Reminds me of boxed software, too. You check the compatibility, the features that included one must-have new feature. Buy it and discover what vaporware is. It started me on the ethics of pirating, finding out if it actually works, and then, and only then, buying a real copy. I donate to developers on Linux, now.

And Bandcamp.

It sounds harder than it was. Our furnace was on its last leg, huge, loud, and inefficient. We made sure that our replacement could handle a heavier load that a HEPA filter would add when we bought it. The second HEPA air exchange filter was an off the shelf unit, put in the room that our immunosuppressed relative worked from. We have allergies, (not serious, but uncomfortable at certain seasons) so the HEPA upgrade seemed to just make sense. Because the new furnace was smaller, making room for a thicker filter was easy. It was an easy swap. Our heating bills went down, so the payback is relatively short.

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We provided home-schooling for two and had an immune suppressed person at our home. I added a HEPA air exchange filtration system and upgraded our furnace/AC for a second HEPA filter in our home. Now, the children are back in school, and their dad is back to the office. We are teaching at school, but remain Covid free. We had our most recent shot on Thursday. We know of more infected people this year in our circle this past two months, than the entire time before, so we are hoping for the best.

To force people to spend more time shopping. More time means more chance for impulse buying and better sales. Basic marketing.

Taxes take the money out of circulation, and the government AGAIN spends the money. It is two transactions. This technicality is important. Following where the money goes and the steps that it takes to how it gets there is how you get some understanding of economics. Government bonds are the safe haven in that largely stays even with inflation. That funds the government in a large way. Taxes, to an increasing degree, pay the interest on that debt. The interest rates set by the government set the interest rates of corporate bond, of the giants to the little consumer rates by risks taken. These, together, fund loans, which fuels America’s economic engine. High interest means slowed growth. Low rates spurs growth.

To offset this “tax”, people must put their money in places that will grow. Government bond’s interests are close to inflation, for example, and are seen as the safest of investments.

Consider a series of transactions for a certain amount of money. Each transaction has a tax cost, that reduces that “certain amount” of money. On average, six transactions return all of that “certain amount” of money back to the treasury/ per Krugman.

Investing in a company puts your money in a non-inflationary asset. If inflation goes up, your land, machinery, buildings, raw materials as well as finished product just jumped in numbers of dollars of value, thus holding its real value. The same can be said of any hard asset, and dollars could also be switched with any country’s currency. I like large index funds because they are largely diverse. There are big swings, but I have gotten 9-12% average, over long periods of time.

Inflation is similar to a stock split. If you can understand stock splits, you have a rudimentary understanding of inflation.

Here is some extra information that may be too much info: Add in population growth, and realize how money supply has to at least increase to keep pace, for every worker to maintain the same pay. (in theory) Some nation’s citizens like the relative stability of the dollar’s value, and trade or have savings hedged with dollars. These dollars essentially drops out of money supply. Their trade velocity drops for these dollars. There are so many variables, that economists look at inflation measures to see how they are doing. These indicators are always 6 months or so behind, so they are always flying by only being able to look behind their plane.

Gold is a shiny bauble material, but never grows. It can be a good investment for that part that you want to put aside and will just sit. Bitcoin is invaluable for money laundering, but very unstable for saving/investing. Look at how many have been fleeced when someone gets their keys, or lost their coins by a hard drive failure. It is costly in electrical use to mine.

There are far better things not tied to the value of a dollar. I would suggest very low-fee indexed mutual funds as one better alternative. They offer an accessible way for people to get a share of the means of production. My experience is that for people who can can learn to not be ruled by fear or greed can, over time, build enough wealth to live better lives.

The thing that humans have is resilience. We can jump off the f’d up train track if we put our efforts toward that goal.

Remember the ozone hole? It’s been shrinking and almost back to normal, per scientists who watch. Pesticides put birds on the endangered list, but after that pesticide was banned, they have become abundant again. We don’t remember the wins, but they are there. Humanity will change their ways, but only when they have exhausted the other ways, first. We can ban more pesticides. We’ve done it before, we will do it again. We are on the verge of a clean energy future. The old rich fossils can hold on to the old ways for only so long, They are dying out. They will be replaced by a new ethics, who will find new ways to screw up.

My news sources have their slant, but are relatively factual and properly vetted. Pulitzer prizes and awards for journalistic excellence convince me of their quest for reporting truth. My quest is to find truth. My education was STEM and economics. I draw my own conclusions after seeing facts, but the blind spots in what I read are glaring. Even the better news sources largely miss reporting what is most important. The GINI index, global warming, why Farmers insurance quit Florida and parts of California, and absolute cluelessness of what we are doing in those policies are completely off their radar.

There is an adage that if you look at a person’s spending, you see an honest picture of what their actual values are. I apply that as my strategy to cut through ideological BS.

I don’t remember. I kept it out of the game folder and hid it in an acronym-of-letters sub folder with the executable also being another acronym-of-letters that sounded deliberately sounded insanely boring. TBH, it has been a while. I didn’t have computer access, and snuck it in on a computer that a partner in crime left open for me. So. I never got a chance to play it. I do remember finding some proprietary software, and hid my folders in there. It was an old Win machine.

Almost all of the news sources around the world have news sites. I cannot keep up unless I only read those sites that have excellent reputations for being factual. Al Jazerra, BBC, The Guardian, the Independent, LeMonde, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washinton Post are on my political list. (Yes, it leans left). Credibility problem has made it harder to find right sources that I can trust.

My favorite lists are for STEM subjects. Facts, science and economics will shape how our world looks. Facts are the focus in this realm. If I only looked at Pulitzer Prize winners, I would have a good list

FWIW, my bias is our environment. Screwing that up makes most other biases moot.

This doesn’t ask your question, but this may be of useful to people, anyway.

I’ve just joined ground.news, a pay site. The great part about this site is that it rates news as to left, center, or right leaning, and rates the “factuality” of the sites. Filtering out non-factual knocks out a large part of the outlier’s lies, and shows who the people are, who push them. like knowing the players pushing their agenda. One caveat is that some that push lies still slide through by quoting the people who spout lies without disclaimers of the reliabilty of their false claims. One rule of thumb that I find helpful is that I mentally filter out any pleas to emotionalism. Manipulating readers/viewers emotionally is the opposite of informing. Sites that try to be centrist and ignore whether the sources are reliable about facts, end up being half lies or propagandsa. It is useful to keep in mind that blatently propaganda sites work in some truth to give themselves some plausibility. Only the highest reliable news are worth letting in to your news sphere.

This is a worldwide problem as paid propagandaists muddy the news sphere. Welcome to our cyber warfare world.

IT removed games. I put them back in, but renamed the games, as well as the folder that they were hidden in. Then told people that I was sworn to secrecy BUT, and how to get into the games. I knew that I won when I caught a couple instructors playing it.

A right of water, shelter, food, medical care and schooling. A right to live free of violence, a right of basic equality, for equal justice, a right to privacy, and a right to be forgotten.