Disability has moved from a verified medical condition that presents with obstacles, to, I feel sad because I do, and therefore, I need the red carpet treatment.

What does it take to be diagnosed with ADHD or ADD? Nothing, there is no hard diagnosed line you have to pass. You don't need an MRI, or fMRI, you can claim you are ADHD or ADD, and almost no doctor will push back. It's one of the holy grails for the lazy and self-entitled. “Occasionally, my mind wonders doc!”, “Oh, well, you certainly have advanced ADHD, better get you on meds and write an IEP for you, this is dire.”

What does it take to be diagnosed Autistic? Again, nothing, you don't like the sound of your disgusting classmates chewing food with their mouth open, you have autism because that bothers you. You would rather not acknowledge reasonable social norms, like waiting until people are done talking, oh boy, you have advanced autism.

Depression / anxiety, triggers, everything is basically an excuse for being a reasonable human. The more left leaning you are, or were told you should be by your parents, the more likely you have these imaginary conditions.

I know one woman who claimed ADHD and autism, was told she did not have them by a doctor. She then paid thousands of dollars to get privately tested, and the results proved she did not have either condition. She still claims both, and blames the doctor and the test being incorrect, and says it's triggering. Does she have them? No, objectively not, she's just a boorish pig of a human, who is “woke”, and therefore thinks irresponsibility and a lack of accountability are the calling cards of greatness.

I hear all the time, “I have ADHD”, or “I'm autistic”, nope, you're irresponsible, lazy, lack accountability and never take ownership of your faults. How many times have you heard someone say: “I really want to sleep in on the weekends.” followed by “I feel so lazy for not getting anything done.”. You woke up at noon, and made non-stop excused on why nothing could get started, and then wonder why nothing got done. Whereas I got up at 6:00am, and got everything done by 11:30am, now can spend the rest of the day doing whatever I want.

Should we get into Ozempic craze? It's the same BS, you think your inability to control your diet, and get active is a disability which needs medication. If you just cut out the 9 rounds of dense carbs you had in the form of pasta, and sugar loaded dressing you pour like fountains over your “salad”, guess what might start happening? “I've tried dieting.”, no, no you didn't. You made a solid grain and carb meal plan, that was packed with dense energy, then, sat on your fat ass because you were too tired to do anything. Hell, I know people who claim: “I'm prediabetic.”, what? You don't have diabetes, so you require a diabetes medication for what? Cut the carbs, boost the protein, cut the fruit, which is just a sugar source, and either go into a calorie def, or, start lifting weights 3x week, and BAM, guess what "major disability" disappears.

Exactly! If I need kitchen stuff, like sponges, a strainer, drain plugs, that's where I go, and maybe for the odd Island Bar, which is a Bounty Bar knock off. I don't buy food, food there, but all the surrounding ones do have several isles of groceries, and you could buy a pantry full of items if you wanted. I'm not sure if they have milk, never noticed, but I don't buy food food. Maybe the odd bag of chips if I'm with my daughter, but again, it's for one-off things, at least for me.

Right, but that's not an excuse, since you could automate the tag changing automatically. How many times do you call into a customer service line and hear: "We're experiencing higher than normal call volume!", so often that if I said every time, the very rare exception is in the noise. You can't always have "higher than normal", that's not how averages work, in the same context: "We understaffed, slashed hours, misclassified employees, and stole labour, so it's their problem." doesn't work either. You hear this pass the buck style excuse all the time, and once you know the problem exists, you have a very short runway to fix it, and keep it mitigated.

Agreed.

Do you think they care about $600k? Dollar stores fit an odd segment, either you need something random you know your dollar store has, which is the only time I go, or, you're poor and need single use small format things to get by. In either case, their best option for making money, is to steal it, and the best way to steal it, is to show you one price, and charge you another, that's higher. They will always use the excuses that staff are overworked, or, staff are expensive, or, it was an accident, but none of that is true.

If they cared, they could force price compliance automatically using e-paper tags. The fact they don't deploy modern solutions to a known issue, means they don't want to solve it. The real solution for consumers, you need to pay attention to what price shows up when a product is scanned. That sounds obvious, but almost no one pays attention.

They'll gladly pay $600k, to steal millions, and no government or regulatory board is ever going to make a fine high enough to be a deterrent. Imagine hitting Dollar X with a $250 million fine, plus, 10-years of independent oversight through a fully isolated third-party monitor. That's a deterrent, $600k is the government giving the wink, "awful, you shouldn't have done this, I hope a cheque doesn't fall out of your coat as you leave *wink *wink".

'In my entire life, I've never paid for something by check and been told I couldn't take my purchase until the check cleared'

Your life experience does not match mine. Vehicle purchases especially, unless I used a cashier's check, I would wait for delivery and title. I've mailed checks for merchandise and been told I will not see shipment until the check clears.

And a classic check purchase fraud is to overpay, request a refund, on a bad check. You left holding the bag for a bad check, out the refund money you made good.

In fact, look for online car dealer experiences, and you find this exact fraud is common. Most dealers know better.

Just not my experience. You are fortunate.

I buy CDs I want (and do not already have) anywhere, yard sales, Goodwill, etc., because I prefer to *own* the music I want. I use streaming services for convenience, since Google mangled my online libraries, but if I wanted to I could stream off of a self-hosted gadget.

I've kept a portable CD player just in case, and my portable Minidisc recorder is still important to me, along with a stock of blanks.

Owning is underrated.

If you buy a car with a credit card( and I know someone who did and they used their Amex and it works) you're probably going to walk out to the parking lot. Put your key in the car and go. If you buy a car with a check, I just suspect you're coming back tomorrow and maybe even 3 days later, as ACH does not clear instantly. It's all it's worth to you. If it's convenient to just walk out the door, you use a card. If you can wait just a couple of days and let the check clear. Obviously you saved yourself 800 bucks. You pay for convenience. That's one of the features of payment processing.

"The 2.5% processing fees more than cover their losses."

Are you implying this is the only real cost for payment processors?

MasterCard and Visa both employ an internetwork that links banks (issuers) and merchants (acquirers) so that data is exchanged and payments are processed.

Issuers maintain the data necessary to identify their account holders, keep records, pay out the transactions presented by acquirers, and arrange to be paid for the transactions they facilitate. The float between payment to acquirers and receiving payment from their account holders binds capital, which sometimes is actually borrowed from sources, at interest. Even if it is held as working capital, it is not earing interest elsewhere. Along with all this, issuers have a fiduciary responsibility to protect their account holders from fraud and misuse, as much as is practically possible. All this I mention not to excuse fees, just to point out the reasons. And all of this requires complex information systems, which must be sufficiently accurate to avoid penalties for failure, even from regulatory agencies that are predicated on nothing more than a desire to impose their judgement on the process.

Acquirers also have a responsibility to eliminate fraud as much as practical. They also have a responsibility to ensure their customers, merchants, receive payment for goods and services provided on the promise of payment, and within reasonable time frames. And since the agencies purporting to protect consumers from bad behavior demand reporting, acquirers maintain these records. Not to mention tax receipts, etc.

Payment processing is not cheap. It most certainly is not free. Is 2.5% fair? I dunno. But it is a competitive business, despite the outsider not discerning that, but competitive in two directions. First, under the hood, processors do compete on fees or services. Stripe used to charge a LOT more than others, for the convenience of an easy signup. Amex used to charge more for the convenience of lesser fraud and customer loyalty (It was factual, look it up, or ask CVS and Walgreens). MasterCard and Visa discounted fees to attract the business that other brands enjoyed. Now convenience is a feature that has value. Loyalty programs increase fees because, well, if you're getting 2% cashback on your card, that came from somewhere. The equation should be obvious, but go look that up also.

Whining about processing fees can be about the absolute value, but if you don't understand the process, you will not believe that fees are fair, ever. You're wrong.

As we consider the premise that ACH checking is 'free'...

Most banks charge business customers for cash deposits. That includes checks.

Which sort of challenges the concept that payment processing fees are somehow excessive, when these fees are levied even for aper.

ACH can be used entirely electronically, but there are fees. Inconvenient, because ACH has rules.

Many payment processors charge fees almost invisibly.

And business customers find that depositing cash is a unique nuisance, so they might very much like this.

Eliminating paper checking is the gateway drug to eliminating cash. And that is the stepping stone to eliminating personal privacy.

(Off-topic rant here, eliminate the 702 provision. Please.)

Yes, this.

The unbanked in the US suffer many insults and damages. Eliminating paper checks will add to that, forcing them to use some service to convert cash into a form acceptable to the banking industry,

As it is, unbanked often pay to cash the checks they get for payroll etc. They convert direct deposit debit cards into cash, often with a fee. And then they enjoy the scorn of others who wait impatiently as they pay in cash, wait for the cashier to miscount change, and further complain.

SO eliminating paper checks will slap the unbanked twice - their sources of funds will be forced into some method, and they will be denied even the paper checking some use to avoid electronics.

And we should enjoy the discussion on the topic of 'We should eliminate cash'. Right in with 'We should eliminate printed material'.

Eliminating paper checks is not so good an idea as it might appear at first glance. As it is, those paper checks are negotiated and virtually immediately converted to electronic image data. From there, it's conventional for today.

I'll leave the discussion of personal privacy, freedom, and the Surveillance State to others. But you have been prompted.

Most grocery stores in the US will happily print that check for your signature, Yup, that's not at all new.

"Ukrainian authorities said the drone was Russian"

Ukraine has good reason to attack the site, gauge response, and then blame the Russians.

There is no way for the rest of the world to know, except perhaps some intelligence agencies, and they will NOT tell.

In this scenario, the truth cannot help any of the parties involved, until you recognize that nuclear pollution from this site affects the world, and then the whole world is involved. And it's time to stop this madness in Ukraine before it escalates in a direction we should not and cannot tolerate.

Get over the right and wrong. That's past.

and if you take offense to that you're entitled to destroy their property?

Well, it is New York City.

My point was that in an environment where random errors occur you may minimize the errors with reliable processes. But the unspoken caveat... If you have everything on one device, that becomes your point of failure. Partitioning a drive doesn't give you multiple points of physical failure. Logical points, perhaps...