numberfour002 @ numberfour002 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Gotta fight the system somehow. I just hope others see this, report issues, and share the link/info with others. Maybe next time you see a post or discussion about USA student loans, you'll share the link as well.

I'm fortunate enough that all the fucked up shit that my student loan servicer did wasn't going to break me, but plenty of others are in situations where it could have had significant negative impacts. Even 5 years ago, if they'd have pulled the same stunt it would have been tough to adapt. So, that's part of the reason why I like to share that link and encourage folks to use it.

I mentioned this before, but if you're running into issues with your student loan servicer (in the USA), you should submit a complaint here: https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. At a minimum, my experience was that submitting the complaint was quick and easy.

Some of these student loan companies are lying to borrowers, screwing up basic financial transactions, delaying payment processing, and generally operating in bad faith and in adversarial fashion. Making complaints may not do much of anything in the immediate sense, but in theory when enough complaints get recorded, eventually it will reach a point where it can't be ignored (I know, you've got a bridge to sell me).

Plus, if it ever does come down to some kind of remedy being provided to affected borrowers, having an official complaint on file will probably help you with making a claim.

Having said that, it seems like the complaint system is overall pretty crumby. My complaint was sent directly over to the loan company's customer service folks to handle, it wasn't handled by anybody on the government side that I could tell. And no surprise, the loan company investigated itself and concluded that it had done nothing wrong. But don't let that discourage you, it's still worth it to report.

Praise the lawd!

realistically no one reading this post is influencing global events on any significant scale.

I'm not really sure where influencing global events comes into play with my prior comment, but I agree with you. However, when I posted my comment, I really mostly only saw people discussing relative and personal changes they'd make, so I'm also sort of thinking that global events are mostly irrelevant.

Especially if you’re just doing normal kid stuff. A random kid ordering spaghetti instead of chicken nuggets is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The same goes for just about any choice you’d likely be presented with.

If you're focused on the ramifications of any one specific choice, then I feel like you're missing the forest for the tree (to coopt a popular idiom).

Every choice you make and everything you do differently will change things in some way, even if only to an imperceptible degree. From the moment you arrive back at your 6 year old self, you will constantly be making different decisions and doing things differently, whether you want to or not. The cumulative effects of these minute changes over time will make things increasingly more unpredictable and the new timeline and old timeline will necessarily diverge.

Then consider that some things in life are literally a cumulation of everything that you've done and everything that happened to you up to that point. Even small changes will have an impact. For instance, think of someone with biological children who goes back in time. The children they end up the second time around will be completely different people because of how random the process is that leads to two specific gametes being involved in the fertilization process. Literally eating spaghetti as a 6 year old could affect the outcome there, let alone the millions/billions/trillions of different actions that person would make over the decade(s) leading up to their child/childrens' conception. Perhaps having completely different kids is still inconsequential, but that's literally just one example, so I wouldn't get too hung up on the specifics.

How come whenever I go to a Bass Pro Shop I never get to see a naked 42-year-old man leaping into the aquarium? I swear life is not fair.

Ten million USD in 2024 is more than enough for me and my family to live out comfortable lives, to be honest. I'd just take that, live off the interest. It will present its own problems, of course, but I'm sure I can figure those out.

Going back in time with any specific goal or intent (like making lots more money than ten million dollars by 2024) is almost certainly going to end up being its own kind of hell in this situation and especially so when there's no guarantee that I'll actually be successful in that pursuit. No guarantee that I'd arrive at the new 2024 with more than ten million dollars, no guarantee I'd be able to "fix" anything without causing worse problems for myself and others, no guarantee that I'd get here alive again, sounds like quite a bit of a risk.

Plus, once I go back to age 6 and start making different decisions, a different future will necessarily emerge. Think about it this way, in order to not change the future (until you're at a point where you can reasonably execute a plan to reach your goals), you'd have to make exactly the same decisions you did when you were 6. Pretty much nobody has that kind of memory/recall, so it would literally come down to sheer luck. And the further along in time things progress, as you make more and more different decisions than you did originally, the more uncertainty it would introduce to the new future. Eventually, you may even find that you basically have no more ability to recall/predict the future than you would have otherwise.

So if you're in it for the money, just take the guaranteed money.

I think what you're describing is how I felt with Hollow Knight. When I set it down for the last time (so far), I did so knowing I would probably never return to finish it.

I don't get a lot of time to game, and the time I get is punctuated by months of hiatus each year. Any game that's too long, too difficult, or too complicated to pick back up quickly after I've been gone awhile is not a good fit for me.

I was too far along in the game to even consider starting over, not to mention that a lot of the magic would be lost. But I was also far enough along that I know I don't want to put the effort into relearning the mechanics, figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing, and having to re-explore everything.

Granted, by the time I stopped playing, it had already grown tedious and I wasn't enjoying it much anyway. It stopped being rewarding was just mostly just punishing at a certain point.

After I set Hollow Knight aside, I found other games that I liked better and were more accommodating to my circumstances (ex: Hades). And now, even if I did want some more time with Hollow Knight, I'd honestly just wait for the upcoming sequel / prequel / whatever it's going to be (Silksong).

the food industry allegedly removed BPA from their packages/cans years ago

Even if they removed BPA entirely from consumer packaging, these are mostly or entirely processed / manufactured foods being discussed.

The chemical exposure could be coming from equipment used during the production process, from non-consumer packing/shipping of raw ingredients, and possibly even during the agricultural production stage. For example, if there's BPA in the plastics that foods come into contact with during the cooking or cooling phase (i.e. from silicone mats) it may leach into the food. Or if the food dyes in the products come to the manufacturers in packaging that contained BPA, it's a potential source of contamination. Also, modern agriculture is heavily reliant on plastics, so it's possible that these chemicals enter the products as a result of those practices.

Obviously I don't know for sure and I would almost bet that the source of contamination is different for different products, so there may not even be one right answer that covers it all.

I dunno about you chaps but Sexy Lady is my jam.

This is probably preaching to the choir, but long covid is pretty nasty stuff. If you are able to regularly get vaccinated against covid and the vaccines are also effective at lowering risk of long covid, then get vaccinated.

I'm traumatized after seeing the effects of long covid on a family member. The covid infection itself wasn't great, mind you, but the after effects have been awful.

It's been 2 long and difficult years since the initial covid infection. There was a point when things were on the right trajectory in terms of recovery, but if I'm actually being honest with myself, it was false hope. The person I used to know isn't ever really, fully coming back. It's traumatic for them because they know they aren't the same. It's traumatic for me because I lost the caring, intelligent, thoughtful, loving, empathetic person I used to know while also watching them suffer from delusions, depression, and all manner of issues while fully realizing that something is wrong without knowing what or how to fix/change it.

The theater folks I used to know back 15+ years ago were pretty vocal about the fact that Maher is pretty nasty to work for and that he's a giant asshole. I don't know if that's common knowledge or common experience, but seeing these folks' passionate distaste for him left an impression on me.

I wonder if this meme is a low-key advertisement to make people aware that this feature even exists.

That being said, I'll pass on the $200 million. Just not worth it to me.

Good for them, but oh they're so nasty.

Adding to the ACKSHSCHUALLYies...

If you have hemochromatosis, and you get sick from it, you probably should be asking about bloodletting. Regular bloodletting is one of the most effective and cost-efficient treatment options available to reduce or prevent the myriad of complications caused by this health condition.

I don't know that I'm fully able to articulate my opinion on this, but I'll give it a try.

Overall, I feel like a lot of companies took "market conditions" for granted in the past 3 - 5 years. They didn't really make any significant improvements. In fact, some of them are notably worse. All that in spite of raising prices and lowering quality/standards. For a time, they may have been correct -- no matter how much they sucked, they'd still rake in the profits. Perhaps now the short sighted decisions are biting them in the ass?

I don't have a lot of experience with some of the companies listed, but Target and FedEx for sure have declined in the value they offer me, in my anecdotal experience.

FedEx is a decent shipping option for my area, with some caveats and annoyances. But in the past 5 years, nearly every time I've opted to pay for expedited shipping with them, they've failed to deliver on time. So I'm fine with their cheaper standard shipping options, but the more expensive stuff is a waste of money.

Target is an okayish retailer for what it is, but there are so few locations that my experience with them over the past 3 - 5 years is primarily online. Their e-commerce platform is alright, but the selection is noticeably limited compared to the alternatives. Initially the online site either didn't have 3rd party sellers or it was very limited. But now those have taken over a lot of categories and products, making the Target website as hit or miss as the others, so there's no real incentive for me to check them out when I'm shopping.

The whole ordeal is/was a colossal screw up.

The student loan company I had to deal with lied to me and made no apologies about it. When I submitted an official complaint through the Federal Student Aid site, it wasn't handled by some government agent or a 3rd party supervisor, it was handled by a customer service rep working for the student loan company. It was literally "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong" kind of thing.

Having said that, you may still want to file a complaint if you have had issues with the USA's loan servicing - https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. It's probably delusional, but I feel like at least having an official record of the report could be helpful down the line at some point. Maybe one day the Federal government will seriously investigate, or maybe one day there will be a lawsuit and at least an official complaint could serve as evidence you were impacted.

I cancelled Amazon Prime awhile ago when the customer service took a nose dive and I realized too many of the 3rd party vendors were using Amazon as their defective products outlet.

But I actively and permanently skipped out on an Amazon Prime subscription because they refused to give me a pro-rated refund on the remaining 8-9 months of service after I cancelled. They literally told me that they start with the pro-rated amount, then subtract out the cost of all the "free" movie/show/music rentals as well as all the "free" shipping on orders during the time you've had prime, and you only get whatever remains (if anything). Within the first 3 -4 months, I had already accrued enough "free" $5.99 shipping and $3 - $4 rentals that it exceeded the $100 or whatever cost of a prime membership was back in those days, so I got no refund. Bunch of crooks.

No surprise, I'm completely on board with folks kicking Prime to the curb.

It's really hit or miss. The communities generally have most of the same downsides as those on the corporate competition, but with added issues due to the small size of Lemmy/fediverse and inherent features of a decentralized platform.

I mostly stick to bigger communities and instances on Lemmy, which was not a thing I did much on the r-word site, and I admit that makes it trickier to make a one-to-one comparison.

My hobbies and interests aren't actually all that obscure, but the communities for them on Lemmy are functionally dead, fractured across multiple instances, or just plain non-existent as far as I can tell. Really little or no engagement. So, that sucks.

Another issue that seems especially apparent here is that it seems much easier for smaller groups with "loud" voices / strong opinions to overwhelm any kind of discussion or debate and give the appearance that their opinion is majority opinion, even if it is not. I'm not saying that doesn't happen elsewhere, just that it seems especially pronounced here. People would complain about group think on the r-word site, but it's often amplified here.

One thing I like about some of the bigger communities here is that it seems like it's more visible when unprovoked rudeness and incivility are called out. Not that it never happened on the corporate r-word site, but I do run across that a bit more here.

It's not a "usually" thing, but yes there are bone-in and boneless (aka de-boned) chicken wings available in the USA. It's quite common for establishments, especially fast food or convenience restaurants, to offer both options but not all places offer both.

The higher quality boneless wings are typically made from drumettes like the piece in OPs picture above, but with the meat pulled off the bone. It's often cut into "nuggets", breaded, and deep fried. Sometimes other cuts of meat are used, though, like the breast.

The lower quality boneless wings are usually just barely more than ground up chicken parts mixed with binding agents, similar to mass produced chicken nuggets but usually not quite as uniform in shape and texture. Basically one step up from "pink slime" or chicken dough based nuggets.

Based on the size and proportions of this, I'm guessing this is a drumette and not a drumstick. But, I'm also I'm not sure a photo of a single piece of chicken from a single order is really evidence of much of anything.