So it's like Monopoly, the game, where you pay a tax for each house and a larger tax for each hotel... Sometimes it'll break the monopoly, again in the game. I stress the game because we all know it wouldn't fix anything in real life. Too rigged!
So basically any silent gen through older Xers fear losing their power, so in a final attempt to take what they can and fuck everybody else, this is why the world is shitty! Got it.
As a Millennial, I'd like to get ahead of this shitstorm and run for president. I will only take money from citizens, no PACs or businesses that aren't proper non-profits with actual good intentions... No shell corps or bribery.
Let me chime in as I've previously worked in insurance for several years. I was licensed in a few States across all major lines (fire/property=home, casualty =auto, life, and health)
The point of a "MUTUAL" auto insurance company is its "owned by its shareholders/policyholders, and therefore controlled by policyholders. Any "profits" are paid back in the form of dividends. Aka overpayment in a sense. If they do a rate hike, it'll probably result in more dividends the following year. Think of it like an escrow account. You base premiums on anticipated costs of business, claims, staff, legal, errors and omissions, etc. You might go above and beyond by a small percentage to make sure you're covered for anything unexpected.
I'll give you an example: COVID hit in 2020, and with less drivers on the road with petiole working remotely, we saw rate drops of 15% or more. On the flip side, 2022-2024 especially, with the struggle and shortage of auto parts, labor shortages, rise in vehicle thefts with Hyundai/KIA, etc, costs of policies went up by quite a bit to cover components doubling or tripling, labor prices for repair shops going up, and rental car companies raising rates, plus customers staying in rental cars for longer terms as shops were backed up. As these mutual companies ran deficits for the unforeseen costs, prices went up 1-2x a year to cover losses. Anytime a MUTUAL company makes too much, it repairs policyholders the profits as a dividend.
Now, state farm specifically has 2 auto insurance ends. State farm mutual automobile insurance and then there's state farm fire (home/dwelling) and casualty (auto).
For any auto insurance company, be it state farm, GEICO, farmers, Allstate, etc, the Mutual companies are the better rate, better discount company if you qualify with low/no claims, no tickets, no gaps in policy coverages, etc. It's a preferred tier meaning low risk. It's the ones that are typically advertised to save you a bunch of money.
For the standard (non mutual) companies, that's including anyone with a few claims, tickets, lapse or gaps in coverages, late payments, etc. Anything higher risk, aka higher premiums.
**It does pay to shop around ** occasionally, as there's no benefit for loyalty. There's no cost to shop around, but as companies always pull up to date info, If you're claims drop off, tickets are the past, have consistent coverage for the past 12 months, you could qualify for a better rate. IF you care about loyalty, then what you do is still shop around at least 3 quotes, and if your quotes are much lower, request your current company "rerate" you. Aka pull current data. They'll see you've shopped and your data is likely more favorable and you could see a drop in premiums. If not, that's a sign to leave. I wouldn't shop more than every 12-18 months as it looks unfavorable to you.
I don't think you're weird for that. I agree anything over 90 or maybe 120 isn't perceivable. You might notice if the frames aren't synced to the refresh rate more, but it's the placebo effect, there's no way petiole can truly recognize actual refresh rate. There's a lot of other tech coming into play to help that. The technology isn't even standardized, like BFI, or calling response time 1ms when that's grey to grey vs a full black to white or vice versa.
To me, it's all snake oil, like dynamic contrast vs contrast ratio. Or calling an amplifier 100w per channel using a peak rating vs RMS (Sony). Much more.
What native resolution is your projector? Not at all trying to insult, but many "1080p supported" handle the signal, but still play back at 720p, and there's a good chance you're getting a better native resolution playback that compressed and down converted 1080, which would make sense.
Also, while I LOVED my 120" projector screen with my med-high end BenQ DLP projector, after upgrading to my 85" I just can't go back to the screen, even if it's dark. Idk, it just can't compete. And I play actual BD discs on the projector to maximize quality.
No way, not even close. At least I can't enjoy that anymore, I'm too much of a snob now... Are you watching on your phone or Laptop? That would make sense.
However, 1080p h.265 can get you superior quality while saving space over 720p h.264.
When I had to watch on my 65" UHD, it was 4-5GB/hour 1080p h.264 files at minimum. 8-10GB UHD h.265 minimum. When I rip BDs my 1080p stuff i rip and convert to h.265 and keep them around 5-6GB/hour (which is like 8-10 h.264 so a gain), and my UHD + DV/HDR stuff I rip are also about 12-15GB/hr... but I cut out all subtitles and alternate audio and keep stereo and multi channel English to help maximize that file size (for friends/family who don't have surround or just use TV).
Now that I'm on an 85" UHD, I kept most content the same (most shows don't need UHD + DV or HDR) but on bigger theatrical stuff or content where I care, movies are closer to 20-22GB/hour for maximum enjoyment. It makes a very big difference when viewing lower bitrate vs higher bitrate! Way less banding, pixelation, and offers smoother playback in higher motion scenes. Plus, audio plays a huge part in immersion!
Not everyone has the space though, for that content, so I get it. But treat yourself occasionally and watch something hi res with quality audio!
It's no different than you subsidizing the costs through the carrier, the only difference is Apple will likely earn interest whereas carriers do this at basically 0%. Or Apple is going for vendor lock in. Right now you can "switch phone companies" and they advertise paying off balances up to a certain amount to entice the switch. Apple may not allow that.
No offense, but sounds like you're trading one social media addiction for another. If you're just checking them out, why even make an account? I thought the whole point of the fediverse was to use an account and go across services? I've seen piefed stuff on Lemmy and iirc, mastadon too.
They're under 24/7 watch by that Indian company I thought, for "ai training".