Good Things Friday (304) and Link Love
December 20, 2024
1. I FINALLY tackled 2/3 of the wall boxes! You know the boxes that get piled against a wall “for now” that then grow into mountains as people stack things on top of those boxes “for a minute” and eventually there is no hope of reclaiming that space? I’ve reclaimed 2/3 of it! That last third, or quarter, of the pile remains, slightly mocking me, but that’s still progress.
Can we help this young man? Elijah Romero metastatic cancer
Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You: Banks deal with lots of angry people, and are optimized to treat this like a customer service problem. Some do better and some do worse at this, but you never want identity theft treated like a customer service problem. Their CS department is scored on number of tickets resolved per hour, and each rep’s incentives are simply to classify you as something requiring no followup and get you off the phone.
Instead, you want to communicate with the bank in a manner which suggests that you’re an organized professional who is capable of escalating the matter if the bank does not handle it themselves. You do not yell – not that you’re ever verbally speaking with anyone, but you wouldn’t yell in a letter, either. You do not bluster. (“I will tell on you to my attorney” is, generally, bluster, and that’s bluster that is common to people who do not actually have attorneys.) You instead present as if you’re collecting a paper trail…..
The thing which causes regulatory incidents is well-organized people taking paper trails to regulators which allow a regulator to trivially follow up with an investigatory letter. Accordingly, anyone who sounds like a well-organized professional with a paper trail is a problem to be swiftly addressed.
Spain Enacted a New Law That Has Major Implications for Travelers. This is really creepy and we will NOT be going to Spain. Fascism in this country is bad enough, I’m not sharing sensitive information with a whole other country’s government: Hotels around the world require guests to disclose basic details such as name, email address, and ID (i.e. a passport). Spain is going a step further by asking for more sensitive information, such as banking details, home addresses, and relationships between travelers. Hotels, rentals, Airbnb, camping sites, car rentals, and tourism operators must collect this data and send it to the government. Minors are not exempt from this requirement, and all data will be stored for three years.
I enjoy my trainer’s blog: What You Look Like Shouldn’t Matter I would still like to be able to be comfortable in jeans again but that’s going to stay at the bottom of my priority list now that I own cargo pants that will do the trick of keeping me clothed and carrying my things without cutting off circulation.
I’d forgotten about James Garfield Christmas! 15 years is giant metal chickens. Or sweet stuffed animals. Welcome to the 15th James Garfield Miracle. I love that it’s still going. I can’t participate this year but I’m going to remember for next year.
I really don’t understand why the judge ruled this way. Haven’t these families been through enough? Why not allow the sale that they wanted go through?: The Onion’s Bid to Buy Infowars Is Rejected in Court
Ugh. DH and DC2 just bought tickets and reserved hotels for Spain. I guess we make sure to have banking info for our tiny account.
https://www.the-independent.com/travel/news-and-advice/spain-new-travel-rules-hotels-flights-visa-b2655790.html
Not banking info— just how you paid (that is, credit card).
Oh that’s better. I wonder where the other reporter got the banking information detail from.
Oh that’s right! I thought it pinged my radar in some way that I knew someone was going too, slipped my mind who.
That’s a good post from your trainer! My goal is flexibility – ease of bending, tying/untying shoes, that sort of thing. I am going to add in endurance – I’m much stiffer after a long walk than I used to be!
The Infowars rollercoaster is crazy, especially the fact that the trustee still has to arrange a sale but it sounds like it’s not clear whether they can simply hold a second auction. I can see why the judge had doubts though; the net value of the cash+waiver was $2.5 mil and the straight cash offer was $3.5 mil – and that’s a pretty stark difference. The trustee’s argument that the drastically lower bid would allocate more funds to the other debtors is a well-meaning one, but that is more of a “fairness & feelings” argument than a fact-based one. I wish it could have gone through – OnionWars would have been a beautiful revamp! – but I can see why the judge might feel that it simply couldn’t be supported legally.