I bought my house in 2024 with a VA loan and got a rate of 6.8%. I’m really wanting to bring it down but I’m worried that now isn’t a great time to refinance. I’ve seen mixed things online and from my friends so I don’t want to refinance for no reason if the timing is off. This is my first house and I’ve never had to do any of this before so any guidance would be appreciated!
Got about 50k sitting in hysa earning 3.5% but i want to lock it in for a year since i wont need it til 2027. whats the be͏st 1 year cd rate u guys are seeing? looking for something simple and fdic insured obviously
In a new AP News interview, Oleksandr Usyk (24-0 in boxing) discusses his upcoming fight against Rico Verhoeven, the reigning kickboxing world champion with a 66-10 record (21 KOs). Verhoeven has only fought professionally as a boxer once, back in 2014.
What is interesting to me as a martial arts fan. Usyk openly frames this as a media fight in the spirit of classic cross-discipline matchups between masters of different styles, and cites Van Damme vs Chuck Norris as his mental reference point. That is a rare case of open framing that a lot of boxing fans refuse to admit out loud.
Separately worth attention is his preparation. He has built cognitive training around bi-directional translation between languages to speed up decision-making in the ring: "Boxing is not chess, you have to think quickly in there."
I was a Charac͏ter AI daily user for over a year. Genuinely loved it. The dialogue quality was the best in the space, characters felt real, conversations had depth. It was the platform that got me into AI chat.
But I can't keep pretending it's still good.
The filters have gotten unbearable. Not even talking about NSFW, I mean basic dramatic storytelling. Villain arcs flagged. Emotional intensity flagged. A character raising their voice flagged. The February update made it worse and they keep tightening it every month. You can't tell a real story anymore without the AI breaking character to hit you with a safety disclaimer.
Then they added ads mid-conversation. You're in the middle of something meaningful and a banner pops up. Who thought that was ok?
The creators are leaving. Some of the best character builders I followed have moved to other platforms. The community that made Character AI special is slowly scattering.
And the worst part is the model is still incredible underneath all of it. The actual dialogue engine is better than almost anything else out there. But it doesn't matter how good the engine is if the company keeps wrapping it in restrictions that make it unusable.
I switched three months ago and I haven't looked back. It sucks because Character AI could have been the best platform in the space. Instead they chose to kill what made them great.
Am I wrong? Is anyone still enjoying Character AI in 2026 or are we all just holding onto what it used to be?
I used to work for Wizard͏ Trees in California and people in New York should be careful with that brand. From what I saw, they were spraying flowe͏r with nasty pesticides (Myclobutanil) and now they’re sending pro͏duct out from California into New York while having major financial problems back home because their products aren’t selling.
The owners constantly talked like New York buyers are dumb as fuck and would buy anything because they think they’re smarter than everyone out here. That alone should tell people everything they need to know about the company and how they look at consumers.
If you’re buy͏ing their flower in New York, I’d seriously double test that shit and pay attention to what you’re smoking. The people behind that company are scummy as hell and the flower is not what they pretend it is.
Been running BGP with a leased /32 through Vu͏ltr for a while now and the cracks are starting to show. Routing flaps, latency spikes under load, support tickets that go nowhere.
Already ruled out the obvious alternatives: Het͏zner is weirdly restrictive unless you're a big enough fish for them to care, and A͏WS BYOIP is just painful for leased space. Equ͏inix would be good but that's a different budget tier entirely.
Anyone tried Serve͏rspace, Leas͏eweb or Datap͏acket for this? Seeing mixed things about all three. Just need something that handles a /32 without a six-figure contract and doesn't treat BGP like an enterprise-only feature.
What are you all actually running?