Poll of the Day > I'm in a catholic monastery.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I had to camp out in a thunder storm last night because I lost my debit card a few days ago and have almost zero cash, effectively making me dead broke and I needed a place to charge up my bike so after looking around in the first little town I came across and not finding anywhere I could I decided to head towards some church spires I could see in the distance.

Turned out to be an honest to goodness abbey, with monks and wine and a life sized Jesus hanging in the main room. Not only did they let me use their electricity but they invited me to have dinner with them and then stay the night in a special guestroom they have in the basement. Man, I've met a lot of nice people on this trip but this takes the cake.

How many dead children did they bury there secretly

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Huh. Thats pretty cool actually

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Fuck organized religion

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Jen0125 posted...

How many dead children did they bury there secretly

I'm in the middle of North Dakota so there aren't many people here to begin with so I can't imagine many.

Also since I'm using the abbey wifi to post this since I'm so far from civilization that my phone has lost reception and I can't use data, Iwant to make it clear I am only joking in case one of the Fathers or Brothers can see what websites I'm on and comes across this topic.

Greenfox111 posted...

Huh. Thats pretty cool actually

Apparently Catholics don't eat meat on fridays so I sas told it would probably be fish for dinner which I'm not a fan of but I'm sure it'll still be better than the gas station food I've been living off of the last two weeks.

Charge up your bike?

Reigning_King posted...

I'm in the middle of North Dakota

likely a few dozen at least

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tony8669 posted...

Charge up your bike?

I'm on an ebike. Honestly I'm in pretty bad shape physically so I really doubt I would have made it this far on a traditional bike, but it does come with downsides like each battery only getting about 35-40 miles before they die. Without all the gear I'm carrying weighing me down and making me incredibly unaerodynamic they can get me closer to 60 miles but oh well.

So yeah, I can't stray too far from the roads directly linking towns and have to sit around in said towns, usually in a public park or something recharging since if I run out of power in the countryside I'll be in very bad shape.

probably a cult
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After you had dinner and slept did you wake up with a burning sensation in ur butthole?
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Did you try to bang any nuns?

I recently developed a fantasy for this.

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thedeerzord posted...

Did you try to bang any nuns?

I recently developed a fantasy for this.

No nuns, there's only dudes here. Hmm that actually makes me wonder if they'd let a chick stay here or not... Anyways the food was great and they even let me sample some of their homemade wine. I'm not a big alchohol guy but it was pretty good. Man am I tired now though, time to go to sleep.

Are you wandering the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu at this point? Or is there some other backstory to how you just came to be in the area?

At any rate, sounds neat.

Reigning_King posted...

Apparently Catholics don't eat meat on fridays so I sas told it would probably be fish for dinner which I'm not a fan of but I'm sure it'll still be better than the gas station food I've been living off of the last two weeks.

Pretty sure that's just a Lent thing.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

probably a cult

Hopefully not a Lovecraftian death cult masquerading as Christians.

Reigning_King posted...

No nuns, there's only dudes here. Hmm that actually makes me wonder if they'd let a chick stay here or not... Anyways the food was great and they even let me sample some of their homemade wine. I'm not a big alchohol guy but it was pretty good. Man am I tired now though, time to go to sleep.

I imagine they probably would, since they're kinda big on offering shelter. However, I'm like 90% sure that monks and nuns don't co-habitate monasteries. I'm pretty sure nuns stay in abbeys.

Also I'm trying to remember who thedeerzord is, let alone why he'd block me. Guy seems to have some weird kinks, so maybe I'm better off not seeing his salacious posts.

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fish is meat
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Zeus posted...

Are you wandering the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu at this point? Or is there some other backstory to how you just came to be in the area?

I'm on a 2,600 miles (electric) bike ride across the western 3/4ths of the US going from east to west and traveling the northernmost tier of states. It's been going great up until the last few days when I lost my debit card (and I have so little cash that I'm effectively dead broke now) and now it seems one of my batteries has died on me, which will cut my range by about 60% which isn't good since the towns in Montana which is my next destination are extremely spread out. The stay with the monks was a good point though.

Oh yeah, another cool thing about losing the debit card is that even if I had the cash or paid for a motel room online I would still need to show them a card when I got there so they could charge me if I damaged the room or whatever. So that means I'm camping every night for the foreseeable future.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

fish is meat

You're meat.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

fish is meat

That's what I've been saying!

Reigning_King posted...

I'm on a 2,600 miles (electric) bike ride across the western 3/4ths of the US going from east to west and traveling the northernmost tier of states. It's been going great up until the last few days when I lost my debit card (and I have so little cash that I'm effectively dead broke now) and now it seems one of my batteries has died on me, which will cut my range by about 60% which isn't good since the towns in Montana which is my next destination are extremely spread out. The stay with the monks was a good point though.

That's a run of bad luck.

Reigning_King posted...

Oh yeah, another cool thing about losing the debit card is that even if I had the cash or paid for a motel room online I would still need to show them a card when I got there so they could charge me if I damaged the room or whatever. So that means I'm camping every night for the foreseeable future.

Aren't those pretty easy to replace? I saw banking ads where they walked them out to a guy's car. Otherwise, don't you have a credit card? Or was in that the same wallet or whatever?

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I have an account with a local (to my home town) credit union so the nearest branch is like 1,200 miles away. I did talk to them and have them cancel the old card and issue a new one, but the thing is I can't have one of my friends or family members pick it up for me since it can only be shipped/handed over to the account holder. They also can't tell me what the numbers on it are/activate it for me over the phone or email for obvious reasons.

The lady said they might be able to ship it to a P.O. box under my name, but since I'm traveling I would have to get a box several days ahead of me, in a city I've never seen, with money I don't have and hope it got there before I did. It's all a mess. Really the only reason I'm not literally starving at this point is because I happen to be carrying an ancient Walmart giftcard in my wallet and have been using that to stock up on food for several days at a time.

My plan to save myself is that I downloaded the PayPal app a few days ago and started a transfer of a few hundred dollars directly from my credit union to it. When the money hits on Monday (I hope) I should be able to withdraw it as cash from a walmart or a few other places apparently. It won't solve everything but at least I can spend that cash almost anywhere instead of being forced to only buy stuff at one store.

Glad to see your decision making has matured over the years.

Cacciato posted...

Glad to see your decision making has matured over the years.

I'm currently laying(freezing)in a wet tent in a wet sleeping bag in a hidden nook alongside the perimeter of a national park that is known to have bobcats, coyotes, rattlesnakes, bison, and other animals that could maim me because I didn't have the $15 to spare to get into the park proper. I also have a ton of food including meat in the bags on my bike 5 feet from the tent.

I don't feel like my decision making has improved much.

Reigning_King posted...

I have an account with a local (to my home town) credit union so the nearest branch is like 1,200 miles away.

Oof. That's another reason why I'd only ever use a national bank.

Reigning_King posted...

Really the only reason I'm not literally starving at this point is because I happen to be carrying an ancient Walmart giftcard in my wallet and have been using that to stock up on food for several days at a time.

Again, why don't you have a credit card? >_>

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Zeus posted...

Again, why don't you have a credit card? >_>

Because I'm not the type of person to ever buy something I can't afford. I've also never taken out a loan for the same reason. Ironically this makes financial institutions and other people see me as untrustworthy, since I haven't let them screw me with interest and fees, but that's a whole nother issue.

Besides, if I did have a credit card in some alternative universe I probably would have just lost it at the same time and place, unless you're saying I should carry around multiple cards which I find extremely silly. except in this fringe case of me losing one, other than that it would just be redundant.

So it's halfway through Monday and nothing had changed so I looked into it and apparently the transfer I started last Friday in the PayPal app just didn't go through for some inexplicable reason. It worked on their website, but that means I have to live off $16 on a walmart gift card (the nearest walmart in the direction I'm traveling being over 100 miles away) and about half a days worth of snacks that I have on me for at the very least 3 days.

This is going to be fun.

[in a monastery] wow... it's just like the house in fata morgana

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Kanatteru posted...

[in a monastery] wow... it's just like the house in fata morgana

Now if I came across an old abandoned mansion/monastery out in the middle of nowhere with a cute, if creepy maid I would totally call off the trip and stay there. I don't even care that it would end in tragedy.

Reigning_King posted...

Because I'm not the type of person to ever buy something I can't afford.

so get a debit card
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Krazy_Kirby posted...

so get a debit card

Reigning_King posted...

I lost my debit card

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Reigning_King posted...

I don't feel like my decision making has improved much.

Oh yeah I was being sarcastic. I definitely agree it hasnt.

Cacciato posted...

Oh yeah I was being sarcastic. I definitely agree it hasnt.

It has arguably gotten worse considering I quit my job and let my lease run out before doing this so if things really keep going sideways I'm actually boned.

Huh, now that I think of it I guess that means that I'm actually a homeless person right now.

Reigning_King posted...

Because I'm not the type of person to ever buy something I can't afford

It has nothing to do with buying something you can't afford. Credit cards make more sense than using debit.

Plus debits have advances, so even that logic doesn't fly.

Reigning_King posted...

Besides, if I did have a credit card in some alternative universe I probably would have just lost it at the same time and place, unless you're saying I should carry around multiple cards which I find extremely silly. except in this fringe case of me losing one, other than that it would just be redundant.

There are countless ways to just lose one card. The only way you lose both if you misplace your wallet.

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You could go back an join the monastery.

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Zeus posted...

Credit cards make more sense than using debit.

Nope. This is just American brainwashing, same with cars being the end all, be all form of transportation. They want people to think like this so they can get you sucked into their system and pile up debt and intrest payments and mortgages. No thanks to any of that.

Reigning_King posted...

Nope. This is just American brainwashing, same with cars being the end all, be all form of transportation. They want people to think like this so they can get you sucked into their system and pile up debt and intrest payments and mortgages. No thanks to any of that.

That's the stupidest fucking deranged brainwashed absolute drivel and hogwash I've heard in a long time. I've had a credit card for longer than most of this board's users have been alive and I've never once been "sucked into their system and piled up debt and [interest] payments" and... what, did you say mortgages? This whole fucking thing is a rib, isn't it? Got me there!

I guess it had to been a joke, because nobody would believe that nonsense. A credit card is superior to a debit card by most objective metrics. The two are broadly treated the same by retailers (so credit or debit you face the same penalties when there are penalties) except credit cards have far more perks including a greater number of protections, far less potential for disruption when something goes wrong, rewards of all kinds, etc. Offhand, I can't remember the last time I've used a debit card to pay for anything because, really, why would I?


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Im kinda worried for you

Maybe consider trying to settle somewhere and look for some short term work?

There are a lot of people out there that might be willing to work with you or cut you a break if they see that you are trying

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Zeus posted...

That's the stupidest fucking deranged brainwashed absolute drivel and hogwash I've heard in a long time. I've had a credit card for longer than most of this board's users have been alive and I've never once been "sucked into their system and piled up debt and [interest] payments" and... what, did you say mortgages? This whole fucking thing is a rib, isn't it? Got me there!

Clearly my insight has caused so much cognitive dissonance within you that you couldn't understand my post. Credit cards have nothing to do with mortgages, at least not directly, but it's all part of the same financial system designed to exploit most while truly benefiting few. People in the states call the social credit system China is implementing ridiculous and dystopian, while participating in an even more dystopian system that they can't even recognize since it has been in place for so long here and they've been conditioned to accept it as normal.

Imagine being denied a job or housing you're qualified for or can prove you can pay for just because you haven't borrowed enough money from the banks and lived life consuming more than you need. You don't have to imagine it, since that's actually how it is.

Reigning_King posted...

Clearly my insight has caused so much cognitive dissonance within you that you couldn't understand my post. Credit cards have nothing to do with mortgages, at least not directly, but it's all part of the same financial system designed to exploit most while truly benefiting few. People in the states call the social credit system China is implementing ridiculous and dystopian, while participating in an even more dystopian system that they can't even recognize since it has been in place for so long here and they've been conditioned to accept it as normal.

Imagine being denied a job or housing you're qualified for or can prove you can pay for just because you haven't borrowed enough money from the banks and lived life consuming more than you need. You don't have to imagine it, since that's actually how it is.

If you don't have the money for a house then you're not qualified to own one by definition. That's why credit exists.
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Zeus posted...

That's the stupidest fucking deranged brainwashed absolute drivel and hogwash I've heard in a long time. I've had a credit card for longer than most of this board's users have been alive and I've never once been "sucked into their system and piled up debt and [interest] payments" and... what, did you say mortgages? This whole fucking thing is a rib, isn't it? Got me there!

I guess it had to been a joke, because nobody would believe that nonsense. A credit card is superior to a debit card by most objective metrics. The two are broadly treated the same by retailers (so credit or debit you face the same penalties when there are penalties) except credit cards have far more perks including a greater number of protections, far less potential for disruption when something goes wrong, rewards of all kinds, etc.

Credit cards are able to offer those benefits because of people that are sucked into their system that rack up interest payments. Certainly, it's not that hard to avoid ever paying interest on credit cards (by basically treating them as a debit card with an extra step and paying down any balance you accumulate before your statement is due), but the entire model is designed to prey on people that lack the impulse control, financial planning ability, or financial stability to stick to that process. If it weren't, it wouldn't be profitable enough to be worth offering the service, let alone offering it with all of the added benefits that you're enjoying.

Zeus posted...

Offhand, I can't remember the last time I've used a debit card to pay for anything because, really, why would I?

I mostly only ever use mine at Costco (because they only accept Mastercard for credit and I only have a Visa) and small businesses. The former because they only accept Mastercard and I only have a Visa, and the latter because credit fees hurt small businesses a lot more than debit fees do, in many cases, and I'd rather give them more support than earn slightly more rewards on a relatively small purchase.

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Revelation34 posted...

If you don't have the money for a house then you're not qualified to own one by definition. That's why credit exists.

you should be able to purchase it by proving you have enough steady income
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Yeah, very few people buying houses actually have the capital to be able to buy them outright. Being approved for a mortgage is not a matter of having enough money for the house, it's about making enough money to pay off the house within the terms of the mortgage.

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Housing prices are way too fucking high anyways because of artificial scarcity and other forms of manipulation for them to even be brought up as a valid point for anything.

Around here SO MANY people are living in RVs in the suburbs. Just parked on side streets and around houses mostly. Some people dont like them and want them gone but its better than homelessness at least

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Reigning_King posted...

Clearly my insight has caused so much cognitive dissonance within you that you couldn't understand my post. Credit cards have nothing to do with mortgages, at least not directly, but it's all part of the same financial system designed to exploit most while truly benefiting few. People in the states call the social credit system China is implementing ridiculous and dystopian, while participating in an even more dystopian system that they can't even recognize since it has been in place for so long here and they've been conditioned to accept it as normal.

Imagine being denied a job or housing you're qualified for or can prove you can pay for just because you haven't borrowed enough money from the banks and lived life consuming more than you need. You don't have to imagine it, since that's actually how it is.

I like that you respond to me criticizing your weird rant with another weird rant. iirc, your credit rating has limited impact on hiring and it's more a matter if you have bankruptcies in your personal history. As for buying a home, obviously credit SHOULD directly factor into that because they have to look at some loans to determine how good of a prospect you are for other loans, but you can buy a home without a loan, so that's technically irrelevant. Even with apartments, you can just pay upfront at the start of a term to get around that.

adjl posted...

Credit cards are able to offer those benefits because of people that are sucked into their system that rack up interest payments. Certainly, it's not that hard to avoid ever paying interest on credit cards (by basically treating them as a debit card with an extra step and paying down any balance you accumulate before your statement is due), but the entire model is designed to prey on people that lack the impulse control, financial planning ability, or financial stability to stick to that process. If it weren't, it wouldn't be profitable enough to be worth offering the service, let alone offering it with all of the added benefits that you're enjoying.

They make money on the transactions themselves, not just on the interest payments from those transactions. And some of the tangible benefits have nothing to do with their ability to "afford" the benefit, but more to do with their strength -- such as you have greater protections because they can chargeback retailers who can't do shit. And it's actually worse than that for the retailer, because they can impose additional fees on retailers who have excessive chargebacks at which point the retailer struggles with profitability.

Other benefits like airline miles cost them basically nothing. It's just the cashback that takes from their pocket, because they're giving money back to the consumer.

However, and much more importantly, most credit cards are embedded within other companies *because* those companies want to avoid suffering transaction fees. As for the profits they make on interest, keep in mind they also lose money on non-payments.

Reigning_King posted...

Housing prices are way too fucking high anyways because of artificial scarcity

What?

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Reigning_King posted...

I'm on an ebike. Honestly I'm in pretty bad shape physically so I really doubt I would have made it this far on a traditional bike, but it does come with downsides like each battery only getting about 35-40 miles before they die. Without all the gear I'm carrying weighing me down and making me incredibly unaerodynamic they can get me closer to 60 miles but oh well.

So yeah, I can't stray too far from the roads directly linking towns and have to sit around in said towns, usually in a public park or something recharging since if I run out of power in the countryside I'll be in very bad shape.

So is it like you're pedaling and it assists you, or are you pretty much just steering while it does everything?

tony8669 posted...

So is it like you're pedaling and it assists you, or are you pretty much just steering while it does everything?

It has five levels of pedal assist and a throttle so I can do either. However since using full power burns through the battery extremely quickly, it was rare that I ever rode on anything but the minimum amount of assistance which only helped enough to mitigate the high weight of the bike and my cargo.

Based on some testing I did going full throttle on relatively flat land would drain the battery after a mere 20 miles or so, which would be about 1.25-1.50 hours of riding. It takes about 6 hours to fully charge the battery and there were many, many times I was in areas where there were no places to charge the bike that frequently or for that long. Riding on the lowest level of assist would let me travel roughly 45-50 miles based on things like wind and hills over the course of 4-5 hours so it evened things out much better. I would often try to stop after about 30 miles and charge it for an hour or two at a time to add some extra miles to the total instead of charging it all at once too, unless I knew I was planning on staying somewhere with electricity that night.

You're in a catholic monastery? Taking your creepy thoughts about children to the next level, huh?

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Zeus posted...

They make money on the transactions themselves, not just on the interest payments from those transactions.

In which case, you're paying for them anyway because retailers have to raise prices to account for transaction fees (that, or you're relying on businesses paying for them for you, but that's generally not a good way to do business). However you slice it, any benefits you aren't actually paying for come out of other people's interest payments.

Zeus posted...

And some of the tangible benefits have nothing to do with their ability to "afford" the benefit, but more to do with their strength -- such as you have greater protections because they can chargeback retailers who can't do s***.

They're able to do that because of their buying power, which is entirely a consequence of how much money they have (much of which comes from interest payments).

Zeus posted...

Other benefits like airline miles cost them basically nothing.

No such thing as a free lunch. If anyone is giving something away, it comes at another cost somewhere else in supply chain (a cost which is greater than the benefit you receive, since whoever's doling out those benefits will want their own cut).

Zeus posted...

As for the profits they make on interest, keep in mind they also lose money on non-payments.

Yes, it's certainly not a risk-free endeavour, but I'm sure you're not actually going to try to argue that Visa and Mastercard struggle to turn profits and that any benefits their cards offer you comprise them sacrificing their profit margin out of the goodness of their hearts. They're making truckloads of money; the benefits they offer you are a small slice of it.

This is not to say that you won't ultimately see a net personal benefit from the bonuses offered by credit cards if you're careful to avoid paying interest, but don't pretend that you aren't enjoying those benefits on the backs of people that are mired in debt.

Zeus posted...

What?

A relatively small subset of people/companies buy up a relatively large subset of real estate, then rent it out at a premium they can only demand because of how little is left. Home ownership would be significantly more accessible if not for the rental industry driving up property prices and ensuring people spend too much on rent to be able to amass a down payment for a property they could otherwise afford. "Artificial scarcity" might not be the most accurate way to describe the situation, but it gets the point across.

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adjl posted...

In which case, you're paying for them anyway because retailers have to raise prices to account for transaction fees (that, or you're relying on businesses paying for them for you, but that's generally not a good way to do business).

Technically, but at that point either way you're paying the increased prices so it's the choice of getting something back or not getting something back. And, at a conceptual level, it's not much different from any other cost of doing business and, compared to other things, that's a relatively small one.

adjl posted...

However you slice it, any benefits you aren't actually paying for come out of other people's interest payments.

No, by your own admission they don't. It's coming from the transaction fee, which most benefits directly relate to. Part of the percentage they claim is being kicked back to you.

Granted, all money is ultimately fungible, but the way that it's structured, that's a more logical conclusion. (Whereas the interest payments would logically be used to cover the fact they're loaning money.)

adjl posted...

They're able to do that because of their buying power, which is entirely a consequence of how much money they have (much of which comes from interest payments).

That's a pretty massive stretch. Their buying power relies less on "how much money they have" and more on the overall userbase. Even if a credit card company had trillions, their "buying power" wouldn't mean shit unless enough consumers were using their card.

And in a perfect world where everybody paid their bills in full, a credit card company's power would STILL be the same (minus the portion of the userbase that can't pay its bills who wouldn't be buying).

adjl posted...

No such thing as a free lunch. If anyone is giving something away, it comes at another cost somewhere else in supply chain (a cost which is greater than the benefit you receive, since whoever's doling out those benefits will want their own cut).

...the cost of free miles is negligible because it's a benefit they get for almost nothing. And it's either miles or a % back, so that's still a result of transaction fees to the retailer.

adjl posted...

Yes, it's certainly not a risk-free endeavour, but I'm sure you're not actually going to try to argue that Visa and Mastercard struggle to turn profits and that any benefits their cards offer you comprise them sacrificing their profit margin out of the goodness of their hearts. They're making truckloads of money; the benefits they offer you are a small slice of it.

I'm arguing that the interest payments are necessary for any actual loan because of the nature of loans. However, they're both making and losing on the loans whereas they only profit on transaction fees.

adjl posted...

This is not to say that you won't ultimately see a net personal benefit from the bonuses offered by credit cards if you're careful to avoid paying interest, but don't pretend that you aren't enjoying those benefits on the backs of people that are mired in debt.

I'm not "pretending" because that's not happening. Diners club cards -- the prototype for credit cards -- offered benefits, yet they didn't have a major debt-interest structure. The idea that the debt-interest structure is somehow essential to the benefits is a conflation of facts.

adjl posted...

A relatively small subset of people/companies buy up a relatively large subset of real estate, then rent it out at a premium they can only demand because of how little is left. Home ownership would be significantly more accessible if not for the rental industry driving up property prices and ensuring people spend too much on rent to be able to amass a down payment for a property they could otherwise afford. "Artificial scarcity" might not be the most accurate way to describe the situation, but it gets the point across.

The problem with that assessment is that a portion of the rental market were always unlikely to be homeowners so you can't blame the rental market for it. The larger issue is government driving up the costs of homes via regulation, zoning, fees, taxes, and everything else. And you can clearly see that when you don't have those government influences and the costs go way, way down to completely unbelievable levels. That said, *any* land in a major metropolitan area will have a lot of demand -- rentals or not -- so pricing will always be an issue. And the closer something is to the center of the area, the more it's going to be valued. That's a natural function of the market.

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