@Doladin, I am with you, and I keep asking myself HOW do those that peaked some time back get by? There is a limit to what we can reduce or cut out when fuel and necessities are roaring thru the paycheck. Obviously things need to contract. Like in the 80's businesses were closed on Sunday or after 7 PM weekdays. Plan ahead and share rides, reduce trips etc. We are just getting started. I expect even the on paper wealthy are gonna yearn for the plenty of the 90's.

Insurance has been a yuge topic at work the last couple of months. The premium increases are insane for those without any claims. Have a claim? You are dropped.

Health Insurance - my employer offers high-deductable plans with a tax-free, interest-bearing Health Savings Account. Insurance doesn't kick in until $10,000 deductable is met, which is easy if one is diligent in saving and one is not a hypochondriac nor land-whale. This probably as close to catostrophic insurance that one can get nowadays.

They're struggling a bit, aren't they.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5QwKEwo....

Care & Dawe

@Ckaminski, the local Longhorns around here aren't open for lunch anymore. One opens at 3PM, another one doesn't open until 5.

My SIL and I went out to eat a couple nights ago, up in our shithole little southwestern, meth infested hometown. There used to be a bar/restaurant I used to go to way back in the day that closed down pre-covid. New owners bought the place and threw some fresh paint on the wall and reopened it about a month ago. She suggested we try it and I agreed....I have a soft spot for local businesses over chain/franchise and don't mind throwing them some cash if I have the choice to.

Yeah...no. I found the new owner working there, tried to make small talk to him for a minute and wish him well on his new business venture, he was a total asshole. He was more interested in the meatball he was walking around with on the end of a fork, eating it. Strike 1. Place was not busy at all, we sat at the the table for a good five minutes before anyone even acknowledged our presence. Strike 2. She got a fucking club sandwich with French fries and one bottle of beer. I got a grilled chicken salad and one beer. Strike 3, you're out and so were we....$53. Good luck with all that.

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Si Vis Pacem, para Bellum

You'll get less than you desire, but more than you deserve

I will say this - we built Outback Steakhouses and Carrabbas back in the day. At the time neither served prior to 4PM. The kitchen staff was there in the AM, but doors were closed. I was surprised most places didn't use that model, to be honest.

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Molon Labe
Where is Henry Bowman when you need him?
How many are willing to pledge this? We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor

Just got the email from internet provider in the mountains - where there are extremely limited options. My service is point to point using microwaves.
Prior plan was 39 basic up to 79 premium a month. New plan - basic starts at 79 and premium up to 149!!
They called it a modest price increase.
🤣
Im dropping service entirely effective Monday , tethering for basic services to my phone plan (40/mo) and doing any heavy lifting at work with regards to online work. Ill be reading and focusing on non tech activities a lot more for 500 a year savings!

Starlink will kill them.

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Yep! They were reasonable and local so I liked supporting but not paying that per month !

On T-Mobile you can get to 40Gb tethering for an extra $15/mo before you are throttled and if you use casting so your video consumption doesn't go over the tether that works quite well.

The only problem is the Sprint merger broke IpSec VPNs for tethered devices and they refuse to even talk to customers about it being broken. I can get around that as I have a SSTP server here that Windows machinea can talk to but it pisses me off as IPsec is faster and there is no technical reason for them to fuxk with it.

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Yeah Im on mint mobile - pretty much same price point - 40gb
Im not a heavy bandwidth user at home do anything more than 30-40 a month doesnt make sense (Im also rarely at home)!

From Appropriations Watch FY 2024

Updated 9/14/2023:

With the enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), appropriations bills will soon be marked up in the House and Senate. The FRA caps total base discretionary spending at $1.590 trillion for FY 2024, with base defense spending capped at $886 billion (a 3 percent increase from FY 2023) and base nondefense spending capped at $704 billion (up to a 9 percent decrease from FY 2023, depending on how it is measured).

====

So ...

Defense spending is higher than nondefense spending?

Americans are getting screwed on bandwidth - when I was in Italy, they were in a race to the bottom. First cell service advertisement was 150gb for 9.95, then they bumped that up to 180gb for the same price. I think I saw another provider doing over 100gb for 7.95

Here in Albania, it's a little bit worse but still better than the states - I paid 2000lek (20) for a month of service, including 100gb, and a sim card.

I can't wait for Elon to open up Starlink to everyone and crush the internet companies. If I were C-level for any of them, I'd be shitting bricks.

At Starlink's prices the Internet companies will be not ruined. And at Starlink's costs he can't drop the prices to where they would be.

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Quote:

Defense spending is higher than nondefense spending?

That's discretionary spending, which is the pimple on the elephant's behind. The elephant is nondiscretionary spending.

Quote:

On T-Mobile you can get to 40Gb tethering for an extra $15/mo before you are throttled and if you use casting so your video consumption doesn't go over the tether that works quite well.

The only problem is the Sprint merger broke IpSec VPNs for tethered devices and they refuse to even talk to customers about it being broken. I can get around that as I have a SSTP server here that Windows machinea can talk to but it pisses me off as IPsec is faster and there is no technical reason for them to fuxk with it.

Karl, IPSec is great, idealistic, and low overhead, but wireguard is where it's at now. It was always made with being a linux kernel module in mind (it's rolled into mainline for a couple years now), but I'm fairly confident that there's a windows client for it.
It is as simple as asymmetric key sharing