Since you asked, the tax write off stuff is basically a myth. If you donate, let’s say $20, then they have to mark down $20 of additional income, raising their tax burden by $20 x 21% (federal, plus whatever state tax there is). Then, when they hand over the money to the charity, they get to take a $20 deduction (not a credit) which means their tax burden is lowered by $20 x 21% (again plus any state tax). So comes out even in the end. The deduction basically says, hey, remember the $20 I put down as income? Don’t tax me on that because I used it for a tax-exempt purpose. They report it as income, then report the donation. Nothing fishy there.

However, depending on how long they hold onto that money, it’s possible to use the money to make other money, like investing it or even just sticking it in a savings account where it would get a little interest. And with enough donations, that might add up.

That’s actually been found to be not true with advancements in how we detect bacteria and viruses. https://youtu.be/OTIYcemQ_OQ

Well, he did The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as most of Tim Burton’s other films. Along with tons of other things.

I’ve ordered the ring because I have the watch, but I don’t like wearing the watch at home. Sometimes I put it on at home, but instinctively I find myself taking it off within a few hours. I especially don’t like wearing the watch while I sleep. However I have no problem wearing a ring all day. The form factor itself is more advantageous for me, because it’s the difference between wearing it or not. When I leave the house, I have no problem putting my watch on and keeping it on. Same way I don’t have a problem putting on shoes and keeping them on. But like the watch, I don’t like wearing shoes at home.

Mostly just freeways. I don’t think it’s heavily enforced. The idea is that cars traveling at drastically different speeds on the same road are more likely to cause an accident. It’s best to drive “the speed of traffic” because that’s what is predictable. Roads should be designed in such a way to make the target speed limit the fastest speed at which most people feel comfortable anyways, rather than just obeying a sign. So a 20mph road should be skinny and not straight. A 70mph highway should be wide and straight. Back to the point, though, in a traffic jam, all the cars are slow and therefore the speed differential is small already and therefore no reason to ticket anyone.

When Meta bought Oculus, I boxed up my OG Quest and threw it in the basement,

Meta (at the time it was still just named Facebook) bought Oculus before they ever released a retail product. Facebook bought them between the release of the original dev kit on Kickstarter and the dk2 in 2014. They had already been owned by Facebook for 2 years when the first Retail Rift came out in 2016. The first Quest didn’t come out until 2019, 5 years after Facebook/Meta bought Oculus.

It basically means trend. It’s sorta evolved from the concept of “metagaming” where you’re not just playing the game, you’re gaming the game. People now use “the meta” to refer to the collection of viable strategies for a game, and “the current meta” to refer to what is popular at this moment. This could be types of decks in a card game, character builds in an MMO or a MOBA, or other things like that. Presumably, for twitch, “the meta” is referring to not strategies of playing games, but strategies of gaming twitch. In other words, strategies to maximize viewership and income, and specifically, what is working at any given time.

Someone (possibly recently?) figured out the protocol and how to register a phone number without needing an apple device. Older versions of stuff like this required having a Mac virtual machine and routing messages through it using a user’s AppleID, so this was much easier. I saw a video that was bragging about how this new method would be very difficult to block because doing so could affect regular users, and I just kinda laughed at the naivety.

For most people it will be things like tax documents, medical receipts (assuming you are in a country where that’s important), photos of kids’ life milestones, photos of family members who have passed away, copies of leases, receipts for large purchases for insurance purposes if your house burns down. Things like that. Also, if you do freelance work like web design, photography, video editing, writing, music production, game design, research, etc, you want to make sure that stuff is backed up.

For any really important data, you should always have at least 3 copies. 1) Your working copy on your computer. 2) A local backup which could be an external hard drive, a NAS, another computer, or whatever. 3) An off-site backup. That could be a cloud service, a computer at a friend’s or family member’s house, an external hard drive in a safety deposit box, etc. The off-site backup is in case your house burns down or is robbed.

If it’s REALLY important, you may have even more than that. There’s also the issue of how often do you update the backups. A hard drive in a safety deposit box is hard to update compared to uploading to Google Drive which can be automatic, but the hard drive in the safety deposit box is more secure. So you have to weigh your pros and cons.