I remember writing a comment about invasive advertising by Instagram. Just shared some anecdotes about how a few extremely specific conversation topics soon became the topic for the ads I was seeing on Instagram, and pointed out that if they were in fact using background conversation to target ads, it would be extremely easy to automate with the voice recognition technology available at the time, so why would they ignore the opportunity if targeted ads are their main source of revenue?

It became one of my most down voted comments at the time, and I had about twice as many replies as downvotes, claiming all kinds of wild or easily disproven shit to disprove the idea that Instagram used such tactics. Was very fishy

I’ve had a chili dark chocolate ice cream before that was obscenely delicious. The cold and creamy chocolate almost completely dampened and soothed the burn from the chili, then the spice would slowly intensify, a little more with every bite. I was helplessly addicted down to the last bite.

If I ever see that available again, I can’t imagine I’d even consider anything else. Unless I maybe saw some sort of chili lime sorbet, but I’ve never come across one.

Cheetos and tabasco flavored ice cream however, are both just so far in the wrong direction. Absolutely foul.

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Please tell me that’s not the real price for what is essentially a few small blades in a cup attached to an electric motor

I could see a Wikipedia-style donation model working to keep lots of different servers up. But I can’t see it happening for servers hosting exclusively news + memes + whatever random communities people want to add.

I _could _ see it happening for dedicated broad-topic or semi-niche instances (instances for gaming, investing, Linux, music production, etc.) each hosting a collection of related and maybe more niche communities (for CSGO, Bitcoin, Arch, EDM production).

As they become more popular, server hosting costs increase, and at some point they might need to ask for donations to keep afloat. People are willing to throw a little money towards something they enjoy, especially if it’s their choice to do so. And they feel good about it. And instances that stay around longer gain more users, more usability, more credibility (assuming a non-toxic community).

I could definitely see it leading down a path of growth and prosperity for the platform. However, now that I typed this out, I could see it both working positively, and being abused and exploited, so 🤷

I can practically guarantee that people who say they hate tea haven’t tried brewing any kind of loose leaf tea at the proper temp and time.

I got a 1kg brick of the cheapest loose-leaf black tea I could find for ~$3.50, and it’s delicious. I drink it almost every day, I bought it in June last year, and I’m just now running low. I brewed a bag lipton black tea at work recently, took one sip and I dumped it the fuck out. Absolutely foul, that stuff.

So I can see why people hate tea if they’ve only ever tried cheap bags with boiling water

They’re all competing for recruits.

Wow, I didn’t even consider that. It makes them seem so much less human to me, and so much more like a pack of hyenas.

Huh, we had 7 for our school district (one for each branch, and I think the army and navy had two), but my high school alone did have just under 3000 kids.

We had all 7 of these guys (and one woman) going from class to class every day for a month giving four 90-minute presentations per day to pander and force-feed each individual classroom of ~30-50 students a glorified recruitment ad. They even set up one of the portable classrooms as a recruitment office for that month.

I’m curious, did the recruiters hand out forms to kids under 18 that required parent/guardian signatures?

I’m asking because ours did, and I could swear that these forms were a sort of pre-enlistment contract that needed parent/guardian signature in order to waive the 18+ requirement for agreeing to enlist. So although we wouldn’t actually be enlisted until we turned 18, we could agree to enlist beforehand with a parent’s signature. But, as strong as that memory is, I still can’t help but doubt myself because of how insane and illegal that all sounds.

I’m not sure, I just see a blank comment box with 1 point and no username asking for a favor

Strange, I can’t see your comment. Maybe something is wrong with your account?

God I miss Tidal. Their suggestions were so far above and beyond everything else I’ve tried, I just wish it was managed and maintained competently. Their Android and desktop apps are (were? It’s been a while) so chock-full of playback bugs and annoying little quirks, and their customer support is probably not even legally considered customer support at all, considering the fact that it seems to consist entirely of a single email bot that receives support tickets, waits 3 weeks, then closes that ticket.

I was particularly irritated with the fact that albums would become “unavailable” so incredibly often, while a new, identical version of the album was made available, for no apparent reason. Since these replacement albums weren’t automatically migrated into my library, I would have to remove and and re-add the albums individually in order to play them from my library, then update all my playlist containing any songs from that “disabled” version of the album by removing and re-adding each individual song. That shit got old, FAST.

I eventually had to swap to Spotify because of an absolutely baffling bug that acted like a virus and slowly “ate” my library (more info below if anyone’s curious), and Spotify’s music suggestions are just nothing short of horrendous.

My “discover weekly” last week for example was made up of approximately 60% songs either already in my library, or songs that I’ve listened to before and not liked much from artists in my library, plus 7 (!!) 20-30+ minute soundscapes, something I have NEVER listened to before, as well as 2 new Ariana Grande singles (sponsored? I’ve had to block her, those singles were popping up everywhere), and a few songs from totally out-there genres, including a country rap song which just so happens to be the one and only song I’ve ever actually disliked back before Spotify removed and re-introduced that feature, some background music from a random indie game’s soundtrack which was mostly just cave noises, a jazz-fusion album’s interlude, and something that I can only describe as bubblegum cyberpunk black glitch-metal dancecore. A positively psychotic selection of music.

Granted, that was the worst discover weekly I think I’ve ever had, but I still just wish that tidal worked for me, because I’ve never discovered more great music from any other platform’s suggestion algorithm, and nothing since has even come close.

About the weird bug if anyone’s curious:

The bug was pretty fucked up in that it behaved basically like a virus. At random points while listening, Tidal would fail to play a song at master quality, automatically downgrade playback by one level, then apply that inability to play master-quality permanently to each subsequent song I played in that session. These songs were now “infected”. Replaying these songs at a later date would further degrade the playback quality by an additional level, and also add a delay of ~20 seconds per playback quality level it had been downgraded to, as well as infecting any other songs I played after. When a song reached 96kbps (or 160? Whatever the lowest is, I forget) and could not degrade any more, it would either play at minimum quality after a ~60 second delay (which was unskippable because Tidal was unresponsive to playing a new song during the delay), or just fail to play entirely while loading infinitely, absolutely chugging my battery-life, and overheating my phone. I could only stop it by force-closing the app, which would crash my phone, every single time. There was about a 20% chance for one of these songs to fail playback, but if it did play, that chance to fail playback was now applied to each subsequent song played, no matter the song’s “infection level”. Though that at least didn’t seem to be permanently applied like the quality degradation, but I don’t know for sure.

The weirdest part is that the bug would persist, spread, and behave exactly the same way on an old phone that had never had tidal installed before, and also with the desktop app (though without the overheating, and it would throw and error message after some time if a song failed to play). So the bug seemed somehow account-bound?

I researched unsuccessfully for weeks looking for a fix, and I tried everything I could to fix it aside from making a new tidal account, because it was a lot of trouble to migrat. And support… Well, Tidal support apparently just doesn’t exist. I had sent 3 separate support tickets, all of which went unanswered, then marked as “resolved” and closed 2-3 weeks later. Only the 2nd ticket got an automated “thanks for your ticket, staff will help soon” response before being marked resolved and closed.

Eventually, so much of my library became infected (as well as a ton of random songs that would commonly end up playing after albums) that my ability to both listen to the music I loved and discover new music in the styles/genres I loved was crippled. Which obviously rendered the entire platform effectively useless. So after being repeatedly ignored by support with no explanation, and after several software updates that didn’t fix the problem while I was trying to contact support, or even just report the bug… I had to give up and switch to Spotify.

No problem! It’s a cheap solution for me, but everyone is different ofc. As a 75kg guy who’s struggled with insomnia from birth, I can wake up way too late after losing sleep, then take my 70mg dose at 15:00 and still fall asleep by 22:00 if I take 1000mg vitamin C by 20:30

I see magnesium+zinc supplements labelled ZMA in health/fitness shops, highly recommend something like that too if you normally have trouble falling asleep anyway. It knocks me out quickly, works wonders for my sleep quality, then the next day the meds are even more effective/helpful because I got such great sleep.

It’s best to take vyvanse no later than 12-14 hours before you expect to go to bed, but some people need longer. Try taking 500-1000mg vitamin C a couple hours before bedtime, maybe also some magnesium just before you go lay down.

The vitamin C is particularly effective in flushing out any residual vyvanse in your system to prevent it from keeping you awake, and the magnesium will help you fall asleep. Zinc-magnesium supplements are also common, and the extra zinc is needed for your body to produce dopamine (which is something that is put under stress with ADHD medication releasing so much of it).

Sure, but they return it as well for a refund or new item. Both the seller and new buyer get reimbursed in full by amazon. Plus, it makes amazon a worse place to shop overall, and I don’t think is a bad thing if irritated customers choose another site to shop from, loosening the near-monopolistic grip they have on online shopping.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty and immoral thing to do, generally speaking. It would make me feel guilty thinking about the poor schmuck who gets whatever junk I send as a return. I’ve been the guy who receives a busted piece of shit in my “new” package from amazon, and it’s irritating as hell. But I think amazon suffers most from that type of shitty behavior because it poisons the overall trust people have in them, and makes it more inconvenient to use amazon’s services.

So you might disagree, and that’s fine, but it’s because of the negative impact that shitty immoral behavior has on amazon that makes me feel 0% guilty overall, and hope the same scummy return scheme spreads like a plague to a point where amazon and wish have a similarly iffy reputation. Because I think they deserve to fall from their throne.

What a disgusting video.

Greedy, manipulative, despicable behaviour like this is why I take no issue with people who just repair their broken things by ordering a new one on amazon and sending the broken one as a return for a full refund. I’m not sure how a person could even feel remorse while pissing in the face of a company pushing shit like this into their employee’s faces.

A surprising amount of people I know like to upgrade their graphics cards this way, returning their old card in the new box, getting free cutting-edge upgrades as soon as they become available on amazon’s dime. Seems to have worked pretty well for them over the years 🤷

It’s unfortunate how often it is that the best solution is to combine the powers of 2 sites that have been (not so) recently dipping their toes into the “detestable corporations” side of things.

I share the same sentiment, but the problem is finding a better “elsewhere”.

Google search used to be so far beyond the capabilities of all other search engines, but lately it’s been closing that gap from the top down. Even in its enshittified state, it still outperforms the other search engines out there more consistently, albeit just barely.

That’s my experience anyway, I would love to be introduced to something better if anyone happens to have suggestions!

Here’s the fun part: you only get that if you work somewhere that obeys labor laws! Many (most?) restaurants pretend like they don’t exist at all. I’ve worked at a place that would occasionally (3 times in the year and a half I worked there) fire a chef just after the pay-cycle without saying a word, so the chef works the next 2 weeks up until payday, asks “where’s my paycheck” and the boss says “you don’t get one you were fired last week”.

On a chef’s salary, that has potential to put them and their family on the streets.

Edit: Sorry about this comment, it’s pretty useless, I just had time to kill waiting for my next flight. Reads like a fictional dystopian exaggeration, but it was my reality and continues to be reality for many others, unfortunately. TL;DR - anecdotes outlining how US working conditions can be brutally unforgiving, especially in the restaurant industry.

There’s 3 days sick leave in the US? When I was still living there, I got my 2nd write-up (3rd = termination) for not coming to work because I needed to go to the ER for an overdose. Side note: caffeine powder is way cheaper than coffee, but if you’re too broke to afford coffee, you’re too broke to afford a milligram scale reliable and accurate enough to prevent accidental overdose.

After breaking my 30+ day streak of 12-15 hour shifts (about 90-100 hours per week, was normally only 85 or so), I came back to work the next day with a doctor’s note, and my boss said “I don’t think you’re lying to me…” followed by 10 very long seconds of suspicious squinting and staring me down, “… But yesterday was Saturday, so I’m going to need to write you up”. You see, it was explicitly forbidden to call in sick on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

Don’t let your loved ones work in restaurants, ESPECIALLY in the kitchen. I unfortunately couldn’t quit because I had no days off to apply for other jobs, and missing out on even one day of pay was the difference between covering bills AND food, or having to steal food to avoid homelessness. I legitimately considered choosing to be homeless temporarily as a way out, because I pretty much lived at work anyway, I only ever slept at the apartment. Granted, my situation was particularly bad because they were actually stealing 50% of my earned wages (~$8300 over 10 months, which I eventually got back after threats of litigation).

Lots of people still think that introverts hate social interactions, or feel better without any social interactions at all, but we do need to be social. Some people get dogs or cats and that helps them a lot. But lots of introverted people will tend to find some way to mask the loneliness by distracting themselves that requires a lot of attention, or occupying themselves with something that emulates social interaction. Playing a game while watching twitch streams of that game can fill both of those roles, listening to the streamer and reading chat periodically. That can work in a pinch, but it’s not a real solution. And I don’t have a real solution, aside from “find your balance”, but I know that’s not helpful.

I can suggest something that I found to be a more effective distraction, though. And it even could lead to the first steps to a solution to introvert loneliness if you’re lucky. You can try going to a local bar/pub on a slow day. It helps if you drink alcohol, but you really don’t have to. And of course if there’s a history of alcoholism in your family, you should definitely avoid the alcohol. Make sure to sit at the bar, because a lot of bartenders will start up conversation with lone patrons in their down-time, and the same goes for drunk people getting up to buy another drink, so you don’t have to initiate if you don’t want to. You can end up having a few interesting conversations in a night (or sometimes none at all), and go home either feeling good about going out on your own free will (I.E. Not being forced into a social situation), or exhausted from any overbearing social interactions and therefore a bit more content with going back to spending time by yourself for a while.

This helped me before I made a couple of friends (who I met at the pub) while living alone in a new city, after my distractions got stale. I say it’s worth a try, but everyone is different.

It was hard to initiate that first trip to the bar though, it felt very, very weird. But halfway through my second beer, I felt mostly content with even just listening passively to background conversation. By the time I ordered the 3rd, the bartender had initiated conversation, and before I knew it that feeling of loneliness was gone. It’s important to keep moderation in mind though, I could see that being very effective in catalysing a drinking problem. I did this 2-3 times per month, and that was just enough for me.

So ymmv, but it helped me a lot.