GooberEar @ GooberEar @lemmy.wtf

Posts

0

Comments

456

Joined

11 mo. ago

I'll put an offender on blast: Max.

A couple of months ago I subscribed to the highest tier, ad-free plan. Around a week into it, we started getting ads for different kinds of sports shows, interrupting the shows and movies at random spots just like traditional ads on television.

First thing first: Back in the days when we rode our Dimetrodons to school both ways uphill in fallen volcanic ash, we called it Cinemax and HBO was separate. And neither one of them had ads show up in the middle of their content because they were premium channels.

Second thing second: When I contacted customer service about it, they actually had the audacity to tell me that those aren't ads, they are previews for other content offered in their service.

So to me, whether it is a bug in their system or the definition of ad has changed in the ensuing millennia since I first learned its meaning, the fact that there are even ads in premium media services like these is a prime example of enshittification to me.

It's interesting to hear how prices are so different in other parts of the world.

Where I live, which is considered low cost of living for the USA, $10USD is about what it would cost to buy a pound (roughly 0.5 kg) of the lowest grade hamburger and a pack of generic potato buns at the lowest cost store around. That wouldn't be enough to make a bunch of burgers unless they were slider size and it wouldn't cover the cost of all the other extras (veggies, cheese, condiments) that I'd need to be able to approximate a burger from a place like Five Guys.

Granted, I could do much better for myself for much less than $80 (assuming we're talking about $80USD for a family of 3 - 5). But there are some advantages to not having to do the shopping, the prep work, and the clean-up. I could see doing this every once in a while as a special occasion thing, but then I haven't eaten at Five Guys in over a decade, and I don't know if their food has declined in quality as much as pretty much all the other fast food places.

I have a family member who told me last year that they believe Christians are the most persecuted group in the USA, even more so than gay people.

In truth it was very challenging to stay calm in the face of someone saying something so blatantly biased and false. Packaged as an opinion, of course, but presented as the truth.

I asked questions and challenged some of the statements being made, but I know for a fact that the only thing I accomplished is that she's unlikely to make that particular statement in front of me again. No minds were changed that day. It's just sad.

As someone who actually IS persecuted in this country for things I cannot change about myself, I really don't get why someone would want to live under the delusion that they are being persecuted when they otherwise aren't. It's not fun and there's no benefit to being persecuted.

My scabs haven't even healed, the wound is still too fresh.

Last year the grocery store I go to remodeled for almost 5 months. Each and every week that I went in there, entire sections had been moved to a new location. Signs weren't updated at all during the process, and there weren't any employees to be seen, so it was time consuming to find stuff. Plus, the store was disgusting during that time.

Not only that, but they significantly reduced overall product selection and moved the aisles closer together so that you can barely squeak 2 carts side by side down the aisles. There's no room to maneuver and get around folks.

The big "win" was that during the remodeling, they didn't have all those displays down the middle of the main aisles blocking everything up. But that turned out to be false hope, because once the remodeling was done, those displays all came back with a vengeance.

The other big "win" was more space in the checkout area, including more self-checkouts. But that turned out to be false hope because within a few months, a lot of the machines have been permanently "broken", some were converted to cash-only, and they added AI cameras to them that lock the machine up about every 3rd item.

Oh yeah? I'll make my own eggs with blackjack and hookers.

I'm disappointed to hear that that about Josh's Frogs. I'm a fan of the company overall and had great experience with them, but I have never bought live food or live animals from them. So, I'm a little surprised to hear that they're shipping roaches and crickets this way. Otherwise, they're my go to for a lot of other hobby related stuff, so I hope they have made some improvements on that front.

For clarity, I imagine that the species of roach you ordered were likely something like dubias.

For anybody that might see this, most of the roach species used as feeders (or even kept as "pets") are not associated with diseases in humans and would be highly unlikely to become an infestation issue in most domestic situations outside of fully tropical climates (and even then it would be unlikely). These are critters that need stable, warm temperatures and fairly high humidity, as well as appropriate food sources and surprisingly clean environments just to keep them alive in cultivation. Your home or the post office (in North America) is unlikely to be conducive.

Of all the critters that people feed live "bugs" (i.e "bugs") to, snakes are one of the least likely.

Food items like live crickets are usually fed to animals like lizards (probably most common example), frogs and other amphibians, fish, birds, predatory invertebrates (like spiders and scorpions), etc.

In the case of pinhead crickets, those are usually purchased (in large quantities) by people breeding insect eating species since the young are too small for anything larger than the youngest and tiniest food items or for people with a large collection of animals like poison dart frogs that need very small, fairly fragile food items.

As for the debate of local pick-up versus online orders, there are pros and cons to each, and different people have different situations and needs. At the end of the day, in my part of the world, pretty much all the places I'd go to pick up crickets locally are just getting them shipped in from large scale cricket breeders anyway, so if you need a bulk order of 1000+, it's likely cheaper and easier just to order them online and have them shipped. Also important to note, these aren't just random crickets someone collected in their back yard, these are a specific cultivated species that's been grown in relatively sanitary conditions so that they aren't carrying harmful parasites and disease or covered in dangerous pesticides and chemicals.

Wait, I had eggs for breakfast and lunch today. How is this possible?

No worries mate, as long as you lay very still so you don't trigger any predators' hunting instincts, you'll probably fare okay.

So long as we all still agree to call their poop "scat", I am okay with this.

I'll have to give this a watch sometime. I think I only ever got to play the Nintendo / Super Nintendo version(s) of these games. But for some reason I vaguely recall thinking that the Sega games were a lot cooler looking. Maybe I am misremembering, so yet another reason I should watch this.

No worries mate, as long as you're not the weakest and the sickliest, you'll probably fare okay.

I wonder why Twix didn't catch on as a mockunominal for that social media platform. Mars or whoever owns the brand missed an opportunity. On the other hand, I haven't had one in a long time, but I recall Twix being a particularly delicious treat, so perhaps it is best that name not be besmirched.

In the biological sciences world, this is known as "you are what you eat". My impression is that this place has always kinda been the most popular alternative destination for redditors (exes or otherwise).

I like big butts and I cannot lie.

Same way we test everything else on animals. It all starts with the mice.

Can't tell if it's a joke question, a questions about having agency over your life/others', or if it's specifically about having access to electricity. And at this point I'm too afraid to ask. Based on the responses, they don't clear it up at all.

When I was a kid, we used to coax wild anoles into biting our ear lobes and wearing them around like earrings. Maybe the kitty is doing the same as a labret piercing.

I live in a rural setting, so 90% of the time the answer to that question is wild animal poop or some dead critter. Sometimes though it's a bug or random fruit/veggie.

Purely due to circumstance, the price of eggs became an easy, overly simplified economic indicator, and via massive amounts of misinformation/disinformation, somehow an indicator of the Biden administration's efficacy. Eggs were essentially the stand-in for all the complicated and politically inconvenient stuff that willfully ignorant folks don't understand, prefer not to think about, or simply want to deny.

Willfully ignorant people know that grocery prices in general were being affected by inflation, but understanding the causes and recognizing that it was a global phenomenon was not something they were willing to engage in because it was an easy way to demonize and blame Biden.

In my personal experience, when prices spiked last time, these were the people who claimed that eggs were the bulk of their diet because it was the only protein they could afford to eat anymore. That was never true for most, but that's what they claimed as they lamented how they could no longer afford to eat. They also liked to mention the prices of the highest price tier eggs (name brand, organic, fancy stuff, free range, etc) and try to pass that off as the going rate for eggs, despite the fact that they never bought those "premium" eggs prior to the price hike and that the "cheaper" eggs cost significantly less. Also, now that it's happening under their preferred presidential administration, suddenly they are much less vocal (almost completely silent) about the price of eggs. But if forced into a discussion about the topic, they suddenly appear to understand and advocate for the idea that it's caused by factors outside of the president's control. Funny how that works, huh?

On the flip side, most of the folks who are currently bringing up the egg prices are doing so in a satirical sense (even if it's covertly satirical), fully aware that Trump isn't in control of the egg prices. It's just a good way to further demonstrate his supporters' own hypocrisy. Also, it's sort of giving the willfully ignorant people a taste of their own medicine. Probably not terrible effective from that standpoint, but cathartic for the people currently doling it out.