I’ve used a (LibreOffice) spreadsheet for the past 10 years to track everything I spend–yes, every single thing–it’s not that hard at all. Keep the receipt or make a note of it to enter when you get home. Mine is set up like this:

One tab for each year. Rows are transactions and columns are categories (after the date, payment type, and payee/description), so one transaction row could have amounts entered in multiple columns.

I use only about a dozen broad categories like Food, Utilities (I see no point in separating out each specific utility), Household supplies, Car, Entertainment, etc. Also sales tax and donations columns. Basically whatever you might want to see totals for. Start simple and general, and you can always add another column or two later if needed. Row totals in the final column, column totals at the top.

I also have tabs for: Credit card charges–for reconciling with the bill (and then record the payment on the yearly tab in the appropriate categories); Medical expenses–categories are type Rx/Tx/Ins and how paid HSA/Chkg Acct/Credit card; And finally a Notes tab for entering more detailed info about any unusual/extra costs like auto/house repairs or major purchases.

You could add Budgeting on another tab with budgeted amounts vs actual amounts (grabbed by using formulas pointing to the year tabs), but I don’t need that because my spending and expenses are pretty simple and consistent.

Most people would just put water in the mug (ceramic/microwave-safe of course) that they’re going to make the tea in and microwave it until it boils or bubbles just short of a rolling boil, which takes 2 or 3 minutes, depending on the microwave’s power–you’d learn the time yours takes and set the timer for that. At that point I don’t see the difference between that vs. if you poured it into the cup from the kettle. Either way you now have a cup full of boiling-hot water to steep your tea in. No, it won’t spill over if you don’t fill it all the way up to the brim.

Oh, now I see! You don’t understand that a microwave can boil water, you think it can only warm it up a little. Thank you for clearing up my confusion.

Have some class!

Whenever I hear Europeans accuse Americans of being arrogant, I can only laugh. Feeling superior about something like how you boil water is hilarious.

I use an electric kettle but remember that in the US outlets are 120V, so they take a lot longer to heat water than in countries with 240.

So the microwave isn’t much less efficient than the electric kettle, mainly because some of the energy is heating the mug/container. The least efficient is a stovetop kettle on an electric stove.

But I’m curious, why are Europeans so horrified by the idea of heating water in the microwave? Is it related to power consumption, or is there some other reason?

They’re proud to do it.

Evergreen

Call it the 'Murca! Party and you’ll get the entire maga contingent.

“Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he said.

Yes, because Musk is the first person that comes to mind whenever “actually cares about the people” is mentioned. 🤮

Everything trump and republicans have been doing is with the goal to privatize as much of the government as possible, to funnel taxpayer money directly into private pockets. The oligarchs want that money! They hate seeing it spent on the poors.

They want to decimate agencies until they can’t function, then use their inability to provide adequate services as the excuse to privatize, then either pay twice as much taxpayer money for the same or worse service from for-profit companies, or in some cases get rid of the services and let people fend for themselves.

Even though two parties is the equilibrium state that’s always reached, a new party can replace one of the two if it has massive enough support (the other method is for a contingent faction to take over one of the existing two as we saw with maga). In our system, having it funded by the richest person in the world who also has a large following already is one of the few ways a new party could feasibly get to that level.

Because they want everyone to use their name for it. Magats love that name. It hides what it really is and lends a celebratory air to the base at the same time as an intimidating effect to potential victims. Remember, they want people to ‘self-deport’ and this is part of that strategy, in addition to its obvious use. So they’re going to make more places like this with more names like this.

Don’t help them. Don’t go along with what they want. Resist them in every way possible, including not using their terminology–whether it’s what they call concentration camps or what they call the bills they pass, like the huge hideous bill signed yesterday.

And of course they made sure the Medicaid cuts/work requirements go into effect right after the 2026 election.

This explains well the different ways the new rules will kick people off medicaid even though they qualify. I got an idea about one of them-- see last part of post

But whether because of language barriers, physical or cognitive disability, lack of internet or phone, or job instability, for all of these patients, overcoming additional bureaucratic barriers would be burdensome at best. For many of them, it would be nearly impossible.

The author describes the situation of one patient and that there are many like him:

But he told our team that he lives in shelters, so he lacks a fixed address. He doesn’t have a cellphone. He could access government websites at a public library, except that his request for a power wheelchair, which Medicaid will cover, hasn’t been approved yet, and navigating the city in a standard one exhausts him. Plus, every time he leaves his stuff behind at the shelter to go somewhere, he told me, it’s stolen. At present, he doesn’t even own an official ID card.

An idea for at least the internet access issue: What if people/organizations with unlimited mobile data plan(s) could periodically take some laptops and make a wifi hotspot at shelters, so people could log on to the govt websites they need to fill out whatever red tape they need so they can get the benefits they qualify for? The people who go would need to understand the rules and how to navigate the websites and answer questions/help, but they could be trained on that. That seems like a practical idea. You’d think there would already be volunteer orgs that do this, but apparently not!

Didn’t know that about the keymap prompt, I can think of several things it would be useful for!

“It’s OK, he bought a ticket,” said trump.

Either that or they just didn’t want a woman or just didn’t want a Democrat.

It’s The Everglades Concentration Camp.

We should not call this what they want us to call it. Do Not Comply. Resist and speak the truth!

I hope we on Lemmy and elsewhere can start a trend of refusing to parrot their bullshit talking points and speak the Truth instead of spreading their propaganda for them.

I hate that the media and the public immediately parrots whatever 1984-speak terminology they roll out, letting them define the narrative and pacify people to accept their atrocities as normal.

(Likewise, it’s not the “big beautiful bill”, it’s the “Kill Americans to Pay Billionaires” bill. January 6 was not a “protest by patriots”, but an armed insurrection, etc. etc. etc.)

Isn’t that the time most people would think of testing it on themselves?

Yeah I use the hottest running water and also scrub it with soap to get as much as possible off.

I’ve also used a hair dryer to heat the bites up but you have to be careful not to hold it too close to the skin and burn yourself. I’m very reactive to bug bites and I seem to get a million bites within seconds of going outside.

I’m one of those who gave my bread maker away. The problem was when I was making bread with it, it was so good I’d quickly eat it all up and kept gaining weight, so I stopped using it.