The Daily Adventures of Mercat

Well, Paypal's been in the news a bit today, and I, for one, am a sucker for internet battles. Especially when people are coming off pretty scummy. Regardless of one's opinions on Regretsy, SomethingAwful, or Wikileaks-- and actually, someone just linked me to an older-yet-related incident regarding George R. R. Martin-- the fact that PayPal has been less than clear on its policies and seems to repeatedly have pretty poor treatment of their users, the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. So I am trying to collect a list of alternatives to PayPal. (Deleting facebook comments is actually one of my pet peeves as well. I do not take kindly to censoring.)

I do not personally endorse any of these and all commentary on them is what I can tell from reading their site and others' comments on their services. I am simply trying to collect suggestions into one location.

Here is one large list of alternatives with more information than I have been able to find, although a lot of what folks seemed to be suggesting as alternatives were not listed.

Here is another good post on a few alternate suggestions: 8 Ways To Not Paypal

If anyone would like to leave personal reviews, etc. in the comments (if you have used the services of any of these listed, or know of others), I will be happy to update as I can.

www.dwolla.com - This was the site I saw most recommended in comments of other posts. It links directly to your bank account (with many security measures in place) rather than a credit card. You can use it on your phone, and transactions less than $10 are free. (All other transactions have a flat fee of 25 cents.) You can also hook up your account to social networks such as facebook and twitter in order to split bills between friends, etc. They also mention privacy and transparency in their main explanatory pages (here), which I personally find worth noting.

www.wepay.com - Second most recommended in comments. Seems to be 3.5% fee, 50 cent minimum. Also mentions security measures and transparency, and has an 800 number as well as other methods of communication listed on every page. They don't mind trolling PayPal, either.

www.obopay.com - Not as much information presented (to be fair, I'm not pushing around too far or registering for accounts on any of these sites), but it seems very interested in using mobile devices to easily transfer money.

www.alertpay.com - Seems to have many options for sending/recieving money, and has two contact addresses posted on their About Us page.

www.v.me - Upcoming Visa method for transferring money. Mobile support appears to be an option.

www.serve.com - From American Express, use your bank account, credit/debit card, or cash. Can be used online, from a mobile device, or with their American Express-based card.

squareup.com - A credit-card reader for vendors that plugs into your mobile device. One commenter said that you are charged $10 for the reader if you buy it in a store, but it is free directly through the website.

stripe.com - An online method for vendors to take credit cards. Seems to be very suppoert-friendly in terms of setting it up on a website.

nochex.com - UK-based online payment system, both business and personal supported.

checkout.google.com - Online payment system for setting up your own shop website through Google. Monthly sales totals less than $3000 have a per-transaction fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents. Uses credit cards for buyers to pay.

payments.amazon.com - Allows you to set up a checkout system on your own website. Can also create a personal account to send or receive money. Some commenters who used this said it has been buggy, however, not alerting sellers to purchases, etc.


That's all I have for now, feel free to leave more information in the comments! If anyone has any comments on whether these are accepted only in the U.S./worldwide, etc., leave a comment and I will update.

And to lighten the mood a bit... :D

OMG color e-ink is coming. By the time I can afford this stuff, these systems will (hopefully) have settled a little more and be COMPLETELY AWESOME. (As if they aren't already.)

I still think it would be awesome if there were an open-source pdf textbook service that would 1) put shitty textbook companies (read: bad writers, those under the effect of legal shit like Texas' removal of non-christian religions and the downplaying of Jefferson because he was "an atheist", ripoff artists who release new editions every few years just to make money while wasting both people's money and the materials used to print them) out of business, 2) reduce the weight load of students, which would, in effect, 1) save students money, 2) [theoretically] allow for more honest writing (think about the accuracy of wikipedia here, sort of), 3) save students from weight injuries (I did my eighth-grade science fair on this, remember?), 4) save physical materials. Look, if you could buy a pdf-reader for your kindergartener and it lasted them all the way through college with the net result of no physical textbooks, wouldn't that be amazing?! It could even be a laptop or a netbook and not e-ink, if that was what you needed.

SO! EXCITING NEWS. A random lady (and by lady I just mean, a female who I would consider in an older age group than me-- she has a daughter who is old enough to have been to COSI, but she's not, say, whole generation older than me, probably in her early 30's or late 20's?) messaged me on facebook through my posts on the "I miss COSI's Adventure!" group. We are going to start a fan page for Adventure and PROBABLY end up breaking the code as a team (unless I somehow manage to stumble into the solution beforehand, which is doubtful). BUT! I am so excited.

Also, I really want to win that spend-the-night-in-Adventure contest. WOOOOO.

A geek pronunciation guide, which I actually found helpful and corrected me on a few things. (Although to be honest when I see "WYSIWYG" I just say "what you see is what you get" which is definitely easier than saying "doublyew-wy-ess-eye-doublyew-wy-gee". Don't ask me why I chose those spellings, I just did. There have to be a ton of ways to "spell" letters, and it probably changes every time I have to sit down and write-spell something.)

WOAH. You're going to want to read this.. It's an internet security issue. ANYONE can hack your social media as long as you are both signed into the same UNSECURED WI-FI. Which is most wireless. BRB trying to secure things.

So I've seen the world's largest gummy worm floating around the internet for a few weeks, and for the life of me, something about it bothered me in the back of my mind and I couldn't figure out what. But I just got it: look familiar? (Side note: I've seen those World's Biggest Gummybears in person, they look disgusting based sheerly on mass. I'm pretty sure the worm would be the same way, although it would make for a GREAT halloween food item.)

Also. I am not in a great mood, currently, with technology. My OneNote files decided to get corrupted, and it's looking like I probably won't be able to rescue them (FUCKKKKKKKK). Additionally, I just discovered today that all the quotes I've kept in my facebook application --ALL 150+ OF THEM-- are no longer accessible because the app just DISAPPEARED without warning anyone. GODDAMNIT. As much as I love OneNote I think from here on out I'm going to try to just keep everything in Evernote. UGH.

Some guy on twitter made a bot to argue anti-global-warming crap with people, originally just for the people that responded to him, but now it actively searches and starts discussion. Trolling for arguments with a chatbot might be the best method of this, because you present the same evidence without wasting your own time, which you know you're going to if you spend your own time doing this. Really. I want to give this guy a hero badge or something, shit.

The Kahiki's fireplace is for sale! If I had a real job, and I lived here, and I were actually opening the tiki restaurant I dream of opening, I would buy it. (Last time I checked it was at $1.25... I COULD AFFORD THAT.)

PROMPT TIME! I used to play softball. However, my "sport" is marching band. Specifically, drum corps. <3

A cute video:



So, more information on the 200 student cheating incident I posted yesterday. Granted, I only read the article the other day and did not watch the professor's video; I think I'm too empathetic and I didn't want to feel angry or guilty or shamed watching a video that had nothing to do with me. I get that enough in regular life, thanks. (I can't stand to see people embarassed... I, unfortunately, am readily affected by second hand embarassment, which SUCKS.) ANYWAY. It turns out the students were just studying from the publisher's testbank. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I don't see a problem with this. I study from people's notes, from answer manuals, etc. IN FACT, the books we've generally used HAVE THE ANSWERS IN THE BACK SO YOU CAN CHECK YOUR WORK. Granted, this is a test. But I do think the professor should expect students to be studying from the materials they can attain legally, and if he uses the same problems, I don't think that's the students' fault. I use solutions manuals to check my work regularly, when I can, because THIS SHIT IS HARD. I need any advantage I can get to pass these classes, and I don't consider it cheating to check my work, or, in this case, anticipate problems and study.

I'm still not watching that video, I'd probably make myself sick.

Honestly, what's with all the "Cowboys & Aliens: Ford's Comeback" crap? WAS HE EVER GONE? I say no. Choosing to do a different genre doesn't mean you've slacked off, it means you got offered different things.

SURE, just like Disney's switching 100% from 2d animation. Okay. Look, you can be creative and come up with more general-children's-films ideas, but at some point you're going to want to make "a princess movie" again. Also, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU CONSIDER ALADDIN TO BE?! If that's a princess movie, I CAN'T EVEN.

In other rage-inducing media news, there's a Mean Girls 2 coming out?! Ugh. Please.

On a positive note, I'm catching up on episodes of Chuck and they just made a Fievel Goes West reference. UH, YESSSS.

I'm actually liking this daily challenge thing. Some days I'm a little busy to catch it in time, but for the most part, I'm actually making daily posts. :D SUCCESSFUL POSTING IS SUCCESSFUL.

Today's! My favorite subject to study... Man, I don't know. I love learning. I don't always love lectures, or homework, but I love the sense of accomplishment from understanding something, and the perspective you gain from it. I love love love reading. In case you couldn't tell from the fact that I probably spend a minimum of $50 every time I hit the bookstore... which is like once a month. And the fact that I spend sooooo much time online reading blogs. I LOVE INFORMATION. I think it's all one of the reasons I chose engineering--not just so I could get paid more for doing technical stuff (which I'm actually starting to think I might hate, as a job)-- but so I could have that background and understanding. Math and engineering and physics can be challenging, but once you understand it it's kind of amazing, the way you can see patterns. However, I'm not good at learning from proofs or methodologies; I sort of work from multiple examples, working my way through them to understand the subtle differences. This poses a problem wherein most engineering professors don't like to do tons upon tons of examples, I don't have the time to be in their office hours all day long, and the textbooks aren't much better (they usually just have one or two examples).

I like history, but I've found that challenging, too. I was fascinated by ancient history when I was really young-- Native American, Egyptian, Greek, Hawaiian (I remember checking lots of books on those topics out in gradeschool)--but I found learning American history out of a textbook difficult because our textbooks were written really poorly. This continued into high school where I already didn't have a great sense of world history, but I gleaned a little bit here and there except European History with the best history teacher I've ever had. He told events like stories, and would sort of reenact them with the help of his "time machine" (his closet), which often contained props like Napoleon's really cheap bendy plastic sword. He would often stop his storytelling at the MOST EXCITING PARTS, glance at his watch and tell us, "oh, looks like we're out of time!" There was one day, I believe, he was "out of time" with 20 or 30 minutes left in class. SO RIDICULOUS. But to this day I still remember the whole crazy story of Rasputin's death and the Russian royal family's deaths. And why everyone thought Rasputin really was a holy man (from either heaven or hell) by withstanding poison and being shot only to drown. (I think. He might have also survived drowning and then died of hypothermia or something...? Okay, wikipedia tells me he did die from drowning, but what I was forgetting was that he was beaten and secured before being thrown in the river, but then broke free of these bonds to then drown.) ANYWAY.

College history is a lot better, because we had a "World-War-II-In-One-Lecture-Using-Only-Battlefront-Maps-of-Europe" day, which gives just the kind of summary on the war that our crappy textbooks lacked that is kind of like a five-sentence-outline version of the politics of the time and let me start placing events within that timeline. Honestly, whoever wrote the textbooks we used in gradeschool and highschool needs to reevaluate their methods. The problem is, they told history like a bunch of individual stories, which makes it very difficult for someone with no overarching view to tie them together. There were basically no ways for me to string everything together into one timeline, at least, not well. BUT. Strangely, I got another good "summary" of globalization through Hawaiian and Pacific history, strangely enough--because it's essentially watching undiscovered lands mature into modern countries in less than two centuries. A century and a half, even. Not to mention, the Pacific was a significant part of WWII, which is a good education on the Japanese side of things rather than the standard Nazi/European focus.

I also like art, because it gives more relationships for history, and understanding the context of famous art pieces makes them a lot more meaningful. Although I now find Warhol annoying. I understand his intent but him, personally... he seemed kind of pretentious in his videos when we studied him. Like the forefather of Hipsters. (For srs.) Also, art history also makes you more prone to getting into discussions about the meaning and value of art (see: trivia night two weeks ago, haha!).

(For the record the argument was whether or not modern art is worthless. My position is that modern art is much more meaningful than other art because it is completely expressive at it is freed from the necessitation of replicating life exactly--that is, the invention of the camera and video, etc. allows for much more "creation" in art. The opposition was saying that this is pointless because you aren't simply looking at something, the art is in the emotion or the context, which isn't the art itself. SO. LET IT NOT BE SAID MY ART HISTORY MINOR WAS EVER COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.)

So! What have I covered so far? Math, physics, engineering, history, art... Music? Music is my-life-outside-of-design. I could do it as a career if it were the right thing. I miss marching and I don't know what I'm going to do without anymore marching band... ever. Although I am taking tap next semester, so, currently, dance is my closest-approximation-replacement. And tap is percussive, so it's closer than, say, ballet, which I can't watch anymore BECAUSE THE DANCERS DON'T MOVE NECESSARILY WITH THE MUSIC /rant

Okay. Am I missing anything else? Oh! English (and languages). I love grammar, and spelling, although that is something my gradeschool also taught poorly that I picked up in high school better. One, because I was learning a new language as well, so there was a focus on grammar, and two, because we learned to diagram, which is also a focus on grammar, and it's basically all like one big puzzle. Now if only I could do better with strange verb conjugations! OH, SUBJUNCTIVE/PRETERITE/IMPERFECT/ETC TENSES. (I also miss learning languages.)

Uh... earth sciences? I guess that's what's left? Also fascinating. I love nature. I find psychology fascinating. Astronomy is SO COOL. It probably helps that my parents are doctors, so my sister and I got a lot of weird biology talk (and a lot of big words) and a pretty good grasp on some areas of science when we were young. BUT, my gradeschool had a completely awful science teacher for 6th/7th/8th grades (shared teacher), so that wasn't great either. Although our books were at least better, more diagrams, more straightforward, so I could at least self-educate to some degree. Now, another topic for another day, our lack of good science communication is evident in science fairs in gradeschool and highschool, because my version of "original experiments" were never quite on par with what they wanted. I still don't understand what they wanted. Because it wasn't a demonstration of a principle, but my ideas were more often too strange to be taken seriously, it seemed.

My science fair projects throughout the years: whether people could actually tell the difference between cola brands, whether kids carried too much in their backpacks, whether cat saliva prevented germ growth (e-coli or streptococcus? or both? can't remember], whether edible fauna (a.k.a. pansies) contains vitamin C, and whether fake or real wine corks do a better job of preventing germ spoiling of wine. I'm missing seventh grade's project... I don't recall at all, really. At any rate, these projects were all off the wall because everything else I had come up with would have "been done before" (meaning my teacher didn't really want me to do that specific project, although they never really gave much advice as to what exactly I could do to improve it) so my methods were always slightly bizarre, and my data was never quite clean enough, and other than the science geniuses who managed to do amazing things (these are the people who make it to international science fairs, I mean) A LOT OF PEOPLE BULLSHITTED THEIR DATA. And got better grades because of it, because their presentations were easier when they didn't have to answer difficult questions about their data's subtleties. So basically despite the fact that "the data you get doesn't have an effect on your final grade", meaning, let science do it's job and don't force a proof of your hypothesis, I generally got fucked over by being honest. Yes, I'm still bitter about this. WHY? Because ethics are important to me. Because human treachery starts early. Because I get punished for being honest. Because my generation clearly doesn't have a problem with cheating and lying to get themselves out of a challenge. FUCK IT ALL I'M SO GODDAMN BITTER ABOUT THIS SHIT.

Sorry to give this a turn for the sad for a moment, but I really don't tend to trust a lot of people my age, and this shit is why. (On the other side, I trust them more on the technical side than I trust myself because, unless I feel I can do something perfectly, I feel very unsure of myself and second-guess myself to no end.) Same kind of shit even happened on retreats! One of my many disillusionments with faith--all the people who act like their religiosity made them so much better than everyone else, when they couldn't even set aside their phones and cd players and everything else for our week of poverty. (To the point that there were prank calls and a string of tampons and pads let down from our room to the guys' quarters. Complete bullshit for a whole week.)

ANYWAY I LOVE LEARNING BUT DON'T TRUST PEOPLE MY AGE. They are not above buying their way out of things. =/

I kind of want to do an anonymous study of gradeschoolers and see how many bullshit their data now. Ugh.

(This is why I've started to think I don't really want kids--I look at adorable babies and toddlers and think, "some day you are going to be an asshole.")

I may or may not be a horrible person.

BUT I LOVE LEARNING :D

Oh, I guess, in terms of "favorite subject", specifically, I guess I could say marching. Because drum corps is my life, and I don't know what I'm going to do without being able to do it any more. (Teaching is definitely not the same and I don't necessarily have the desire to be a music teacher. Although I could do visual, but it's still not the same as competitive marching.)

If you watched Hawaii Five-0 tonight and saw a red-headed girl in the photos in the house they raided, that is my good friend Kim. :D

Have you seen this article about the college essay writer? It's so fucking depressing, on so many counts. That these students are okay with it. That the school isn't catching them. That they're so inept in the first place, and getting no real help. That entitled people are just paying their way to a degree. My only recompense is that they likely won't be able to get or hold onto the jobs they think they deserve, which is actually sad for the people who have just been forgotten and pushed through the system. ANYWAY. Poor ethics piss me off and if I ever meet a person who admits to using a service like that I... will no longer be friends with them. And will probably be paranoid. (An easy solution though, honestly? It looks as if these teachers just had in-class writing assignments they would probably be a lot more suspicious, at least based on the communications supplied in the article.)

Also, this metafilter comment wins for the Sneakiest Use of Xkcd in Serious Discussion Without Drawing Attention to the Fact:

If you pretend that the degrees are evidence of your mastery in some subject, and that this mastery will allow you to produce good work in some area that you could not without this mastery, ie, that colleges are not a waste of time in general, then this is a misrepresentation of your abilities to your future employers.

Imagine you buy a chair on e-bay, and it has a certificate of Being a Chair, and instead, it was a bob-cat who hired someone to forge its certificate of Chairitude. You have essentially had your money stolen. If you try to sit on it anyway because you also forged your certificate of Being Able to Tell What a Chair is, you will sit on it anyway and it will RUIN your butt.

Cheating on papers is ruining the butts of society.
posted by EtzHadaat at 6:38 PM on November 14

Okay, I have a discussion question for you guys, so I'd really like your input.

I'm not sure exactly when it started, but somewhere along the line I became really concerned about ethical spending. I didn't think of this as too obscure, because, I mean, who allows themselves to be subjected to scams and stuff? And shouldn't you be monetarily supporting that which you only actually support? But it seems like recently I've come to realize most people just aren't aware. And I realize part of awareness is stumbling onto topics, and I spend a lot of time online stumbling onto things, so it would make sense that I know a bit more than your average person on the street; but these sort of things are things we talk about in Environmental Ethics, too, and I'm finding it hard to believe people make it through school without philosophy or some sort of ethics thing.

What reminded me of this was a madTV (ugh) skit about those "name a star" gifts. Those are a total scam, you're basically paying for a random star and name printed on a piece of paper that gets stored in a database that has nothing to do with actual technologies involved in studying stars, and I'm guessing they will sell repeats. I'd find it hard to believe they haven't run out of stars by now--I know there are a lot of them, but people are going to want to buy stars they can see with the naked eye or a cheap telescope.

SO ANYWAY. The other reason this came up is that Laura came up to me the other day and said that through boredom she and Savannah had found the wedding rings they wanted some day, and I went off on my whole diamond/wedding-ring spiel. To me, there are so many things wrong with that market that I just can't support it. Human rights violations, monopolization of a market (leading to prices tens or hundreds of times the actual value), and all the anti-feminist angles including "it's what women should want", it being a status symbol, men should spend twice their monthly salary on it, "it means true love", the fact that the market was MADE UP in the 1930's, all that jazz. How about diamonds don't actually last forever? They're not even the hardest material on earth known to man anymore, sorry2say. And you may say, oh, well, there are still cruelty-free diamonds (usually from Canada, for some reason? or are there actual mines there?), and lab-created diamonds, but how about the monopolizing "natural" diamond market sending mobsters to kill lab technicians and send threatening letters? Or the fact that recently they've started marking what used to be "imperfect" diamonds as colored and "chocolate" diamonds and stuff? (By that I mean the "colored" ones that aren't supposedly "rare".) I mean, good on them for choosing to have less "waste", but then marking up the price and everything... It seems like a huge farce, to me. Even if you're buying an "ethical" diamond, I don't understand why people choose to ignore the other issues at hand.

Anyway, this just continues onto my ethics class--why don't people recycle? It's so easy--throw your paper and plastic and glass in a different wastebin than your food and unrecyclable material. And why do people waste so much? I try to buy stuff with less packaging, or use fewer utensils, or that sort of thing.

And as for packaging, why isn't more packaging efficient? Or made of recycled material?

I dunno, I could go on and on, but I'm not really feeling "ranty" right now, I'm more curious as to other people's spending habits.

For example, one of my favorite blogs is youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com, and through it I've learned that places like Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters, and if I'm remembering it right, Anthropologie as well? I'm only about 25% sure on that one though-- steal designs willy-nilly from independent artists, and because of that, I choose not to shop at their stores. But, for example, if I point that out to Laura, she just says "meh". What does it take for people to realize they are just supporting a destructive sort of business model?

Is it just that I think too much, I read too much, I'm too aware?

I've started trying to buy safe organic stuff, if I can, because 1) it removes a lot of toxins from the entire business cycle, and works just as well if not better, 2) the business are more likely not to have extreme animal testing/abuse or pollution issues and tend to use recyled/recyclable materials (amognst other things--basically, better business ethical practices), and 3) it may be more expensive but I feel like that is not a sacrifice to make for ethics AND, to me, it demonstrates what capitalism is all about. Plus I've started preferring business based on their practices in general; I've read some skeevy things about Coke, for example, so I'm glad I'm a Mountain Dew (a Pepsi product) person, and I was even more happy to find out Pepsi or one of the top guys there had donated a lot to the gay marriage initiative in California. I realize I'm not 100% of everything that goes on, and I'm just starting down the rabbit hole, as it were, but it seems like such small choices per capita can have such a hgue impact, that people's decisions to ignore/remain ignorant of them truly make me curious. The world can clearly not go on with so much human chauvinism.




Basically, I'm curious-- to what extent do your ethics/awareness play into your shopping?

Damn, time flies really fast when you're distracted.

Also; DAMMIT, RE: Thirsty. I AM DRINKING LIQUIDS LIKE A MADWOMAN
WTF WHY AM I SO THIRSTY
I AM GETTING PLENTY OF SLEEP
DAMNIT I BETTER NOT BE GETTING SICK LIKE EVERYONE ELSE

Btw, poor Leigh! She punctured/ruptured her ear drum and has been out on vicodin all week. Had hearing loss and severe pain, so hopefully it's a wound that will start to heal by this week. What misery for her =(

35 days! woohoo! So... Kate Capshaw used to be a Scientologist, huh? this explains so much

In real news, my Indiana Jones spoon is fucking rad.

Okay, in REAL real news, a while back when I was hunting for evidence (but not spoilers! The kind of stuff I mean is like the fact that their store and the spoon I got has ants on it. HMM, I WONDER WHY), I noticed that at the top of the frame on the official webpage there is a really weird looking head with three layers. (Ogres? I think I'm tired) Because the MacGuffin (supposedly, and also I hate that term) is a skull, I was like, hey, I wonder if that is going to have to do anything with the plot? (I am insane on details like that sometimes. Too many years of reading Hardy Boys novels)

Well, I don't know, it still might, but I doubt it, because the images are blatantly ripped right from this site and also if it were highly relevant to the skull I don't think they'd put it so centrally on the website. Or would they?! (Kind of anticlimactic, though.)

HOWEVER. Since I no longer support the theory that it's part of the plot, AND that the images appear to be 100% copypasta'd from that eMuseum website, I'm thinking some ethically questionable webdesigner might have taken those images figuring no one would notice or whatever. (Sadly, as evidenced in my engineering ethics class, there are too many people who don't give a damn about professional ethics.) I mean, I'm not saying they did, but with the way that LFL's lawyers hammer down on the slightest slightest thing (and I can back that up, but I'm not going to tell the story here), it just makes me think it would be such delicious irony.

Or maybe I should submit it to www.youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com? I don't want to be the one getting out bad press on Indy, though (and if it turned out they did have permission, then making myself look like a fool).

ANYWAY. Thoughts?!