“3. When they use the imperial system.” (this is true in more ways than one)

“3. When they use the imperial system.” (this is true in more ways than one)

Let’s say you run a big health insurance company and you want me to pay you money, regularly, every month. You should: (a) Prominently place the current balance and the information and settings for payment accounts on the front page when you log in, perhaps even more prominently than your worthless health tips newsletter (b) Tuck away information about current balance and payment accounts somewhere on your main website behind an out of the way link that you can’t see without searching for it (c) Segregate all information about balances and payment accounts onto a completely different website on a different domain, used only for one of the hundreds of different byzantine sub-brands that your company has for holding different kinds of plans, which special domain you’d have no reason to use in ordinary interactions with the company and which you only know about if you search through past e-mails and which requires a different sign-in account from the main website, with arbitrary rules that may actually prevent the user from using the same username on both websites and a registration form that requires entering an unrelated, arbitrary 7 digit number that you can’t even get from your policy information on the main website.

Happy 25 Messidor.

Happy 25 Messidor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLrtEyisDMU

The Gnu’s Room is my favorite used bookstore in the world. Here is a kind notice of the store by the Opelika Observer.

The Gnu’s Room is my favorite used bookstore in the world. Here is a kind notice of the store by the Opelika Observer.

In honor of Omar Sharif here is his best scene, from Doctor Zhivago. https://youtu.be/1f-jzGNpUmo

Plutarch, Life of Nicias. I paused to stand up and take a short break when I got to the launch of the Sicilian Expedition. Then I flipped ahead and noticed that there were still 50+ pages to go, just of the Sicilian Expedition. Welp, this is going to be gruesome.

Plutarch, Parallel Lives. Lysander and Sulla.