I remember getting my Texas instruments financial calculator circa 2009 for probably fifty dollars or so.
The professor told us that at the time, production costs for my fifty dollar calculator were roughly a dollar.
On the bright side, I’ll bring that thing in whenever I buy a car and it truly fucks with the whole “what kind of payment are you looking for” routine they do. (Though these days, I’m more likely to bring a laptop with Excel. Same idea, but faster and better visuals)
Usury was indeed the term that immediately came to mind.
I would agree, but it’s not my life, not my money. You can’t really go around telling people they fucked up every time you see it.
Most of the math I do at work is related to compound interest. Of all the math I believe the general public should understand, the concept of how paying interest to others is a total screw would get my top vote.
I have a co-worker who took out a car loan last week at, wait for it, FIFTY THREE PERCENT INTEREST! No concept of what that was costing her. She could only see, “I can afford the monthly payment.”
(1 + r)^n and its friend 1/(1 + r)^n have been the two most important concepts in work and personal life that I’ve ever learned and applied.
I know several of those. One I don’t see listed is stuff made here. If you’re a fan of backyard scientist, you’re gonna love stuff made here.
Smarter everyday is really a special one. The way that guy involves his kids and his own boyish excitement when he finally gets an experiment right is downright heartwarming. Then there was the whole episode checking in on physics girl. He had no particular incentive to do that. He just really seems to care.
I didn’t believe this was real. Looked it up. Here’s a cool video. Don’t worry, the chevrotain wins this one.
I know it’s wrong and that I’m going to Internet hell for admitting to it, but there’s a smell when Grandma would light her cigarette in the hot box car with the windows up that I find nostalgic to this day even though I find the concept of smoking in a car repugnant
The crazy thing is that it was so prevalent, I don’t really remember the world smelling smoky unless I went into a small room like my grandparents living room.
I didn’t notice it in places like restaurants and bars until after the bans came.
I would guess that my generation has a diminished sense of smell because of it.
It’s not me and I have an office. It doesn’t get to me.
But I can definitely see that it would bother a whole lot of people.
On that, I’m old enough to have begun my working life when people smoked cigarettes at their desks. This is a much, much better alternative.
People bring their dogs to work all the time in my office. Fortunately, all of us are dog lovers, so we all enjoy it.
The other trend that doesn’t bother me, but surprises me is that I’d estimate about two thirds of the people in my office vape at their desks.
We also have bean to cup espresso, which is nice. People will go find high end beans and contribute them. It works out nicely.
We’re highly educated professionals, damnit!
I just took a charter flight that didn’t involve going through TSA or the airport terminal.
Whatever happened on the flight itself was irrelevant as the sheer pleasure of getting on a plane without the standard anal probe far outweighed all other aspects of the journey.
I personally pronounce it fahrenheit
We’re headed for global serfdom, aren’t we?
It’s Texas. They’re terrified of the demon birth control.
Should I let it sink in just like the sea lions do with their nipples?
Also, the platypus doesn’t have nipples. It sweats milk.
You’ve definitely got no shortage of choices out there.
I was up in the other Portland last week (Maine) and they’ve also got a ton of good options.
That city name must inspire people or something.
When I used to teach European students, they would invariably go out and buy the cheapest crap they could find like cases of pabst genuine draft and then complain how bad the American beer is.
I think the British equivalent would be if I bought a bottle of frosty jack and used it to declare all British cider to be shitty.
You gotta spend some money to get good American beer. Pretty much all the nationally brewed stuff is shit. There’s a lot of local stuff that’s actually good.
I’m not sure how European beer culture works, but one of the reasons to drink shitty American beer water is that you can drink it all day without dying.
One more useless fact: I long thought that adjuncts in shitty American beer like corn and rice were strictly cost cutting measures. There’s definitely some truth to that. But the origins apparently go back to nineteenth century brewers being unable to achieve a clear lager with the barley that was available in America. When they used the barley exclusively, they kept getting a cloudy product.
I was thinking of this video as soon as I saw the post. She’s really an interesting person.
There’s a reggae album out of Jamaica by Romain Virgo with a song called “I’m doin good”
In that song is the line, “may not be able to buy what vegetarians cook but I’m doin good”
The album is from 2010. The first time I heard that song was my first realization that vegetarianism can be difficult as I’d recently been to Jamaica, and they do love them some vegetarianism. It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe some of them wanted to be vegetarian but weren’t able.