aramis87

My mom used to save gift cards and use them for “special things”, to get something she really wanted but was a splurge for her. When she died, she had probably like $800-900 in gift cards waiting to be spent, and they’d lost like a third of their value. They were part of my mom’s estate, so they went to my sister (the executrix). When my sister died, I found those exact same gift cards, still unspent, only this time they’d lost all their value. Plus she has a bunch of gift cards of her own that she’d been saving that had lost a bunch of value as well.

I know I’m fortunate that I don’t need to scrape money, and that not everyone can afford to do this. But after losing out on a bunch of money, this is what I do: when someone gives me a gift card, I spend it immediately and enthusiastically tell the giver what I got - or, in some cases, supposedly got: occasionally I’ll use the card to buy a gift for someone else, or I’ll just buy gas or groceries. But I use it on something I want or need, even if it’s just in the vaguest way. That avoids losing the value of the money, which I absolutely hate.

But I take the birthday or holiday or thank-you or thinking-of-you card that the gift card came in, and I’ll tuck in the same amount of cash as was on the gift card. I have a little stash of cards in my desk (and my heir knows to check those cards), all with some amount of money in them. And when I’m feeling down, or really need a treat, or just need to remember that I’m loved, I go pull out the cards and read through some of them. And if I’m still feeling bad, I may pull out some money from the card and go buy myself something - an ice cream or a nice dinner or a pair of socks - it doesn’t matter. To me, it’s that person giving me a giant hug on a day that I really need it, whether that person is even still around - to me, that’s an immensely valuable gift, and something that I always treasure.

Also, to keep each gift giving, I usually sneak back a couple weeks later and put the same amount of money back into the envelope: just because I spent that specific money doesn’t mean my mom or grandma loved me any less, and sometimes I need to be reminded of that.

Thank you - I appreciate it!

I am no help on this subject, but find it interesting. Are there any particular channels that you remember as especially ‘good’ that you could recommend?

What pisses me off about this is that, in conditions of low visibility, the pedestrian can’t even hear the damned thing coming.

“One of the biggest functions of blocking is giving women the ability to stop weird men from constantly making them uncomfortable and scared,” one user wrote. “So of course Elon had to change that.”

Given how he constantly tries to insert himself and his opinions into everything he sees, it’s clear he has no idea about how consent works, nor why people don’t want him in their lives.

That person who was in a car that ended up crossing three lanes, hitting a pole and then hitting a tree. They declined an ambulance because they were scared of the ambulance bill - then got a bill for $150 for refusing the ambulance. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Blue. Didn’t really envision a person, just the hand, didn’t notice the potential sex. It was a billiard ball on a pool table. The ball kinda rolled gently across the table at an angle, hit the side, and slowly rolled back before stopping.

Good.

Darrow’s Barn. Seriously, if you’ve never heard it, click the link, close your eyes, and just listen.

Passes to local museums, gardens, and attractions.

And the droplets can still be infectious after they fall, so wash your hands after touching anything as well.

And wash your hands after leaving the area as well, because some of those droplets will have landed on your hands.

If you use a public bathroom to wash your hands, assume the sick person was in there earlier and touched the faucets, soap dispenser, towel dispenser, and door handle: get towels first (plus one extra), get the soap on one hand, then turn on the water and wash your hands. Dry your hands and turn the water off with the paper towel, then use the spare paper towel to open the door.

“Illicitly obtained” is a weird way to spell “Musk gave them the damned things”.

Google free paper shredding and recycling events in your area?

I subbed to SuperbOwl as soon as it got posted in the new communities community :)

I’m always on All (my subscribed communities show up here as well), but I block any community I have absolutely no interest in, which alters the experience a bit.

We’re currently at solar maximum, which means we’ll be getting the most solar storms for the next few months, then they’ll start tapering off before the next solar maximum around 2035 (it’s roughly an 11 year cycle; they’re not entirely sure why, but this one is a few months early). FWIW, here are my aurora links:

Dark Site Finder: shows you where there’s historically more or less light pollution, so you can try to find a better viewing area. https://darksitefinder.com/map

NASA’s Space Weather Center: this is the link to their aurora dashboard page; you can also open up their animated prediction map, to help you figure out if you’re likely to be able to see it in your area. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental

Space Weather Live: a site with more data, useful if you know a little about what you’re looking for. It includes a helpful moon-phase indicator, because I always forget that’s something you may need to account for, depending on where you live. https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity/.html

National Weather Service: enter the place you’re thinking of viewing from then, on the results page, click on “hourly forecast” to see how likely it’ll be to have cloud cover, rain, what temperature it’ll be, etc. https://www.weather.gov/

Aurora Borealis Forecast: has a nice predictor saying things like

in 1 minutes, the Geomagnetic Activity level (Kp number) will be 8 – at STORM LEVEL! in 9 minutes, the Geomagnetic Activity level (Kp number) will be 3 – Active.

Those are the actual current numbers. If it’s cold where you are, you don’t necessarily want to be outside all the time (though if you’re in a marginal area, staying outside will help your eyes adjust and you’ll see better). I’m around Kp-7, so I can hang around outside for a few minutes, and when it fades, I can go inside for warmth or at least stop staring at the sky for a bit, then pay attention when it perks back up. They also have a 3-day predictor (less accurate the further out it is). You can also pay for their aurora alert service, if that’s of interest. https://cdn.softservenews.com/

Google News Alerts: Or you can sign up for a Google News alert for things like “solar storm”, “Corona mass emission”, CME etc - those are the things that create the aurora on earth 24 to 48 hours later. (You can set the frequency of the alerts; I’d suggest once-per-day.) That’ll give you enough time to figure out if the weather and moon are likely to cooperate. As it gets closer, you can check NOAA and SoftServeNews to see if it’ll be viewable in your area, and Dark Site Finder to find the best area to view from (I have different areas, depending on how strong the storm is vs how much time I can afford to be away from home). https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en

Happy aurora hunting!

I’m on fedia.io, but I still miss kbin.social. :/

Do you have a microwave? I put lightlife’s in my microwave for 90 seconds on rotate and they come out okay. Or you can boil and then pan-fry to make the skin crispier, or you could just pan-fry.

Do you have chopsticks, or can you grab some? Chopsticks would be better for a toaster.

When the air turned orange from the Canadian wildfires last year, I had massive, massive headaches from the smoke. On the recommendation of Wirecutter, I bought a Coway, and my headaches cleared up.

I’ve been very happy with it. The low and medium settings are quiet, while the high setting is a bit noisy for me. When the wildfires were running, I had it on low or medium all the time and it was fine. Since then, I mostly have it on Eco mode, where it samples the air periodically and kicks on at whatever speed it thinks is necessary. Mostly it just quietly pops on at low speed for dust or pollen or whatever, and I rarely notice that it’s done so. It always kicks in at high speed for a few minutes after I’ve changed the cat’s litter, and once it noticed that the bread was starting to burn in the oven before we did, lol.

Anyway, I got a Coway based on Wirecutter’s recommendation, and I’ve been very happy with it.

Edit: I got the 200m, which covers like 1700 square feet.