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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • On further research, you are correct. I’ve heard the thing about it being deductible for the business repeated enough that I thought it was true. Guess that’s just a reminder to always be fact-checking. I will be editing my comment accordingly. I do feel like the rest of my comment still has some value on how to determine whether it’s worth it or not.

    Thank you for pointing out my wrongness.


  • Fondots@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlIs it worth rounding up at checkout?
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    15 days ago

    How are we defining “worth it?”

    EDIT: THIS IS INCORRECT, the business cannot deduct your donations.Yes, the business can claim it as a deduction on their taxes. If it’s a business you like, maybe that’s a good thing, if it’s not then that may be a bad thing. Does the money that goes to charity outweigh whatever harm may come from that company paying less in taxes? I don’t know if there’s any good way to objectively say that.

    You don’t really get much say in which charity that money goes to, it’s just going to whatever charity that company has chosen to partner with. Some charities can be kind of sketchy, not all of them are on the up-and-up. If it’s a cause you care about, you may be better off just donating directly yourself to a charity you trust.

    Now your individual contributions doing this are really a drop in the bucket, let’s say you go to a store and donate at checkout 3 times a week, and since you’re rounding up to the nearest dollar, you’re donating a max of $1 × 3x a week × 52 weeks a year = a maximum donation of $156 dollars a year donated by rounding, probably going to several different charities, and realistically you’re probably donating about half of that unless you have some real OCD about your purchases being even dollar amounts, so probably about $78/year divided up among however many different charities the various places you shop at are involved with.

    Now of course you’re not the only person making those donations at any given store, each store is probably making hundreds or thousands of dollars in donations between all of their customers rounding up their checks.

    Unless you’re really struggling, you’re probably not going to miss the maybe $100 or so that get siphoned off from you making these donations spread out over a whole year.

    Can you Deduct those donations from your own taxes? I’m genuinely not sure, my gut says no (EDIT: you can), but let’s say you can. Do you think that $100 or so + whatever other deductable expenses you have in a year are going to beat the standard deduction? If it does, then sure, feel free to save those receipts and try to add it all up, that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth to me, but maybe it’s worth it for your purposes, there’s a lot of different tax situations I won’t pretend to know for certain.

    Are those charitable donations going to improve your life? That’s hard to say, I don’t know your life. EDIT to expand on this a bit Are you in a position where you’re going to benefit directly from a charity? If you are you may need to reconsider making a donation because you may need that money yourself. Although there are cases where a charity may be able to make better use of money than an individual, for example being able to pool money from donations to buy things in bulk at a better price, but you’d have to know how that organization is ran and how the money is going to get used to determine whether you’ll be able to benefit from that directly. Indirectly maybe you’ll see some benefits but probably not immediately and it probably won’t be immediately obvious. Maybe donating money now to a charity that supports youth sports leads to some kid taking up baseball who wouldn’t have been able to afford to otherwise which in turn keeps him off the streets, gets him scholarships, etc. when otherwise he might have ended up in a gang or hooked on drugs or something and broken into your neighbors car 10 years down the line to steal some change which resulted in your insurance rates going up because your in a “high crime area” or something. Or maybe it will just give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.





  • It’s been a long time and I’m not sure of it’s current state, but some friends and I used to have a blast play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (I think there’s a couple other games out there now that are similar)

    You kind of need the right setup for it to work well, a big TV or projector you can hook up to a computer and everyone needs their own laptop, etc.

    The basic idea is- picture the bridge of the enterprise (or your starship of choice) you’ve got a bunch of people with their own consoles responsible for different aspects of the ships operation, the helm, engineering, weapons, etc. That’s what you’re doing.

    I think at some point they added support for support fighters and such to accompany the main starship so if you have more people they have something to do.

    We also made up a couple extra positions, like a captain who didn’t really have his own console, he just got his own chair front and center and a fancy hat and gave out orders.


  • My dog likes to steal things when we’re out of the house and leave them on the stairs or on our bed.

    She’s not a breed that’s known for having a particularly soft mouth, their claim to fame is probably the opposite if anything (malinois) so it’s kind of impressive when I find an avocado or a martini glass somewhere unexpected without even the slightest bruise.

    We joke that they’re her “emotional support objects.”



  • What you’re most likely looking for is amateur (ham) radio. The exactly regulations will vary by country, usually there’s some sort of testing/licensing required (at least if you want to transmit, you can listen without a license)

    I didn’t look too far into it but it looks like the app you linked is basically a tool to let you use your phone as a controller for other radio equipment. You’d probably need to be licensed to actually use it, and there’s a good chance the equipment needed is pretty pricey. Ham equipment can kind of run the gambit from handhelds that run from about $20 up to thousands of dollars depending on what you want to do with it. You’re probably better off starting with some more standard equipment before you start trying to rig together other stuff controlled by an app.

    There’s a lot of info out there for free on the internet and plenty of books have been written about how radio, so there’s a lot of resources out there to learn from, or if there’s a radio club in your area (there usually is) you can show up to a meeting and ask some questions.

    Assuming you’re in the US (different countries again have different laws) there’s a few other radio options if all you want is to talk to people who are local to you. You can get a CB radio (think Smokey & the Bandit or truckers talking to each other) some places have more or less people actually using CB radio. The range and capabilities are more limited than a lot of ham options, but you can usually count on a few miles of range, and sometimes it’s nice to get a heads up from truckers about traffic issues and speed traps and such. I personally like to use them with friends in different cars when we’re on a road trip.

    There’s also FRS radios, you can pick them up pretty cheap at Wal Mart, pretty basic walkie talkies.

    Many of those FRS radios are also GMRS radios, there’s a GMRS license needed to use the GMRS capabilities, not test, just a licensing fee, so that’s something to be aware of.

    MURS radios also exist, I honestly don’t know too much about it, but it’s another free, no-license radio service you can use.

    Each of those have their own limitations and restrictions on what you can do with them, but in probably 99% of cases you’re probably not gonna run afoul of the law if you don’t try to modify the radio or do something obviously stupid and use it in a way that’s not interfering with other people’s uses.


  • If you have enough people, bulldozers, and money to throw at the problem, sure.

    Does Israel have that available? I can’t really say.

    Some of the things that would factor into how many people, bulldozers, and money you’d need to do so

    How big of a city?

    What kind of construction are we dealing with?

    How much are we willing to ignore worker safety and such?

    How much of that city has already been partially demolished by other means the time the bulldozers get there?

    How bulldozed does it need to be? There’s a spectrum here that goes from something “crashing a bulldozer into every building enough times to make it unlivable” to “everything completely leveled, and all the debris cleaned up, neatly pushed into piles, loaded into trucks, buried, etc.” Do we need to bulldoze the entire city? Or just most of it? Or maybe just enough that pretty much every block is looking pretty wrecked? Or maybe just all of the structures and we can leave parks, parking lots, streets, and other open spaces intact?

    Do we have to be picky about using specifically bulldozers? If the end result is essentially the same, you could also use excavators, guys with sledgehammers, cranes, wrecking balls, explosives, airstrikes, artillery fire, etc. there’s plenty of other options to work into the mix if we don’t limit ourselves to just bulldozers.


  • I’m a 911 dispatcher

    Was once at a party where a motorcycle crashed right outside.

    By the time I got outside, 911 had already been called, my friend was already performing CPR. I know he’s been trained, so I let him keep at it, made sure he was doing it right, counted with him to keep time, and basically repeated the same CPR script I’ve given over the phone countless times and stood by in case he got tired and needed me to take over.

    EMS shows up, as they’re running over with their equipment they tell my friend to get the guys shirt open, he starts undoing buttons, I tell him to just pop them, a couple lost buttons are the least of this guys problems, and every second counts.

    I’m 99% certain this guy was dead the moment he hit the ground, but regardless of what the outcome was (I’ll probably never know and am OK with that, I’m used to that from my job, after I hang up with my caller I often don’t get much if any follow-up on how a call turns out,) if you’re going to crash a motorcycle and go into cardiac arrest, short of doing it outside an ER, you can’t do much better than the house with a 911 dispatcher and counting myself and my friend who was doing CPR, no fewer than 4 eagle scouts.

    There were a handful of bystanders pulled over not doing much of anything but standing around. I got the impression that they were already there not being particularly helpful when my friend started doing CPR. Looked like the kinds of guys who fancy themselves to be real rugged tough guys, driving big trucks and whatnot. The bystander effect was on display there. I’m pretty sure one of them was the person who called 911, which means they didn’t really check on the guy, because if they had they would have been on the phone with one of my coworkers getting CPR instructions and doing it themselves. Remember that people don’t usually rise to the occasion, they fall to their level of training.


  • It seems like OP is probably pushing a bit of an agenda here (maybe a good one, maybe a bad one depending on where you land on the whole Israel situation, I’m not gonna go into that right now) but in case you’re just out of the loop

    There’s recently been some incidents in Lebanon where pagers and radios have been exploding. Not just defective Samsung Note battery bursting-into-flames exploding, but packed full of actual explosives, detonating, and killing people exploding

    Long story short, Israel intercepted a shipment of these devices going to Hezbollah, and planted remote triggered bombs in them.

    And some people are concerned about this, and probably rightly so, first of all these pagers have caused some collateral damages, killing and hurting bystanders. Secondly, we don’t exactly know how widespread this has been- are there other people out in Lebanon or other parts of the world walking around with literal bombs in their pocket? What if those devices get lost, stolen, sold/traded in? What if the target had been onboard a plane or something when the pager detonated? What if the bomb doesn’t go off as intended- is it gonna go off in a trash truck, recycling facility, or incinerator when they decide to get rid of it?


  • I consider myself to be a fairly tech literate person. Not a professional, but better than average. The guy my family comes to to troubleshoot computer problems, basic working understanding of programming and networking but not nearly enough to do it professionally.

    I think you’re shooting too high on some of these.

    Basic hardware is good, but don’t spend too much time on it or go into too much detail, just kind of basic overviews. Boot chain is probably pushing it, but basic overview of operating systems is good.

    I probably wouldn’t go so far as having them install their own Linux distro, that feels like you want to take a week of your class time to troubleshoot all the potential issues that come up, if you do it on school computers you’re probably looking at a nightmare getting that cleared by your IT department, and if it’s their personal devices you’re probably going to catch an earful from some parents for messing up their/their kids computer.

    I do think it’s a good idea to have some computers running Linux for them to use so they can see what it’s like, and probably some macs too, I’m not an apple guy but there’s a lot of them out there and people should be at least a little familiar with both.

    I don’t know what the current state of things in schools is, but you can certainly hand out some flash drives, but there’s a decent chance they already have some. I know over a decade ago when I was in high school pretty much all of us were already carrying around flash drives.

    Programming is good to introduce them to, python is a solid choice, but unless these are kids who are pretty sure they want to go into computer science I wouldn’t go too deep. It’s not a particularly useful language for actual usage but I think that BASIC still has a useful role as a way to teach the fundamentals of programming to people in an accessible way to see if they may want to pursue it further. I know programmers hate it, but visual basic is also kind of satisfying because it makes it pretty easy to crank out something that looks like an actual finished product.

    I’d keep networking pretty straightforward. Network stack and OSI are probably a little too high level to go into, but basics about WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. are good to know.

    Basic typing and general computer use are probably something a lot of kids could use some work on. A lot of kids these days have a lot less experience with keyboard and mouse computer use thanks to smartphones and tablets. Don’t shun the touchscreen devices though, they’re more powerful than a lot of people give them credit for, and since that’s the way technology is trending figure out how to push the borders on what you can do with them.



  • I once drove through Ohio, don’t remember my exact route, but came up north from Kentucky to Cincinnati, then east into Pennsylvania

    There may be more boring drives out there, but I haven’t made them.

    Cincinnati seemed like a nice enough city though. Can’t think of any particular reason I’d ever want to go back, but I didn’t hate it, so that was pretty much the high point of my time in Ohio


  • My mental health is pretty solid, but it’s in spite of capitalism. I do pretty well at managing stress, I don’t have any real mental health concerns or other issues. I’m physically pretty healthy, have a decent head on my shoulders, and am lucky enough to work a job thats very secure and for me is pretty enjoyable and pays well enough that I’m not struggling in any significant way.

    But damn-near every ounce of stress or anxiety I ever experience has to do with money. What if I lose my job, what if I have a health problem, what if I need a new car, what if my house burns down, etc.

    Big one-time infusion of cash or a decent enough raise would eliminate just about every source of stress I have.


  • Poland and Hungary have historically been very close allies since the middle ages, lots of shared culture, history, they’ve faced similar struggles over the years, and generally they’ve always held each other in pretty high regard. They each even have a little poem about how much they like each other

    Them polish version translates to something like

    Pole and Hungarian brothers be,
    good for fight and good for party.
    Both are valiant, both are lively,
    Upon them may God’s blessings be.

    The Hungarian Version

    Pole and Hungarian — two good friends,
    fighting, and drinking at the end.

    Unfortunately there’s been a lot of tension between them in recent years over the war in Ukraine, and their relationship has been deteriorating.


  • I don’t know, I’ve met a decent amount of Canadians over the years, never got any bad vibes from us. I think the problem is America has more than our fair share of assholes, so they approach us a little skeptically, but if you show you’re not an asshole, I think they like us just fine.

    Of course, my biases should be disclosed. Most of the Canadians I’ve met have been from roughly the Toronto area, plus a good handful of French Canadians.

    Couple of the officers at the border when I went to Montreal were kind of dicks, but I think that’s more of a universal feature of border crossing and customs officials around the world. Once I was there though no one gave me any shit.


  • An independent artist probably isn’t going to have an employer-sponsored retirement account like a 401k or a pension, etc. like many of us with “normal” jobs have, and are counting on to help our spouses, children, or other dependants should we die before them. Allowing them to retain the rights to an artists work for after death seems to me like it would help fill that same kind of role and also provides them a little protection, since not all artists are wildly successful and may not have been able to save much or anything for retirement/funeral expenses, etc. on their own. I don’t think it needs to last their whole life, their kid could potentially live 100 years which seems excessive and against the spirit of allowing things to go into the public domain, but I think seeing them into adulthood is fair.

    Edit: I’m personally contributing to a pension at my job, my wife has never worked there but she still gets to collect that pension after I die, that’s a big part of our collective retirement plans. If we had kids, I’d want to make sure those kids are being provided for out of that pension at least until they’re old enough to live on their own. I think artists would also like to have that kind of safety net for their loved ones after they die.


  • I feel like there needs to be at least 2 separate sets of rules for copyright.

    For independent artists, I think it’s pretty reasonable that copyright should last for their lifetime and maybe a little longer to make sure that their spouse, children, or other dependants can be cared for before the work goes public domain. We can quibble over exactly how long after death that should be, but that seems pretty fair to me (personally I’m tempted to say 18 years+9 months, so if hypothetically a male artist knocked up his wife immediately before kicking the bucket, that kid would still be able to receive something from their father’s works until they reached adulthood.) And if they don’t have any apparent next of kin, it just expires at death.

    But when it’s not an independent artist, and it’s something like Disney, where that legal entity that owns the property could very well be around forever, I think it’s more appropriate to put a hard limit on it, maybe 50 years as long as they’re actively using the property- marketing it, selling merchandise, licensing it out, making it available on streaming, etc. and maybe 15 years if they aren’t doing anything with it (Again, we can quibble over the exact length of time, I picked 50 it’s a nice round number, and 15 because that’s how long a design patent lasts and it felt appropriate)

    There’s of course going to be some interplay between those two categories, an independent artist who’s contracted to make something for Disney may retain some rights to that work, so what happens after 15 years? What if that artist is contracted to make something using IP that’s about to expire even sooner? What if an independent artist creates something insanely popular and builds a disney-like megacorporation around it with hundreds of other people all creating derivative works from that original thing, does the copyright stay with that original artist to expire when they die or does it become one of those corporate copyrights that expires in 50 years? And if the latter, does that happen automatically when the company hinsts a certain size or how would that happen?

    I definitely don’t have all the answers to all those questions, but as a general framework that feels fair to me.