Vilnius is fucking amazing. I really enjoyed my visit to the three Baltic nations recently. I’m glad I got there before all this started kicking off.

Coincidentally, I hope, several places I’ve visited in the last 15-20 years have become sketchy to travel to for one reason or another within a year or two after my visit. Maybe I should just stay home for the good of the world.

Seriously, I’d like to know too. I’ve always thought that you got them and then you were done. But maybe that was counting on there not being a bunch of disease vectors walking around.

You guys are talking about different things.

Credit utilization of 0% doesn’t mean paying your cards off on time every month so you avoid interest. It means paying your cards off before the statement period even closes so nothing is reported to the credit agencies.

I do this. All my cards have a statement period ending on the 19th or 20th. Around the 17th every month I pre-pay so my statement is $0 on every card.

When I use a card after doing this and the charge goes through before the statement closes, my FICO score goes up (vantage doesn’t seem to do this).

For the last 18 months or so my FICO has been going up 22 points every time there is at least a little balance to report and down 22 points every time my credit utilization is 0.0%.

I was disappointed when this happened but now I’m glad I can’t find it anymore. I had become lazy, just putting it on everything. Now I have a variety of sauces I choose based on what I’m putting it on. There are a lot of good sauces out there. With proper pairing you might not miss Sriracha at all.

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’ve never heard of an employer that requires their 401k match to be invested in the company. Everywhere I or my wife has worked you could put it in any fund available with that 401k plan.

It’s not too heavy. That’s “premium feel and materials.”

You can’t get it in the boonies. I live in a city and my insurance, with an earthquake rider, is only a few hundred a month. My coworker lives in sparsely populated area (by the standards of this metro area) and his insurance costs a little over 7x as much, and continues to rise.

And it’s deserved too. These people move out there because they’re the type that want to “own land,” but then none of them maintain it. I’ll go over to his house for a party and be in the backyard and everywhere I look, his property and every property it touches, as soon as you go beyond the area immediately around the house that is actually used, the entire ground is covered by kindling. One dropped cigarette and his entire neighborhood is gone.

The Clone Wars might have started out for a younger audience (I would say more all ages, it wasn’t too kiddy) but it started to have episodes that were pretty heavy after a while. Also, the transformation from “snips” to who Ahsoka is now is one of the best examples of character growth I can think of. Back when it came out if you had told me that annoying little shit would become one of my favorite characters in the entire eu, I never would have believed it.

And on a general note, the eu has always had better stories than the movies anyway.

It used to be that when people talked about hypersonic missiles it was understood to mean hypersonic cruise missile, something that could hug terrain and maneuver. Then Russia and China came out with “hypersonic missiles” that were just ballistic with maybe some minor maneuverability so the term doesn’t mean anything until you dig deeper.

Malazan.

Most books, including the ten book series, are by Steven Erickson. There are several other books by Ian C. Esselmont. Read them in publication order regardless of author.

All the bullshit with tipping on food delivery apps made me stop using them years ago.

First I hear the apps are stealing tips. Then they’re not stealing tips anymore. Then maybe they’re stealing some of the tips.

To try and avoid all that I tried to use cash. The drivers don’t get their base rate reduced and they get the entire, non-reportable cash tip. Then my food started taking twice as long and arriving cold because the drivers thought I was stiffing them.

My theory is the apps do this (pre-tipping) on purpose to discourage cash and after-tipping so they can lower what they pay the driver and they’ll still accept the order because they see the higher after tip amount. So now the apps might not be technically stealing tips, but they’re using up front tips to allow them to reduce their shitty base rate for everyone.

Now if want delivery it’s pizza, Chinese, or one of the few other places with their own drivers. I’ve had this policy for years now and I don’t see myself ever going back unless it’s an emergency.

Bonus to me: all my takeout/delivery is now 20-30% cheaper. Everyone should really take a look at the inflated prices they’re paying and decide if it’s really worth saving a short drive.

Normally you’re right. It seems like every day there is a new revolutionary battery tech with no real estimate when it’ll ever be in use. But in this case, according to the article, deliveries will start next month which means they’re already in production.

But there is a penalty for littering. Some people might refrain from littering not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they don’t want a fine.

The lack of repercussions for being a scumbag and abandoning your cart is what makes it a good test.