#junk banks

[gabbysdawsons]

Juno in Percy Jackson? 💚

oh this is actually one of my favourite aus for her!

she has such strong child of Hermes energy it’s not even funny. I can’t even explain why she just Does

as a child of Hermes she’s gifted with his unique ability to be a menace to all mankind, as well as his penchant for thievery. she likes to steal clothes from all of her siblings whenever possible.

she really enjoys all the lake activities offered at the camp, way more than the survival training, and would probably be pretty close with Grover because she appreciates that he’s actually very cool underneath all of his awkwardness.

she would also love Percy immediately, and by love I mean these relentlessly and make his life kind of a living hell- but in a loving way. because her love language is just…. bullying

also I can honestly see her siding with Luke cause she is nothing if not a girl with daddy issues and a very deep sense of loyalty to those closest to her, which Luke would be

[awoogaslashers]

[godzillachloe]

The Barden Bellas as Barbies

[tomorrowusa]

The Biden administration is trying to limit junk fees. The president made reference to this during the State of the Union speech on Thursday. Of course Republicans think junk fees and screwing the consumer are great.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday unveiled a heavily anticipated rule cutting the late fees that credit card issuers can charge, delivering on an objective that President Joe Biden touted in his State of the Union address last year. The regulation caps fees for a missed payment at $8, down from the current level of up to $41. The rule has already sparked intense pushback from banks and congressional Republicans pledging to fight its implementation. The Chamber of Commerce is vowing to sue.

Republicans are serving predatory banks which give them big campaign contributions. Excessive fees enable the banks to get fat off of poor people. Most likely the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be abolished or neutered by a second Trump administration.

The rule will “stop some credit card companies from ripping you off with late fees,” Biden said at a meeting of the White House Competition Council Tuesday afternoon. “This action will collectively save families $10 billion in credit card late fees every year.” The rule is part of the Biden administration’s broader campaign against so-called junk fees that has targeted industries from car dealers to cable operators. It’s a central focus of Biden’s reelection campaign and one that he’ll likely highlight in Thursday’s State of the Union speech. “Late fees have gotten out of control,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said on a call with reporters Monday. “Today the credit card industry hauls in more than $14 billion in late fee revenue, which our research shows is more than five times that of the companies’ associated costs.”

Banks would still make insanely large profits even with reduced junk fees. But greed makes them want to squeeze every cent they can out of American consumers.

Yeah, rightwingers already find themselves on the wrong side of the abortion and IVF issues. Now they are also trying vigorously to position themselves as defenders of price gouging, junk fees, and shrinkflation.

Tens of millions of Americans are inundated by credit card junk fees — and now right-wing media are rallying to defend this price gouging

[subsequentibis]

yknow i still think about that exercise darthfar did forever ago where he drew his face designs for les amis in b&w with no hair or accessories to see if they were all distinct from each other, and how they all looked like fully realized different people, and then i did the same thing (probably at age 16ish?) and realized across nine characters i had maybe Three different head/face shapes that i attempted to distinguish between expression alone, and that left a really deep impact on me and made me more critical of how i design and i think it made me a better artist making more interesting & varied charactes, and i'm endlessly grateful for that lesson that i don't know if he ever even knew he was teaching me

[grimlock]

okay. I think my biggest jealousy with japan just hit me with the hotel provided mouthwash

it was APPLE flavored!! literally I am so happy to get a mouthwash that isn't mint, I just can't stand mint and i am legitimately wondering if I can bring mouthwash in my checked bag

literally the only non-mint fruity ones I've seen in adult mouthwashes in the US is like. grapefruit. and I'm cautious with grapefruit and grapefruit-flavored things in general

[onlyfangz]

the how to rob a bank netflix doc was pretty interesting, and i really enjoyed how they let the people telling the stories tell their version of events, even when they conflicted. but did they really have to show that dude's cock and balls?

[here-there-everyfuckenwhere]

Okay question for the group;

So I am having a Barbie-themed dress up party to celebrate both my birthday and also the opening weekend of Barbie (2023). I really wanna get an on-theme outfit for the party but the one I want to get is $80(AUD) and I seriously cannot justify spending that much on a dress I’ll only wear once?

The dress in question

[faeralalune]

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

God we gotta update so much legal shit this weekend DX

[greenpitbullzombie]

Have I told you people that I finally bought a house? I bought a house and I've begun renovations to bring the kitchen into this century.

This weekend:

Built a fence

Removed wallpaper from kitchen and 1 bedroom

Got all my appliances

Mowed 3 yards

Physically had to go into water office to make an account bc they won't let you on-line and got it turned on same day

Spent several hours ripping out toxic-to-dog plants from garden bed

Decided on countertops and new shingles

Called 811 to set an appointment to mark my lines and pipes 🫠

Aforementioned ER vet visit (which further emphasizes why I've spent full days ripping out plants from new house specifically for my dog)

In conclusion, my body hurts.

[bass-borot]

Hiiiiii :3cccc

Hiiiiiii anon hi hello :3c

[tomorrowusa]

Call them junk fees, nuisance fees, or sludge, they amount to add-ons to the stated price of something. 

Unregulated businesses which have national or local monopolies or who deal in uncompetitive services can mostly charge you whatever they want. Sometimes exorbitant prices are camouflaged by fees billed as add-ons but are usually necessary for the transaction.

In his State of the Union address, President Biden said he would try to crack down on these junk fees.

Hertz charges almost $6 a day simply for using a toll transponder in a rental car. Marriott and Hilton add nightly “resort fees” to the bill even at hotels that nobody would consider to be resorts. American, Delta and United list one airfare when you first search for a seat — and then add charges for basic features like the ability to sit next to your spouse.

Ticketmaster is especially aggressive about imposing fees, as I experienced recently while buying two tickets to a football game. When I initially selected my seats on Ticketmaster’s online stadium map, they cost $48. The bill at checkout was more than one-third higher — $64.40.

President Biden has announced a crackdown on these fees (which his administration calls “junk fees”), and he devoted a section of his State of the Union address to them. “Look, junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most other folks in homes like the one I grew up in,” he said Tuesday night. “I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it.”

Very often consumers don’t pay much attention to the small print written in extended and impenetrable gobbledygook which has become a routine part of many transactions. Did you read the entire text of the terms the last time you purchased or updated software and clicked AGREE?

We lead busy lives that keep us from analyzing every purchase, and we get distracted by salient but misleading information (like a low list price). Big companies, with the resources at their disposal, have learned to take advantage of these limitations. The economist Richard Thaler refers to practices like these as “sludge,” the evil counterpart to nudges that use behavioral economics to improve life.

True, one company could call out another for using sludge. But doing so often requires a complex marketing message that tries to persuade people to overcome their psychological instincts (like the appeal of a low list price). For that reason, Hilton can probably make more money by charging its own sneaky resort fees than by criticizing Marriott’s.

Yep. When competitors don’t call each other out, it may be to hide their own dodgy practices. In such circumstances they are acting more like a cartel than like competing businesses.

One step beyond a cartel is a classic monopoly.

In some markets, consumers don’t have much choice. Ticketmaster’s fees outrage many people. But I didn’t have any choice when I bought those football tickets. There was no rival service selling them.

In recent decades, many American industries have become more concentrated, partly because Washington became more lax about enforcing antitrust laws. Thomas Philippon, an N.Y.U. economist, has estimated that increased corporate concentration costs the typical American household more than $5,000 a year.

There was an orgy of deregulation during the Reagan years with an encore during the first George W. Bush administration. The stated aim of these rounds of deregulation was to get government off the backs of American businesses. What really happened is that they put certain businesses on the backs of American consumers.

Making it difficult to cancel a service is another aspect of this culture of sludge.

The small number of dominant internet providers, for instance, reduces the chances that a new entrant can design a business strategy around undercutting Comcast’s and Verizon’s sneaky fees. Those new entrants don’t exist. Comcast and Verizon have also figured out how to make the cancellation of internet service unpleasant and time-consuming. Airlines — another concentrated industry — use frequent-flier programs in a similar way, effectively punishing customers for switching to a different carrier.

So the Biden administration is trying to alleviate or even put a stop to many of these fees.

The Biden administration is trying to address both causes of sneaky fees. On antitrust, it has adopted a policy more confrontational than that of any other administration in decades. That effort is in its early stages, without many big victories. Still, the administration does seem to be taking corporate concentration seriously.

As for the sludge itself, the administration has already taken steps to restrict a few examples, such as charges for late payments on credit cards. Biden has asked Congress to pass a law with stricter rules for other industries.

The administration’s bigger focus for now is on disclosure — requiring companies to tell consumers up front what the full cost will be. The Transportation Department has proposed such a rule for airlines.

If you’ve been impacted recently by such business practices, this might be a good time to contact the folks who represent you on Capitol Hill and let them know that you demand change. To get rid of some of these dubious fees it may be necessary for Congress to pass legislation. 

BONUS TRACK: Over a year ago an SNL sketch featuring Kieran Culkin brilliantly depicted how difficult it is to deal with corporations who wish to retain a stranglehold on your money.

Kieran should return and do a follow-up on dealing with banks.

[diet-cokette]

moving is so expensive

[ur-mag]

Banking surcharges hit record high despite junk fee clampdown – steps to check if you’re being unnecessarily charged | In Trend Today

Banking surcharges hit record high despite junk fee clampdown – steps to check if you’re being unnecessarily charged Read Full Text or Full Article on MAG NEWS

[zooophagous]

So why do you hate the advertising industry?

Hokay so.

Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.

I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.

I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.

Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.

Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.

Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.

I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.

And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.

Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.

Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.

And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.

Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.

It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.

It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.

And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.

Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.

Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.

However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.

I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.

Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.