For VHS there's the VHS-Decode project that's trying to do something similar. I don't think they work by scanning the tape itself with some custom hardware, but rather by recording some kind of internal RF drum head signal inside the VCR itself. Then they have a software stack to decode the VHS signal into actual video. Looks pretty cool, but I've never used it.
It's worth noting that I bonds are exempt from state income tax, and you pay federal income tax at the time you redeem the bond, not at the time you get interest, so it's federal income tax deferred. You could potentially hold onto the I bond for up to 30 years before being forced to redeem, so you could wait until you're in a lower tax bracket, which makes it better.
Indeed. But consider: except for very high income households, the LTCG tax rate is never more than 15%-- and federal income tax brackets don't go lower than 10% and even just social security payments will move people into 12%. Many ibond alternatives yield qualified dividends (=LTCG rates). For anyone with income under 41k (81k married) long term the LTCG rate is 0. A rate of 0 is wayyy better than a rate of 12% but deferred.
State taxes are a bigger difference but really just for the few states that have higher income tax rates... and even those they're only really high for high incomes.
You don't have to make an estimated tax payment. You can also file an extension, and when you do that you can make a payment with IRS direct pay as well. Also just because you filed for an extension, that doesn't mean you have to file your tax return later, so you can just file your tax return when you would regularly payment. You can file for an extension much later than Jan 15th, I think the deadline is sometime in April.
I was never a huge caffeine user, my peak was maybe 3 or 4 cans of coke zero a day. Since I quit I've seen my level of general anxiety go down, my moods are more stabler (like less feelings of irritability, stress, feeling overwhelmed), and I feel like my sleep has improved. I haven't noticed any real change in my performance after quitting. Maybe I don't feel as "sharp", but I'm still getting the same amount of things done at the same quality as before.
One thing to note is that once you quit you will not be able to really use caffeine effectively at the same level you are currently using it.
I recently had some caffeine, and after being off it for so long, it was actually very unpleasant. I felt like a cpu that got overclocked and was overheating. It didn't really make me any more productive, it just made feel like wow I'm really up right now, too far up and I want to be back to normal, but I can't until the caffeine passes through my system. And just that feeling of being trapped in the "high" and being unable to get out was very disturbing to me personally.
I love this idea! I can't tell you how many friendships I've lost in the past (or ones that could've taken off but prematurely died) from getting stuck in the "I think they don't want to talk to me"/"They think I don't want to talk to them" cycle. Then you end up with neither person initiating contact, and the whole thing just kind of ends. Many if not most people these days don't want to initiate, including me, so if you wait on them to reach out to you, they simply never will, even if they want to talk to you, or would enjoy a conversation.
I've been making steps toward being the person who initiates all contact, and so far it seems to work better than my previous strategies of "never initiating contact", and "initiating 50% of contacts and assuming they're not interested if they don't initiate". The only problem is I'm really not a natural at reaching out, so if left to my own devices I wouldn't do it often enough to maintain the relationship. I like OP's idea of externalizing it with a tool, that makes it a lot easier to maintain the kind of consistency needed to grow a relationship.
To all those saying this is forced or inhuman or robotic or whatever... Listen it would be great to have some kind of easy natural friendship where both people would do half the work, think of each other regularly and reach out in an easy non forced manner, but in my life experience that kind of relationship seems to be very hard to find, if not impossible.
In the real world it seems to me like the choices are be lonely and alone, or to do all the work (especially in initiating). In the past I chose to be lonely and alone, maybe holding out for that kind of unicorn, ideal friendship that people in this thread are talking about. I don't think it was a good choice. I switched, I'm doing the other approach and now I have people I can talk to. I do feel kind of resentful for having to put in way more effort initiating than the other person in these relationships, but it beats being alone and lonely, so I'd still say it's a net positive overall.
I think people are using artstation mostly these days, although it does seem like artstation caters to a more professional crowd, and deviantart attracted more amateurs.
Just saying in this in case it will help you. For treasurydirect, you can use inspect element and change the value="" field on the password element, and paste in your password from your password manager. It's not as convenient as autofill from your password manager, but it sure beats using the graphical keyboard.
Thanks! That would definitely be a way to do it. I was hinting at something similar by saying "unless you use a user script to make the field editable again". You could also run a bookmarklet that makes the input editable using JavaScript, and then using the password manager. But it's a pain in any case if you're using the site on a mobile device.
https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode