Darkoshi

I've found out the following about Ring's Neighbors app:

You can install and use the app without having any Ring devices:
https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005447323-Joining-Ring-Neighbors-without-a-Ring-Device

Once you install the app and set up your account, you can also log in from a browser on a computer. You can view and post to your feed from either the app or your computer.

In the app you enter your address, which controls what messages you see on your feed. The default area for which you get messages is a circle of some large radius centered on your address. You can customize it to a smaller polygonal area by means of 8 draggable vertices.

I believe you can create an account at ring.com without using the app, but I think the rest won't work unless you set it up in the app first. When you login via a computer, if it doesn't take you directly to your feed, look for the link labeled "Neighborhood Web".

From what I've seen so far, unlike Nextdoor, the post topics are limited to safety, crime, and lost/found pets. Neighbors by Ring Community Guidelines indicates what kind of content is allowed.

How Public Safety Agencies Use Neighbors (ring.com)
A Helpful Guide to Request for Assistance Posts (Posts by Public Safety Agencies) (ring.com)

Ring's police problem never went away. Here's what you still need to know (CNET - 2021/09/27)
You shared Ring footage with police. They may share it, too (CNET - 2019/09/04)

Things like this always slow me down when doing my taxes, even though I keep notes so as to not have to look up things I've already determined in prior years.

Based on what I've read (sources listed below):

Credit card rewards are considered rebates and not taxable.
Credit card sign-up bonuses are also considered rebates and not taxable, as long as they required spending some amount to get the rebate.

Bank account sign-up bonuses, as they typically don't require spending any money, are taxable.
Bank bonuses for referring friends, as they typically don't require spending any money, are taxable.

This makes me wonder about cell-phone plan (and such) bonuses for referring friends. I would deduce that because you can only get these bonuses while you are a paying customer of the cell-phone company, the bonuses are considered rebates and not taxable.

I have a reloadable pre-paid Bluebird card. Last year, Bluebird gave me a $30 bonus for having direct-deposited my IRS tax refund to the card account.
Based on what I read, I deduce that it is taxable, and that it should be included under the line for "Other Income" on Schedule 1. Oh, the irony.



https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/are-credit-card-rewards-taxable
https://thepointsguy.com/news/tax-on-rewards-ruling/

https://www.classaction.org/blog/are-class-action-lawsuit-settlements-taxable

..

OMG. Some things make me laugh.

Publication 17, Tax Guide 2022

Bribes. If you receive a bribe, include it in your income.

Ah, page 71-72 specifically discusses lawsuit settlement amounts in the section "Court awards and damages".

Hmm, I wouldn't have guessed this:
Found property. If you find and keep property that doesn’t belong to you that has been lost or abandoned (treasure trove), it’s taxable to you at its fair market value in the first year it’s your undisputed possession.

Oh jeez, this oddity is taxable and even has it's own section in the tax guide?
Free tour. If you received a free tour from a travel agency for organizing a group of tourists,
you must include its value in your income...

OMG! LOL!
Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

Dang. Every time you sell a used item of yours, you're supposed to report it:
Sale of personal items. If you sold an item you owned for personal use, such as a car, refrigerator, furniture, stereo, jewelry, or silverware, your gain is taxable as a capital gain. Report it as explained in the Instructions for Schedule D (Form 1040).

Thank you IRS, for making this task amusing, even though reading this is delaying me from actually starting:
Stolen property. If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.

I was finally warmed up enough, feeling nice and toasty. But then lying in bed, felt hungry. It's late enough in the day now that I really ought to be up, even though I got only 4.5 hours of sleep.

There's a Nextdoor post about a recent break-in in the neighborhood. The burglar must not have been able to completely kick the door in, but enough so to make a hole big enough to reach inside to unlock it.

That reminded me of an undone item on my to-do list, installing longer screws on my doors' strike plates and hinges. As well as replacing some of the strike plates, apparently.

So I thought that maybe I could get started on that today. Should be easy, right? Drill the holes deeper, replace some screws... (I'd forgotten the part about replacing the strike plates.)

Being low on sleep seems to make me feel a greater sense of urgency about random things like this. Like my brain is less able to moderate impulses. Sometimes it helps me get things done. Sometimes it side-tracks me from doing things that I ought to have been doing instead.

Now where did I put those long screws? And do I have any drill bits here, or did I take all the good ones to Qiao's house when I was putting up the extra hooks on his porch?

Ten minutes ago (an hour ago now as I post this) I heard what sounded like gunshots, 6 in total, much closer than usual. After the initial shock, I looked out a bedroom window (thinking to myself, this really isn't the smart thing to do; that would be to get away from the windows. But I was curious.)
There was something odd going on 2 houses down. It looked like a car parked in the street, and then another one drove up and parked. It's hard to tell as it is dark; maybe they are on the side of the road, not in it. There was a flashlight flickering by their driveway. Maybe it's unrelated to the shot noises.

I anticipated hearing police sirens. But no, it's been quiet since then. I guess no one called the police.

No dogs barking, even.

Now I'm wondering if it could have possibly been a car engine back-firing. But, no. It wasn't anything like that.

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This evening's news was somewhat bewildering.

An escaped inmate was shot dead by a homeowner after breaking through her back door and coming to her bedroom door with a knife. (That sounds like an ad for the NRA.)

An motorcyclist driving on the interstate shot at a car with 6 people in it, including 2 kids and a baby.
(Why??) (That sounds like an ad against guns.)

An intruder was trying to drown their grandson in the bathroom (WTF?) so the homeowner shot him, but then police shot the homeowner. (That sounds like... uh...) Wait a minute, that story is from August. Why did they report it on TV tonight?

During one of the clips on President Bush's funeral, I had the sudden thought. When Trump dies someday, flags will be lowered to half-mast for a month for him, too. Whoa.

Hearing reports about the current opioid epidemic has always made me wonder how bad it is compared to the crack and cocaine epidemics in the 1980s and 90s. So I found some graphs with statistics.

Drug Epidemics: Now and Then - the 3rd graph shows the overdose death rates from 1970 to 2005. The rates increased about 700% during that time, while the first 2 graphs show that it continued to increase steeply since then.

Unlike the current opioid epidemic – which has captured our attention due to the number of overdoses – deaths directly associated with crack ingestion were minimal. Overdose deaths associated with crack did increase from the early 80’s to the early 90’s, but the numbers pale in comparison to opioid overdoses today. It was the indirect effects of crack that proved to be so devastating.
...
The consequence was significantly increased homicides, particularly in adolescents. Plus, strict new drug laws plucked inner-city residents from their homes and communities and sent them to jail for many years, making it even more difficult for the families left behind. This also made it hard to integrate back into society following a felony drug charge. Taken together with actual drug overdoses, it’s likely that the crack epidemic cost as many lives if not more than what society is witnessing today with the opioid epidemic.

Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever - has a graph showing drug overdose deaths from 1980 to 2016.

Homicide trends in the United States - lots of graphs and statistics about homicides in the U.S. between 1976 and 2005. Homicide rates spiked up during the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and have mostly decreased since then. (Unfortunately, the links in the PDF don't seem to work.)

Crime in the United States (1995–2014) - a table showing reduction in violent crime during that time period.

So in summary, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s there weren't that many overdoses, but were a lot of homicides, many of which were gang and drug-related. Whereas now, there are about half as many homicides, but way more overdose deaths.

I was reading about Kalief Browder, who at the age of 16 was incarcerated for 3 years in New York after having been accused of a robbery which he denied committing. Due to backlogs in the court system and multiple delays requested by the prosecutors, he never even got to have a trial during that whole time. During his imprisonment, he was beaten by guards and fellow inmates, and spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. He was finally released after prosecutors admitted that they had lost contact with the man who had accused him of the crime. After being released, Kalief suffered mental illness and ended up committing suicide two years later.

2 years and 10 months after being jailed, a judge had offered to release Kalief based on the time he had already served, if he plead guilty to two misdemeanors. Kalief refused. How many other people, even if innocent, would refuse that? How many people, after having been wrongly jailed for almost 3 years and having a chance to finally go free, would trust the system enough to want to risk being wrongly convicted and incarcerated for another 10 years? And yet, pleading guilty will result in a criminal record, and will make it difficult for you to get a job or to get an apartment for the rest of your life, and will make people think that you got what you deserved (rather than recognizing the horrible injustice you suffered). You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

And that is only one small aspect of how our criminal justice system is not working like it should.

Innocent until proven guilty is a myth, isn't it?

How many innocent people are jailed or put to death?
How much racial disparity is there in arrests and convictions?
How many people commit minor misdemeanors and end up having to pay huge fees and court costs?
How does our justice system reform criminals? How many people who serve time are actually less likely to commit another crime afterwards, versus more likely?
How many people who commit crimes aren't ever even charged, convicted, or jailed?
How much likelier is it for you to have access to a good defense attorney and to be exonerated of a crime, when you are rich versus poor?
If you are convicted of a serious crime, how likely is it for you to be released before you've served your whole sentence, because keeping you in prison costs too much?
When the government hands over the running of prisons to private companies who are only interested in making money, how can we ensure that these companies uphold minimum standards and respect the inmates' human rights?
How can we expect people who have served their time to move on to a law-abiding life, when their criminal record makes it hard for them to get a job? Yet, can you blame people for not wanting to hire ex-cons? Especially when the criminal justice system isn't focused on reforming criminals, but rather on punishing them and turning them into more hardened criminals?

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I was reading about VoIP. Neither VoIP nor cell-phones allow you to receive incoming collect calls. That must make it difficult for a lot of inmates to call home. If their friends and family can't afford land-lines, how can the inmates call home? I did a search and found that there is a service that allows you to get a phone number whereby collect calls can be redirected to your cellphone or VoIP phone number. The website doesn't at all mention how much this service costs, which makes me think that it must be expensive.

I was further struck by this entry in the website FAQ:

If the prison specifically prohibits calls to cell phones, third-party or relayed calls, can I still us Just Talk?

Yes. Just Talk has a VOIP service that can offer significant savings while still complying with prison regulations prohibiting calls to cell phones, for third-party or relayed calls, such as the Arizona Department of Corrections order 1.4.2.

So most prisons only allow outgoing collect calls, but some also restrict you from using this kind of service to call a cell phone? Why??? I looked up information on these Arizona Dept. of Corrections rules.

The document indicates:
Inmates may not have a telephone card or cell phone and do not have access to email.
Inmates may only call people on their visitation list - this list may contain up to 20 people.
Before any of these people are allowed to visit or be called, they have to submit an application and be approved, a process which takes 40 to 60 days and requires a $25 background check fee.
These are not allowed: "Calls that are relayed from the number called to another number (i.e., third party calls), credit card calls and calls to 800 and 900 phone numbers."

In retrospect, I suppose those kind of calls are not allowed as it would be too easy to transfer a cell phone (etc.) to someone *not* on the approved visitation list.

Then I found this 2011 article, Prisons seek ally in crackdown on cellphones. Apparently, a lot of inmates are getting their hands on contraband cell phones. The prisons want to install equipment to block the cell phone signals, so that inmates will be forced to use the official pay phones provided for outgoing calls.

There's another issue. Why can't prisons even prevent inmates from getting their hands on contraband items? How many prison employees are illicitly making money by providing these contraband items to the inmates?
Why can't prisons prevent inmate-on-inmate violence?

In movies and shows like Criminal Minds, when women or girls are the victims, most of their on-screen time is spent crying, pleading/begging, whimpering, and screaming.

Whereas when men are the victims, they do much less of that.

Is there anything in real life to corroborate those kind of portrayals? Would a typical woman in that kind of a situation really act like that? Or is it mostly myth? It seems very unreal to me, and grates on my nerves.

When women are the victims, there are frequent cuts between the rest of show's action, to these scenes of crying, whimpering, etc. It is as if those sounds are meant to spur on the people trying to find and save them, or meant to provide a feeling of suspense for the viewers. It's like, oh those poor women are so helpless and in such danger, they must be saved, and quickly!

Wouldn't a real person, regardless of gender, spend more time struggling and trying to escape, as well as trying to verbally reason with their abductor, rather than crying and whimpering? Why are women portrayed as being so emotionally active and physically passive?

New Police Strategy in New York – Sexual Assault Against Peaceful Protestors

Interesting police tactic... provoke protestors into attacking them or defending each other, so that the police will have "reason" to use force and arrest them.

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I think that having a police force is generally necessary. And I think there are probably a lot of good police officers doing good work in many places, which one doesn't hear much about. But the more I hear, read, and experience, the more I feel that police and law-enforcement are at best, of not much use, and at worst, dangerous thugs to be avoided.

(That's not very different from my default view of humans, actually. It's not until I get to know people that I start thinking they may be nice, interesting, etc. But even then,... different topic.)


I grew up with the viewpoint that police are a force of good, there to fight crime and help people. That if you were the victim of a crime or a witness, that you should report it, and that the police would then proceed to take care of the problem (to the best of their ability).

Now, I'm finding myself agreeing with the viewpoint of Lisbeth Salander in the Dragon Tattoo books - that one may as well take matters into one's own hands rather than relying on the police to protect you.

If you're the victim of a crime, sure, the police may come to take a report. And they may go through some motions of looking into the problem. But is anything good going to come of it? Probably not. In the unlikely event that the perpetrator of the crime is identified, caught, convicted and incarcerated, they'll eventually get out of prison and most likely still be a potential future threat to you and other people. One may as well stock up on self-defense weapons, locks, surveillance cameras and alarms - in fact (::nudging self::), one should do that to begin with, not after the fact.

If you're not the victim of a crime, the only interactions you're likely to have with the police are ones where from the police's viewpoint, you're the suspect of a crime or an adversary in some way. In that scenario, the police are even more dangerous than regular criminals, because legally, it seems that you're not even allowed to physically defend yourself from the police. Criminals can't legally lock you in jail like police can.

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Gah. I already avoid watching the news, to avoid getting into more of a funk than I already am. I need, really NEED to stop myself from reading web pages like that too. I have this urge to "know about things" that are going on in the world. But there's no POINT for me in being aware of bad things going on in the world. It doesn't improve my life in any way. I NEED to stick my head in the sand, even though doing that doesn't make life feel any better. Reading about bad things going on in the world just wastes my time and makes me feel worse.

Even writing entries like these just wastes my time and doesn't improve my life in any way.

Every f*ing thing about life just wastes my time.

Time which has no better use anyway, than to be wasted.

But I should at least try to avoid those activities that make my mind hurt more than otherwise.

I used Google Translate to check what the Swedish title (Män som hatar kvinnor) of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" means. As I typed the words, I seemed to recall that kvinnor means "women". But the translation displayed as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". In fact, even "hatar kvinnor" by itself was translated as "Dragon Tattoo". Not-Very-Helpful, oh ye translating tool! I quite doubt that is how one says Dragon Tattoo in Swedish. Only by entering each word separately did it give me the presumably correct translation "Men who hate women".

The title of the 2nd book "Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden", does literally translate to "The Girl Who Played with Fire".

The title of the 3rd book "Luftslottet Som Sprängdes" (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) seems to mean "The Air Castle that was Blown (Up?)". No weirdness with that translation.

I finished reading the first book today. I'm not planning to watch any of the movies until I finish the books.

( Spoilers... )

I have a "private" street light right outside my fence, pointing in over my front yard. It illuminates the whole front yard and driveway, as well as part of the street, at night. I was thinking, it might be nice to just use my front porch light and the lights on the garage for illumination. That way, I could turn them off whenever I want to look up at the stars, or when I want to sit outside at night without being exposed by the light. That way, I could leave the window and curtain in the bedroom open in the summer, to let more air in, without the bright light shining in too.

But it makes me uncomfortable, thinking of the front yard being as dark as the back yard is, at night. The garage lights would not be nearly as illuminating as the street light. It would bother me, looking out the window, and not being able to see if someone was out there or not. Someone outside would be more likely to see me looking out, than me to see them.

It all comes down to crime and security. It sucks that I feel I have to keep the light on, to deter crime. It sucks that I can't just leave it dark, and not worry about people who might try to use the darkness to their own advantage and my detriment.

From something the power company told me, it seems that the private street light was put up at the owners request in early 2007 - which would have been in the few months before I bought the house. I wonder, did some crime happen back then, to the previous owners, which eventually made them decide to move out? Maybe that was the reason they sold it only 6 months after having bought it?