numberfour002 @ numberfour002 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Personally, I don't think the technology is a failure. It's the implementation that's the pain point.

I'm no fan of Walmart, but the local store has the lenient self checkout machines that don't make you place and leave your items in the bagging area. And there's a hand scanner for each machine. The hand scanner is pretty close to instant, so I can literally scan an entire cart full of items in under a minute (with caveats) and you don't even have to take things out of the cart to scan them (with caveats). Sometimes there are hiccups and obviously some items are sold by weight, so that'll slow things down.

But even with all that, the implementation is the pain point because they'll only have 1 person running the machines, so if they have to run off to help a customer or multiple people need help at the same time, you just have to wait. Also, the particular store I go to shuts down half the machines ridiculously early in the evening. When the machines break, they stay broken for weeks or months. And they have some kind of ridiculous system where some of the machines are cash-only, some are card-only, but the majority will accept either -- this adds to a lot of inefficiency because a lot of customers don't know which machines are which and if you mess up and pick the wrong one then things get tied up while you wait for a cashier to come and transfer you over to a different one so you can pay.

The other big factor is that customers were trained on the old shitty style self checkouts where you had to scan each item one at a time, place it in the bagging area, leave it there until you pay, and if so much as a speck of dust landed in the bagging area or a piece of onion skin fell off, it would freeze up. So even with the new lenient hand scanners, people still do it the old and slow way.

♫♫ If it hadn't been for Cotton-Eye Joe ♫♫

♫♫ I'd been married long time ago. ♫♫

♫♫ Where did you come from, where did you go? ♫♫

It doesn't look like comfortable sleepwear and there's only a limited portion of the year where I can get away with pants, long sleeves, and layers without sweating myself to death.

The pickle juice would dehydrate you and if the pickles or juice were consumed in any significant amount, would likely reduce your survival time ... potentially by quite a bit.

But also, you're in a location with an unlimited amount of pickles (in theory), so even if you don't directly have fresh water, there's a chance you could rig up some way of distilling / evaporating the pickle juice to extract fresh water from it. In that case, duration of survivability would increase quite a bit depending on how much fresh water you could successfully extract from the brine. First priority would be to drink only fresh water and not consume the pickles (or consume only a small amount). But if you have lots of left over water, then you can start soaking/boiling the pickles to reduce sodium levels.

It would vary quite a bit depending on the person and the circumstances.

First, I'm assuming you're talking about brine pickled cucumbers based on the context, but brining isn't the only way to make pickles and cucumbers aren't the only thing you can make pickles from.

I think 2 of the biggest considerations here would be whether I have access to clean, fresh water and whether I'm in good health, with no major health issues.

If I don't have access to fresh water, then I wouldn't eat the pickles to begin with. And I would probably only have a matter of days to live.

If I had major health issues that would be potentially fatal without medical treatment, then that would probably be the limiting factor in how long I survive and would be dependent on the condition.

If I do have access to fresh water, I would give the pickles a lengthy soak (or even boil them if I could) before I ate them. That would mitigate at least some of the concerns about too much sodium. I could further mitigate some of the concerns by ensuring that I'm drinking lots of water (at least I would assume that would help somewhat).

I've read that the average person can go without any food for at least a month or two (with 3 weeks being the minimum), so if I did my sodium mitigation, then I would expect to at least survive at the upper limit of that. From a purely caloric standpoint, the average pickling cucumber (not that there really is such a thing as average/standard) is something like 20 - 50 calories each, and I feel like that alone would extend the window of survivability.

I suppose it's possible, but I don't think that's it.

The trip when this happened was 7+ years ago (pre-covid for sure), so I don't recall the specific location, but it wasn't in Atlanta proper. And I don't recall either location looking like a museum or a location where anybody would put a museum, it was a stretch of road/highway with retail space / strip malls on both sides.

In a manner of speaking, yes and that's a factor. Really it's just that general life slows down a bit for me for a few months around the end and beginning of the year, and then goes full throttle from spring right on up to the holidays.

Plus, when it's warmer and days are longer, I prefer to be outside doing something/anything when I have spare time, rather than just sitting and staring at a screen like I do all day at my official job.

I haven't read the article yet, but easy mode is actually for me.

I like gaming, but almost all my gaming time is compressed into a few months of the year. Even then, it's not uncommon to have to have a week or longer hiatus between sessions. And when I do sit down to play, I'm lucky if I get the time to have a 1 - 2 hour session. With my situation, games that are long or difficult or that have overly complicated control/button schemes are not a good fit for me.

One game that really stood out for me in terms of being really well designed in this respect was Hades. I thought it did an excellent job of making itself accessible to more casual audiences, while still providing lots of options for dialing up the punishment if that's your cup of tea. I definitely wish more development teams would put as much effort into making other genres and franchises friendly to more casual players, and I think it's definitely an achievable goal to do without compromising the experience for more dedicated/advanced players -- at least for certain types of games.

The bird: Chick-a-deez nutz.

And so much more: Like burning away the hair growing out of your ears without also burning your fingers!

I always used to laugh at the scene in Best In Show where the yuppie couple talk about how they met at Starbucks. But they weren't at the same Starbucks, they were at two different Starbucks across the street from each other.

During a trip to the Atlanta area, I saw so many Waffle House locations that I jokingly made a reference to that scene from Best In Show.

Then IT happened. Literally drove past a spot where there were 2 Waffle Houses across the street from each other. It was supposed to be a joke. Only a joke.

If the provider you were seeking the vaccine from didn't already have up-to-date, accurate, and valid insurance information for you, then that would be one reason for asking. Realistically, a random internet stranger isn't going to know the answer to your specific situation. However, if you want to know more about your specific circumstances, you may consider contacting them again and asking for clarification.

The third was at pharmacies only and free only if you didn’t have insurance.

For people in the USA: The covid vaccine is free for people with insurance.

Additionally, at least some doctor's offices have it (mine does, but I don't want to assume they all do), and there are vaccine clinics where they do flu/covid/etc that show up periodically if that's more your style.

I'm not specifically calling out the user I quoted, just making a general statement because I've seen that exact sentiment ("the covid vaccine is no longer free") like 4 or 5 times on lemmy in just the past day. It's disinformation/misinformation and it leads to situations where misinformed people decide not to get vaccinated, in part, because they think it's going to cost them money.

I'm not clicking a link to that site to get any additional context, but "Bots talking to bots" for the sake of stealth/viral advertising has been happening on Reddit for at least a decade (and almost certainly longer). Sorry this will be a novel of a comment.

My awakening happened when I noticed a specific trend of posts and comments in subs related to things like nutritional supplements, personal grooming, and things of that nature and it would be most easily detected in small subs with low user activity.

I'd see a post like "I need to find a new body wash, has anybody tried BoShiWah?" It would usually be the most highly upvoted thread in the sub with far more comments and replies than anything else in the sub. Comments were all posted within minutes of each other and shortly after the post was submitted, which would be highly unusual for a sub that only gets a few posts a week. These submissions would all be highly upvoted. The "conversations" would all be positive regarding the product and/or ask questions about it that would sound suspiciously like the script from a tv or radio commercial. And there would always be at least one comment like "where are you planning to buy it from" with a reply that contained a link to a vendor or someone saying something like "XYZ company has it on sale right now, here's the link".

I got curious and started looking at the specific user accounts involved in these posts and the comments/replies. It was a never ending supply of different accounts, some new, some old. The part that surprised me is that these accounts were also active and doing the exact same thing in larger and more active subs that were otherwise actively moderated. The activity that made them so obvious in the tiny subs was almost invisible in a post with hundreds of comments.

Reporting them rarely ever resulted in any kind of removal. The smaller subs aren't actively moderated. The admins don't (or didn't) really ever respond to direct reports. I would sometimes comment on my observations in hopes that it would persuade less savvy folks from falling for it. Sometimes, though, I'd end up with dozens of down votes for doing that (again, very odd thing to happen in a small and inactive sub).

At one point I got "noticed" and I was invited to a private sub run by users who report and track that specific kind of spam. Also very eye opening to see how pervasive it was.

The battery life difference between the OLED Steam Deck versus the Asus and Lenovo competitors was a major factor in my decision to choose the Deck. As others have pointed out, it's hard to imagine that MSI (of all companies) can deliver on battery life given these other specs, let alone other considerations like weight & size. Good for them if they manage to excel at all of these things, but I'm going to have to see it to believe it. And as of right now, I haven't seen anything at all.

I'd be willing to give it a try. I haven't watched much of his more recent filmography, and what I've seen was not in chronological order.

After seeing him in Renfield, I did end up watching Color Out of Space and Willy's Wonderland. Neither of those movies was something magnificent the way I view his performance in Renfield, but I enjoyed them. Well, Willy's Wonderland was meh, but I really liked Color Out of Space for what it is worth.

To be honest, I didn't even remember him in KickAss but for what it's worth I did enjoy that movie. Your comment inspired me to look at his IMDB page and compare to which movies of his I actually have seen since the 1997 - 2002 era.

The Flash - I don't really count this, especially given that his role is listed as uncredited.

Renfield - I liked this movie way more than I should have and I also particularly liked Nic in it. It has changed my view on him.

Willy's Wonderland - Nothing great, far from his worst movie. And I'm not sure it counts in this context since I saw it after Renfield.

Color Out of Space - I enjoyed the movie it's really my type of thing, but also I saw it after Renfield, so not sure it counts in this context. Plus, I can't say his performance was anything spectacular.

Mandy - I don't really remember the movie, let alone Nic's performance, but for some reason I'm thinking it was at least alright.

Ghost Rider movies - I didn't have much choice in watching these, but they sucked in my opinion and reinforced my dislike of movies that contain Nic Cage.

Kick-Ass - I forgot he was in it when I made my original comment, but I mostly just recall him as being unusually competent and in an usually good movie beyond his caliber.

One or more of the National Treasure movies - They weren't my thing. I thought they all sucked. Feel free to disagree, I won't hate you for it, but I disagree. It reinforced my belief that I should avoid movies with Nic Cage in them.

Covid slashed a lot of things on the consumer side.

I was just contemplating today about how many things I've purchased, just in the last few months, that have been defective. A pair of shoes, thermostats, blankets, and more. Since December I've had 2 somewhat expensive items where they would send me a replacement because the first item I received was defective, and it turns out the replacement has had the same issue. That's never happened to me before, granted, this is obviously anecdotal.

And at the same time, it seems like they also slashed customer service not that most companies ever excelled at that to begin with. But even places like Amazon, which supposedly had top tier service, have fallen off significantly in that department.

So, here I am, yelling at the clouds, but I do wonder where it all ends.

For the longest time, I refused to watch anything he was acting in. I think it was sometime between maybe 1997 and 2002 when I realized how much his movies had started to suck.

More recently though, I caved and decided to watch Renfield, and I'm glad I gave it a chance. It's not like the greatest movie ever, but I thought it was cute. And I actually really enjoyed Nic in this movie for the first time in decades.

Eons ago when I was working in retail, pretty much all the training on "shrink" (aka losses, including theft) emphasized that the overwhelming majority of it comes from employees (and not necessarily from employee theft). Things have certainly changed in the post-covid era, but the fundamentals haven't changed all that much. So, I have been skeptical about some of the retailers' shoplifting claims.