u/Lucky-Law7220

Bought two items on eBay that I used pay in 4 with, and paid one installment on both. eBay fully refunded, but PayPal hasn’t refunded my credit card with the installments paid before. What do I do? I have proofs of dates and charges on credit card.

For students on benacquisto some guide points I’ve gotten to make sure you keep your scholarship:

1. The scholarship renews yearly, so they look at whether you were enrolled full time (12 credits) in fall and spring and then if you have a 3.0 cumulative gpa, and if you receive credit for all classes taken. If you withdraw a class or fail (so a F or E) you lose it. You can get a D- and still keep it but it would be massive on any apps, so obv try to get a C minimum and keep track of ur gpa

2. The scholarship does not cover summer, if you withdraw a class or fail a class in summer, it doesn’t count.

3. This covers 10 semesters, or 120 credits (not including summer unlike Bright futures). If you use up BF, benacquisto will increase to cover tuition and you still get a similar reimbursement amount

4. The 500 dollar stipend does not count toward renewal but does count towards being eligible at first

5. In your last semester, you do not have to be full time. They will send an email, and you can opt in to the scholarships for them to cover, but keep in mind if you do not end up graduating you will lose the scholarship.

Scalper - an individual who hoards multiple of one product with intention to resell at a higher market rate

All I see on this subreddit is that “this hobby has gone to shit”, “scalper”, “fuck scalper”. I guarantee half the people acting like white knights here themselves do not know anything about the games these cards are based on, or are reselling themselves on the side masking as a ripper. The honest truth about this hobby is that it has always been one about collecting in all sorts of ways including sealed, slabs, error cards, damaged cards, fan art etc. there is no ONE wrong way to collect.

There’s people who say that Pokémon is meant to be ripped only, ok so what about the other million toys including action figures, LEGOs etc. that people have been collecting sealed since the dawn of their releases? Those videos of the first edition booster boxes you like seeing? You think someone resealed those boxes or popped out of thin air? Someone had to keep it sealed.

While I myself am not a person who resells, I have 2 sealed products and mostly rip, I’ll even go as far to say there’s an even finer finer line with reselling and scalping. Scalping is an egregious form of reselling that includes hoarding 10s of hundreds of boxes with intent to resell. If someone grabs 2 boxes, sells one and rips another, they aren’t “scalping”.

The very nature of this hobby has always been about the various forms of collecting and the market that comes with such collectors items. The average scalper is not what this subreddit loves to throw around the term for. They are much worse people and pathological larpers and liars. Someone on eBay saying they want 200 extra bucks on a massive trade deal for an Evolving booster box does not warrant a label of “scalper”.

All of these things just makes you look insufferable, and karma farming in that sense. Down the line when you want to sell cards, would you sell them at 5 cents each because that’s how much the raw material was and the msrp is that? I’ve fought with scalpers, and avoided them, but blind messaging them of Facebook marketplace is not doing you any good or fixing the hobby.

There's so many megas to go, only a year left for mega evolution printing and each set has like only 3-4 megas

Before even getting into the roster, their picks are all locked from 27-33, with a swap in 32 available. Off a technicality, they can unlock the 2029 first, but that’s only if the Hornets agree to unlock the 2027 first round pick that is owed to them lottery protected.

Defense is the name of the game, but their two best players are primarily players who play downhill or in the paint, and spacing has been the biggest concern. However, to this point, I also content that their lack of any primary creator to gel their addition in hardaway and the shooters alr on the team is very concerning. And calling their team a good 3 point shooting team seems like stretch, Wiggins was a good shooter last year but we’ll see how he does on even lower volume this year most likely.

They also have 18 million locked up to Jovic who is a player riding the end of their bench and IMO another P-Will esque extension that was a huge mistake. Forget using his salary to get players, I’d be shocked if they can move him without wasting more draft capital like an unprotected swap. Top to bottom there’s fringe players at every position where for every positive a player has there’s 3 negatives (not talking about Giannis and bam in this sense). The huge extension Giannis will get will propel them closer and closer to the second apron and that will just be a point of navigating the second apron instead of using resources like future firsts in coming years to get the team better.

And if they add Derozan, you need to install plastic covers for people sitting court side for the bricks and airballs from outside the arc. Not saying they shouldn’t have traded for Giannis but I’m struggling to see how they match up to the best of the best in the league. Forget the west, how are they planning to beat the 76ers?

Pokémon is and always will be my first love in video games and I will always get the newest release no matter what, and I’ll always force myself to finish the game because of the actual Pokémon that are in the game. Not so much about the plot. I found myself HATING this game as a whole. Let me start with my grievances.

1. The price - 100 dollars for a full switch 2 experience is the priciest we’ve seen a mainline release game be in forever and I’m not sure there is any justification for this game at this price point. There is simply not enough diverse content here from a technical or even game design standpoint to justify it being so expensive. Even StarFox, which recently came out and has roughly the same amount of content in terms of all the routes u can possibly take is 50 dollars.

2. The disservice to the map - I know this has been a beaten, burnt, ripped apart horse, but the fact that we are limited to ONLY Lumiose city in arguably the most beautiful region in Kalos is so disingenuous. The argument here is that there is verticality introduced so you can explore the “rooftops” and the “sewers” but there’s such barren content here other than collecting mega crystals and seeing a bunch of pidgey. The entire map can be covered in 15 minutes, and that in and of itself leads to us being thrown into one of the most boring repetitive and awful gameplay loops we’ve seen in Pokémon. But even before that, you don’t even have FULL traversal like you had with Scarlet and Violet, it’s a shitty parkour based system that all looks the same and doesn’t have notable landmarks to allow for a subconscious mapping like in BOTW or TOTK. Timed parkour is the absolute worst here.

3. The shitty loop- This games content is so lacking and the devs likely knew this. After releasing awful looking games that ran like shit in Scarket and Violet, they cut out all the content and focused on having the game look ok and run well. Except they forgot good progression, and put us into a shitty battle rank system where you’re fighting trainers in an awkward battlefield with “realtime combat” which just alludes to you button mashing A on a move. You do battles and points and battles and points and get to a ticket and go up one rank, and hilariously they even make you skip A fuck ton of ranks after releasing no one has the patience to go through 26 ranks. Instead of making this an option and allowing other forms of getting stronger like a regular city would have, we have this.

The mega dimension loop is even more infuriating cause at this point the loop is the EXACT same except ur timed on shitty donuts and have to do 50 of these hyperspace areas to get to one Pokémon. Most of the new megas are locked behind online play anyways so who cares.

4. Lack of any real connection to X an Y - X and Y were my first ever Pokémon games so I have a lot of nostalgia with them. I think they’re classics and I would love to replay them, but they’re infamous for being rushed and cut off. Instead of extending plot lines in an organic way we have vague references and some characters who aged, and that’s it. No other significant characters appear other than L and AZ, and Zygarde is barely important in the story until the ange floette decides to pop up. The whole point of those games is life death and order, why wasn’t there a real emphasis on those motifs? Who knows, just give scovillain a mega.

Winds and waves looks amazing and I hope it’s a return to form and a game that meaningfully takes Pokémon in a good direction

1. StarFox

2. Pokopia

3. Pokemon legends ZA

4. Hyrule Warriors AOI (SOLD)

5. Metroid Prime 4 (SOLD)

6. StarFox while being a retelling of the same old story from 64, which I have played through multiple times, this was my first ever actual StarFox release on original hardware and it actually felt like a brand new game. It’s slick and again the whole mojo is that it takes a hour - two hours to beat a campaign. Choose a route and go for it. It doesn’t get old. Game looks awesome, probably best looking game other than MP4.

7. Pokopia is criminal to not put on any list. It’s a comfort game at its core and I have enjoyed playing through it when I get overwhelmed at times. It’s not over StarFox for me cause I don’t play it as often and I see myself liking the old Pokemon formula games or even LA better at times, but this is still a stellar game. It’s a Pokemon sandbox where u can play w Pokemon u battle against. I have copped the DLC as well

8. Pokemon Bias kind of creeping in here, this game is OK. I don’t like that the game takes place in one city, 70 dollars for that and 30 for DLC is criminal. The real time system is innovative, and it works but there’s some serious modifications that are needed, like doing it in a stadium. It hounds u w megas which are cool, but I still find myself fighting to complete a rather boring DLC.

These last two games, I did end up selling for 45 total to save up for some new joycons which is a bummer, but I’ll explain why I didn’t like them.

4. Hyrule warriors isn’t a necessarily bad game, but back and slash for me got boring after a while, and it was a game that u would complete solely for plot. Knight construct was my main whenever I could have him. After one playthrough, I realized I didn’t have it in me to complete a second one. If ur a Zelda fan, I recommend waiting for the discount bin before copping

5. Metroid prime 4 - 🫩. Man I was so excited for this game. I even had second thoughts before selling it but it’s cheaper than a base switch game to get right now. The first few hours are fine, but Metroid excels when u have a sense of isolation and ur in a trance by urself playing this game. The fucking federation force soldiers kill that immersion and ramble like a typical triple A release. Ice belt is easily the best area in terms of presentation and atmosphere especially before u turn on the generator.

HM - Mario Kart World was bundled for me when I got the switch 2 and its honestly a good game whenever I scarcely played it, but not really a game that I play by myself and I haven’t played it enough to rank it. I’ll give it a shot later.

They play off each other so well and they been having their moments off the court too. Seems like they’ll be running mates for a long long time

So I recently called the Financial office about not getting Bright futures added for Summer yet, and they let me know that it was because I was only taking 5 credits and I needed 6. They advised me to add a class before the start of summer B where there would be another calculation, but so far no aid has been added. I have all of the requirements for renewal, marked summer 2026 a WHILE ago, and moved up a class from fall to get 8 credit hours. Is this a common thing, or am I going to have to drop a class or two?

I think the team took a step forward and is now an interesting team to watch from an offensive standpoint. We took a step back defensively but retained the same guys mostly, I hoped we would be able to get Watson but it’s quite alright if we don’t.

Wagner and Ellis are two decent players

“Hearing that the first-round picks going to the Clippers in the Kawhi trade are in 2027 and 2029, with a swap in 2030.

Still awaiting full pick details in the Kawhi Leonard deal, but he is heading back to Toronto in a deal involving Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick.”

Source: X

Immediate thoughts: as always the 2027 draft is being used to pad the first round draft capital as it’s not a draft that teams believe are super strong. In reality, the raptors have sent out a first and a swap here and some padded draft capital in 2 seconds and the 2027 pick. Regardless decent haul.

The Clippers are def also targeting the 2029 draft, they now have 3 firsts in that draft (worse between theirs and Philly, Indiana, and now Toronto)