Wow, really?

Can you explain more?

My experience is anecdotal for sure, but it spans a few cities/ regions of the USA. And it aligns with what my formal teachers/hearing friends in deaf families have told me.

I won’t live and die by that but from my experience deaf people are super welcoming.

A few ways

Easiest is to find a class in your area for beginners - colleges and hospitals are the best place to start (hospitals not because they teach them but because they generally know from referring newly deaf patients, or family members of newly deaf patients).

You really only get so much from a class though - some cultural introduction, basic vocabulary/structure, facial movements. If you actually want to really learn you need to get into the local deaf community, which depending on where you live will be huge or small.

The other way to learn is harder, but still doable. Seek out the local deaf community and go hang out at meetups (Pizza and bowling are common everywhere). Immerse yourself and self teach using online resources. Deaf people LOVE when hearing folks try to communicate so they’ll do anything they can to help you out generally.

They’re so, so isolated in normal society. Any person that demonstrates interest in communicating will be welcomed with open arms. You’ll probably run into translators and families of deaf folks that hear and speak English just fine as well.

Keep in mind that many people who are deaf from birth do not know English very well, if at all. Trying to write back and forth in English will have mixed results, but until you’re faster at finger spelling that is a good crutch, but try to shake it as fast as you can. When you first go to hang out with deaf folks bring a small whiteboard or notepad if you can’t finger spell.

Jesus, you really struggle with this don’t you

NK isn’t in Southeast Asia, but Southeast Asia is the geopolitically contested region that China cares the most about dominating (at this point in time).

Macron said “keep your dog from shitting in my yard or I’ll let mine loose in yours”

Dang, sorry to hear that. How much did your score dip? Anything around 25, maybe up to 50 points is probably not a critical issue. Dips like that, and especially ones that relate to credit checks (like when you’re shopping for a loan or a new card) go away in a couple months (I’m not sure about your case. Without active credit utilization you’re an “unknown” factor, which is risky to the lenders). I’m not even sure why your score dips when someone does a hard credit pull - overall my frustration with the system is the lack of transparency and the fact that there’s zero regulation or accountability for the credit bureaus.

Best practice is to open a no-fee card with points/cash back that aligns with your normal spending habits, use it for general purchases that you already make today, and pay the balance off in full every month after you get your statement.

As long as you don’t carry a balance it won’t cost you a penny in interest, and you’ll reap the card benefits and improve your score by establishing and maintaining a good credit history.

The thing is, MOST people carry a balance. That’s why credit companies are able to afford giving you 5% cash back, travel bonuses, etc etc - just the fact that those things exist, on top of all the overhead required to maintain/issue credit cards tells you just how many people are carrying a balance and giving interest to the companies.

If you have the discipline to not charge more than you earn and to not miss payments, you’ll get all the benefits without any of the costs. On top of having card bonuses (5% on groceries adds up!) you get several other benefits, some of which I will list here:

-your money is shielded in part by the credit company. When you charge a card, you’re not spending YOUR money (yet), you’re spending Capital ONE/Chase/whoever’s money. What that means is that if a business does wrong by you (sells a faulty product, doesn’t provide the service you paid for) you can issue a charge-back. That’s a pretty serious thing, if companies get a high number of charge backs they can lose their ability to receive credit payments. (Chargebacks can be useful but they’re not always the best option). Also, and maybe more importantly, your BANK account information is shielded from all the businesses that suck at keeping your information safe. Your credit card gets compromised, you see your statement and somebody’s buying gas and fast food with your credit card, the company will remove the charges and issue you a new card - if someone gets hold of your debit card or your bank login, it’s MUCH harder to get your money back, if not impossible.

-in case of an emergency you can carry a balance - it offers some cushion from financial ruin. The downside is that now you’re paying interest, but if it’s a choice between paying interest for a couple months vs not having a working vehicle, or not being able to pay for an emergency vet bill, the interest is worth it imo.

-cards have all kinds of benefits besides the flagship cash back/points. Extended warranties, concierge services - every card comes with a booklet of other benefits that most people don’t read, but you really should. I’ve used extended warranties several times alone when for example something breaks 26 months after I bought it, but the warranty expired at 24 months and the card extends the warranty a 3rd year.

If you do get a card you will probably have a fairly low balance at first. Couple thousand dollars, so it’s really easy to get over that 20% utilization fast if you’re not paying attention - which can hurt your score! Utilization doesn’t carry nearly as much weight as paying your bills on time and the length of your credit history, but it does matter. So be mindful of that. If it’s working out for you then six months later open another card that gives you different benefits (a card for utilities vs one for groceries, or one for travel, etc) and start breaking your bills up so you can maximize benefits. Some cards give you a cash bonus if you spend a certain amount within 90 days, so if you know you’re going to make a big purchase then you can open a card, put that big purchase on it, get the $200 back or whatever, and pay it off.

Unfortunately there’s no way to avoid the credit system in the USA, you’re SO disadvantaged if you try to do so. Housing, loans, job applications, security clearances (Federal work), all take it into account. Best thing you can do is to make the system work for your benefit.

I don’t pay anything in interest and I pay pretty much everything on credit, because I live within my means. My credit score is ace because I’ve been doing it for years.

If you have any questions let me know, happy to discuss.

It does not lower your credit score to pay debt off early, where did you get that idea from?

Over time if you show that you aren’t delinquent on payments your score goes up. That’s the vast majority of how a FICO score is calculated.

Other things that impact your credit score are the LENGTH of time you have established credit (aka don’t close your oldest credit card for most people, even if it sits unused), the total amount of available unused credit compared to your income (ie if you have a ton of high credit availability cards sitting there - you could run up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and disappear to a non extradition country being a risk), and lastly your overall utilization of your available credit (ie you want to be using 10-20% of both your available credit both on individual cards (“revolving credit”) and your overall total revolving credit across all your cards together).

The last one is a bit harder to explain, so here’s an example:

-you have three lines of revolving credit (credit cards)

-one card has a 1000 limit, one has a 5000 limit, and one has a 10,000 limit

-ideally you’re posting a balance of 200, 1000, and 1500. That’s between 10-20% on each card, and it’s between 10-20% of all cards in total.

Other things that impact your score (negatively) are bankruptcies, late bill payments, things in collections, and having a high debt to income ratio.

At no point will you be penalized for paying debt off early. The only thing that can possibly affect your score in that sense is if you ONLY have a loan, no revolving credit, and you pay it off - now you have no credit utilization at all, which potentially could ding you a bit, but not much. That’s also not very common - most people have several credit cards and few loans, if any.

That same target audience would be the least equipped to install a new drive or handle any problems that do come up. How many John Q public people have even opened up their laptop to dust it out?

Problems might be rare, but if I am selling a product (in this case new storage with Linux on it) I need to be able to charge enough to cover all my overhead. Every time I sell it and it doesn’t work out of the box that’s time spent helping the customer, more shipping/return costs, or both. Markup has to cover all that, and I’d guess that it’s not viable as a business model to charge a high enough price to deal with all the random static from computer illiterate people.

I get what you’re saying but I just don’t see it being a viable business strategy to sell this product to that target audience.

Anyone who knows enough to seek out and purchase a Linux OS drive can just download and install it themselves.

It’s not a binary option. It’s a spectrum. You need to be cautious while driving, which is correct. You CAN be TOO cautious, which is in itself incorrect.

Stop being a pedant.

My bad, mistook your reply as being from the top level comment OP.

No… It’s not

Hmmmmmm… I think the hardware bugs might be rare, but common enough to make this a tricky product to sell consistently to the unknown masses.

Also, I think storage partitioning could be a problem; assuming some number of people would have other drives that they had OS/media together, or just separate storage with files they wanted to keep. Those would be NTFS, which can read/write on Linux but you won’t have the best compatibility with Linux program execution (depending on a ton of factors).

It sounds like you’re disabled in this area, and it’s unfair that the world is not more accommodating.

“Change the world to accommodate my disability and I’ll quit being a hazard to people’s life, limb, and property” is not an acceptable attitude.

Being cautious is correct. Being unpredictable because you’re driving abnormally is super dangerous.

The reason we have a driving system is so that everyone knows that to expect from everyone else. If you operate outside of that system you’re a danger to yourself and everyone else.

If you can’t drive don’t get behind the wheel

Adding pockets costs next to nothing.

You think this is some overlooked thing that the clothing industry never considered? That this is some secret niche that just hasn’t been filled? They don’t sell. If they did, then there would be brands or clothing lines with pockets, and marked up for the piddly cost of the manufacturing expense.

That has NEVER HAPPENED. It’s not because the manufacturing can’t be priced adequately despite high consumer demand, it’s because for all the shouting at clouds, women, in general as a consumer demographic, do not buy pants with pockets.

“I saw it on YouTube and therefore it must be true, not basic economics”

The clothing industry doesn’t make many clothes with pockets for women because they don’t sell. Women all complain that they don’t get pockets, but then vote with their wallets.

This is a legit example of the intended meaning of the phrase “the customer is always right.” The market supplies what customers demand, and for all the fist shaking about having nowhere to put a phone, there’s very little actual market demand for women’s clothing with pockets. Majority of demand is related to outdoor activities so you see them there.