetting of the 1885 original (sometimes a publisher doesn’t even bother to produce a new typeset but literally reprints the old one) – thus with the identical content as the original.
IMSLP is of course a much smaller site in terms of the sheer number of items in our library. We’re highly specialized after all (music scores, for those who might not be familiar). We have a team dedicated to this kind of thing and we’re always busy at it. We know all about the various games played by publishers. Take a page from our book please. Archive.org has a lot of community goodwill and there are no doubt folks with time to volunteer and do some curating to redact only the kind of newly-added thing mentioned above. Hachette el al really don’t want a public domain. They just want to control everything – despite the fact that they’re clearly benefitting from things in the public domain – just take a look at this short list taken from your own list of “banned books” affected by the decision:
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (first published 1884-85) “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin (first published 1899) “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser (first published 1925) “Candide” by Voltaire (first published in 1759, also in English translation, again in English 1762) “The Decameron” by Giovanni Bocaccio (written ca.1353, published in English by 1620)
All five of the originals are public domain worldwide, even the two translated into English. Yet there they are on the list. Yes there are certainly derivative works which are very much under copyright – like Bernstein and Sondheim’s “West Side Story” – based on “Romeo and Juliet” but obviously recast, transformed and adapted in such a way that it’s a work on its own. That one won’t be showing up at IMSLP for quite some time for obvious reasons.
That being said, publishers have been known to put up “scarecrow notices” on plain old reprints containing nothing at all outside the original. In the US, these are technically illegal. With all the lawfare they’ve conducted over the decades, they’ve got countless folks gaslighted into thinking every claim made is a valid one. As the lyric of a famous song goes: “It ain’t necessarily so.”
I feel a bit less odd about Ian than you, but I can't deny I've had a little trouble after seeing some of his interviews and his fireside chats about YouTube policy.
Forgotten Weapons and also C&Rsenal are such wonderful sources of historical information, but their total avoidance of any direct stance leaves me assuming the worst when I get those potential dog whistles you mentioned.
I still watch them occasionally, but not near as much as before, and not anything off topic. I hope they're not shitty people, but if they leave me guessing, it's realistic to not trust them in certain areas.
Karl from InRange is more openly liberal and was just on again with the Behind the Bastards crew talking about do's and dont's about arming yourself if you are worried about the next few years. His channel seems to be more quirky stuff and less historical though, so not as much of what I'm looking for.
Learning about weaponry and some of these less talked about wars can definitely attract a lot of people I don't want to deal with. I don't need a liberal twist on it, but I definitely don't want conservative opinions on the side.
I just googled it:
Mutual of Omaha
Sounds a bit useless to me. The rules are definitely in the house's favor.