Did you know a U.S. Army engineer leaked nuclear and missile secrets to a foreign nation, but wasn't caught for 20+ years?
Ben-Ami Kadish smuggled classified blueprints on nukes, F-15s, and Patriot missiles out of a military arsenal from 1979 to 1985.
Hey @Grok, in few words only. Can you confirm Kadish's religion and exactly which country he committed this treason for?
Now that I'm on a computer instead of the toilet, lets type!
NYCHA residents get subsidized internet and basic cable from whichever ISP services their building. To my knowledge, this is Spectrum and Quantum. I worked at the former.
Here's the deal as I saw it: By merely being at a NYCHA address, they get whatever Spectrum's lowest-tier internet may be. During my time, that was 300mbps, later upgraded to 400mbps, then 500mbps. By all accounts, this is already a cost savings of ~$45/m for the first year, $85/m each year thereafter (due to how the 1yr promo pricing works for regular customers). They also get a free router rental, add another $10/m they don't pay.
For TV, they get 1 free cable/XUMO (oh god kill me) box. This comes with free basic cable, and I mean so basic that Spectrum wouldn't even sell this channel line-up to anyone else. I think it mostly gets NYers the same channels as would come free over an antennae, but with better reliability/quality. These same channels are priced under the "Broadcast Surcharge Fee" of ~$28/m for regular customers.
So already, NYCHA residents save $1,140/yr on internet, and $336/yr on basic cable. Almost $1500/yr.
That alone should upset most anyone, because Spectrum sells a select few poor areas 100mbps service for $65/m, NYCHA gets 5x that speed for free.
But the fuckery just begins.
See, NYCHA residents are allowed, if not downright encouraged, to upgrade their services, while only paying the difference.
What any Spectrum community solutions rep will tell you is that NYCHA residents LOVE to upgrade their services, not pay their bills on time (and my god Spectrum is lenient when it comes to paying on time), and finally call in at the ~61day mark when Spectrum shuts off ALL their services.
See, NYCHA residents will almost always add *at least* $40 worth of channel packages, but typically way more. TV Select and a few premium channels will quickly get even their subsidized bills well over $100/m. It was not uncommon to see NYCHA cable bills of $200, owing to all the channels and internet speed increases they'd add.
So you have to explain to these librarians that just because NYCHA (the taxpayer) pays for their basic services, lack of payment shuts down their entire account until the *past due* balance is paid. You have to beat around the bush in explaining that Spectrum knows NYCHA residents would be perfectly happy to let a past-due $300+ balance ride if they were still getting the free services.
Sometimes they would pay the past-due bill right away, other times they'd call back after scrounging up the money. Rarely they would pay the entire past-due.
The system, at the time, would accept payment and restart their account with just the NYCHA basic services, which would immediately transition the conversation into said NYCHA resident adding back most of the stuff they just got done proving they couldn't pay for, because how they heck were they gonna go without their TLC and ESPN?
Terrible financial management aside, NYCHA calls were also famous for one more issue. New York is full of buildings that are absolute dogshit for trying to get a workable wifi signal in. This resulted in endless calls from the younger members of the households upset that their online gun and ball games lagged. I eventually stopped trying to explain that upgrading the theoretical speeds to gigabit would do absolutely zero to help their online experience over bad wifi blocked by thick concrete walls.
And during those calls, you could always hear the sound of black excellence ringing throughout their apartments.
The city of Charlotte, NC gives their ghetto members taxpayer-funded gigabit internet via Spectrum. Those people were nowhere near as bad, not even close. Only funny story I have from them is when a caller rang in to get internet, to which I informed him it was free, only for the caller to hang up utterly perplexed as to what sort of scam I was trying to pull on him.
Coworker told HR on me today. They told me my head looked whiter than usual.
(It was freshly shaved.)
I instinctually replied "You're wife said same thing about my inner upper thighs."
75 year olds have no sense of humor.