The oldest degree-awarding institution in #Wales (which also introduced #rugby to the country) is under threat.

As a graduate of Lampeter I'm biassed, but I think it's a place worth saving. Small and quirky, when I was there we had one of the highest percentages of of students who were openly LGB because it was such a friendly place. A lot of working-class and mature students too.

There's a petition asking the Welsh govenment to save it. #academia #universities

https://www.change.org/p/save-undergraduate-education-at-wales-s-historic-lampeter-campus

Trump’s tax law cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

What did corporations do with the money saved?

They didn’t invest it or raise wages.

They spent a record $1 trillion on stock buybacks the year after the law went into effect.

Nothing trickled down to workers.

Part of what’s wrong with American healthcare

CEO of failing hospital chain got $250M amid patient deaths, layoffs, bankruptcy

“As the more than 30 hospitals in the Steward Health Care System scrounged for cash to cover supplies, shuttered pediatric and neonatal units, closed maternity wards, laid off hundreds of health care workers, and put patients in danger, the system paid out at least $250 million to its CEO and his companies, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/08/as-hospitals-failed-and-patients-died-ceo-reportedly-netted-250m/

Did you know that there's a thing called the "Automatic Billing Update" program (ABU), that enables merchants to get notified of your replacement payment card number before it even shows up in your mailbox?

https://globalnews.ca/news/9763295/little-known-credit-card-program-companies-information/

Yep, you can guess what the bad guys are doing. They're registering as a merchant and then involuntarily signing people up for nonexistent "subscriptions" ... that their support path mysteriously refuses to let you unsubscribe from:

https://malwaretips.com/blogs/vigor-vita-cbd-gummies/

But if you naively report these to your issuer as simply 'fraud', they will just ... issue you a new card. And then the "subscription" will be charged again.

Many issuer support teams seem be totally unaware of this fraud type. You have to explicitly tell them it's a subscription scam, and ask them block that merchant from using ABU to get your new card number. (That card is lost, but at least the evil merchant won't get the next one).

(I found this out the hard way, helping some elderly friends, whose cards kept getting mysteriously "compromised". When I realized that an unexpected charge happened before they had even received the new card ... I knew it wasn't just ordinary skimming or phishing.)

tl;dr When you detect unauthorized charges, ask your issuer to check for ABU and block the entire merchant. Otherwise, you'll be caught in an unending cycle of useless reissuance!

#ABU #fraud

This mind-bending timelapse with the Milky Way stabilized shows the Earth is spinning through space.

Credit: Eric Brummel
https://www.instagram.com/brummelphoto

#photography #milkyway #space