ritswd

joined 1 year ago
[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago

I had missed that, and have been spending the past few days wondering why my feed got so serious (and, well, kinda boring). Beehaw has a lot of solid content to be proud of, but a number of the most interesting and thought-provoking subreddits were re-created on lemmy.world's side. This is your prerogative of course, and I support every decision you take as an admin team, you can only do what you can do; but with this, it seems to me like having an account on Beehaw doesn't seem to have much of a point anymore...

I just created my new account on lemmy.world, and I'll keep this one around just in case the decision gets reverted, but this post also serves as my farewell and good luck to this community. 👋

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 294 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You gotta appreciate the irony of Reddit demanding free labor from mods of a sub that is about labor abuse.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Oh my, fine, have my upvote!

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hah, yeah, that’s a good point. Right now (at least in Beehaw), it’s “Local” though, which feels like the worst of the three.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

It’s going to be a challenge to figure out who gets what half of the burrito.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 33 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this is not the actual problem that is keeping lawyers away.

Many freelancers are ok to get paid and do their best work for customers who will then destroy that work and shoot themselves in the foot. It’s frustrating, but as long as you get paid, after all it’s the customer’s problem. Lawyers are the same, you can find a number of them who won’t mind.

But here my understanding of what happened was that Trump made his lawyer sign a document where he personally committed to have checked everywhere and there were no documents left, all the while Trump was lying to him and there absolutely were hidden documents. So if that lawyer had kept defending Trump, it could have come across as him being in on the lie to the feds, and being liable to the same crimes.

A lot of lawyers will be glad to take hard-earned money from frustrating clients, but won’t be keen to get themselves in actual legal trouble.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I also struggle to see the issue here. People will subscribe to the various communities across instances, and they’ll quit the ones they don’t like, thereby making the best ones rise to the top, just like it works across subreddits of the same topic.

I guess the concern is discoverability? On mobile web, Beehaw’s homepage show “Local” (not sure if just Beehaw or all instance). It’s true that it’d be good if the default was “All”, so discoverability isn’t fragmented.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think this is the main thing for me. I’m less shocked by Reddit’s decisions (it does make some sense that they need third-party apps to die, even though they could have done it a bit more sensibly), than by this one guy’s deeply disingenuous handling of it all. I can’t stand dishonest obnoxiousness at that level. I think if they admit wrongdoing and fire the guy, I might go back even if they don’t change their other plans. Provided all the interesting subreddits are not dead, obviously.

Although I’ll be honest, for now I’m in the Lemmy honeymoon period, so right now I wouldn’t, I’m enjoying it too much here (and I don’t have time for 2 of those!). But if the honeymoon wears off and they fire the guy, I might.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it’s all a game of chance. My feel is that the combination of legislative risk + risk that those funds would not match at all their plans is low-ish enough, lower than it was or I thought it was a few years ago, that it threw me over the fence now. I was firmly against getting 529s until recently (mostly because of my annoyance with scammy colleges, which is most colleges).

Ultimately I fully agree with everything you said. They will build their own projects and ambitions, and our role as parents is to build around to support those ambitions, whatever they are, that is what makes kids successful. In fact, my sudden interest in the 529 is exactly to that end, to be sure they get opportunity if their ambitions happen to be aligned with what 529s are helpful for, while being sure that it is not too harmful if they’re not aligned.

So what if they’re not aligned and they can’t use those funds in meaningful ways for their goals? Well, right now they can transfer it to a Roth; or transfer it to any family member. Those rules can change, but they’re more likely to be that way a while than they were a couple of years ago when those rules weren’t yet a thing; and even if they do change, I feel it is reasonably to expect that there will be similar-ish ways out, hopefully. Otherwise, they can use some of the funds to buy various roughly educational things, like computers and similar expenses. And otherwise, if it’s really terribly unaligned and the law changed so much that those funds are locked as heck, there’s always the possibility to cut our losses, and take them out paying the 10% penalty; but hopefully that won’t be needed, who knows.

[–] ritswd@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Oh, yeah, I’m glad you’re bringing that up, thanks; my state (Illinois) allows to deduct from state taxes up to $17k per year per account in donations, which ain’t bad, and is in fact more than I’d be willing to put in, I think. Which is useful, because it goes to show that even though I’m confused and feel like I have no idea what a good amount is, I do actually have some idea of an upper bound I probably wouldn’t go over.

 

We’re naturalized Americans with no family in the US, so we don’t have anyone to ask what they’re doing. Also, advice about it online is remarkably inconsistent, ranging from like $20 a month to $2000 a month. I understand that it’s because it is strongly dependent on personal finance and priorities, and nobody’s going to have a straight answer for me, but still, I am interested, what is everyone else doing, and what is the thinking that landed you on that number?

Obviously, I have no idea what my kids will want to be, so I can’t use that as signal. Doctor? Painting artist? Woodworker? Nobel-prize-winning physicist? Beats me!

Some details about my personal situation: I don’t really have any major financial goals except for this and my retirement (I own my house and it’s paid for). So, I can put some decent money in there, but this is competing with my retirement funds, and it’s important to me that I don’t depend on my own kids during my old age, so I don’t want to overdo it.

A thought I had, but I don’t know if it’s relevant: with the recent ability for kids to convert to a Roth IRA up to $35k with no penalties if they don’t use the funds, has that become the new golden number?

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