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REMINDER: DBD Zoom tonight in about 2.5 hours (8:05pm Pacific)

Cugel, you can call in on your phone if you don't want the video on.

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Slims is closing https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/slims-to-close-after-more-than-three-decades-at-heart-of-sfs-music-scene

While nightclubs throughout the Bay Area are looking forward to the day they can reopen to raucous crowds, San Francisco’s reigning star said the city’s longest-running rock club will remain shuttered.

“Slim’s had its day,” said owner Boz Scaggs. “Maybe we could have changed things and kept it going, but that’s not our business and never has been. Slim’s did what it was here to do.”

Slim’s staff was informed on Wednesday, March 18, that the 11th Street nightclub will close permanently after more than 30 years. The decision had been made late last year, long before the coronavirus pandemic forced its immediate shutdown, Scaggs told The Chronicle in an exclusive interview.

Scaggs and his partners in Big Billy Inc. will continue to operate the Tenderloin jewel box, Great American Music Hall, where Slim’s staff will move once the city- and statewide shelter-in-place orders are lifted. But Slim’s is done.

“It was a long-term decision based on things that had nothing to do with the current situation,” he said.

For an entire generation, the 600-person-capacity Slim’s played a crucial role in San Francisco nightlife. It was the home base for many Bay Area bands and the first stop in town for touring acts on their way up. Among the acts who made their debuts at the club are superstars Sheryl Crow, Beck, Melissa Etheridge, Bruno Mars and No Doubt (as openers for Berkeley’s own Dance Hall Crashers). Slim’s has also hosted big-name acts like Pearl Jam, Snoop Dogg, David Bowie and the Foo Fighters playing for intimate audiences.

“There is not another Slim’s in the U.S.,” Scaggs said. “Not New York, not Los Angeles, not Chicago.”

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Sads

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CAL

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Cal undergrad courses default to P/NP with ability to opt back in to for-grade by May 6.

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/03/20/all-spring-2020-undergraduate-courses-at-uc-berkeley-default-to-pass-no-pass-grading/

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Vandy has the same thing except it's default with grade and option to go P/NP around Apr 10 I think, which is around 1.5 weeks before classes end. No 2 is thinking of taking his programming class P/NP if his grades remain C or below.

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So many complications. I'm glad this is an option for the students!

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https://twitter.com/adambedders/status/1240717993467949057

@adambedders: Our 5 year old seems to have deemed himself the local virus warden.

Over the fence to our neighbour:

‘JEAN YOU NEED TO GO INSIDE’

‘Okay I will in a minute’

‘YOU’RE OLD AND THERE’S A VIRUS’

‘I’m not that old thank you’

‘HOW OLD ARE YOU JEAN?’

‘I’m 68.’

‘THAT IS NEARLY 70 JEAN.’

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in the midst of a WebEx faculty meeting with around 80 participants. It is a SHITSHOW. A few folks don't have their mics muted and the echo is unbearable.

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Sometimes I forget that not everyone in physics works in collaborations. For particle physics, web meeting is the norm. You still get technical issues with more people logging into a call, but people at least know about muting or get called out for not muting.

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usually it's a two-way meeting with a conference room at one end (or two people huddled behind a webcam)

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there should be a way for the organizer to auto-mute all mics

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took the presider about a half hour to figure that out. Getting better, still about as pleasant as a faculty meeting gets though.

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The lack of technical expertise (operating a projector, switching inputs, putting a computer into an extended screen mode) in the academic community is alarming. No field seems to be immune, except maybe CS.

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the meeting is nearing two hours (usually they're one hour). I'm dying here

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BOOMTHO!!!

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hi!

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How are you, how's the fam, and do you want to Zoom with DBDers tonight?

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life is good! busy busy... we bought a house :) may not have been the best timing with the market, but we moved in two weeks ago and luckily were able to get safely down here before the bay area shelter in place. i cannot zoom with DBD'ers tonight unfortunately - i am zoom'ing with my former roommates.

how are you? how is life?

PS- i thought you said "how is the farm" and thought that was a euphemism for being sent to the farm in the country side where dogs go to ... play

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o/ on home ownership

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Congratulations on the house! I suppose being sent to the farm might be an appropriate euphemism for the ones who get banned...

Life is pretty good, aside from impending death and societal collapse by plague. Really liking my job and being back in the Bay :)

Enjoy your roommate chat--join us another time!

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DBD Zoom call tonight at 8:05pm Pacific. Let me know if you don't have the link yet.

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I am excited. This will be my first Zoom call.

My second is going to be a book club meeting on Sunday.

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I don't.

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I'll email it to you

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thx!! :D

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Check out this device that UofA's Bryce Dixon is using to return basketballs. Have I been living under a rock? This is awesome. If I had one of these growing up, I could have been much more efficient in throwing up bricks in my backyard.

https://twitter.com/brycenixon5/status/1240791098995298305

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Yeah you've been living under a rock - we had mechanical ones when I was on the team, and the automatic ones have been around for . . a decade at least?

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Check is in the mail...

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Chloroquine

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News is that this stuff is that some are testing this a potential part of a cure.

I used to take this stuff for months as a prophylaxis against malaria, until I realized that the treatment for malaria was the same stuff and it gave me horrible vivid nightmares. People in the pensiones were like, yeah, everyone knows it gives you nightmares. People also said it made your hair fall out, but I think that due to poor diet when travelling.

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I took Mefloquine for malaria (Lariam) and had terrible hallucinations from it. I mean, better than dying I guess, but green snakes climbing up the walls at night are not a great experience.

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Sounds like securing the household self-defense weaponry is a prerequisite before administering it.

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update from Bangkok - all gyms are closed along with bars and other entertainment venues. no orders to shelter in place or social distance, but everyone is still heavy with masks. I stayed in for most of yesterday and today - only going out to eat dinner yesterday - no one in the restaurant except one other couple seated quite far.

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Dear John

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I got one once...met a girl on a plane (Southwest sit wherever you want FTW!), ended up not dating dating but talking a lot, fly down to see her blah blah... then got the letter saying she was dating someone else and didnt want to confuse anything so we should stop talking. Totally understandable but still a sad face...

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I also met a woman on Southwest like a year and a half ago, but she lived in SoCal. We went out when I was down there and really hit it off, but since I don't live down there, it didn't work out.

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yup, she was in San Diego, I was in the Bay

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Nah, never been dumped.

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Well, not unless you count the girl who scratched me and dumped me after being her boyfriend for all of 10 seconds when I was 9 or 10.

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I'll allow it

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yet

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Rather late in the game for that, methinks.

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or is it?!?

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A couple situations where I wish I could have just written a letter, but alas, there was no excuse not to do it in person.

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never received a Dear John (Jane) - guys don't write letters! But I've been ghosted

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Uh... my girlfriend when I was a HS senior dumped me by a written note on binder paper. The weird thing was that she waited to give it to me when we were on vacation together with some friends on a remote island in Fiji. Super awkward to be with her the rest of that vacation.

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Huh. Why did she do that? What'd the note say? Did you guys talk about it? There must be more to the story here...

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Remember how I told the DBD a few days back that I was a competitive choral singer (a la Glee)? As California champions, we were invited to and won an international contest. We were invited back to compete again the following year, even those of us who were graduating. I got into Cal, but my HS girlfriend did not, so she went to Diablo Valley College with the idea to transfer to Cal. We continued to date off-and-on through my freshman year and then we went on the tour through New Zealand (second ever concert given in the national theater), 3 concerts in the main Sydney Opera House, and then a few days on the beach in Fiji as pure vacation. The story from my friends was that she suffered from low self-confidence and that the tour gave her enough confidence to go on her own. So she wrote the note, but was gathering enough bravery to give it to me. Yeah, dumped by a letter. But, good for her. She was a nice girl, she did have low self-confidence, and I'm glad she found her wings. She ended up getting in Cal and became a Cal cheerleader 1990-92. We didn't see each other much. But still, super awkward for a bit.

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How did the rest of the vacation go? Did you have your own respective circles to hang out with?

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Corona Virus Update

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"Stay at home" order is in place in LA, finally.

My brother suggested that I come stay in his guest room so that I don't spend the next few weeks completely alone, and I think I'll take him up on that.

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selections from my Quarantine To Do List:

do taxes

practice piano

learn ASL and/or Hindi

listen to podcasts

practice calligraphy

read non-fiction

play board games with my brother

do jigsaw puzzles

watch nightly Met Opera streams

foster kittens?

catch up on TV

finish cross stitch projects

learn to draw better

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My list: don’t go insane. That’s it, that’s the list

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Mar 20, 2020
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Hope springs eternal

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someone on my team in Austin went to the doctor last night and was told she has all the symptoms consistent with the virus. No tests available though and it would take 5 days to get an answer anyways so here's some drugs and dont leave your house for 14 days unless breathing becomes an issue. She has asthma too so is high risk

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IRS tax filing deadline pushed to July 15. Will states follow? And property tax assessors?

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Having already filed my personal income taxes, I'd really like to see the delinquent date for property taxes pushed back.

Not holding my breath, though.

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Suspended.

S-U-S-P-E-N-D-E-D.

Suspended.

The Scipps National Spelling Bee is being suspended

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I'm of the view that a combination of a) varying degrees of personal precautionary action, b) weak government direction, and c) human nature to not take it serious since it is an invisible threat - means that we are doomed to go the Italy route. I have asthma, so I can't take risks. My son and wife are less cautious, but I'm alarmed. I don't like having to beg them to not accidentally kill me because it sounds like hyperbole at this point.

I am of the view that it is already endemic. Take the NBA as an example. While they are a higher risk group since they travel more and meet more people, they are having enough positive tests while being completely asymptomatic, for me to think that - while not everywhere - is a well along enough to be a fuse that cannot be stopped over the next months.

I am resigned to that this is going to get really bad, thousands of Americans are going to die, and I am stuck indoors for essentially a year - only venturing out dressed like a plague doctor.

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My missus crossed over from “I don’t know what you’re so worried about” to “we’re not getting carryout until this is over and I don’t really even want to go to the supermarket but it’s unavoidable “

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Heh, that pretty much describes my son.

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Maybe I'm the one that is weird that isn't going to 11 on the worry scale.

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I think I might have hit peak panic and gone to appropriate disquiet

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I think the best chance is that they can quickly develop better treatments for the most severe symptoms, so that people can be treated and recover more quickly (and at a higher rate).

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I agree. I did see a comparison of tests per million population vs positive tests per million population and in general it was about 10% positive tests. Which to me indicates broad spread through the population and various communities. So, regardless of control measures, lots of people are going to get it, and lots of people are likely to get very sick/die.

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Do you have a reference link?

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The botched rollout of tests has really exacerbated the situation (it's hard to convince people to quarantine if they're not tested). What a mess.

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Testing, securing other supplies and equipment, messaging were all not up to par and still aren't at least at the federal level. We had time to prepare for this and just didn't do enough.

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Complete shitshow, no urgency at all.

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Japan is, apparently, not doing a great job of testing either.

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Sean Payton (New Orleans Saints Head Coach) and Daniel Dae Kim (actor, Lost, Hawaii Five-0) both test positive

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Pro

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Todd Gurley released by the Rams, signed by the Falcons

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Our Crumbling Democracy

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NYT: White House asks States to not announce unemployment figures

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20/politics/labor-department-states-unemployment-numbers-coronavirus/index.html

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Senators Richard Barr and Kelly Loeffler made massive dumps of stocks after receiving the Trump administration briefing. Senators Ron Johnson and Dianne Feinstein also dumped stocks, but their sales appear unrelated to the news about Corona Virus.

VOTE THEM ALL OUT.

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This really doesn't sound like insider information if anyone could have figured it out just from what was publicly available.

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Insider trading is a nearly unenforceable crime, especially in a situation like one with people with the amount of information that you come into contact with in Congress. Even Martha Stewart didn't go down for insider trading IIRC, but obstruction of justice and other shit.

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well....the senators were making public statements that the market was fine and not going to be affected by this.

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Burr & Loeffler?

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Mar 20, 2020
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@Jeez, you do know that wiki is the preferred (by gb49) W4C reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Loeffler@

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Well, it was before the rest of the market started tanking.

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I know, but I knew this would happen, and I had zero inside info.

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Mar 20, 2020
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I doubt I will

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Matt Levine at Bloomberg covered this in his morning newsletter this morning. His point was basically... if what Loeffler did was truly insider training, why would she be so dumb to do it? She's worth $500M and maybe netted a tiny, tiny fraction of that?

The optics of all this are horrible, and it could be a diff story for Burr. But still...

Also - HI DBD! It's been a long time :)

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Because greed is a disease of the mind.

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I'm pretty sure Senators and Reps are immune from insider trading. So, it's terrible optics but not illegal.

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They were exempt until Obama got an oversight law passed.

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It's the exact opposite. Senators and Reps have a specific law targeting them to prevent them from insider trading.

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NOPE. STOCK act was passed in 2012 forbidding it. Before that it was legal.

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Unsurprisingly, Senator Loeffler deleted this tweet she did 10 days ago:

https://preview.redd.it/oqgyfvhccrn41.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7c9d6d81b81c9ddf5944b6441d7ab1f780dad83a

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Letters

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I still drop off a physical rent check. Last year, for one of my many trips, I just ran out of time to go do this (15 minutes round trip that I didn't have because I cut things too close) and ended up mailing that check from the local airport. I think that's the last physical thing that I've mailed.

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Perfect timing on this DBD: this morning I'd started reading a book called "To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing"

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A week ago, for a Reddit Gift Exchange. And, tomorrow, because a friend just moved and everyone deserves to receive a letter at a new home.

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I mailed a card a couple weeks ago to my friend. It was in advance of his wedding, which was supposed to be at the end of this month, but has now been postponed until August.

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Uh, yesterday?

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@did you chisel your letter on slate?@

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Silly boy, cuneiform is pressed into clay tablets

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I used to return the contents of junk mail solicitations (minus the personal or tracking info) in the postage paid return envelope that accompanied the "offer". does that count?

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this was a core part of a proposed campaign a few years ago to keep usps afloat

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BOOMBRO HIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

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Return to sender. Address unknown. No such number. No such code.

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Now that song's going to be stuck in my head all morning. Thanks

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Same, but someone on my other internet community brought up piña coladas, so I have a new earworm

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I mail letters regularly at work. Not so much for non-work.

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I don't even remember the last time I mailed a written letter. I've mailed other stuff like checks for something like rent or other payments like orthodontics.

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I mail in my mortgage payment every month because they started charging $2.95 to pay online. They ask that we write the account number on the check, and I often accompany it with seasonal, passive-aggressive notes like "Santa doesn't give presents to people who charge to pay online," and "Happy 2020, where free online payments are the norm." I doubt anyone reads them, but it makes me feel a little better.

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That's similar to how I would write a check to PG&E each month that was made payable to Pigs, Greed & Extortion. PG&E didn't care just so long as the initials were PG&E. They cashed my checks each month.

At some point I went to autopay because it was easier for me and man, it takes energy to do keep up a fight.

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It's funny, but despite PG&E screwing up so many things so badly, I have no hate for them because the people I've interacted with have been by and large so decent, plus they sold me my first big deal.

Waste Management OTOH, I hate with every fiber of my being.

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Not only mail, but send certified, since those MFers at Wachovia and then Wells were trying to charge bullshit late fees ($3,500) several times.

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Can you schedule a check from your bank so that you don't have to pay postage?

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You can do that?! This is how I'm now going to pay rent.

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The function is called Bill Pay and almost every major bank or credit union or brokerage cash management account offers it.

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That seems like a reasonable solution (although I would miss my petty notes). I'll look into it.

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Adds more passivity to the notes by having a bank employee compose them for you

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yup. I only had a problem once when the check didn't make it. Had to pay $25 to cancel the check and drop one off.

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I've turned in my rent check a week or two late sometimes just because the days all blur together and I don't really register that it's a new month. I've been complaining about the lack of auto-billing for as long as I've lived in this apt, and this is going to solve so many problems.

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My mother has been using it for many years.

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yeah, this is how I pay rent

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same

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you should elevate your comments as a Complaint. You're correct, the payment processor won't do anything about it (they should forward them), but the customer service team will. And if they don't, escalate to their regulators. Excessive fees; ask for a refund.

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"Please join in celebrating National Passive Aggressive Day. Or don't. It's fine."

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I love passive-aggressive notes like that.

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I mailed a letter yesterday. My wife sent a card and cash to her hair-stylist to help her fight against sliding into homelessness. I guarantee you that she will always get a preferential treatment forever.

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I mailed a document and receipts to my insurance provider in Hong Kong

I mailed a post card from the islands to a friend of mine who teaches first grade and takes post cards for her class room.

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