numberfour002

I'm thankful that in all my years of working in retail, I never had a gun pointed at me. Having said that, random people get so bent out of shape about the most ridiculous, inconsequential things and it can be close to impossible to predict who it's going to be or what is going to set them off.

Based on my experiences, if a customer is being indignant even after explaining that I was helping them out, I would apologize and remove the discount or ring the order up differently (if it was in my power to do so). More often than not, they calm down after they get what they want, even if it's to their own detriment. Granted, after calming down, a not insignificant number of these folks will realize their mistake and then they have to figure out a way to save face so they can ask for the discount to be reapplied.

"Wipe" is a bit of a stretch and a bit specific when it comes to animal behavior, but many animals do clean their food or clean their living quarters in a variety of ways.

In addition to the other examples already given, I'll toss Eusocial Insects into the ring. This includes groups like bees and ants that live collectively in colonies. For example, honeybees will clean their colony's comb to keep it free of debris. Leaf cutter ants depend on a specific type of fungus that they cultivate for food, and they spend a lot of effort keeping their farmed good nice and sanitary.

It's really hit or miss. The communities generally have most of the same downsides as those on the corporate competition, but with added issues due to the small size of Lemmy/fediverse and inherent features of a decentralized platform.

I mostly stick to bigger communities and instances on Lemmy, which was not a thing I did much on the r-word site, and I admit that makes it trickier to make a one-to-one comparison.

My hobbies and interests aren't actually all that obscure, but the communities for them on Lemmy are functionally dead, fractured across multiple instances, or just plain non-existent as far as I can tell. Really little or no engagement. So, that sucks.

Another issue that seems especially apparent here is that it seems much easier for smaller groups with "loud" voices / strong opinions to overwhelm any kind of discussion or debate and give the appearance that their opinion is majority opinion, even if it is not. I'm not saying that doesn't happen elsewhere, just that it seems especially pronounced here. People would complain about group think on the r-word site, but it's often amplified here.

One thing I like about some of the bigger communities here is that it seems like it's more visible when unprovoked rudeness and incivility are called out. Not that it never happened on the corporate r-word site, but I do run across that a bit more here.

The whole ordeal is/was a colossal screw up.

The student loan company I had to deal with lied to me and made no apologies about it. When I submitted an official complaint through the Federal Student Aid site, it wasn't handled by some government agent or a 3rd party supervisor, it was handled by a customer service rep working for the student loan company. It was literally "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong" kind of thing.

Having said that, you may still want to file a complaint if you have had issues with the USA's loan servicing - https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. It's probably delusional, but I feel like at least having an official record of the report could be helpful down the line at some point. Maybe one day the Federal government will seriously investigate, or maybe one day there will be a lawsuit and at least an official complaint could serve as evidence you were impacted.

Maybe relevant:

You wake up.

You're still a lizard sunning on a red rock.

It was all a dream.

The concept of selling "Feet pics" to pay back "Student loans" is already losing its meaning as you open and lick your own eyeballs to moisten them.

Time to eat a bug.

I think I have Disney PTSD from a former friend/acquaintance who had an almost supernatural ability to make any conversation into a conversation about Disney. So, now I'm super sensitive about it. Would almost rather a conversation start with "Have you heard about our Lord and savior Jesus Christ" than anything that includes the word "Disney".

Translated for the hard of hearing:

Master Lock closed down. I used to use Master Lock all the time when I was a little child.

I take mashter-lacka goomp een naste lots a naste liddum puzzles yah puddum.

Understatement, I know, but I find this so annoying, and it certainly feels malicious.

I was just commenting the other day how ridiculous it is that google search results literally serve up malware to people via paid ads. My neighbor was running into issues where her computer kept getting "infected" and a full screen scam would take control, blaring out a loud message that her computer was infected with a virus, that it was infecting microsoft's servers, and she had to call them now to fix it.

After investigating, I found out that these types of scams are stored as blobs on Microsoft's cloud service, but the links are spread via ads in google search. When I tried searching for the exact search terms my neighbor was using on my own devices and my own network, I found out that google was serving me the exact same ads, aka sponsored links. They look like legitimate results for things that people search for, like showing what appears to be a link to Amazon when searching for a product, even the links will say "www.amazon.com".

Obviously I told my neighbor not to use Chrome and suggested some browser alternatives. I installed uBlock on all the browsers (including chrome) just to be safe. Then I showed her how to tell when things are ads, even when they are deceiving, and to never click on ads or sponsored links under any circumstances.

But it's definitely infuriating that they are serving up malware in their ads, don't respond to reports in a timely manner, are getting people caught in scams that they allow to advertise on their network but then somehow object to people managing those risks by blocking ads from untrustworthy sources, like google.

Wonder if they'll go light on him given how many medals he just won in the Paris Olympics for team USA.

I'm usually a patient gamer type. I think I got Hades in 2022 or 2023 on discount. I've also never purchased an early access game. But I'm seriously considering this one.

Main thing holding me back is that I just don't get to play games very much this time of year, and I probably won't have much time again until Fall.

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.

Based on the size and proportions of this, I'm guessing this is a drumette and not a drumstick. But, I'm also I'm not sure a photo of a single piece of chicken from a single order is really evidence of much of anything.

Especially since Michael Jackson did not look like Michael Jackson.

I have never seen a man with this hairy of a torso / chest who also had smoothie upper arms like that. Quite the combination.

I chuckled heartily earlier today when I saw a post on the front page of the R-word site that was posted to the conservative sub. It was a picture of the band holding up a mask of Trump with idiot written on it and a title along the lines of "After Trump assassination attempt, Green Day holds up head of Donald Trump".

Literally, it was just a mask of Trump with something like "Idiot" written on it from a band that quite literally is known for criticizing the government (understatement).

They were making it sound like it was an implicit threat to Trump and hateful rhetoric inciting further violence.

I swear there must be some brain damage involved in those types of conclusions.

The definition of these "generations" is arbitrary and subjective. The reality of the matter is no such person exists. So, I completely disagree.

Even if everyone in the world agreed that Gen Z is all people born between 1995 and 2010 (which would require you to be ignorant, naive, or just plain stupid), it ignores the reality of things like geography, culture, time zones, etc. Literally hundreds (if not thousands) of people could have been born at the exact same moment of time, but due to the magic of time zones, some would be Gen Z, others would not. That's super arbitrary if you ask me.

So, it's more like theoretically some person is the oldest member of Gen Z, for some given interpretation of what "Gen Z" means. But in practice, there's no such thing. In some ways it's like a mathematical limit. There's no smallest number greater than 0, because you can always devise a smaller fraction. But, if you artificially and arbitrarily limit your resolution (let's say to 1/10th), only then can you declare some number the smallest (ex: .1).

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.

Could be that he's the type to shoot the messenger, and nobody wanted to be told "You're fired" for letting him know he's got tp on his feetsies.

BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE WHAT I TYPE OTHERWISE HONEY I LEFT MY GLASSES IN THE BATHROOM AND MY KNEES WON'T GET ME BACK THERE ANY TIME SOON

Anecdotally speaking, I've been suspecting this was happening already with code related AI as I've been noticing a pretty steep decline in code quality of the code suggestions various AI tools have been providing.

Some of these tools, like GitHub's AI product, are trained on their own code repositories. As more and more developers use AI to help generate code and especially as more novice level developers rely on AI to help learn new technologies, more of that AI generated code is getting added to the repos (in theory) that are used to train the AI. Not that all AI code is garbage, but there's enough that is garbage in my experience, that I suspect it's going to be a garbage in, garbage out affair sans human correction/oversight. Currently, as far as I can tell, these tools aren't really using much in the way of good metrics to rate whether the code they are training on is quality or not, nor whether it actually even works or not.

More and more often I'm getting ungrounded output (the new term for hallucinations) when it comes to code, rather than the actual helpful and relevant stuff that had me so excited when I first started using these products. And I worry that it's going to get worse. I hope not, of course, but it is a little concerning when the AI tools are more consistently providing useless / broken suggestions.

I don't bother. 99.55912432140001521439566917234% of the time it says "Fuck the colorblind" or some variation thereof.

I think what you're describing is how I felt with Hollow Knight. When I set it down for the last time (so far), I did so knowing I would probably never return to finish it.

I don't get a lot of time to game, and the time I get is punctuated by months of hiatus each year. Any game that's too long, too difficult, or too complicated to pick back up quickly after I've been gone awhile is not a good fit for me.

I was too far along in the game to even consider starting over, not to mention that a lot of the magic would be lost. But I was also far enough along that I know I don't want to put the effort into relearning the mechanics, figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing, and having to re-explore everything.

Granted, by the time I stopped playing, it had already grown tedious and I wasn't enjoying it much anyway. It stopped being rewarding was just mostly just punishing at a certain point.

After I set Hollow Knight aside, I found other games that I liked better and were more accommodating to my circumstances (ex: Hades). And now, even if I did want some more time with Hollow Knight, I'd honestly just wait for the upcoming sequel / prequel / whatever it's going to be (Silksong).

This is second hand info, but everyone I know who has ever worked for him basically hates him. He's a raging asshole, difficult to work with, and just a horrible human being on a personal level. I've never met him myself, but the people I'm referring to are all pretty awesome, wholesome people so I do trust their judgment.

Oh Spez.

I remember when "the other site" launched an instant messaging feature. It was buggy as hell and interfered with my browsing experience on the site. Totally didn't expect anything to come of it, but mostly jokingly messaged Spez through the new feature knowing it would go to an endless abyss never to be seen again. Surprisingly he responded. Cordial but ultimately also not at all helpful. But some time later (maybe a month?), the bug I messaged him about was fixed. So, maybe it wasn't all fruitless.

I mean aren't numbers invented by Arabics anyway? What's the point at ending with 9 and 10 when they could go full 9 and 11? /s

It's infuriating (mildly may be an understatement).

My neighbor ended up getting "a virus" on her laptop. It wasn't actually a virus as best I could tell, but instead, it was a full screen pop-up browser window with no window controls.

The scam had a bunch of scary messaging and loud sound playing an alarm with someone stating that the computer was infected and that it was also infecting Microsoft's servers. Further, the scam insisted that she call the number on the screen or she will face legal issues.

For an older non-technical person, it was frightening.

After this happened a second time, I did a little more digging to see if I could figure out what was going on. Virus scans showed no infection and I couldn't find much online with specifics about what I was seeing.

Turns out, my neighbor was going to Google, searching for terms like "Amazon", and then she was clicking the first ad / sponsored link in the results expecting to be taken to the Amazon website. Instead, the sponsored ad on Google search was linking to a blog on Microsoft's Azure hosting services, which then triggered the full screen non-closable scam.

I even tested it out on one of my old laptops. Went to Google search, tried the exact search term she used, and sure enough, the same exact thing happened. I reported the ad, it is clearly malicious and a scam. It's ridiculous that Google actually serves up malicious ads like this. And the ad was up there for days after I reported it. I sincerely hope nobody actually got scammed by it, but I definitely feel like Google should be responsible for any damages/losses.

I did go ahead and install ad blockers on all her browsers, removed google search from being the default search engine, and showed her how to avoid clicking on ads and sponsored links if/when any slip through the cracks. So, hopefully it won't happen again.

A couple of months ago, I broke down and opened my last bottle of the Huy Fong I had in stock. The best by date was January 2024 and I had no intention of selling it, so figured I'd enjoy one last round of the sauce.

In the past year and change, I've tried all the sauces that my local grocers carry in-store. I have settled on the Tobasco version. It's different from Huy Fong brand and takes some getting used to the differences, but pretty much all the stores in my area carry it, the price is reasonable, and it has its own merits.

I've tried some of the more niche brands, but they tend to cost more and are harder to find or impossible to find in-store and honestly I'm just tired of looking and trying new ones all the time when it's so hit or miss.

The worst sriracha I've tried (so far) is the Chickfila sriracha. It's basically Asian inspired ginger flavored sugar syrup with no real redeeming quality in the context of sriracha sauce. If Huy Fong is your jam, this is pretty much the furthest thing away from that which you could possibly imagine.

I don't think moldy even applies here, this cat was a thing on the internet back before we even knew it was all powered by tubes. At this point it would be more appropriate to call it fossilized.

I used to be friends with a guy who was getting a graduate degree from Liberty. He apparently only did it because he was a member of the Falwell family so the courses were free for him.

He was pursuing an "online" degree, which at the time meant that the school sent him DVDs of the lectures and he had to take quizzes and exams online. Neither of us was particularly religious, so he kind of got a kick out of showing me the highlights of the lectures on DVD.

Those lectures were ... something else. It really didn't matter what the subject matter was, biology, statistics, psychology: The first 10 - 20 minutes of all the lectures was basically a church service. There were prayers and Bible stories, things like that. There would be about 10 - 15 minutes of actual course instruction. And they would work in religion as much as possible during that time. All the examples were focused on religion, it was super weird. And then the final 10 - 20 minutes would be wrapping up with more prayers and Bible study.

The quizzes and exams weren't much better. The "problems" were so simple that you mostly didn't even need to read the books or watch the lecture to answer the questions. All the open ended word problem were religion/Bible oriented, very hamfisted. You almost had to make an effort to make anything less than 80% on these things.

So needless to say, I try not to judge too much, but I think about my buddy's educational experience any time I see someone with a degree from that university.

HTML CSS XML JSON SQL CRAYONS

Okay, it's starting to add up.

I cancelled Amazon Prime awhile ago when the customer service took a nose dive and I realized too many of the 3rd party vendors were using Amazon as their defective products outlet.

But I actively and permanently skipped out on an Amazon Prime subscription because they refused to give me a pro-rated refund on the remaining 8-9 months of service after I cancelled. They literally told me that they start with the pro-rated amount, then subtract out the cost of all the "free" movie/show/music rentals as well as all the "free" shipping on orders during the time you've had prime, and you only get whatever remains (if anything). Within the first 3 -4 months, I had already accrued enough "free" $5.99 shipping and $3 - $4 rentals that it exceeded the $100 or whatever cost of a prime membership was back in those days, so I got no refund. Bunch of crooks.

No surprise, I'm completely on board with folks kicking Prime to the curb.

I can't speak to growing or shrinking in terms of number of users and I try not to bring "feels like" into this since that's subjective. However, anecdotally speaking, I've been noticing signs of a down turn over the past month or two. Perhaps just a seasonal thing, perhaps due to some other cause such as the upgrade to 0.19.X.

The most telling thing to me is that I'm seeing fewer comments during my active hours. One of the ways I browse for active discussions on Lemmy is to sort by "New Comments' and switch to the view that shows comments instead of posts. So, I do the sort/filter, view the results, looking to see if there are any interesting comments or topics.

Historically speaking, other than a weird bug that would seem to pin some slightly older posts to the top of the list, everything on the first page would be somewhere between seconds to several minutes old. It was incredibly unusual to see anything over 5 minutes old on the first page and also very unusual to see any of the same comments if I refreshed the page.

More recently though, it's more common to see comments that are 5+ minutes old on the first page of new comments list. It's also much more common for me to reach the bottom of the page, hit refresh, and then see some of the same comments in the list after it refreshes. And I don't exactly speed run through this page -- I check out the post titles, if it's an interesting topic, I'll often click through and read more in the post, sometimes I'll even respond to comments directly, then return back to the new comments, etc.

As I mentioned, it could just be a seasonal slowdown. Perhaps the 0.19 upgrade results in a slowdown or backlog of things that show up on the new comments list, I know other things have changed like the fact that I can no longer view anything except the first page of results. Others have suggested there are fewer posts/posters, but that what gets posted "feels like" it's higher quality, but I'd counter that with the fact that what I "feel like" is that's not actually the case based on what I'm seeing in the new comments list.

As an ass man, I didn't even notice the wiener titties at first because I couldn't take my eyes off her buns.

Nobody brings that much marinuanans to an elementary school and even if they did they aren't giving that shit away free to the kids. Shit costs money.

Where I live, the big 3 are mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise.

If I had to limit it to the "big 3" you listed, I would have to go for mustard. There are so many different types and of the options listed, mustard is easily the healthiest (or can be the healthiest) since a basic mustard is going to be low in sodium, sugar, and fat while also containing healthy phytonutrients.

Mustard is also much more versatile than folks in my part of the world give it credit for. It seems like a cultural thing / learned behavior rather than based on actual taste preferences. For instance, a fairly bland yellow mustard actually goes well with french fries. A spicy mustard (the types that are almost like horseradish) goes well with a variety of roasted veggies like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower. Honey mustard works well with chicken in various forms. Lots of cheeses pair well with different types of mustard. I could go on, but I'll stop here.

Since the majority of folks are discussing condiments that aren't in your "big 3", I would say that my actual favorite condiment is hot sauce. I'm not a connoisseur by any means and I don't have refined tastes. I don't even like super spicy hot sauces. But I do use hot sauce of some type with almost every meal and I go through a lot more of that than mustard or ketchup. Granted, hot sauces tend to be high in sodium, so I try not to go overboard.

I have many concerns about these types of comments and statements that are disparaging towards people without children. It really seems like it's an attempt to paint whole swaths of the population (but particularly targeting young voters and the LGBT+ folks) as unworthy to vote and morally contempt. Super weird and shady.

In a way, I'm glad people are slowing starting to come around and pay attention to this. For years, any time I would publicly complain about Amazon customer service online, it was very common for people to be completely dismissive or even blame me. I'd hear statements like "sure Amazon sucks, but they have great customer service" and I'd think to myself, just wait until it's your time to find out that the customer service isn't what you think it is.

Long story short, the item came with a broken part. Should have been quick and easy to rectify (send a replacement part, send a replacement unit, or refund the purchase). The seller was completely unhelpful. Amazon customer service would not intervene and insisted that I continue fruitlessly corresponding with the vendor, even though they had an "A-to-Z" money back guarantee if something goes wrong. It literally took months of back and forth between me, the vendor, and Amazon customer service before things were finally refunded in full.

So, basically I gave them another chance and they showed that things hadn't improved a bit.

This sounds like propaganda spread by a remote Amazon tribe that got addicted to porn would use to convince the sheeple who read news media that a remote Amazon tribe did not get addicted to porn even though they totally did not that there's anything wrong with that. Can I get an amen?

I'm not here just to be a contrarian, but I really don't fully agree with some of the hot takes in these comments. So here's my perspective:

I'm in a rural area and because of this type of funding, I have decent high speed internet. The same can be said for my neighbors, some of whom didn't have internet until very recently because the options weren't really viable or reliable.

I get that this is a wonderful opportunity to sling vitriol at the government AND businesses. I get that there were spectacular failures in the past. But the reality is, like usual, more nuanced than that.

A lot of this type of money has, and likely will be, used to support building infrastructure for rural areas that would otherwise not be economically viable for companies to provide that kind of service to. Living in a rural area, I'm not convinced that many/any people are going to change their vote to Biden because they suddenly have access to (or promises of future access to) fiber internet. I'm also not convinced that Biden and his administration would have any reasonable expectation otherwise.

Additionally, I'm sure some of this money will go to the big corporations and directly into the pockets of the top execs. However, it does provide work and jobs for regular "commoners" as well. It's also the case that the big players aren't always the ones getting that money. A lot of this type of money is going to replace copper infrastructure with fiber, and a lot of the work is being done by smaller / regional companies because they're the ones who have been operating these areas all these years while the big players focused on the most profitable areas with the higher returns on investment.

Of course, feel free to aimlessly hate on the entire system, but at least do so knowing that this type of thing IS helping real people and that if/when they see these types of comments, it's pretty clear that folks are being unrealistic and dogmatic.

Congratulations Aunt Trudy! Today is the 60th anniversary of your 10th birthday and we got you this amazing balloon display.

Is it possible that the 60 balloons are celebrating a 60th wedding anniversary? The ring between the 6 and the 0 make me wonder. Not that a 70th birthday isn't a big deal, but I think a 60th wedding anniversary is an even more impressive achievement than not dying for the past 70+ years.