As someone who lives rurally, I just want to make sure everyone is aware of how important mail service is. FedEx, UPS, DHL won’t deliver to us - not even to our nearest town. If we absolutely need something and they won’t ship Canada Post, we have it sent to a friend’s house a 1.5 hour drive away.

Do this! Years ago a very nice post lady asked me if I wanted to get flyers in my mail. I said “hell no.” And, now I don’t! Now I just get junk mail from companies that send their junk as actual mail. So, 100% my credit card company.

I have similar feelings, but I’m not sure how to put them into words. Maybe “disappointment”? Like “Oh, not you too, Israel.”

Yes! What is with that? We’re almost assured a terrible wildfire and growing season at this point and everyone is gushing about how nice it is. I mentioned at a coffee shop that I wouldn’t mind snow for some snowshoeing or skiing and the look I got was like I had smeared shit on myself. Well they enjoy not shoveling the walk or need to brush snow off their car.

I thought mentioning farmers and crops would back me up, but no. You know those farmers, always complaining… 🙄

I’m loving the new camera update and I don’t have anyone to tell… I think it’s awesome they’re doing this for a previous-generation phone.

If you are reading this, and you live in an area that got hit with forest fire smoke last year, prepare now and get supplies to build a DIY HEPA filter setup for your home with guides like this:

https://deohs.washington.edu/edge/blog/how-make-box-fan-filter-clean-indoor-air-smoke

I’ve already got my set up ready because I had to last year.

You’ve inspired me to make one for my parents. It really is cheap and easy to do, you just need the foresight to do it because box fans get hard to find in the summer.

I don’t know if this is related, but occasionally I get some new insurance quotes just to make sure I’m not missing out on any deals, and this year I’m being asked for all sorts of details I’ve never been asked before. I’ve been asked for pictures inside and out, documentation from the county, information about my pets, specifics about my roof material, letters from past insurers.

I’ve been with three different insurance companies in the past and it was always just basics like square footage, distance to fire hall. I get the feeling these companies don’t really want my business, but they also don’t want to tell me no, so they just send me on irritating errands to get strange info for them.

I think most people waaay under estimate the risk of reusing passwords. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but in the security incidents I’ve seen there will often be the initial “No, I only use this password for banking!” and then “well… it’s just for my important accounts.” I’ve also seen the misconception that a complex password means it’s ok to reuse it.

The other thing I’ve seen is people just mashing “agree,” "ok, “yes,” or any kind of prompt. This probably isn’t what happened here, but with device-based 2FA, like when Google sends you an “Allow device?” message, it’s pretty easy for someone to just mash “Allow” so they can get back to whatever it was they’re doing.

I don’t want to come off as victim-blaming, or as overly sympathetic to a big bank, but at some point I think it’s fair to expect individuals to have their own shit in order. I think a reasonable step towards this is that consumers should start demanding safer devices and software.

Sublime?! What packages are you running with that?

If it’s the Kirkland dog food, I think that’s actually really good dog food. So, no worries there.

It sounds like they’re suggesting most of the businesses they took money back from unintentionally claimed too much. They also said it was the third-parties who assisted with inaccurate claims that they’re most interested in. Considering these would be accountants there might actually be some consequences for them that aren’t just “bad application? That’s a fine.”

Considering the chaos and immediate need that these programs were conceived under, I think that the approach of giving money as quickly as possible then following up when the dust settled was the right approach. Like the premise of our justice system - better that some dishonest people have money they don’t deserve temporarily than those in dire need go without.

Also, do we know they’re not being charged interest?

Something that I’ve found that’s counterintuitive is that there’s more ISP competition rurally than in cities. In a rural setting anyone can slap a radio on a tower and get access to a reasonable number of homes. With 60GHz equipment showing up, the speed isn’t terrible either.

This might be true for fibre as well, but you don’t see that as much. Our independent ISP has been busy trenching all over the county. Certain towns have direct access, while every one else benefits from fixed-wireless towers having direct fibre connection.

In the city you just can’t do direct line-of-sight wireless, and while your customers are more tightly packed, trenching in fibre must be a non-starter for anyone that isn’t Telus/Bell/Rogers.

To the people going “everyone is,” I’m thinking you may not know a veterinarian.

We have a rural vet, so she’s mostly a 1-person operation (she has a vet tech). She gets calls at all hours, from people she doesn’t know, who are desperate, rude, or both. She was telling me about a woman who called about her puppy who was struggling to breathe. It was an hour drive away, and from experience she knew she needed to be up front that there was going to be a fee for her coming out. After being told what a shitty person she was, the woman just hung up. So, there was a puppy out there, struggling to breath, and either the vet needed to drive two hours on her weekend to help it, and possibly not get paid, or quite likely this dog dies some slow painful death.

People seem to think they’re entitled to a vet, and when she can’t see someone as soon as they’d like they get angry. When it’s time to pay, people can get angry. There was an accident by our town and the fire department brought in two dogs that were thrown from the car and in bad shape. She had tried to make them as comfortable as possible while trying to contact someone from the family. She ended up doing a bit of work, but when the wife of the driver was finally found she simply refused to pay anything. Said she didn’t ok any of it.

So consider that a vet goes into this profession because they love animals, but day in and out they’re seeing them suffer terribly, and often much more than is necessary because people are ass holes. From beyond our own vet I’ve also heard lots of stories of people just ghosting after they’ve learned how much some treatment will cost, or wanting to put down animals that are just “too old.” Vets sit at this intersection between helpless animals and how society treats animals. Well, and now how people treat people.