Retailer who offers one of those 0% financing schemes, here. TL;DR: It’s from processing fees paid by the retailer and punitive interest after the 0% promotional period lapses.

The lender makes money in two ways. One, a percentage fee is charged on the financed amount, but it’s not paid by the customer. It’s paid by the retailer. For us it is a little under 2%, similar to the fees most credit card processors charge. So as soon as you make your purchase, the bank instantly skims 1-point-whatever percent off the top. You don’t see this, though. It affects the retailer’s bottom line, not yours.

Two, the 0% interest rate is a promotion which provides specified limited time in which to pay off the balance. If you do not pay the outstanding balance in full by the end of the promotional term, the bank whacks you for a monstrous interest rate on the entire original transaction amount – not just the remaining outstanding balance. In our case this is damn near 30%. Look carefully at the promotional signage and literature. It will always say “0% INTEREST FINANCING!!! _{for 12 months.}” That 12 months is important. That’s the end of the promotional terms, after which you pay aforementioned buttload of interest.

And then, the minimum payments on the bills they send you are obviously deliberately structured to trick you into failing to pay the entirety of the balance by the deadline at the end of the promotional period.

If you’re talking 0% introductory rates for general purpose credit cards, the answer is right there in the name. Those are introductory rates designed to entice you into signing up and using the card, but they’re never permanent. Eventually that introductory rate will expire and you will be left with an interest bearing credit card. Possibly a lot of interest. Even if you pay your bill 100% on time every month without fail, the bank still makes money in percentages and processing fees taken on every transaction from every single retailer where you’ve swiped that card. The bank issuing the credit card can continue to comfortably make money even if no one pays any interest, ever.

Your yearly reminder that the original Paddington Bear stuffed toy was designed and made by Shirley Clarkson and given to her son: Jeremy Clarkson.

Yes, that Jeremy Clarkson. You know, the “Speed and Power!” guy.

(Although this was not the origin of the character himself. Michael Bond bought a generic toy bear from a toy shop and named it after nearby Paddington station. He wrote some stories using the bear as a character, and then they got published, and then he probably got very rich.)

Ah, I see. So it’s cool when we do it (fossil fuel and ag subsidies, the auto industry bailout in 2008, etc.) but not when they do it.

Got it.

undermining regional carmakers

I think the word they’re looking for is in fact “outcompeting.”

Yutaro-Katori-with-butterfly-meme: Is this capitalism?

That, and I think they trace a direct lineage back to the original Harvey Ross Ball smiley face, which was also yellow.

Me, I don’t particularly care about matching emoji skintones to myself. Rather, I’m much more annoyed that I can’t tune the 🏍️ emoji to match the color of my motorcycle. What a rip off.

I will see your Charlie The Unicorn and raise you…

This.

_{(Zeeky Boogy Doog)}

I have one of each…

Mostly the second point. I would wager from experience that the majority of small man-portable conveyances that wind up at the bottom of lakes and rivers are there because they were stolen and thrown there. Bikes, motorcycles, rental scooters, shopping carts, etc. The reason is hooliganism, and the contributing factors are alcohol and teenagerhood.

You already can:

https://www.amazon.com/Diamondback-Nozzles-Compatible-Polycrystalline-Extrusion/dp/B09X61NG5S

Fuck it, we’re going to six skins.

Released October 23, 1988… In Japan.

Us gaijin did not get it until 1990.

Notwithstanding the instant privacy nightmare this would create, essentially abolishing online anonymity overnight, this is kinda-sorta what MAC addresses are already. As to why MAC addresses can be spoofed so easily without any real impact on anything, refer to my first statement.

There absolutely were pocket TV’s. As a kid, even, I owned two of them. They are now of course functionally useless because they predate the switch to digital television by a significant margin. Both of mine were Realistic brand ones, which was an in store label for Radio Shack. Color LCD displays, telescoping antenna, and they ran off of 4 AA batteries. They were about the size of an OG Gameboy or a large Walkman.

I might even still have one in a box of tech junk somewhere. I believe the second one was a Realistic Pocketvision 27.

You can still buy a portable digital TV. These were always a bit of a stretch for a “pocket” television, more the size of a small tablet but thicker. But they totally did, and still do, exist.

There’s a reason they are called, internally in business parlance, “Loyalty Programs.”

The point is to get you to come back. Using the Kroger card at Kroger gets you discounts. Or rather, gets you their regular price; their non-card prices are artificially inflated in most cases. So consumers form the idea in their heads that those discounts have value and will return to that store to take advantage of them. This is played up by the retailer in their marketing, who will use terminology to try to make you feel special about the program. (As if it’s not offered to absolutely everyone who will listen, and also everyone who won’t.) Look for words and terms like “exclusive,” “VIP,” or “members only,” or “just for you.”

The buy-stuff-to-get-rewards schemes are the worst, because they prey on the inbuilt sunk cost fallacy neurons in people’s brains. You are statistically likely to buy and spend more if you think you’re going to get something back, or spend a little more than you otherwise would have to meet whatever threshold they set to get the next reward. Even if the reward you get back does not actually match in value to the extra amount(s) you spent. (Hint: It never does. The house always wins.)

Nowadays, of course, they also track and record your purchase history and sell it to whoever will pay. Possibly anonymized in some way, but probably not.

Correct answer. I just got an electric clipper and I mow the crop myself whenever it gets long enough to bother me. I don’t have to tip anyone, it only takes a few minutes, and I only have a few short years left where there’ll be anything growing up there anyway.

We should try nuking them.

I can already summon rain, so I’m set. And despite part of my job literally being a graphic designer, I kind of suck at art with traditional media. So I’ll take the art.

All I have to do to make rain is show up somewhere with camping equipment. I have about an 80% success rate, and as a consequence a very comprehensive clothing and equipment loadout for dealing with wet.

No joke, I once cured a drought in Wyoming back in, like, 2012. I rocked up with my homies in Dubois, WY outside of Shoshone and we stopped at a little diner there. The waitress was bellyaching about the dry spell they’d been having and we told her not to worry, we’d go up the mountain and pitch our tents and it’ll rain, guaranteed. She laughed. She didn’t believe us. So we did, and it immediately rained for 3 days solid. It started to tail off just as we were leaving.

We stopped by that diner again on our way out, and I stuck my head in the door just to say, “You’re welcome.”

Yeah, we have these shyster bastards where I live, too. The entire thing is a scam. Think about it: The power lines are owned by the utility company. The generation facilities (at least where I live) are also owned by the same utility company. All of them. There are no third party options, there are no power stations that are independent entities. How then, in any possible way, could any middleman somehow make it “cheaper” to buy power from the vendor you’re already buying it from and sell it back to you?

No points for guessing that they can’t. All these guys do is get billed on your behalf from your same old power company, then charge you their own added bullshit fees on top of that. They haven’t saved anyone in my region a single nickel, ever.

Now the tactic they use is admitting that you might pay slightly more, but they’ll switch you to “more green” energy sources to prey on people’s environmental sensitivity. Isn’t that worth paying a little more for? Too bad this claim is bullshit, too – There is a very low percentage of renewable energy generation in our region (which yes, is something that needs to change) but what little of it exists is already integrated into the regular power grid and is… you guessed it, owned and operated by the same utility company that already owns the lines and power plants!

No, it’s all good. Yours was the millionth time the question was asked, so instead of an answer you’ll get everyone jumping down you throat to “just do a search.”

Your search results will return the previous 999,999,999 times the question was asked, and also the same chorus of “just search,” but not the answer. And it’s no good just scrolling to the oldest result, because that time the question was not answered. You need to land somewhere near the hundredth repetition, which was the one where somebody answered the question, but after when nobody answered the question, and also before everyone got tired of the question.

“But we have THREADS in Discord now! It’s so much better! Especially because no one reads or posts to them!”

No, nor can we rule out that they’re not attempts at influence by external actors, either.

I think the best course of action is to just not touch the fucking thing – the stock, or the site.