Can I message you about your brain injury experience? Your description of what your life/experience matches my own, and I had several concussions as a child. I never considered the possibility my "unique" way of remembering things and speech patterns was linked to brain trauma.
I stayed at a hotel that had bed bugs, the hotel was uninterested in refunding us or giving us a new room (I had only been in the room shortly before discovering them). I went back to Booking.com and they said I had to be refunded via the hotel and they would only act as arbiters. After showing proof the hotel wouldn't refund me, they continued to not refund.
To really add insult to injury I wrote a review of the hotel explaining the situation and it was removed!
I bet they met each other at some point! That was when he was there. Springdale Job Corps, then?
He also looks back on it fondly, and fairly commonly throws out new experiences he got while he was there. Recently he revealed he used to volunteer at the Troutdale Library because there was a van that could take them from Springdale over there!
My brother went through the job corp program in the mid aughts outside of Portland, Oregon.
It was a great experience for him. He struggled throughout school[0], so at the beginning of his high school "career" he dropped out in favor of job corps. As a double-whammy, he's autistic. The structure of expectations and responsibilities that each individual had to handle every day worked great for him.
Ultimately he didn't enter the career field he chose for job corps, but it did set him up for success later. Inevitably he ends up in leadership positions at places he works.
He also got his high school diploma through the program.
[0] Generally because he didn't fit in socially, and teachers treated him differently. He's very smart, but historically had a difficult time applying himself.
> Facebook was all-in on cryptocurrencies. The project is fully gone.
For what it's worth, their cryptocurrency project is absolutely NOT gone. It's gone in the Facebook-ownership sense (in that it was barred from continuing the project by the SEC (?)), but the code and teams are absolutely still iterating on what began at Facebook. Aptos, Sui, and 0L are all projects that have launched to fanfare within the last year.
I'm up for lambasting Facebook as much as the next guy, but I don't think government blocking their projects existence counts as failing.
I had the same experience. The beeline that Progressive's snapshot device did actively encouraged worse driving behavior in a city.
I could see it being more beneficial in rural communities where there's less erratic driver behavior, but in a major US city it was doing me no favors.
There are many considerations you need to make if Act 60 is what you're referencing. To name a few considerations:
1. Cost of living in Puerto Rico is quite high. Expect to pay roughly double for the same foods you would anywhere else in the US, in terms of eating out OR the grocery store.
2. Applying for Tax Act 60 is a fairly lengthy process - depending on what service you go with, it can cost upwards of $20,000. This is just for the application, not for the other requirements it has such as becoming a "bona fide" resident.
3. This one is fairly minor, but worth noting. Puerto Rico moves at a difference pace than the rest of the US. Many online services we take for granted just don't really exist here. Schedule a doctor apt online? Buy car/medical insurance? Bank services? All of those either happen on the phone or in person. If you don't know spanish, this can be difficult to navigate.
I don't say this to dissuade you, just to recognize there are unexpected considerations to make that might not be immediately obvious/expected.
I'd add the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erickson to that list, if you like a grittier dark fantasy.