Since the receipt says the 18% "helps facilitate a higher living base wage for all our employees", then that's already the tip. So I would write the word "ZERO" on the tip line, and never return to that restaurant.

I've already stopped going to anywhere that:

1. Pulls stuff like this, or

2. Wants me to input a "tip" for fast food (which includes coffee shops - looking at you, Starbucks) and other places that don't use the traditional waitstaff model for pampering and serving your table, or

3. Makes me input a tip up front before I get "service" or even product.

All of the above also means I'm eating a lot less garbagey and/or overpriced food-stuffs from restaurants these days. Better health. More money in my pocket. Higher quality food.

It did used to have great stuff. I first unsubbed years ago, and remain unsubbed until I forget what crap it became and resub - and then <DOH!> unsub again.

Buy less. Use less. Reward good pricing with your money. Spouse stopped buying favorite frozen sausages months ago because they went from $5 to $12. The other day noticed they are "on sale" for $5.25. Bought 2 and will continue buying them until they go back up. I've also started buying a lot of things on sale in bulk that will store awhile, so I can just walk by the ridiculous pricing until the next sale drops it again.

The legal system is expensive for the same reason the medical system is expensive:

• When you need to be in it, you need to be in it (e.g., you can't just walk away from possible jail time or having a steering wheel embedded in your body).

• Even if it's for things you are choosing willingly, both systems have over time set themselves up as the only possible options - either by making it a crime to take care of your issue outside their system, or by making you believe that only going their route is the safe / effective / trustworthy way.

• Both are incredibly, unapologetically, corrupt to their core, with no one really accountable for anything beyond a few "examples" made here and there.

Theft of others' creative works (and to an actor their voice is part of their creative work) has been going on via Big Tech for decades now. My first view of it was years ago when Google started stealing books it hadn't purchased and wasn't licensed and adding them to public spaces on the internet. I remember the big publishing houses and a lot of authors up in arms, but obviously they weren't able to truly reverse any of that.

I'm surprised it's not keyed all the days long.

I quit Fbook and all the "social" media a few years back, and haven't missed it at all. Any "friend" who will only interact with me via Fbook/etc, rather than in-person, text, or even email or phone call isn't a real friend, or real relationship at all. My life is quieter and my sanity slowly returned.

Currently paying for YouTube ad-free, Netflix ad-free, and Hulu ad-free.

YouTube's algorithm seems intent on making me look elsewhere for content, as it suggests the same twenty things over and over again, despite the fact that I've watched half of them already and ignored the other half for months now. We only keep it because spouse wants it for YouTube music. Me? I've wandered off to piped and peertube, mostly.

The Netflix app locks up and crashes the Roku at least once every movie. It used to do this just now and again, but recently it's so bad I don't even load it anymore and spouse is THIS CLOSE to being talked into just cancelling it.

Hulu..? Well, it's ok. I wish it still had a lot of the older stuff, as a lot of the newer stuff is just stupid and/or revolting. Because of the above, we'd probably keep this one and dump the others, based on price and what (mostly spouse) finds useful to watch.

I'm actually checking out other things. Like Hoopla through the local library, eBooks, real books (the local library is free). Spouse and I have also learned to play several different card games, and sometimes we actually interact with each other instead of alpha-wave mind-bending into the electronic hallucination machine on the other side of the living room. We're also exploring more outdoor activities, like hiking, birding, nature walks, team sports, and so on.

Sometimes, a "bad" thing is just the right thing that needs to happen.

Lots of same for me. First I take them to the local used book store. Whatever they don't buy I either leave there (sometimes they will take those for free) or take to the library or thrift store. Once in awhile I have one that actually sells for good money. Always a surprise.

Sites that won't load unless I them ad-berserker over my web browser I just don't visit anymore. Seriously. There are a million bazillion web pages out there. The internet managed just fine with people posting pages of relevant links to other similar or recommended other websites back in the Day when Google didn't even exist yet (I had one myself) and other curated web search sites like https://curlie.org/en (and I contributed link suggestions to the ones like this back then). The only thing we can't do today that we could back then is run BBS sites for each other off our home land lines. I'm not so worried.

Edit: typo

Nnnnoooooooo! Don't make Lemmy a top website! The more popular something is, the more vapid and full of spewers it becomes.

I think people 500+ years from now will look back on us like we look back on people of the European Dark Ages.

So happy now that I've been too lazy to let my printer update anything for the last year.

This. Searching for topic information back in the 1990s could be frustrating because you couldn't find the sites until you found the one that had that links page that would lead you to a number of others about that topic. Searching today through the modern "search engines" means getting the same regurgitated, irrelevant and/or common sense non-answers from all the "top" sites. I don't bother looking that way anymore because sites like SearXNG, Mojeek, even sometimes Brave Browser can often do better. It's like we circled around to the same problem, but this time knee-deep in garbage, too.

I was trying to save some steps by pushing 2x4s to the top of the entry railing, rather than walk them all up several stairs over and over, and one of the boards slipped back and smacked me in the eye. Gave me a huge black eye.

"Best" was I had to endure coworkers gossiping and asking me over and over for the next several weeks if I really got the black eye in a fight (which makes no sense at all if you know/see me).

(Edit: typo)

Spent last weekend visiting family out of state, and it was the first time I've watched YouTube with ads in years. I pay to get no ads on YouTube at home, and the ads at family's home was so irritating. Made me realize that I would either pay YouTube for no ads, OR I would just stop watching YouTube. No compromise on that one.

That being said, I don't mind a few ads on webpages here and there. I run uBlock Origin and NoScript with only site-needed scripts allowed. Occasionally there's an ad that manages to not get blocked by either of those, and I don't go out of my way to also make sure those are blocked. It's because they aren't obnoxious. Usually just a box on the side of the page. Not a problem.

I'm finding myself reevaluating my use of the internet, looking to find more meaningful things to spend my time on. I only miss one subreddit that I haven't found here, but I'm also looking for specialty forums to interact on, as well. So maybe I will find that on one of those. (I don't have the time to moderate a community here, so I'm not starting one).

I'm also looking at my technology, where laptop technology is going these days (crap), and considering if I want to go back to the "good ole days" of just having a desktop machine.

So, some good things, I think.

If you are looking for a way to find RSS/Atom feeds on sites you are interested in, but don't list an RSS/Atom feed:

Here is a Textise version and the original version of a Zapier article talking about how to get an RSS feed manually from (many) sites that don't list one.

I do this just because I like to and it takes but a few seconds to put through my QuiteRSS (GUI) or NewsReader (terminal based) feed reader apps.

Here's the basics from the article (the article itself lists more and more in depth).

A shocking number of websites are built using WordPress—over 40% of destinations on the web. This means there's a good chance that any website you visit is a WordPress site, and all of those sites offer RSS feeds that are easy to find.

To find a WordPress RSS feed, simply add /feed to the end of the URL; e.g., https://justinpot.com/feed. I do this any time I visit a website that I'd like an RSS feed for—it almost always works.

If it doesn't work, here are a few tricks for finding RSS feeds on other sites.

If a site is hosted on Tumblr, add /rss to the end of the URL. Like this: https://example.tumblr.com/rss

If a site is hosted on Blogger, add feeds/posts/default to the end of the URL. Like this: example.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

If a publication is hosted on Medium, add /feed/ before the publication's name. So medium.com/example-site becomes medium.com/feed/example-site

YouTube channel pages double as RSS feeds. Simply copy and paste the URL for the channel into your RSS reader. You can also find an OPML file for all of your subscriptions here.

Find an RSS feed for any site by checking the source code...

We always called it Yack in the Box, or eColi+.

I hate stuff like this, that thinks it's being "cute", or "cool", or "clever", or whatever as if the company and I have some sort of personal relationship and could just interact on this level. No, Ridiculous Company, you and I do not have any kind of relationship - and now we never will even try again for one, any time in the future. In fact, from now on every time I see your logo, I will remember your "cleverness" and imagine a room full of imposter marketers and imposter developers sitting in a plastic building full of foosball tables and needlessly-big vertical monitors being "clever" for each other while their stock goes further and further down the toilet.

Or is that just me?

I started having problems with freetube a few months back, as well. I switched to one of several piped instances (whichever one is working at any given time) in my browser.

You still didn't demonstrate the wherewithal to differentiate between an old-school forum and something like F*book and the like, and acted as if you were the smart one. And then you attempted to be insulting, sticking out your tongue at the wrong person. Please.

Someone definitely signed you up. For lots of things.

I did that to a friend in college once, but signed her (as if I was her) up for 3 or 4 dozen different religious colleges and organizations, asking them to snail mail her information. Years later she found out it was me and said "I'M STILL GETTING THIS (#&%^@ IN THE MAIL!!!"

At least they didn't eat them...? 🤔

I don't recall - I uninstalled it so fast I didn't register the name. I was looking for a productivity app, so it was a planner or something. If I come across it again I will make a separate post for it so we can all grumble and wow.

So when I ate sand when I was a kid I was doing a good thing? Why didn't someone tell Mrs. StrictFace, my kindergarten teacher?

This. Though I left Netflix because the only way family was watching it was via Roku device, and in the last 6 months you had a 2 in 3 chance the Netflix app would lock up on it and none of the "fixes" (reinstall, clear cache, etc., etc., etc., ... ) did anything to help.

Even worse, not only would the Netflix app lock itself up, it would lock up the entire Roku device so someone had to be dispatched to unplug, wait, replug the power on the Roku device to restart Roku.

We have so much on the Roku that actually works (Hulu, etc) - why pay monthly for such a crappy app? Family complained for about 2 days and then forgot Netflix even exists.

I have begun to believe that YouTube is trying its best to get me to never use it, ever again. Between the intrusive shorts, the algorithm that recommends the same exact things I've either already watched or haven't watched for the last months despite them showing up all that time, and having to pay to get rid of ads only to live through sponsored ads that seem longer and longer all the time. On my PC I just use newpipe or piped.online, but the family Roku version of YouTube I watch hardly at all now.

Also why is there a generic Christian but then also Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox? But then they just Muslim and not it’s different denominations? Why even have different denominations when you have the generic catch all and the Other category?

There are kinds of Christian that don't fall under Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox by their own measure (which doesn't care how the Big Three want to categorize them). Perhaps this was why? (Probably not.) Graph should have just lumped them all together as "Christian".

I hear this. I worked retail when I was a youngster, so I do my best to make retail workers' jobs easier. That includes deliberately leaving my shopping carts in the parking lot cart stall outside after I use them. A few businesses have removed those now here so you "have to" return them to the building -- so I instead leave my carts in the landscaping on the property (where they aren't in the way of other cars but still have to be fetched). I figure:

1. It does give someone a nice mental break to be able to go outside and get some fresh air once in awhile while still on the clock.

2. It keeps someone employed. Stores here are replacing more and more checkout clerks with self-check machines, so a place that used to employ 20 people now needs maybe 4 or 5. So far they haven't come up with that machine that will go fetch carts scattered over the parking lot.

I see continued guaranteed employment for someone who needs a job. Can't clean up after meatheads with AI - yet.

I get a lot from searXNG. It's gotten a lot better from when I tried it out years ago. Mojeek is getting better, as well.

I look forward to this implementation, as it will make it easier for me to see which sites are truly not worth visiting, and which sites are.

I installed a deb package this morning and started it up - only to face an ad for other software. It's seeping in....