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 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

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.

The only reason I keep Spotify anymore is that I’ve got a family plan with something like six accounts. I gave those to random acquaintances back in the Facebook days - people who are really into music.

If I cancel Spotify, there are five people out there who are suddenly and without warning going to find themselves without music.

I really don’t even remember who they are, but I feel like continuing the subscription is my community service

I enjoy how the party of law and order just wants to consistently ignore laws and order and demands immediate imprisonment of anybody who makes them look bad. It’s been going on for years, but its intensity since Cheeto diapers came around has increased exponentially.

I keep think that Trump’s the immediate threat but wait until some coagulated cum trickle like Stephen Miller is the candidate.

Cease and desist on what basis? Libel? Hey Donny boy, if it’s true, it’s fair game.

I still have no clue how instances work but whatever I’m doing has been working fine for nearly a year

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.

In my fifties and still have that dream, but it’s worse.

I went to boarding school, so my dreams involve fifty something year old me having to go back to live in the dorm with a bunch of kids.

So I was you. I wasn’t financially stable until well into my forties. I would say I wasn’t raised by anybody. Forget about no parental money. I had no parental guidance, and from that I made a TON of beyond stupid decisions.

Fast forward, and I finally got my shit together. I was able to get my daughter through college without debt and her mother sold her a car for a reasonable price.

So now she’s in her early twenties making more money than I do, and she’s always concerned with mismanaging it. But being who she is, she’s also constantly worried that she’s not doing enough good for others.

Her first house will be with her own money, but I was fortunate enough to help her get into that position.

Just on principle, I’m hell bent on leaving an estate to her even if she won’t need it. From there, I just hope it further supplies her with the tools to realize her ultimate altruistic ambitions.

This being Lemmy, I’m sure something about this is wrong or evil or selfish. I can’t accommodate every random Internet criticism, so I do the best I can.

As to the daughter, I’m just so proud of her. Aside from the line of work, she’s artistic and empathetic and caring. You know, an exponentially better person than I could ever hope to be.

I loved it back when the managers and partners imposed mandatory Saturdays.

So we’d slog in and find every one of their offices dark.

My visit to my daughter’s apartment did concern me in that I saw not one but two Scrabble sets on her shelf.

And she doesn’t have means to make coffee. That part will get immediately remedied.

But seriously, she and I are quite close. I was telling her that my biggest concern going forward is living alone and going full blown dementia as I failed in securing long term care.

I also told her to never, under any circumstances, sign anything remotely related to my healthcare because the fine print will make her assume financial responsibility. Fuck that. Dump my withering winkled ass in a storm drain before I let that happen.

I had a long talk with my daughter about this last week.

I bought a small 700 square foot house about a year and a half ago. I’ll have it completely paid off in ten years.

My daughter made all the right moves and is making more money in her early twenties than she knows what to do with.

So here’s the plan:

When my house is paid off, she’ll have a house of her own.

I’ll retire and go live with her.

Then we rent out my house, but not in the traditional way. We’re going to look for somebody who is genuinely looking but unable to buy. We’ll go in the rent to own model, so eventually the tenant owns my house and the daughter has cash from the proceeds to go buy another house and rent it to own.

I’m sure somebody on lemmy will find reason to punch holes in this plan and call us horrible capitalist pigs, but short of outright giving everything away, this was the best we could come up with to use family assets for the good of others without starving ourselves.