For those who follow this blog, and for the surprisingly large number of readers who took an interest in my Apple Card Saga (as I am now going to be calling it), there has been an update. More specifically: I got one.
How? Well, the answer is just as absurd as everything else involving credit scores that I’ve written about. It’s also pretty nuanced and I’m bored of writing about this because there’s nothing I can do to change reality, so I’ll just give you, my dear readers, the short version.
Upon reading my articles, an ex of mine reached out to let me in on a little tidbit I’d been unaware of. You see, some years ago, when we were an item, they’d opened a credit card and I had been an authorized purchaser on it, because it seemed silly for both of us to open credit lines to purchase furniture and stuff for the new apartment we were sharing. It was certainly handy for us to be able to go to separate stores to get the things we needed — divide-and-conquer, as they say — which meant having two cards was better than one. …
At 30 years old, I’ve never bothered to get the influenza vaccine. Coronavirus has shown me that was a bad decision.
Allow me to elaborate. Every year a new flu shot comes around and the pitch is that you should have one because then you’ll be less likely to catch the flu — if you’re older, it’s an even better idea because the effects of the virus can be more brutal the older you are.
Before the pandemic, I — like many others, I suspect — saw the flu as a private issue and more or less just a part of life. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever even had the flu; I tend to have symptoms of a vicious head-cold, but never anything like what influenza is described as. …
As I will demonstrate, it’s no exaggeration to say that without anarchy we would be living in the dark ages, which are a pretty good example because it turns out that during that period the Catholic Church was doing a stellar job of repressing the greatest example of anarchy known to humankind.
I’m talking, of course, about science — that glorious exhibition of anarchic principles in operation, continuously demonstrating that anarchy can work, and that it works remarkably well.
Consider this sobering thought: the scientific community as an anarchic structure spent the last century having quickly adopted the utterly insane (for the time) premise of quantum mechanics and has been implementing and improving on it ever since, to the benefit of humanity as a whole. The United States of America, on the other hand, is a “representative democracy” that’s like 300 years old or something, and it still can’t quite agree to the wacky notion that all humans deserve equal rights and representation under the law, much less make good on that promise, which featured front-and-center in the Constitution which incorporated it. …
I’ve received some great responses to my original post, and have already responded in-depth to one of them. I now have another, even longer and more thoughtful response, and I’d like to dissect that as well, because it highlights the same initial issues I had with the first one.
The user has also responded to my response to the other response (there’s an amusing sentence). They state that they’ve worked in the financial industry for multiple decades, so it’s interesting to see how those in the field actually use and regard the system.
Specifically, it looks like they utilize it happily, and simultaneously abhor it. …
This post is also a response to a comment that can be seen here. I am not haranguing replier. I sincerely appreciate the response because it brought up some salient points that I didn’t cover in my previous post on this subject.
Here’s an interesting piece of knowledge which I did not know:
Credit Karma gives you a Vantage score, Goldman was almost certainly giving you a FICO score, and vantage skews more towards people who are building/rebuilding credit.
When I read this, I am reminded of the fact that simply stating the way something works is not a way to justify it. Many people do not seem to realize this, and so the above may appear as though it is a rationalization for what I was irate over in my previous post, when in fact it is exactly the opposite. …
I’ve been denied an Apple Card but, while that’s frustrating and a little embarrassing, it’s not what’s got me salty enough to write an article. I’m under no delusions that I — a humble writer and sporadically-employed IT consultant struggling to make it through a period of economic recession and rampant unemployment — am a prime candidate for a line of credit.
No, what’s frustrating about this is that it’s evidence to me that credit scores, as I have long suspected, are a swindle. Furthermore, as I’m about to demonstrate, it’s proof that even if the numbers did mean something, the systems by which they are communicated to the various parties who are supposed to be stakeholders and partners in this convoluted scheme, render them effectively pointless. …
Correction and author’s note: A few people have pointed out that Apple states that the camera cannot be active without the indicator light being on. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211148) After some additional research— it appears that my confusion has been in a crucial distinction: not recording video, but snapping images. The secret sauce appears to be accessing the camera quickly enough that the indicator is only on briefly enough that it’s difficult to notice for certain.
I’m going to keep the article as written, because it seems dishonest to try to wipe it away in embarrassment, but also because of a salient point brought up in the video I link to at the end: trust is an issue here and the mistakes of the past effect trust today. On my end, I was sloppy with the details; it was a believable flaw. It was easy to swallow because webcams have had similar problems. …
The Robinhood app’s lofty goal is to democratize stock trading, and they’ve done a remarkably good job at that. The barrier to entry for stock trading has been effectively removed, and while other brokerages also offer zero-commission trading, Robinhood stands out as the one that’s pleasant to use and even makes things a little bit “fun”.
On the other hand, after talking to several friends who had recently opened accounts and started trading, I realized that they didn’t actually know what they were purchasing. …
Okay denizens of the internet, I need you to do me a favor. It won’t take much on your part, but we can’t solve this problem unless we work together.
The thing is: y’all broke the rating and review systems on the internet.
Sure, reviews and ratings mechanisms are up and running; they’re doing their job in tabulating the number of stars people click and more or less making sure that they can’t vote twice. Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with the rating systems themselves. The problem is how we’re using them. …
It’s become fashionable in the last few years to be able to track the amount of time users spend on their devices. The theory seems to be that if armed with this data, users can begin finding ways to ween themselves off the digital world. Whether this is an effective method or not is worthy of debate, but the practical upshot has been that people who are interested in what’s called “quantified self” have gotten a whole host of utilities from big brands that supply us with the data we crave.
Apple decided to enter the playing field with their utility: Screen Time, which runs on iPhones, Macs, and iPads which support the last few years’ versions of the OS. When this was announced I thought it was going to be terrific and I could get rid of some of the other utilities I’ve been using to track things like how long I’m on my computer, what applications I’m using, how many keystrokes I make, etc. …
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