> He was a scammer, in particular he posed as a human-rights lawyer targeting victims of torture to get their secrets and extort them. Tried to do it to me, but you can't con an honest John.
EDIT: You're right I did in fact say victims of torture are liars, at least it can be read that way! Wow, didn't realize it, didn't intend it. So I don't know what he was saying to the others, but he set up many many scams like talking really loud on his cell about "an opportunity going to waste" when we met at Metro el Golf staircase, trying to get me to ask on my own accord what that opportunity was, but I had no curiosity for it. So helping me with torture, I fell for it a bit, but it was something I could not fail to want.
So honest John means many things, but basically it's hard to get someone to engage in a scam without engaging greed. Now with the tortured that's disgusting, it's not greed but he verbally claimed a government payout to the tortured--a pension--ten times higher than the real amount. It's like 230.000 CLP whereas he claimed like 2.200.000[1]. And that's designed to get them to pay him something, very difficult money for a torture victim to earn because their careers are ruined as part of the torture, to keep them down. The torturers advise to steal and impoverish them, never pay back debts. Torture involves bankrupting the victim, it's property crime too. Coerce signatures of course, give up deeds, give up property, give up a car in one case, betray people, betray yourself.
But then the torturer tells you the solution is to get a job. Try to get one with that ruined resume though! "Where did you work in April 2009? No good answer? No hire!"
[1] Morally that's 10x as much, so he didn't actually quote 10x as much because that's too disgusting, too easy to put that in a newspaper headline, it burns too much. But that's how he got the number, multiply it by ten, and then subtract a meaningless amount strictly in order to reduce hatred against him, which he also did with a nonprofit called Sin Odio, Without Hatred, which was linked to his claims of being a human rights lawyer.
My torturers did this too: I was under amnestic drugs from March 29, with a few days on at the beginning, but in total 29 days under amnestics, meaning they give you pills as soon as you awake, all day long, and then you think tomorrow is today, next week is this week, next month is this month. Literally motivating the question, "what year is it?!" Like in time travel movies. But it was less than a month because that's bad PR, saying you tortured someone for a whole month, so they say 29 days, so that I have to say "almost a month" when morally the intention was a full month, minus some meaningless amount to take away the PR sting. Water down the accusation, but if it weren't for the intent to water down the accusation, it would have absolutely been a month! A lunar month, though. And so the reason is they do this to women too, but they menstruate so they know if they've gotten roofied for weeks, unless you shoot the moon, 24/7 amnestics for an entire menstrual period, 29 days, they end up at the same part of their cycle as before the amnestics started, then it's not as obvious.
How can you lend your miner to a neighbor for heat? You all need heat at exactly the same time. Are you going to move the rig to a different home every hour?
Well right, you can't. Very good point. But perhaps you have guests for a month and when they leave they have guests, that means more of the house has to be heated instead of sealed off. I've seen that in huge houses.
> A major use case lauded by supporters is the amount of money that would stay in the hands of El Salvadorans rather than money gram companies. Remittances account for 20% of El Salvador’s GDP.
What exactly is a remittance? Does it mean money that is sent, but not for a purchase? How are international remittances (in both directions) counted here?
Remittances are cross border transfers from expats of the country receiving the remittances.
If you (as the government of El Salvador) wanted to reduce remittance costs, the way to do that is working directly with the US Fed or with a fintech like Wise to drive down the costs of cross border payments (especially when dollars are used internally in El Salvador).
Remittance is money sent back to the country by expats - like, for example, from a family member who left the country to find a better paying job sending regular checks back to their family in their country of origin.
Sent but not for a purchase is also how I look at it. One thing to keep in mind is that remittance numbers are always only estimates because of the amount of remittances that happen with physical cash on bodies crossing borders.
Emigrants sending money back home for their family--generally family--so they can spend it however the hell they want, on whatever they need most. And they do talk a bit about how much is needed for this and for that, and how much they saved by going out of their way out of respect for the emigrant, eg the Salvadoreño in California working his ass off and getting cheated constantly by earlier immigrants.
So I had to take landlords to court, so far I've taken one and she got treated like crap by the court for her lies, she lost every part of my case against her. She owes me money, she promised the court to pay $100 a month, missed her first payment, owed it on the spot. And the next landlord too, same shit, didn't want to repay the deposit. Both were Spanish-speaking, bad English, but the thing was most of their tenants were illegal immigrants, who couldn't take their rent seekers to court.[1] Both of them systematically cheated their renters because they never got taken to court. Thought court was a gringo thing.
Pajarito nuevo la lleva. The new kid in the game is "it" in the game of tag.
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[1] Rentee is a neutral term, not meant pejoratively, that's not the intent. Landlord implies nobility, the "lord" part is a no-go. And "land" too, it's a whole thing, where really they provide permission to occupy a volume, I'm not exactly going to drill for oil, and it's not like that "landlord" has mineral rights over it either, doesn't own a spherical sector all the way to the center of the earth, and it doesn't extend that far above either. That would be land, a cut of the universe such that the ownership of the entire Universe were defined by the ownership according to the law of zones of the Earth's surface.
Now, formally seeking rent and providing something in exchange, so for instance if a rent seeker does a really good job with maintenance the rent is well earned. It doesn't have to be difficult, the rentee can just be really good at repairs and do them perfectly at the first attempt. There's other ways to pull one's weight as a rentee, it's just the intent--in particular with what is termed rent-seeking is in economics getting a check every month for capital--meaning having money before others, people younger than you. Pajarito nuevo la lleva. The concept of capital, tied to ownership of the Universe, called "land." Things could be different though, now that I'm in a good place I can work on making things fairer for both renter and rentee. Turns out the current arrangement regarding capital, land, and necessity is unfair to both.
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But what was unfair to me alone, was stealing the deposit. Spending it right away. Turns out an immigrant from a place near Salvador told me, with the same woman who stole my deposit, he paid a deposit too but then subtracted it from the first rent payment. The other thing you can do is write down the serial numbers of the bills, insist they have to pay back those specific bills with the same serial numbers, to prove they didn't just squander the money and make up shit instead of failing to pay it back. You can write the serial numbers on the contract they have to sign when they receive the deposit, which you ALWAYS have to do and which rentees will always accept doing. In addition demand receipts, like by text message, as they receive the rent.
Both of these losers tried cheating me with the receipts, like complaining about having to make them or writing stupid shit "dll" instead of "dólares", or trying to never do them. Pablo César Miranda (said his name was Julio César, as far as I can tell both are fictional names so I'm not actually anybody a real man) saying "you make me uncomfortable" with demanding a receipt yeah asshole ding ding ding we have a winner! Because that's what means you can't fuck me over like you do to all your other tenants, like Luis Santos and presumably Osvaldo. Your discomfort tells me I'm acting perfectly. And I tried leaving on a good note, cleaned everything up great specifically for the deposit, left him a six-pack of the beer he liked, but then...didn't pay back the deposit. Turned a good relationship into a bad relationship, gratitude into debt. Means he thinks he can steal from me. Well I already started treating him like shit, told him the price went up, and it's still going up. Only going up. I'm not angry, bitter, frustrated I'm empowered. And I'm acting on behalf of all the immigrants who they robbed with impunity.
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Third time in the recent days we've talked, alisonkisk! I actually was looking through your history because you said something really smart asking if I said torture victims were liars, remember? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31408927 Just seeing if you said other smart things, in this case you asked another smart question. Upvoted of course, second person after cercatrova I engage with.
I'm reminded of Scott Alexanders musing re: whether someone "has ADD" if they have trouble focusing on things that are simply boring as fuck, like looking at spreadsheets (or code...) all day every day, week, after week, after week.
But then if all their peers are in fact outperforming them, because they're already all self-medicating for ADD symptoms, or have a prescription for ADD meds, so they can focus on something that most ordinary people would have trouble focusing on... what then?
What's normal in a work environment that's fundamentally and extremely not normal?
Given enough time abnormal becomes normal and everyone who couldn't fit in is selected out. Several thousand years ago agricultural societies were abnormal, but they allowed high population densities and were better at war so they dominated (except on the steppe).
When Henry Ford popularized the assembly line he had extremely high employee turnover. People didn't like working that way.
It's not, but it will lead to some (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc).
In the same way, consuming infinite amounts of quick-hitting and dopamine-inducing social media is not a disease, but it can damage our brains and lead to "disease" in the same way that sugar damages the rest of our body.
Again, I'm not a doctor and I have no facts/evidence to share. Just my own thoughts on how things are going.
This is way beyond what a high schooler needs for getting started in life.
This is personal finance, for all, not professional accounting for optimizing cash flows. it's far moren important to learn the basics of not getting robbed by predatory businesses, so that they can have a chance at saving some money to turn into capital gains later.
I remember back in 2008 people were complaining that they didn't know they had to pay back those mortgages. They also complained they didn't know what their mortgage contract said, because they didn't read it.
Every mortgage contract I've bought included a separate page that said simply "I have read and understand this contract" that had to be signed.
At what point does some personal responsibility come into play?
