home of the brave

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tanadrin:

The US constitution as a Nomic

gonna start a party whose entire raison d’etre is recreating the holy roman empire without amending the US constitution in any way

then we’re gonna make it Turing-complete

#at least until that fateful day when the Supreme Court has to rule on the halting problem #OVERTURN TURING V THE UNITED STATES the radicals cry #it’s adam and eve not church and goedel! #meanwhile someone has already installed Doom on the state of california 

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(I don’t understand most of this but I laughed at the last tag anyway) #home of the brave #politics cw?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

this egg fucking froze because our fridge is too cold

 

o-bellaciao:

Why would you keep the eggs on the fridge?

 

alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

we keep our eggs in the fridge…so they don’t denature? do you not refrigerate your eggs?

 

nanner:

Because of the way our eggs are processed and the prevalence of salmonella in american chickens, americans have to fridge their eggs.

http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-your-eggs-1465309529

 

colorschanging:

Wait, they don’t refrigerate eggs in other countries?

 

ladyoflate:

wait what people in other countries dont refrigerate eggs???

 

wewishyouamurphychristmas:

wait a second eggs in other countries aren’t refrigerated?????????

 

agathaheterodyne:

Waht.

 

slepaulica:

yeah, we don’t refrigerate them here. they keep like a month or two, even in summer, just crack it into a cup in case it’s accidentally taken you too long to use those eggs, give it a whiff, if it smells okay you’re good to go even if it’s really old.  don’t use the float test — that turns up a lot of false positives and sometimes you end up throwing away perfectly good eggs, which is not cheap. just turn your eggs upside down every now and then to help keep them fresh and yeah.

also chicken eggs do not look anything like those things you see on american tv shows. they have brown shells and the yolks are orange.

 

triplash:

Americans refrigerate their eggs.. 

America..

 

slepaulica:

if you read the link though, there’s actually a reason for why they have to do it, a reason that doesn’t apply anywhere else in the world.

 

slepaulica:

we should organise a charity drive to mail european eggs to americans. we can send them uht milk too, i read on the internet that they only have the kind of milk that has to be refrigerated

 

brin-bellway:

Canadians refrigerate eggs too. And re: colour, every Canadian grocery store I have ever been in carried multiple brands of eggs, some of which were white and some which were brown. (We usually buy the brown: the last time I bought white it was because we realised at the last moment we were out of eggs and Mom sent me to the white-egg-only convenience store to get a dozen to tide us over.)

Who told you Americans don’t have UHT milk? I don’t know about big ones, but there are definitely single-serving ones that I think are intended for kids’ lunches. I used to go through multiple single-serving boxes* of Parmelat chocolate milk a day when I was a kid.

(Come to think of it, did they say “no room-temperature milk” or “no UHT milk”? Because while I’ve drunk well over a thousand cartons* of milk (all bought in America) that appear to fit with the definition of “UHT milk” I just looked up, I had never heard the term before.)

*The Canadian term for this is the genericised trademark “tetra pak”, but since I’m talking about my experiences as an American in America I figured I ought to use the terminology I would’ve used at the time, despite its relative lack of precision.

P.S. Maybe I should look into the possibility of larger tetras of milk, considering I just had refrigerated milk go lumpy nine days before its sell-by date (beating the previous record of six days). Bagged milksounds like a neat idea, but it’s terrible for preservation, and the manufacturers won’t even admit it.

 

slepaulica:

i don’t remember where i saw it. but it was an article on the internet and someone was saying that for a limited time they had uht milk available in the cardboard box things but it didnt catch on with americans because it was too weird that it could be stored unrefrigerated or something and they didnt sell well so it was taken off the market and it was a shame because they were really useful for people like university students who didnt have a fridge.

actually, i remember reading that they do have uht milk in the us, but they don’t sell it in the cardboard boxes but they sell it in the transparent gallon containers, and part of what gives the milk the shelf life of like a year and the need to not be refrigerated is keeping it from exposure to light, and so even though the milk is treated with an ultra high temperature to pasteurise it, it doesn’t have the 9 months-1 year shelf life because of exposure to light, so they have to keep it refrigerated anyway.

it is possible that the author of the article lived in a specific region of the us and was overgeneralising to the availability in the rest of their country.

do any other americans want to weigh in? can you go to the supermarket and buy a cardboard box of milk that is not in the refrigerated section of the store and it does not need to be refrigerated until opened? maybe i am wrong?

 

winterwhitewitch:

No we cannot, at least not where I live. (near San Francisco, CA) I didn’t even know what uht milk was until I googled it. All the milk I have ever encountered needs to be refrigerated, and I am actually shocked this isn’t a rule. 
Our milk choices range from non fat, low fat, regular, half and half (ughhhh), and there’s the vegan milk stuff. My dad drinks almond milk, which is an abomination. 
And I thought bagged milk was weird…

 

slepaulica:

Thank you for weighing in! UHT milk doesn’t have any preservatives in it. The shelf life is due to the combination of: sterile packaging, opaque packaging, and the high temperature at which it is pasteurised. once you open your box of milk, you have to drink it within a few days, and it does have to be refrigerated once opened because the packaging is no longer sealed and germs can get in, but the packages are 1 litre or a half litre, which isn’t all that much milk, so even without refrigeration, you can plan around using the entire thing before it goes bad.

a friend of mine without refrigeration would just reboil it every time she wanted to drink some, but in the summer months i just try to use it all up as soon as i open it, and in winter months it’s easier because i can just leave it outside and use it slowly over the course of a few days.

but the advantages are: not needing to refrigerate the trucks it is shipped in, not needing to refrigerate it at the store, and you can use it as an emergency food. you can stock up on it effectively without worrying about it going bad (within reason, 6-9 month shelf life) because it only starts going bad once opened.

 

sophus-b:

No we cannot, at least not where I live. (near San Francisco, CA)

You can definitely get shelf-stable milk in the Bay Area! I looked it up, and it says there’s some in stock in stock for every Whole Foods I checked, and at least half of the Safeways and Walmarts, too. And Costco has store brand shelf-stable chocolate milk, at least.

They’ve probably just hidden it away on some obscure back shelf because it’s not a popular product.

Additionally, you can get shelf-stable cream at any Trader Joe’s! (Source: I have one on my shelf right now.)

Tags:

#long post #conversational aglets #food #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #the more you know

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

this egg fucking froze because our fridge is too cold

 

o-bellaciao:

Why would you keep the eggs on the fridge?

 

alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

we keep our eggs in the fridge…so they don’t denature? do you not refrigerate your eggs?

 

nanner:

Because of the way our eggs are processed and the prevalence of salmonella in american chickens, americans have to fridge their eggs.

http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-your-eggs-1465309529

 

colorschanging:

Wait, they don’t refrigerate eggs in other countries?

 

ladyoflate:

wait what people in other countries dont refrigerate eggs???

 

wewishyouamurphychristmas:

wait a second eggs in other countries aren’t refrigerated?????????

 

agathaheterodyne:

Waht.

 

slepaulica:

yeah, we don’t refrigerate them here. they keep like a month or two, even in summer, just crack it into a cup in case it’s accidentally taken you too long to use those eggs, give it a whiff, if it smells okay you’re good to go even if it’s really old.  don’t use the float test — that turns up a lot of false positives and sometimes you end up throwing away perfectly good eggs, which is not cheap. just turn your eggs upside down every now and then to help keep them fresh and yeah.

also chicken eggs do not look anything like those things you see on american tv shows. they have brown shells and the yolks are orange.

 

triplash:

Americans refrigerate their eggs.. 

America..

 

slepaulica:

if you read the link though, there’s actually a reason for why they have to do it, a reason that doesn’t apply anywhere else in the world.

 

slepaulica:

we should organise a charity drive to mail european eggs to americans. we can send them uht milk too, i read on the internet that they only have the kind of milk that has to be refrigerated

 

brin-bellway:

Canadians refrigerate eggs too. And re: colour, every Canadian grocery store I have ever been in carried multiple brands of eggs, some of which were white and some which were brown. (We usually buy the brown: the last time I bought white it was because we realised at the last moment we were out of eggs and Mom sent me to the white-egg-only convenience store to get a dozen to tide us over.)

Who told you Americans don’t have UHT milk? I don’t know about big ones, but there are definitely single-serving ones that I think are intended for kids’ lunches. I used to go through multiple single-serving boxes* of Parmelat chocolate milk a day when I was a kid.

(Come to think of it, did they say “no room-temperature milk” or “no UHT milk”? Because while I’ve drunk well over a thousand cartons* of milk (all bought in America) that appear to fit with the definition of “UHT milk” I just looked up, I had never heard the term before.)

*The Canadian term for this is the genericised trademark “tetra pak”, but since I’m talking about my experiences as an American in America I figured I ought to use the terminology I would’ve used at the time, despite its relative lack of precision.

P.S. Maybe I should look into the possibility of larger tetras of milk, considering I just had refrigerated milk go lumpy nine days before its sell-by date (beating the previous record of six days). Bagged milk sounds like a neat idea, but it’s terrible for preservation, and the manufacturers won’t even admit it.

 

slepaulica:

i don’t remember where i saw it. but it was an article on the internet and someone was saying that for a limited time they had uht milk available in the cardboard box things but it didnt catch on with americans because it was too weird that it could be stored unrefrigerated or something and they didnt sell well so it was taken off the market and it was a shame because they were really useful for people like university students who didnt have a fridge.

actually, i remember reading that they do have uht milk in the us, but they don’t sell it in the cardboard boxes but they sell it in the transparent gallon containers, and part of what gives the milk the shelf life of like a year and the need to not be refrigerated is keeping it from exposure to light, and so even though the milk is treated with an ultra high temperature to pasteurise it, it doesn’t have the 9 months-1 year shelf life because of exposure to light, so they have to keep it refrigerated anyway.

it is possible that the author of the article lived in a specific region of the us and was overgeneralising to the availability in the rest of their country.

do any other americans want to weigh in? can you go to the supermarket and buy a cardboard box of milk that is not in the refrigerated section of the store and it does not need to be refrigerated until opened? maybe i am wrong?

 

winterwhitewitch:

No we cannot, at least not where I live. (near San Francisco, CA) I didn’t even know what uht milk was until I googled it. All the milk I have ever encountered needs to be refrigerated, and I am actually shocked this isn’t a rule. 
Our milk choices range from non fat, low fat, regular, half and half (ughhhh), and there’s the vegan milk stuff. My dad drinks almond milk, which is an abomination. 
And I thought bagged milk was weird…

 

slepaulica:

Thank you for weighing in! UHT milk doesn’t have any preservatives in it. The shelf life is due to the combination of: sterile packaging, opaque packaging, and the high temperature at which it is pasteurised. once you open your box of milk, you have to drink it within a few days, and it does have to be refrigerated once opened because the packaging is no longer sealed and germs can get in, but the packages are 1 litre or a half litre, which isn’t all that much milk, so even without refrigeration, you can plan around using the entire thing before it goes bad.

a friend of mine without refrigeration would just reboil it every time she wanted to drink some, but in the summer months i just try to use it all up as soon as i open it, and in winter months it’s easier because i can just leave it outside and use it slowly over the course of a few days.

but the advantages are: not needing to refrigerate the trucks it is shipped in, not needing to refrigerate it at the store, and you can use it as an emergency food. you can stock up on it effectively without worrying about it going bad (within reason, 6-9 month shelf life) because it only starts going bad once opened.

Tags:

#(December 2013) #conversational aglets #food #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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ophiuchusdenied:

brin-bellway:

ophiuchusdenied:

oh, and you can get detention if you refuse to say the pledge at some schools.  or at least get scolded by your teacher, get your parents called, or be socially ostracised.  all because you refuse to swear fealty to a piece of fabric as a daily ritual.

How do they know if you refuse to say the pledge?

Being homeschooled, my first exposure to routine Pledging was when I tagged along at my little brother’s Cub Scout meetings. By which time I was nearly eleven, had read Guardians of Ga’Hoole, and therefore knew how to look like I was taking part in a group chant without actually doing so.

(Yes, that does mean not Taking a Stand, but I personally think one should not Take a Stand against brainwashing cults until after one has escaped them. And I was still slightly too young, by my parents’ standards, to stay home by myself on a regular basis. (Mom was helping out with them, so I couldn’t stay home with her.))

in smaller classrooms, it’s hard to get away with pretending, especially if you’re with a teacher who knows you/your voice or if you’re in the front row.  at assemblies, it’s obvs easier, but we had to say it in our first period class or homeroom (depending on grade), and being a C, alphabetically, and something of a teacher’s pet, i was usually on the first row anyway.  besides which, to me, standing up and mouthing along is basically the same thing as actually saying it–ymmv, of course, and if that’s not how you view it, that’s totally cool.

usually, though, in my schools at least, you get caught because you just plain don’t stand up.  it’s continue-reading-your-book-for-the-duration-of-announcements-time.  luckily, in high school, my first period class for all three years was choir, and i was not the only person who refused to say it, and our choir director was live-and-let-live enough that he wasn’t about to send a handful of his best students to detention over it.

(this thread was truncated; here is the first part)

Tags:

#(this is from later in October 2013) #conversational aglets #home of the brave #homeschool #cult cw

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

So much adulting today.

—

Got up a bit early for an appointment at the doctor’s office, because starting a few months ago most of my menstrual periods have been significantly worse than usual, and after the 2.5th bout of debilitating dizziness (the .5 was a time where it felt like it was *going* to happen but never quite got bad enough that I couldn’t stand up) I figured there was enough of a pattern developing here that I shouldn’t bet on it going away on its own.

The first-line treatment is daily iron supplements, plus two naproxen twice a day around the onset of menstruation (apparently, in addition to the painkilling effect, higher-dose naproxen can also make periods lighter). If the OTC stuff doesn’t cut it, the next step is to “”sample”“ some birth control pills. (She is one of those doctors who, when possible, keep their poorer patients supplied with enough ”“samples”“ of a medication that they never actually have to spend money on it.)

—

Then my brother and I went to the bank and signed up for index-fund RRSPs [link]. It’s not so much that I’m planning for retirement per se (though my brother might be thinking of it that way, I’m not sure), but after many hours of very stressful research regarding which forms of investment fall in the intersection of “non-awful returns”, “low fees”, and “won’t piss off the IRS [link]”, this is the only entry that I am sufficiently confident is on that list.

(I came scarily close to buying some non-RRSP index funds this autumn–even set up the account for it!–and only found out that doing so would incur the IRS’s wrath because my brother mentioned he was thinking of getting a TFSA, and this inspired me to read the Wikipedia article on them [link] (they are also terrible, for some of the same reasons). Thank you for telling me this extremely important information, Wikipedia, because nobody *else* fucking did!)

It looks like we are allowed to have *some* ETFs [link] under *some* circumstances, but I don’t have a clear sense of which ETFs/circumstances those are. Once we’ve reached a point in our lives where [18% of all the post-immigration income we’ve ever had] isn’t enough room to keep our savings in, we will have to find an appropriate specialist to consult about exactly how to tell when an ETF is permissible.

Tags:

#sometimes I wonder if I should go into U.S. tax preparation so maybe one day I can actually fucking understand what my own taxes are doing #but I think I’d rather do something more in the realm of bookkeeping or cost-benefit analysis #this stuff does not seem to *quite* be my style #but it’s even less everyone else’s style so I took the research upon myself #(at least I get to cost-benefit-analyse the various types of investment?) #adventures in human capitalism #oh look an original post #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #medical cw #menstruation #the more you know

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

im-a-tnuc:

I don’t know why, but I think some Americans don’t realise how big the UK is….

 

American Customer: you’re English right? Do you know the bookshop between Wales and Bristol that has lots of books in?

 

Me in my head: yeah mate, I know that one. Classic. Love to pop down there on a cheeky break between work. What a wanker…

 

lizq-vs-the-kitkatuprising:

the continuous 48 states are is almost 39x the size of the isle of great britan

that’s your answer

 

mymindsecho:

For reference:

tumblr_inline_p7vj1zqt2f1r8bo0o_500

That’s JUST Texas.

 

welcometothemusicandthemisery:

Fucking hell

 

ryuraven:

But how many bookstores do you know the location of in your state, just for reference? Because my guess is it’s still too big to know even a quarter of them, which I think op’s post was about.

 

elodieunderglass:

If the conversation happened at all, the poor possibly-fictional American was probably just trying to talk about Hay-on-Wye. Hay-on-Wye is the most famous book town in the world, with a prestigious literary festival and so many “shops with all the books in” that the streets are literally full of open-air bookshelves. It’s like Pinterest and Diagon Alley and Waterstones all created some kind of massive hashtag-book-life village for the sole purpose of trying to attract Americans. It’s on the Wales/England border and a tourist would have approached it from Bristol.

This is hardly an unreasonable conversation starter, not like how British people are always demanding to know where I’m from, and then, when I release the information, say chirpily “I have a brother in San Diego!” as if that isn’t on the other side of a continent. And then! ! the only thing for it! is to say “Oh, I don’t believe in San Diego”! and turn away!

In general, the premise of the OP surprises me a bit, because I bet that I could put a photo of a single tree from somewhere in the UK on my Tumblr with a slightly incorrect caption, and three people would immediately correct me, because they would know that specific tree with an uncomfortable intimacy. I know because you have done this to me. It’s like a national pastime for you all. I’m shaken by OP, I am shaken to my fucking core and I respect them so much for having this terrifyingly novel attitude. I bet they’d look me dead in the eyes and tell me they had never heard of London. This is some kind of Gen Z shit that I’m not prepared for.

Because I know, I KNOW that I could spout a bunch of gibberish CAPTCHA word salads that are much more obscure directions than this, and y’all will IMMEDIATELy know exactly where in the British Isles I was talking about to a fuckin’ five foot radius, like some kind of wild scavenger hunt, you’ll all be like “oh did you enjoy it Elodie? did you go to the tea shop”

I swear to God I’ll do it. how do we place bets. how does that work exactly, does anyone know

Tags:

#UK #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #home of the brave #geography #discourse cw? #embarrassment squick? #(I actually kind of find it weirdly gratifying when people ask me questions about where I’m from with bad geographical assumptions encoded) #(I know that sounds unlike me but) #(I tend to suck at foreign geography and I find it reassuring that foreigners also suck at my geography) #(like it’s fair you know? it’s not just me‚ means I don’t feel as guilty about Shouldn’t I Know This) #((I’ve had multiple people at work express concern about my relatives dealing with hurricanes)) #((and I’ve had to explain that we’re from the *north*east and hurricanes are just big thunderstorms by the time they reach us)) #(((unless they’re named Sandy))) #(((but Sandy was a pain in Ontario too))) #((one time I told a Brit I was travelling to Massachusetts and he wished me luck with the jet lag)) #(((it’s in the same time zone))) #tag rambles

What I’m getting from this is everyone who lives even remotely close to the northern boarder desperately wants to be Canadian.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

outofcontextdnd:

If you can’t buy bagged milk in your state don’t even come into my ask box

Tags:

#come to the Canadian side we have square store-brand Thin Mints #(fuck bagged milk though tbh) #((it rots *much* faster)) #our home and cherished land #home of the brave #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #food

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

Home!

*flop*

hooooome

The post here about unsecured borders of the world (which is to say, unsecured borders of the European Union) is going around again.

The last time I saw this post going around, there were a whole bunch of comments expressing shock that not all borders are heavily restricted. And while it did sadden me to see so many people unaware that not all borders are like…whichever borders it was they were thinking of†, it also saddened me to see them walking away with the idea that the intra-EU method is necessarily what it means to have a non-heavily-restricted border.

So, I’m repurposing this post I made in 2015.

—

Shown above is the border between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario. (Note that my description of what border crossings are *typically* like will be describing Niagara Falls, but Sarnia is the picture I had lying around, and the one time I went through Sarnia the experience was about the same.)

The border crossing itself took maybe two minutes, and mostly because the border guard chatted about the good things he’s heard about our town. One minute for the crossing itself is more typical, plus another minute for each car ahead of you in line (but we usually cross on weekday afternoons, when the lines tend to be short).

Usually they’ll ask you where you’re going (or where you went), why, and for how long. (*Occasionally* they won’t even do that, if you show the passport of the country you’re entering, but for the most part they still do it if you’re a citizen.) Most answers I have had cause to give (“shopping for a few hours”, “visiting relatives for a week”, “Disney World!”), they just nod and wave you through, and possibly make a note so they can check if you tell the same story on your way back. If you show a U.S. passport and tell them you’re going to Canada because you live there, they will sometimes ask why you moved, but they don’t press further if you just say you like it there.

While they reserve the right to search your stuff if you give inconsistent answers to their questions or have clearly-visible contraband or maybe show a passport from a country they’re on shaky terms with or something, they do not search you by default. If you went shopping, they ask you how much you bought (and sometimes to see your receipts as well), and if your answers indicate that you’re over the duty-free limit on anything they send you over to a nearby building to pay your import taxes, which takes a few extra minutes.

—

I just wanted people to know that border security isn’t binary, that there exist places where there *are* guards and you *do* have to show a passport but it’s *not* a big ordeal.

I don’t have any strong opinions about what borders should be like in general: I don’t feel that I’m well enough informed on that, and TBH I’m mostly just trying to survive right now and don’t really have the energy to get well informed. (though I’d certainly be annoyed if they started making it an ordeal to go grocery shopping in New York)

But if you’re looking to develop an opinion on border security, please remember that “more borders should be like US/Canada” is a possible stance. There’s more than one way to guard a border, and you can think some ways are going too far without wanting to go full EU (and conversely, you can want to not go full EU but still think some ways are going too far).

—

†If you’re someone who was shocked, let me know which borders you think of when thinking of country borders. I’m curious to see where exactly our experiences differ.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #(close enough) #our home and cherished land #home of the brave #the more you know

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

@sinesalvatorem, I was going to reblog your post [link], but I figure giving poverty advice in a reblog when the OP is about how one shouldn’t give poverty advice is asking for trouble (especially when OP has relatively few notes), so I’m pinging you on a fresh post instead.

—

>>On that note, if anyone who reads this has any life hacks wrt saving money or earning extra income, or knows online resources that have compiled a bunch of them, please tell me! I already know of quite a few, but I’m always looking for more.<<

Hey, look, a special interest!

(or, well, part special interest, part coping mechanism)

—

(Disclaimers: I acknowledge that for any or all of these things, you [may already do them]/[may not find them worthwhile]/[may not be able to do them at all]. If anything in the rest of this post sounds like I don’t, that’s just because it’s sometimes easier to get the words out that way.

A more specific version that I feel is particularly worth pointing out: while I have had plenty of financial difficulties and qualify as “poor” by many definitions, I have never (quite) been *broke*. Some of these tips will be stuff like “how to spend $800 in one day in order to avoid spending $1,400 over four months”, and if you never have $800 on hand at any given time feel free to ignore that (though maybe file them away for if/when you reach a point in your life where you can afford to tie up some money for a while in order to spend less in the long run).)

—

This has been kind of a recurring theme on my blog lately, but: housemates are so important. Finances are best played as a team sport: going it alone is sadly necessary in some situations, but it’s definitely Hard Mode, and being poor is hard enough as it is without adding more difficulty modifiers on top of it.

(It *is* painful to have to watch people you share finances with spend money in ways you don’t approve of, but–I remind myself at such times–it’s still completely worth it for all the bulk discounts and such you can get. (Although I’m sure there are *some* people out there somewhere who are careless enough with money that this would not be true, and obviously you don’t want to share finances with such people.))

—

People hate on Uber-type things a lot, but honestly, they really can be a lifesaver. Delivery gigs are what tipped us over into being in the black for March†. (Up ~CAD$230 over the course of that month! God, it’d been *so* long since our money had been on any kind of upward trend for any significant length of time.) Some companies in some places will also hire bicyclist or even pedestrian delivery freelancers.

—

People also hate on advice to avoid bank-related fees because sometimes when you’re poor they’re unavoidable, but it’s still worth checking that each fee really *is* unavoidable before resorting to it.

(You know why I switched from annual statements to quarterly? Because I found out while preparing the 2017 statement that my parents had gone below their minimum chequing-account balance (which incurs a CAD$11 fee for each month it happens) *eleven months* out of the year, and had been quietly shouldering it *even though the household as a whole had enough money to cover everyone’s minimum balances*: it was just disproportionately in the kids’ accounts because at the time only the kids were employed. I immediately insisted on providing my parents with an informal, indefinite loan to help them cover their balance††, and started doing more frequent statements so we can catch shit like that sooner.

(Apparently Dad was embarrassed and Mom didn’t want to ~burden~ her children when she was ~supposed~ to be providing for them. And I was like “You can use the money you’re saving in bank fees towards buying me food.”))

—

You make a remark about the restaurants in San Francisco being expensive, and of course in this part of Tumblr I hear plenty about how high the rents are. To what extent does the Bay have generally high prices across the board (or for groceries in particular: grocery prices are about to be important), and how far away do you have to get from the Bay for things to stop having that markup?

The New York trick (travel to an area with a lower cost of living, stock up on cheap groceries to bring back) is harder in a place with no nearby-ish country borders or similar clear markers of “you are now entering the Cheap Zone”, but it might still be doable there.

(I think the trick used by people who *live* in Cheap Zones is to use coupons *intended* for places with higher costs of living (with discounts sized accordingly), but which are technically valid there. Occasionally these can even be stacked: Mom almost always brings some coupons (from American websites) to New York.)

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Target does ad-matching: if you show them that another store’s flyer has a sale on a certain food, they will sell you that food at the other store’s sale price, letting you avoid the hassle and transportation costs of running all over town chasing deals. (note that Target does not match produce) The Flipp app [link] will give you the flyers for a (U.S. or Canada) postal code of your choice.

Walmart does not do ad-matching as such (in America; Canadian Walmarts still do it), but if you scan your Walmart receipt into their app, they will issue you an e-gift card for the amount you *would* have saved if they allowed it.

There might be other stores in your particular area that do matching, but these are the only ones I found when I was looking this up in an Arizonan context recently. It seems to be less common in America than it is in Canada.

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Running ad videos and occasionally doing other stuff through Swagbucks is a nice way to get a bit of supplemental income. I recently helped Mom write a guide to using it [link], so I will direct you there. (please use the referral links, I’d very much appreciate it)

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If you have anything that gives you a discount on Amazon purchases and/or generates income in the form of Amazon credit (like, say, Swagbucks), bear in mind that Amazon has an ever-expanding selection of other stores’ gift cards [link] (including, notably, Safeway [link]), almost all of which can be purchased using Amazon credit.

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There’s this one program of incentives to encourage lower electricity use during peak periods [link] that I keep getting ads for from advertisers who don’t realise I’m not Torontonian, which is only available in Toronto and parts of California (weird list, I know). Is that applicable to you, or likely to become so?

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I haven’t done any freelance audio transcription for Rev [link] in a while, but you might be better suited to it than I am. (Maybe your picking-out-what-people-are-saying-at-crowded-parties ability would help you here?)

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>>At one point, I even had a list of which staple items are cheaper at which stores, but homelessness means I keep moving too much for that to ever stay relevant.<<

Some grocery stores let you look up their prices online, making it easier to collect data for such lists and less painful (relatively) to keep making new ones for new places.

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I recently systematically went through the websites of every cell company available in this area and determined the single best phone plan for getting our house phone to do everything we currently need it to do while paying as little as possible, and I am very glad I did. If we hadn’t been careful, we could easily have ended up paying twice as much or more.

Unfortunately, there is essentially zero overlap between my available cell companies and yours, so I can’t just skip you to the end result of “Public Mobile is great; Freedom Mobile *might* be even better *if* you’re planning to only use your phone in cities”: you’d have to either do the comparisons yourself or find somebody more local who’s done it.

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Some restaurants and the occasional grocery store will give you free food on your birthday. The selection is heavily location-dependant; there are various websites listing the available things for a given place (example: https://www.favoritecandle.com/free-birthday-meals/San-Francisco/CA), though their information is often out of date and you’ll need to check with each restaurant’s own website. Most require newsletter signups (I have a dedicated email address specifically for newsletters from people who might give me free stuff); many require you to buy something else in order to receive the freebie with it, but there are a few that are outright free (except transportation costs, of course: plan your route carefully, and ideally have them be on the way to somewhere you were going anyway). Last year I got a muffin (Starbucks) and a large fruit slushie (Booster Juice): this year Starbucks has unfortunately stopped offering freebies unless you buy at least one thing from them per year (any time during the year, though, not specifically your birthday! still suitable for lots of people!), but I’ve found a couple more newsletters and am set up to get a bag of chocolate-covered almonds (Giant Tiger) and a hamburger (Harvey’s), plus another slushie. (And who knows, maybe I’ll end up at Starbucks at some point between now and November and regain muffin eligibility for this year.)

(maryellencarter, if you’re reading this, note that I’m planning to give you a pre-sifted list of these for your birthday: you don’t need to go figuring this out yourself. I’ll probably compile and send it in October sometime, so that there’ll be less time for circumstances to change while still leaving room for the restaurants to consider you to have been on their newsletter for a sufficient length of time beforehand.)

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My finances tag, “adventures in human capitalism”, might have some other stuff that I missed or covered in less detail here.

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†I don’t have a good picture of our finances after March yet: I’ve switched to preparing quarterly financial statements (formerly annual), but I haven’t finished collecting and processing the data from Q2, so right now it’s scattered around various bank accounts and credit-card records of four different people and I can’t see what it’s like overall.

††Honestly, I don’t really care whether they pay it back or not. Money used for things beneficial to me is mine for all practical purposes, and I’m not too concerned with whose bank account it happens to be in. (Mom expressed her gratitude at my “selflessness” recently, but I’m *really* not selfless: I’m just very aware that working together is in my own best interest. I don’t make anywhere near enough to survive alone: hell, often I can’t even contribute an equal share towards the group’s expenses, and have to find non-income ways to contribute like accounting and pest control. (I’ve gotten pretty good at killing houseflies. As long as they’re up against a window they’re easy.))

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#this post technically qualifies as: #oh look an original post #but is closer to the spirit of: #reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #long post #death mention #food #home of the brave #our home and cherished land

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