Looking forward to when my office moves into a new building; I will then have an hour-ish commute by train where I can whip out my Steam Deck and catch up on my backlog.

Until then, it’s basically just getting whipped out for a couple 15-ish minute sessions most days.

Holy crap - that was brilliant, and Amber’s over-the-top reactions were just the cream on top! 👌🏼

Take a photo; check back 30 days later. Rinse and repeat.

Progress can seem slow, that if you look at yourself day-to-day you’ll not notice it.

Scale isn’t the best judge either, because even if you weigh at the same time every day (first thing post BM is good) - your weight can fluctuate due to hydration and quality of sleep.

Consider measuring your waist as an alternative, seeing as that’s what was your initial motivation.

If you aren’t already, add walking to your daily routine - or even consider programs like Couch to 5K or ZombieRun if you want some motivation and a tougher goal. It’s great for your heart health, and will help contribute a small amount of additional burned calories.

Lastly, diet is the most important facet of weight loss. I highly recommend logging everything you eat (at least for the first week or two to get your bearings) using an app like Cronometer.

Are there any region-free 4K blu-ray drives available? I’m asking for a friend.

Unfortunately JNCO went out of business 7 years ago; shame, really - it could have made for a great moonshot stock bet! 😅

Total stab in the dark, but I assume you’re somewhere in continental Europe?

Seems like your businesses have a lot more scruples, morals and ethics than ours do!

You’d be surprised just how common ‘breaches of contract’ like this are, especially among SMEs.

If the supplier knows that the customer has a tendency to pay invoices EOM +35 rather than EOM+30, it’s not worth the cost to pursue legally - especially as doing so would risk them losing a client.

The first secret of business is to collect money as quickly as possible, and avoid paying out as long as possible, to profit off the arbitrage.

Counter-point: it actually robs those employees from learning the ability to save, and denies them (albeit small, incremental) opportunities to earn interest.

You just made me recall one of my gripes with the finance department at my previous job; they would withhold posting an invoice until the week after it was due, and considered it good business. Why? Because that 100K would sit in their bank account for 5-7 more business days accumulating interest at ~5%.

It’s no different to only paying employees monthly; the company profits from withholding payment for as long as possible.

How does being paid less frequently benefit workers?

I guess it depends on what is seen as the norm in a particular country. In Australia, it’s most common for hourly wages to be paid either weekly or fortnightly - and I believe it’s a similar case in North America also.

Given they only the companies stand to benefit from paying employees less frequently, it makes it harder for those companies to compete for quality labour (without then offering a higher hourly rate, negating any benefit for them to do so).

What does?

In general, because the transition puts too much of a financial strain on hourly/wage staff - they tend to live paycheque to paycheque and would struggle to be able to wait an additional 2-3 weeks for their pay to come through.

Besides risking possible staff revolt, it would also make hiring staff much more difficult if new employees learned during induction they might have to wait 5 weeks to be paid!

I’m not encouraging it, it’s actually one of my biggest pet peeves!

I can understand why given how rarely they’re used, people get confused between semi-annual and biannual - especially since things happening every ~6 months is a more common occurrence than every ~24.

In a world where possible/impossible is simple to understand, why is flammable/inflammable confusing!?

Don’t even get me started on “literally” - I want to bang my head against my desk every time I hear it misused.

JasonDJ did a good job at explaining the what, the why would be down to cost-cutting. There are fixed costs associated with putting out payroll (beyond man hours required, there are processing fees etc.); so opting for 2/month instead of fortnightly saves you ~10% in fixed costs.

The English language is scuffed; due to misunderstandings we end up with seemingly opposite words now being used interchangeably to mean the same thing:

• flammable and inflammable, now both usually mean something can be set alight.
• biannual and semiannual, both mean twice a year and once every two years - which is even more confusing.

It’s at the point where if you can’t derive the intended definition from context, you need to ask for clarification! 🤦🏻‍♂️

In this context, I’m pretty sure the commenter was referring to twice-a-month payment. Here in Australia we would call that fortnightly (once every two weeks), where we end up with a scenario where twice a year we end up with 3 payments (for a total of 26 a year). This tends to be more common for hourly wages roles.

It’s been a hot minute since I was paid like that, as corporate salaried positions now tend to be monthly - in order to keep things simple for the HR and Finance teams, and honestly helps people like me to learn/maintain better fiscal responsibility and budgeting.

Political ideology is a spectrum, and I feel that Leftists tend to be as hostile towards those they deem ‘not as left’ as them, just as much as they are towards Fascists, Neo-Cons and their ilk.

It’s basically the no true Scotsman fallacy manifest.

Are you willing to disclose where you are (even just the country), and what level of debt you’re in? e.g. US, ~$10K

It may help some of Lemmings to perhaps point you in the right direction if nothing else?

ETA: hang in there, debt collectors are limited to what there can do, and are not worth losing sleep over. I managed to get myself into a massive hole in my early 20s due to credit cards, and it took me the better part of a decade to knock some sense into me - but I now have a nigh-perfect credit score and an ability to save.

Likely 6, given just how badly the LNP got beat - it’s going to take them a long time to rebuild.

Gives me some hope that the Future Made in Australia project gets far enough along that it secures its own future, lest it get molested during adolescence like the NBN did.

Oh, absolutely!

My morning caffeine clearly hadn’t kicked in because I stupidly forgot to circle back round to that point. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Ultimately, my biggest worry is that Trump’s absolute piss-poor understanding and implementation of tariffs has very likely ‘poisoned the well’ to the point that they could probably never be successfully implemented in our lifetime by an actual competent Government - assuming the US ever gets another chance to elect one ever again.

Smart, specific targeted tariffs paired with grants/incentives to American companies to foster local production of critical goods (think CHIPS Act) can be a good thing, if they are done in such a way that it doesn’t send an entire industry/market into financial shock.

Like, if you want to onboard silicon wafer manufacturing (as a prime example); you would announce a small tariff to start off with, and a clear road-map of it increasing over time - allowing time for companies to build the necessary infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities onshore.

Once the industry has settled and matured, those tariffs could begin to be slowly pared back to ensure that free-market competition continues to keep prices in check.

But this would only work in an actual free-market economy, and not in the oligopoly-in-a-trenchcoat that currently exists in the states.