#the rest are all frequently referenced in nerd circles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pattern-recognition · 4 years ago

Note

Do you think you could break down your tsukumizu iceberg for the uninitiated? They were on tumblr? The fish? Cum iPad? Hello???

sorry, i can't explain my art

lmao sure let's just go in order i guess

Layer 1 -

self explanitory

Layer 2 -

I'm not sure where the fish motif came from but it's one of the most common repetitions in their art. They draw fish a bit less now, but art with fish used to, and probably still does, outnumber art without fish.

Layer 3 -

The "its all connected theories" bit references chi and yuu being in shimeji simulation and people trying to piece together how their worlds are related.

Tkmiz used to have a tumblr account where they used to upload short animations. It sat dormant for a long while before they decided to delete it not long ago. Surprisingly, unlike all of their other past accounts, they decided to preserve the contents of this one and you can view them all as an extended video on their twitter.

Layer 4 -

self inserts: the black haired, rectangle glasses scientist is basically tkmiz's self insert, no matter if she's ishii in glt or shijima's sister in shimsim.

gender: related to above. tkmiz's personal projection being a girl, themes of lesbianism, and even mentions of crossdressing/wanting to be a girl have led to fans that are in-the-know to debate on what tkmiz's gender identity might be; this is also why I refer to them with they/them pronouns. It's no surprised internet trans girls love tkmiz.

irl photos: I've never seen a definitive pic of what tkmiz actually looks like, but in the past they used to semi-frequently post pics of their living space. Backyards, sunsets, what seem to be the entrance to their apartment, what they ate for dinner, etc etc. Nothing too exciting.

Gon the dog: related to above. Tkmiz used to have a dog named Gon who they would occasional post a pic of or draw. Sadly Gon is now deceased.

Suicide and wine: many of tkmiz's older works have heavy themes of suicide and alcohol abuse

Fanart: they rarely draw fanart anymore but they used to do so much more regularly. Notable references are girls und panzer, gunslinger girl, nekojiru, yume nikki, eizouken, and their oldest artworks are all touhou fanart.

Layer 5 -

Parasociality: this is in reference to tkmiz becoming a cult classic within certain circles of the internet, most notably depressed lainbrains and sad internet trans girls. Ya know, nerds like me

Artbook havers (me): a few years ago tkmiz published a physical print artbook that's now long, long out of print.

Deleted Twitter: the majority of tkmiz's works are no longer available because they were either on accounts that don't exist anymore, or tkmiz deleted them along ago from their current profile.

B2 Bomber: related above. I believe tkmiz had two different pixiv accounts, both of them long gone, and 'B2 Bomber' was the oldest. If you want to see a tiny glimpse of their second pixiv on the Wayback Machine, their ID was 1535101.

Historical art inspo: tkmiz went to university to become an art teacher before dropping out. Many of their older works are references to more well known paintings, especially the works of Gustav Klimt who seemed to be a favorite.

Irl life info: We don't know a lot about them, the enigmatic personality is by design after all, but we do know a few things. Like them being a college dropout, using the proceeds from the glt anime to take their parents to an onsen, etc etc.

Layer 6 -

2chan: much of what remains of the art and posts that tkmiz tried to nuke were preserved by members of 2chan.

Nsfw flan doujins: oh boy where's where things first get interesting. Long, long ago the first manga that tkmiz self-published were lolicon h-doujins of flandre scarlet from touhou. There were three of them, followed by a completely safe doujin called "flan wants to die" which is still easy to find.

Comiket tables: related above. If you dig hard enough, you can find the convention floor vendor lists that mention tkmiz and their booth number from when they had to sell their h-doujins by hand. I think they only sold one of the books at comiket, the other two were sold at different conventions and only ever in very limited psychical editions like most h-manga of the day.

Layer 7 -

The Shimeji Prequel: There is a very ancient comic from back before tkmiz had much artistic experience (even before the aforementioned flan doujins) that still features a girl who kind of looks like shijima (and chito, they probably began as the same oc) and another character that's identical to tkmiz's self insert/shijima's scientist sister. The comic is nsfw in nature, and proto-shijima gets eaten out by her classmate named Yoshiko who immediately dies. Because there are many references in modern shimsim to this character (or someone kind of like her) its believed she's still cannon, is the reason for Shijima locking herself in a closet for so long, and will likely be a plot revelation later in the manga. I doubt the oral sex will be mentioned though.

Layer 8 -

CUM IPAD

This is another referenced to a deleted tweet. There used to be a time when tkmiz would be horny on main and just post about jerking off. You can probably imagine the rest

#anonymous #have fun

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wazafam · 4 years ago

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In case there would ever be any doubt about Dr. Sheldon Cooper's status as a nerd (which is hard enough to even imagine), one would only need to take a look at the shirts he wears on a regular basis. Over the course of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon builds up quite the impressive wardrobe of hundreds of shirts referencing topics ranging from the scientific to rites of science fiction passage to more niche corners of nerd fandom.

RELATED: The Big Bang Theory: 5 Things Season 1 Sheldon Would Hate About Finale Leonard (& 5 He Would Be Proud Of)

Sheldon's personality and emotional maturity in particular might change a lot over the years, but his sartorial style is a relative constant in the ever-changing world of the series. Some shirts are worn more frequently than others, but there are those that stand out as a cut above the rest.

10 D20 - "I Win"

The nerdy pursuits of Sheldon and his group of friends are varied and constantly changing with the times, but one subject matter the guys always come back to is Dungeons & Dragons.

That game gets a cheeky reference in this shirt that Sheldon often wears: a vibrant red t-shirt depicting a D20 dice, also known as an Icosahedron, with a simple, to-the-point caption — "I win." The D20 is one of the most commonly used dice in the gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons, which makes the shirt's reference one that any fellow D&D fan would understand.

9 73

This next shirt gets to the heart of Sheldon's love for the beauty of mathematics and science alike, even when the peculiarities of both fields might not excite others as much as they do him. At first glance, the shirt is both simple and confusing: a blue tee with the number 73 in a circle.

But to understand this shirt's significance, Sheldon perhaps explains it best: "The best number is 73. ... 73 is the 21st prime number. Its mirror, 37, is the 12th and its mirror, 21, is the product of multiplying — hang onto your hats — 7 and 3. ... In binary, 73 is a palindrome, 1001001, which backwards is 1001001. Exactly the same."

8 Old-Fashioned Locomotive Train

Sheldon Cooper loves many things: routines, physics, flags, sitting in the same spot on the same couch every day. But one of his biggest passions is trains in all their forms.

RELATED: The Big Bang Theory: The 10 Best Comic Book Store Scenes, Ranked

This shirt is yet another simple but perfectly in character design fitting for Sheldon's special interests: a mustard yellow tee featuring an old-fashioned locomotive train, precisely the kind Sheldon probably most wanted to conduct.

7 The Wesley Crushers

This next shirt touches on an incredibly niche area of the nerd world, an incredibly niche area of the series as a whole.

The third season episode "The Wheaton Recurrence" finds Sheldon and friends dueling against his longtime nemesis Wil Wheaton in a bowling tournament. It's during these games that Sheldon comes up with a name for his bowling team, and a shirt to match it: The Wesley Crushers. This is a reference to Wheaton's Star Trek character and is stamped on the back of a mustard-yellow bowling shirt.

6 The Greatest American Hero

The Big Bang Theory is filled with references to plenty of mainstream nerd fare, whether Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, or countless other options. But sometimes, the series has fun with referencing lesser-known or lasting pieces of popular culture, such as this Sheldon shirt does.

This red tee features the logo of the short-lived 1980s series The Greatest American Hero. Perhaps best remembered for its theme song, "Believe It or Not," the quirky series hasn't quite held up in the pop culture consciousness in the way other superhero shows have.

5 Television Test Pattern Bars

Sheldon's love of television isn't just limited to sci-fi shows, as this frequently worn shirt makes clear. At first glance, it might not be obvious what this design refers to, largely it's more or less obsolete.

However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that this baby-blue tee features a representation of the classic multi-color television test pattern known as the SMPTE color bars sequence.

4 Evolution of Man and Robot

Sheldon may look down on biology in all its forms, and quite regularly, too, but that doesn't stop him from enjoying a shirt design that humorously depicts the evolution of humans — with a twist.

RELATED: The Big Bang Theory: 10 Relationships That Fans Were Rooting For From The Start (5 That Surprised Everyone)

The red shirt design makes use of the traditional series of human development but takes things one step further as the yellow graphic design concludes with human's technological evolution into a robot.

3 The Vitruvian Superman

Yet another of Sheldon's best shirts perfectly blends his favorite worlds of science, science fiction, and superheroes. Though occasionally hard to distinguish due to the lightness of the print on the dark blue background, this design is an homage to Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

But rather than the traditional depiction of human body proportions, this design includes a crossover with the hero Superman, cape and all, in the pose of the Vitruvian Man.

2 Melting Rubik's Cube

One of the more artistic designs in all of Sheldon's wardrobe, this shirt is also honestly just plain cool to look at it.

Still in keeping with Sheldon's love of all things nerdy, this plain black tee features everyone's favorite brain-twisting toy, the Rubik's cube. But, as can be clearly seen from the vibrant rainbow puddle at the bottom, the Rubik's cube is somehow artfully melting with no clear cause.

1 The Flash

Sheldon Cooper loves many superheroes, but from the beginning of the series, it's clear that he has a true favorite in the Flash. It makes sense, given the Flash's own background as a scientist, and Sheldon's pride in his line of work.

Therefore, it's only natural that perhaps the most iconic shirt to be associated with his character is this simple athletic red tee featuring the traditional logo of the Flash — a yellow lightning bolt emblazed on a white circle background — with white ringed stripes on the sleeves.

NEXT: The Big Bang Theory: Each Main Character's Best & Worst Workplace Decision

The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon's 10 Best T-Shirts, Ranked from https://ift.tt/3czpVtR

#Blogger

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mst3kproject · 8 years ago

Photo

313: Earth vs the Spider

First we had It Conquered the World, in which It failed to even conquer the town of Beechwood. Now we have Earth vs the Spider, in which the poor Spider is badly outnumbered even when it, too, is only really menacing one small California town. It's an incongruous title in other ways as well, but I'll get to that.

High school student Carol Flynn is worried when her father doesn't return from a drive, so she and her rather tactless boyfriend Mike set out to see what's keeping him. There's no trace of the man, but they do find a huge silk rope across the road, which they follow into a cave, which turns out to be home to a spider the size of a house! A giant dose of DDT appears to kill it (along with the entire rest of the cave ecosystem), so a teacher has the gigantic corpse taken back to town and stored in the school gym so that scientists from across the country can come and study it. Before that can happen, however, the spider is brought back to life by the Power of Rock N Roll, and soon it's off on the inevitable rampage!

The movie never tells us how they got the huge spider back to town. Did they just strap it to the top of a truck? Did they airlift it with a helicopter? In either case, how did they first get it out of the cave? Maybe they used whatever it was they did to transport King Kong to New York.

Other than that, it's kind of hard to find anything to say about Earth vs the Spider. It's another bland, by-the-numbers sort of movie that doesn't really have anything to make it stand out from the pack. It's something to look at for seventy minutes, but it doesn't linger. The most memorable thing about it is the scene in Lilo and Stitch where it's playing on the televisions in a shop window and Stitch finds it inspiring.

That said, the movie is not necessarily bad. In fact, there are places where it pays a surprising amount of attention to everyday details that help make the silly story feel more grounded. For example, Carol's father doesn't seem to have been a very responsible man, but at the same time we can tell he and Carol were very close and she takes great offense whenever anybody else refers to his poor reputation. Yet in spite of her love for him, she knows she has no grounds to defend him, either, and is eventually forced to admit that his having run off to gamble his paycheque away is a very real possibility. Her distress over the loss of the bracelet he bought for her would seem like an over-reaction under other circumstances, but understandable due to her grief at his death.

Other character also have nice touches like this. The fact that Mike keeps putting his foot in his mouth, or that he doesn't have his own car but must borrow one from a friend, make the characters feel more like real teenagers even if the actors don't always look the part. It's also nice to see that the kids actually have parents who can be supportive, worried, or strict by turns, as the situation demands. The small town setting makes it plausible that the characters cannot consult with scientists or the military about their spider problem. The closest thing they have is their high school science teacher. He's not exactly on the cutting edge of research, so he uses what he's familiar with rather than coming up with some esoteric technobabble solution to the monster.

So the characters are fairly convincingly written (George Worthing Yates also co-wrote Them!, which is easily the best of the 50's giant bug movies), but unfortunately they're less-convincingly played. I kind of have a thing for June Kenney (Carol), who looked awfully cute in her circle skirts and sailor collars, but she's not a good actress. She always sounds like she's trying too hard, which makes her the opposite of Eugene Persson (Mike), who sounds like he's barely trying at all. If they were both at the same end of this scale it might work, but the fact that they're equal opposites just emphasizes how much they both suck. The Sheriff's skepticism when he first hears about the spider is understandable, but Gene Roth's overacting does neither him nor the movie any favours.

Special effects are a mixed bag. A composite shot of Mike and Carol running along a ledge doesn't look bad – you can buy that they're actually in Carlsbad Caverns for the purposes of the movie. A moment later, however, we see a tarantula move through the same image of the cavern, which has now been cut out so that the spider can pass behind the rock formations without an expensive process shot. This looks terrible, and there's a spot where you can see the edge of the cut-out cardboard. The dried-out victims that have been drained by the spider are amusingly gruesome, but the skeletons strewn around the cave are obvious plastic. The huge strands of silk that make up the spider's web look quite nice, all filamentous and springy, but when we see bits of the spider in the same shot as the humans they always look hideously fake.

Come to think of it, where are all those skeletons supposed to have come from? We don't hear about a rash of car accidents or missing persons along that stretch of road – maybe we should have, since it would give extra foundation to Carol's fears for her father's safety. There's got to be a dozen or more corpses sitting around in there. Who were these people?

The spider itself is realized (quote unquote) like all Bert I. Gordon's giant creations are – mostly through superimposed shots of a live tarantula, with a bit of very limited puppetry. While the latter is, as I've already observed, pretty dreadful, the process shots here are about as good as they ever got in such movies. Certainly they're a hell of a lot better than the bugs with holes in them of King Dinosaur or The Cyclops. The angles are matched very well to the background footage, and the spider is never obviously transparent. As long as it's not expected to interact with its environment or the characters, it's quite acceptable. It seems that by this point in his giant bug movie career, Gordon had a good handle on what he could and could not get away with, at least as far as superimposition went.

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why you've never heard of a 'bird spider', that's because it's a species found mostly in the rainforests of Columbia and Venezuela. Bird spiders are golden-brown in colour and about as big as a bread-and-butter plate, make poor pets because of their aggressive temperament, and never come anywhere near the southwestern United States unless a human brings them there. The furry little spider the movie shows us, supposedly representing a normal-sized bird spider, looks like an ordinary Chilean rose-hair to me. Rose-hairs are half the size of a bird spider (also called a goliath bird-eater... because yes, they do) and not even in the same genus, though both are in the tarantula family. Spider nerd out.)

Unusually for a Bert I. Gordon movie, Earth vs the Spider never delves into the question of why there's a giant spider running around. His other movies all give excuses for embiggening things: Glenn Manning's cells were mutated by exposure to the plutonium bomb, the locusts in The Beginning of the End ate irradiated grain, Empire of the Ants blames a toxic spill, and Village of the Giants has the Goo. None of these are very plausible, but they all make it over the 'just accept it' threshold so we can get to the story beyond. Earth vs the Spider brings the idea up, but never bothers to do anything with it. The teacher notes that while the spider may be dead, 'the principle that caused it to grow' is not, and it's important to study this so they won't end up with more giant spiders that could easily overwhelm human civilization.

This idea is somewhat reminiscent of Them!, in which the elder Dr. Medford fears that the ants, which breed faster and build more efficiency, will drive humanity to extinction. Unlike in Them!, however, the plot point serves only as an excuse for bringing the spider into town so it can wake up and have stuff to wreck. Nobody ever finds out why it was so big, and at the end the cave is sealed up with explosives while the mystery remains un-solved – it's never even referenced again. In the other Bert I. Gordon 'giant creature' movies, the beastie's origin is frequently key to its defeat. In The Amazing Colossal Man the scientists are able to find a cure for Glenn's condition after they realize what effect the plutonium bomb had on his bone marrow. In Village of the Giants, Genius discovers an antidote to the Goo. Earth vs the Spider? Nothing doing. Why did they even bother to bring it up? It seems like the best approach might have been to just not worry about the origin of the spider and hope the audience wouldn't think of it themselves.

This is the other place where the title seems very strange. The idea that the spider is a menace to the entire Earth is merely an exaggeration, but the title Earth vs the Spider also seems to imply that the spider itself is from somewhere else, like the interdimensional spiders of The Giant Spider Invasion. If you're gonna give us a Spider from Nowhere, fine, but don't do that after a title that seems to promise us a Spider from Mars!

I am not watching Giant Spider Invasion next week. Fifty-foot spiders are something I have to pace myself with or I'll run out of things to say about them.

#mst3k #reviews #earth vs the spider #tw: arachnophobia #mister big #50s #tw: spiders #giant arthropod hours

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damonbation · 5 years ago

Text

Introducing Coverage Critic: Time to Kill the $80 Mobile Phone Bill Forever

A Quick Foreword: Although the world is still in Pandemic mode, we are shifting gears back to personal finance mode here at MMM. Partly because we could all use a distraction right now, and even more important because forced time off like this is the ideal time to re-invest in optimizing parts of your life such as your fitness, food and finances.

—

Every now and then, I learn to my horror that some people are still paying preposterous amounts for mobile phone service, so I write another article about it.

If we are lucky, a solid number of people make the switch and enjoy increased prosperity, but everyone who didn’t happen to read that article goes on paying and paying, and I see it in the case studies that people email me when looking for advice. Lines like this in their budget:

mobile phone service (2 people): $160

“NO!!!!” … is all I can say, when I see such unnecessary expenditure. These days, a great nationwide phone service plan costs between and $10-40 per month, depending on how many frills you need.

Why is this a big deal? Just because of this simple fact:

Cutting $100 per month from your budget becomes a $17,000 boost to your wealth every ten years.

And today’s $10-40 phone plans are just great. Anything more than that is just a plain old ripoff, end of story. Just as any phone more expensive than $200* (yes, that includes all new iPhones), is probably a waste of money too.

So today, we are going to take the next step: assigning a permanent inner-circle Mustachian expert to monitor the ever-improving cell phone market, and dispense the latest advice as appropriate. And I happen to know just the guy:

Christian Smith, along with colleagues at GiveWell in San Francisco, circa 2016

My first contact with Chris was in 2016 when he was working with GiveWell, a super-efficient charitable organization that often tops the list for people looking to maximize the impact of their giving.

But much to my surprise, he showed up in my own HQ coworking space in 2018, and I noticed he was a bit of a mobile phone research addict. He had started an intriguing website called Coverage Critic, and started methodically reviewing every phone plan (and even many handsets) he could get his hands on, and I liked the thorough and open way in which he did it.

This was ideal for me, because frankly I don’t have time to keep pace with ongoing changes in the marketplace. I may be an expert on construction and energy consumption, but I defer to my friend Ben when I have questions about fixing cars, Brandon when I need advice on credit cards, HQ member Dr. D for insider perspectives on the life of a doctor and the medical industry, and now Chris can take on the mobile phone world.

So we decided to team up: Chris will maintain his own list of the best cheap mobile phone plans on a new Coverage Critic page here on MMM. He gets the benefit of more people enjoying his work, and I get the benefit of more useful information on my site. And if it goes well, it will generate savings for you and eventual referral income for us (more on that at the bottom of this article).

So to complete this introduction, I will hand the keyboard over to the man himself.

Meet The Coverage Critic

Chris, engaged in some recent Coverage Criticicism at MMM-HQ

I started my professional life working on cost-effectiveness models for the charity evaluator GiveWell. (The organization is awesome; see MMM’s earlier post.) When I was ready for a career change, I figured I’d like to combine my analytical nature with my knack for cutting through bullshit. That quickly led me to the cell phone industry.

So about a year ago, I created a site called Coverage Critic in the hopes of meeting a need that was being overlooked: detailed mobile phone service reviews, without the common problem of bias due to undisclosed financial arrangements between the phone company and the reviewer.

What’s the Problem with the Cell Phone Industry?

Somehow, every mobile phone network in the U.S. claims to offer the best service. And each network can back up its claims by referencing third-party evaluations.

How is that possible? Bad financial incentives.

Each network wants to claim it is great. Network operators are willing to pay to license reviewers’ “awards”. Consequently, money-hungry reviewers give awards to undeserving, mediocre networks.

On top of this, many phone companies have whipped up combinations of confusing plans, convoluted prices, and misleading claims. Just a few examples:

Coverage maps continue to be wildly inaccurate.

Many carriers offer “unlimited” plans that have limits.

All of the major U.S. network operators are overhyping next-generation, 5G technologies. AT&T has even started tricking its subscribers by renaming some of its 4G service “5GE.”

However, with enough research and shoveling, I believe it becomes clear which phone companies and plans offer the best bang for the buck. So going forward, MMM and I will be collaborating to share recommended phone plans right here on his website, and adding an automated plan finder tool soon afterwards. I think you’ll find that there are a lot of great, budget-friendly options on the market.

A Few Quick Examples:

T-Mobile Connect: unlimited minutes and texts with 2GB of data for $15 per month

Total Wireless: 4 lines in a combined family plan with unlimited calling, texting, and 100GB of shared data(!) for $100 per month. (runs on Verizon’s extensive network)

Xfinity Mobile: 5 lines with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 10GB of shared data over Verizon’s network for about $12 per line each month (heads up: only Xfinity Internet customers are eligible, and the bring-your-own-device program is fairly restrictive).

Ting: Limited use family plans for under $15 per line each month.

Tello: 100 minutes, unlimited texts, and 1GB of data for $7 per month (on Sprint’s somewhat lousy network).

[MMM note – even as a frequent traveler, serious techie and a “professional blogger”, I rarely use more than 1GB each month on my own Google Fi plan ($20 base cost plus data, then $15 for each additional family member). So some of these are indeed generous plans]

Okay, What About Phones?

With the above carriers, you may be able to bring your existing phone. But if you need a new one, there are some damn good, low-cost options these days. The Moto G7 Play is only $130 and offers outstanding performance despite the low price point. I use it as my personal phone and love it.

If you really want something fancy, consider the Google Pixel 3a or the recently released, second-generation iPhone SE. Both of these are amazing phones and about half as expensive as an iPhone 11.

——————————————-

Mobile Phone Service 101

If you��re looking to save on cell phone service, it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of the industry. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to skip over a lot of nuances in the rest of this post. If you’re a nerd like me and want more technical details, check out my longer, drier article that goes into more depth.

The Wireless Market

There are only four nationwide networks in the U.S. (soon to be three thanks to a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint). They vary in the extent of their coverage:

Verizon (most coverage)

AT&T (2nd best coverage)

T-Mobile (3rd best coverage)

Sprint (worst coverage)

Not everyone needs the most coverage. All four nationwide networks typically offer solid coverage in densely populated areas. Coverage should be a bigger concern for people who regularly find themselves deep in the mountains or cornfields.

While there are only four nationwide networks, there are dozens of carriers offering cell phone service to consumers – offering vastly different pricing and customer service experiences.

Expensive services running over a given network will tend to offer better customer service, more roaming coverage, and better priority during periods of congestion than low-cost carriers using the same network. That said, many people won’t even notice a difference between low-cost and high-cost carriers using the same network.

For most people, the easiest way to figure out whether a low-cost carrier will provide a good experience is to just try one. You can typically sign up for these services without a long-term commitment. If you have a good initial experience with a budget-friendly carrier, you can stick with it and save substantially month after month.

With a good carrier, a budget-friendly phone, and a bit of effort to limit data use, most people can have a great cellular experience while saving a bunch of money.

MMM’s Conclusion

From now on, you can check in on the Coverage Critic’s recommendations at mrmoneymustache.com/coveragecritic, and he will also be issuing occasional clever or wry commentary on Twitter at @Coverage_Critic.

Thanks for joining the team, Chris!

*okay, special exception if you use it for work in video or photography. I paid $299 a year ago for my stupendously fancy Google Pixel 3a phone.. but only because I run this blog and the extra spending is justified by the better camera.

The Full Disclosure: whenever possible, we have signed this blog up for referral programs with any recommended companies that offer them, so we may receive a commission if you sign up for a plan using our research. We aim to avoid letting income (or lack thereof) affect our recommendations, but we still want to be upfront about everything so you can judge for yourself. Specific details about these referral programs is shared on the CC transparency page. MMM explains more about how he handles affiliate arrangements here.

from Money 101 https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/05/03/mobile-phone-plans/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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andrewdburton · 5 years ago

Text

Introducing Coverage Critic: Time to Kill the $80 Mobile Phone Bill Forever

—

Every now and then, I learn to my horror that some people are still paying preposterous amounts for mobile phone service, so I write another article about it.

mobile phone service (2 people): $160

Why is this a big deal? Just because of this simple fact:

Cutting $100 per month from your budget becomes a $17,000 boost to your wealth every ten years.

Christian Smith, along with colleagues at GiveWell in San Francisco, circa 2016

So to complete this introduction, I will hand the keyboard over to the man himself.

Meet The Coverage Critic

Chris, engaged in some recent Coverage Criticicism at MMM-HQ

What’s the Problem with the Cell Phone Industry?

Somehow, every mobile phone network in the U.S. claims to offer the best service. And each network can back up its claims by referencing third-party evaluations.

How is that possible? Bad financial incentives.

Each network wants to claim it is great. Network operators are willing to pay to license reviewers’ “awards”. Consequently, money-hungry reviewers give awards to undeserving, mediocre networks.

On top of this, many phone companies have whipped up combinations of confusing plans, convoluted prices, and misleading claims. Just a few examples:

Coverage maps continue to be wildly inaccurate.

Many carriers offer “unlimited” plans that have limits.

All of the major U.S. network operators are overhyping next-generation, 5G technologies. AT&T has even started tricking its subscribers by renaming some of its 4G service “5GE.”

A Few Quick Examples:

T-Mobile Connect: unlimited minutes and texts with 2GB of data for $15 per month

Total Wireless: 4 lines in a combined family plan with unlimited calling, texting, and 100GB of shared data(!) for $100 per month. (runs on Verizon’s extensive network)

Ting: Limited use family plans for under $15 per line each month.

Tello: 100 minutes, unlimited texts, and 1GB of data for $7 per month (on Sprint’s somewhat lousy network).

Okay, What About Phones?

If you really want something fancy, consider the Google Pixel 3a or the recently released, second-generation iPhone SE. Both of these are amazing phones and about half as expensive as an iPhone 11.

——————————————-

Mobile Phone Service 101

If you’re looking to save on cell phone service, it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of the industry. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to skip over a lot of nuances in the rest of this post. If you’re a nerd like me and want more technical details, check out my longer, drier article that goes into more depth.

The Wireless Market

There are only four nationwide networks in the U.S. (soon to be three thanks to a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint). They vary in the extent of their coverage:

Verizon (most coverage)

AT&T (2nd best coverage)

T-Mobile (3rd best coverage)

Sprint (worst coverage)

While there are only four nationwide networks, there are dozens of carriers offering cell phone service to consumers – offering vastly different pricing and customer service experiences.

With a good carrier, a budget-friendly phone, and a bit of effort to limit data use, most people can have a great cellular experience while saving a bunch of money.

MMM’s Conclusion

Thanks for joining the team, Chris!

from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/05/03/mobile-phone-plans/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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