I ordered something from a Chinese company and they quoted me 5USD per unit and 35USD shipping. I accepted and the units were shipped and delivered and of excellent quality.
Sometime later FedEx sends me a weird bill for some random seeming amount of money I owed. They had a link or email or something to basically refuse to pay. I did refuse to pay. The shipper ended up communicating with me to determine I was going to refuse to pay and I found where Fedex had on the website that indicated the shipper was responsible for all fees. I assume the randomness of it was related to tariffs but I wasn't going to pay anything like what they sent me.
I do hope that some repercussions come of these terrible economic policies and the shipper gets their money back from Fedex, but as a company or as an individual I don't think a company's policy to send random bills after delivery is valid either.
This sounds familiar.
Months after not receiving an order, UPS sent a letter from a pseudo(?) collection agency for a charge added to the order. But there was no way to pay for it - as there was a statement that only the shipper could pay, but still, the order didn't arrive - it was very confusing, the shipment disappeared in paperwork - and no one could figure it out. Customer was out the original purchase fee, producer never could reviver shipment. Complete mess.
I've had this before, a few years ago, and a quick google at the time seemed to show that a fair few other people have. I'm in the UK, and about 6 months after buying something small from China (iirc), we got an £10 invoice for a "disbursement fee" from Fedex. It was very vague as to what the fee was actually for. I assume it was just a "scam" by Fedex to get more money.
I doubt we've found that yet, but probably safe to assume they are. And it's not being suggested that the comets create the life or amino acids in the first place; likely they have picked it up after being ejected from a rockey planet with an ocean during a large collision or something.
All I can take away from this is that it really doesn't matter where it came from. The real problem is dealing with something like this was a failure on so many levels regardless of where it came from. The OP definitely finishes with the emotional desire to blame that still doesn't change the fact that the despair is not from where it came from but rather our global dealing with it.
Seems rather insane to me to "not care" about the origins if we all intend on preventing this in the future. Each origin hypothesis has vastly different implications - incredibly vast. I'm shocked that this article didn't discuss the Biosaftey Level of the WIV or the many, many, MANY, other lab leaks from labs with even stricter BSL.
Which government? Chinese? you already burned all the WIV records so all is good. US one - jail all the people in chain that led to financing GOF research in China.
If an adversarial government is conducting potentially dangerous research, would you not want to find a way to get your people in the room while they do it? And how would you convince them it was worth letting your people in to observe? There were Americans in the lab until funding for pandemic preparedness was pulled. The fact that we could have had eye witnesses accounts, but for a short sighted repealing of funding is inexcusable.
You've asked a key question. Whether it came from the lab or a wet market, it is China's fuckup. We in other countries can at best punish them for that fuckup regardless of origin, but we have no control over their labs or their wet markets. That is China's problem to deal with.
As scientists, on the other hand, we like to understand things whether or not there is practical benefit.
The Nikon Monarch 7 is good. For birds you want something with a lot of light and less magnification (easier to hold steady). I also like the Vortex Viper HD for lower budgets. 8x42-50 is going to be your best bet for birding.
Doctorow says "But there’s something we can do about this! The part of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act that authorizes agencies to assess fees runs out in Oct 2023, and when Congress renews it, they could add an amendment to block Booz’s junk fees."
I think I would pay for all these services for content if I could be assured of watching the content how I want. I don't like the monthly fees, but Ill put up with it, I prefer the rental model and I'm willing to wait (like we used to for rentals). That said the way I want to watch content is downloaded for offline viewing, on our projector, with the sound split since my wife is hard of hearing and likes the sound going directly to her hearing aids. The content providers see that as pirating and disable it. Its frustrating to find that out, when you are no longer anywhere with service (the reason for the downloading the first place) and can't do anything about it. Netflix has worked like that for a while and the problem is finding good content. Amazon Prime "works" and is the rental model and I like that the best. Disney does not work at all. And I cant be bothered to try every service to see if it works like that. I would love an aggregator and would be happy to pay monthly if they could provide EVERYTHING. In the meantime, Ill often even pay for the content somehow and then pirate it to watch it how I want.
Are all these questions related to Javascript? In some instances number vs object I guess I could talk about it wrt to Java or C but in terms of what Javascript’s notion of anything is unknown to me.
On all these sites, including this one, why is the engagement model to comment on things? At family gatherings, prior to COVID, I always noticed real life chit chat to be bizarrely opinionated and biased as soon as it veered from the weather or traffic. What is the value we are getting from commenting, that makes it “worth it” to us to give up anonymity?
Sometime later FedEx sends me a weird bill for some random seeming amount of money I owed. They had a link or email or something to basically refuse to pay. I did refuse to pay. The shipper ended up communicating with me to determine I was going to refuse to pay and I found where Fedex had on the website that indicated the shipper was responsible for all fees. I assume the randomness of it was related to tariffs but I wasn't going to pay anything like what they sent me.
I do hope that some repercussions come of these terrible economic policies and the shipper gets their money back from Fedex, but as a company or as an individual I don't think a company's policy to send random bills after delivery is valid either.
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