I think in 1995 my dad had pay by the minute internet access and I wasn’t allowed to use it (and didn’t really know what it was anyway). Somewhere around 1996/7 he got a dedicated ISDN line with unlimited internet and I stayed up all night talking to strangers in chat rooms or playing video games. Good times!

Yep, this is such a huge impact on the apparent inflation rate. It is an absolutely valid thing to measure, but I love your point about how the market has essentially shifted to only selling luxury products. You either get to pay luxury prices or do without.

Other challenges with CPI are substitution and owner’s equivalent rent.

With substitution, economists look at changing purchase patterns and adjust the basket of goods included in the calculation. For example, if you used to spend $20 per week on steak, but now you spend $20 per week on chicken, the economists say your preference changed and there was no inflation. In some cases, this might be true, but in others it could be that the price of meat went up significantly and you switched to something cheaper because you can’t afford the higher prices. If you’re talking about the fact that nobody is buying 8-tracks anymore, then substitution is certainly valid, but that’s not always the case.

In the case of housing, up until the early 1980s, CPI included home prices in the calculation. Then they switched to an estimate of what you would pay in rent for your house rather than the price of the house. This flattens out the CPI movement when home prices go up and down. Is it valid? Maybe? Probably to the economists at least, but not to anyone who wants to buy a home. On the flip side, if you already own a home, home price inflation is kind of irrelevant in the short to medium term because your cost doesn’t necessarily change (other than insurance and taxes).

Well, he wasn’t shot, choked to death, or mangled in the back of a police van at the time of arrest, so that’s already a win for him.

This requires more information. Am I reasonably likely to hit a total target comp over the course of a year, but with fluctuations throughout the year? I can live with that if the target fits my needs. Of course, I’m guessing that is not the intent here, this is can you live with no clue about your future income potential? That’s a hard no for me.

I had a similar thing today. My app (looks just like this one) told me it was currently 138 degrees out. I thought I might need to stay inside today.

So, who’s putting out the 80s monitor to go with it? It’s just not complete without a giant “CRT” sitting on top.

Maybe JD Vance turned the camera upside down.

So, is nvidia the cisco of this cycle?

I interviewed for a job recently and asked why the position was vacant. They said the previous person died. I didn’t have the courage to ask if the death was work-related though.

This is great information, thanks! In several cases it wouldn’t have helped us because of the 3 day advance request requirement, but at least its an improvement. Still not as good as what auto mechanics are required to provide, but its a step in the right direction.

Also, there’s this common “feature”:

Dr: “You need this procedure.”

Me: “How much will it cost me?”

Office Manager: “I won’t know until I bill your insurance and find out if it is covered.”

Me: “What is the cash price I would pay you if it isn’t covered by insurance.”

Office Manager: “I have no idea.”

I’m definitely in agreement now, it just took me a bit longer to get over the shift in social norms.

Great points on the horrible quality of sound in these places. I was referring more to the selection of music, but playing it at low quality certainly makes it worse. My kids joke that the grocery store is where old pop songs go to die.

I used to judge people for going about their daily lives with headphones on (like shopping) as being antisocial. In the last few years, I’ve come to realize they were just quicker to realize how annoying our society is and I’m increasingly likely to join them.

Recently I went to a mall and visited all the department stores. One of them had a guy playing a piano live and my first thought was “how quaint”. Then, as I sat and waited for my wife to try things on it struck me that I wasn’t hearing horrible music played over speakers - the piano was really nice. Why can’t places go back to playing relaxing music like that (even recorded)?

This didn’t make sense to my American brain until I realized it was Boris Johnson, so this is a joke for people in advanced nations where medicine is a basic service.

That would be my response, but a lot of people can be guilt tripped into coming in to work anyway.

I used to work for a call center that had an automated call out system, so you didn’t have to talk to anyone or give a specific excuse. However, at some point management instituted a policy requiring supervisors to call their employees to “check in on their wellbeing.” I don’t even have to be cynical to know the real purpose because I was in the meetings where they talked about it as a tactic to reduce absenteeism.

To some degree you can get use Glassdoor with the help of the element zapper from ublock origin. What you can circumvent is pretty limited, but you can at least get a bit of information without jumping through all their hoops.

What that said, I would not put a ton of trust in the reviews section. As people have mentioned, companies can get bad reviews removed, but also most happy employees aren’t taking the time to go submit a review. I use it more to see salary ranges for job titles, both generally and at specific companies. Even that is subject to how honest users are about their title and salary, but employees have much less access to that kind of info compared to employers, so I have to take what I can get.

But were there bread knives before bread? I’m not going to slice my bread with a butcher’s knife or a cleaver, that’s barbaric!

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

If you’re having problems getting support from a Telecom company, file a complaint with the FCC. You are more likely going to get someone who can/will actually help you. This mainly works when you have a concrete complaint that is running into process/policy roadblocks. For example, if you’ve been overcharged by an amount that the normal agents don’t have authority to credit or if you’re having chronic service issues that aren’t being resolved.

It is less likely to help if the issue is more subjective, such as asking for a large credit to compensate you for being inconvenienced by an outage (i.e. claiming the outage cost you business or work time). They’ll likely offer a prorated service credit and a courtesy credit (like $25-50) and the FCC will likely consider that reasonable.