> The pandemic economy is forcing some Nova Scotians to turn to unregistered payday lenders online who resort to harassment, intimidation and name-calling when customers fall behind on payments, says a credit counsellor.
> Eisner said aggressive collection tactics employed by some online loan services are against regulations in all Canadian provinces. The problem, however, is enforcing those regulations when online lenders operate without regard to provincial borders.
jfc, here's an example email:
> "Today we start with references you piece of shit ... Now we start calling your sister and every other reference they have and all the references in the system," a representative for the lender wrote in an email from Nov. 30, 2020.
> Out of 20 online loan companies Eisner has researched in the past three months, 16 were not registered to operate in Nova Scotia.
> For most of the others, he couldn't find provincial registration in any Canadian jurisdiction.
I always knew payday lenders were garbage, but this is a whole new level of garbage.
Maybe if we actually had UBI then companies like this wouldn't be a problem, since people wouldn't need to use them. Just a thought, I dunno.
@Wipqozn Registered payday lenders are bad enough, why anyone would go to an unregistered one is beyond me. I guess I should check my privilege since I don't need these services, but this whole system perpetuates financial insecurity.
> Prior APPC research found that people who regularly used conservative or social media during the early months of the pandemic were more likely to report believing in a group of COVID-19 conspiracies. The current study expands on that, finding that a reliance on conservative or social media actually predicted an increase in conspiracy beliefs from March to July 2020.
@MBraedley The article states people normally borrow from multiple locations, so they probably got all the money they could from the registered ones.
> Conservative media included sources such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart News, One America News, and the Drudge Report.
> Further, these increases in conspiracy beliefs were associated with less mask wearing and decreased intentions to get a vaccine when it became available, according to the study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
I'm starting to think Conservative media is complete and utter garbage.
@MBraedley Sarcasm doesn't always translate to text, sadly.
> While the use of conservative media and social media were associated with an increase in COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, use of the mainstream print media had the opposite association. The researchers found that regular use of the mainstream print media such as the Associated Press, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post predicted a decline in these conspiracy beliefs, which was related to greater mask wearing and greater intentions to get vaccinated.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin asks judge for new trial reut.rs/3vErQVO
> In a series of motions filed to District Court Judge Peter Cahill, Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, said his client was deprived of a fair trial, adding there was prosecutorial and jury misconduct, errors of law at trial and that the verdict was contrary to law.
