I just finished the sublime Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset, in the Tiina Nunnally translation. If you have any interest in the medieval period or specifically medieval rural Norway, it really brings that setting to life and this is reason enough to give it a try. Much more than that though, it deals with so many profound themes -- mostly related to family and faith -- in a very natural and poignant way. I feel like reading it gave me one big long meditation running parallel to my life, to which my mind would dip in and out throughout all sorts of other goings on (it took me almost a year to finish). I would say the cumulative effect was transformative.
Your global figure includes both donations and value of time donated ([2], pg.8)
Your US figure ([1]) doesn't say anything about value of time donated so I'd assume it is not included.
Finally, the metric where Netherlands and Switzerland come out on top in [3] is in size of philanthropic assets vs GDP. This is noteworthy for sure but is a an entirely different thing than amount of yearly donations.
I'm not sure that ruling really has the impact you say it does here. That ruling held that of the 8,000 plaintiffs in the class action suit, only 1,853 had standing because their incorrect credit reports were actually sent to businesses. The remaining 6,332 did not have standing because although their files were incorrect, this incorrect information was never transmitted to anyone (I am getting this from scotusblog coverage). I wouldn't call this a very, very high bar to clear.
It is a joke based on Aquinas' style of answering questions. He begins with a handful of "objections" that take the opposite position to the one he eventually lands on. To take a random example, "Whether a man is bound to give thanks to every benefactor?" (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q106.A3)
That quote is from the Bluetooth standardisation group’s response. They are clearly trying to downplay the seriousness with their choice of language here. “All within a narrow time window” is, generally speaking, something computers are capable of handling. I have no idea from that statement how easy/tricky this attack is. Also, is it really necessary to block transmissions, or can the attacker just “get lucky” and have his transmissions received first? (Honest question, I have no idea)
Well, by my Maths, 10^18 would require close to 7,000 trees for every square meter of dry land on the planet Earth. Even if we allow the use of Bonsai, that would be a stretch :)
Not sure if you are aware of this or not but Form 8938 is different from FBAR. FBAR is filed with the department of the treasury and the threshold is only $10,000.
Ugh, regarding the lack of such a twentieth century visionary, look up Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin for an idea of what such a thing might have looked like!
Ha! I got my own name when I first landed on the site. For a second there I thought the real story was that they'd somehow exploited a third party cookie but it appears to be a coincidence.
Well, and I don't think this is a nitpick, a recession is not the same as a depression. It would be good to get the original source for both of these facts to compare. Perhaps during recession, the number of "failures" is not increased quite enough to create the "generally accepted reason for failure" you might find in a depression.
Honest question, what problems do you think this would solve?
Is it that you don't want people to have children until they are financially capable of supporting them?
It is indeed a grave responsibility to provide for one's offspring while they are still in the brood. But the upside of the situation, even in the unfortunate circumstance where one cannot make such financial provision, is no less than the creation of a brand new, fully conscious member of the human species, capable of experiencing the full wonder and surprise of being, who otherwise would have no chance of ever existing at all.
Furthermore, and here I risk delving into platitudes, children are quite literally the future of society. The continued production of children at a healthy clip is absolutely essential to the continuation of all the things we, as humans, value highest.
Hence it seems deranged to me to be so afraid of any monetary hardship that one should seek to positively disincentivize childbearing with such a broad and punitive measure. You are tampering with processes of infinite value and you do so at infinite risk.
As a smaller, more concrete objection, what about those who are initially of sound bank account, but then fall into hardship sometime after they've commenced in their procreative endeavours? Are they to be punished as well? In light of this possibility, why not take the opposite tack, and instead reward every new human life with a large gift to help pay for the cost of the upbringing?
For this kind of transfer I recently discovered and have saved tons of money using TransferWise. Their model is to charge a moderate upfront fee (0.5% for £200 and up), but then after that they complete the currency conversion always at the exact mid-market rate. The fee may sound like a lot at first, but as you discovered, all the banks "hide" their fee in atrocious exchange rates, such as the 4% mark-up you experienced.
On the contrary, as Ambrose says (De Offic. iii, 10): "In all contracts the defects of the salable commodity must be stated; and unless the seller make them known, although the buyer has already acquired a right to them, the contract is voided on account of the fraudulent action."[0]
It is altogether sinful to have recourse to deceit in order to sell a thing for more than its just price, because this is to deceive one's neighbor so as to injure him.[1]
It seems to me, generally in the case of publicly traded securities, that you may assume that your counterparty in any trade has access to all the same information you do in making their decision to buy what you are selling or to sell what you are buying.
However, this assumption no longer holds if you knowingly make use of insider information in making a trade. In this case, it is more likely than not that the counterparty to your trade does not hold the same information that you do, and hence executing such a trade can rightly be called fraudulent.
An obvious exception would be that you can make the same trade, off-exchange, with someone you know personally and to whom you can privately relate the relevant insider information before making the trade. Is this the type of circumstance you meant when you said "merely trading based on insider knowledge... there is no deception"?