• 0 Posts
  • 53 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle
  • Everyone should know, US flag code is relatively new phenomenon, with the beginnings of it forming around 1942. My grandfather predated US flag code.

    Similarly, flying the flag at half-staff/mast only goes back to 1954-ish.

    Regarding the US flag & how it is presented, treated, there is a lot of customs & nuance that we’re just kind of making up as we go along. It seems as the world gets smaller, the rate of divergency & traditions is accelerating.

    Most soldiers I’ve met don’t really care about the flag code. They dislike the flag being burned but currently there’s not much we can do about that.

    I am (mostly) mindful of “flag code”, just out of my own personal respect & love for America. But it’s not law; the flag is made for Americans. Americans aren’t made for the flag, to structure our actions around what some guys said in 1942.


  • Depending on marketing & their dedication to bringing it to market…again… they can & they do. Digitally. Nintendo has sold old video games on the Wii, Wii U platform. Then, they packaged & released the NES & SNES Classic consoles, very smart move actually & it was a cute product that appealed to many consumers.

    Since then, Nintendo’s greed has grown. They no longer sell because they don’t want you to own copies of old videogames…they want to rent them to you by the month or year. Via Nintendo Online subscriptions, you can browse the whole catalog & play all kinds of old games. It requires a Switch, an internet connection, and don’t forget that sweet, sweet Nintendo Online subscription. Once you’ve gotten your fix & you cancel your subscription, you own nothing & they’ve got your money. This is their goal, everything is going according to plan. Subscription models for endless reven on old games.

    You will give them your money, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.


  • I quit probably 11 years ago. IIRC they did some dumb stuff to cap trades, and I played out most of everything that was very cool & interesting, and they kept adding new stupid skills that I had absolutely no interest in doing. Like the hunting/trapping skill. But then they’d release sick new quests, with good rewards/perks, but to do them you’d have to extensively train up that yucky, boring, dumb “skill” that you would never use otherwise. If not for that quest.

    They turned my play into work, and took the fun out of it, and eventually I was like why am I paying these people so I can grind away hours on dumb stuff that I don’t even like?? So I quit.


  • Oh. The ones I’m referring to are the modern Amazon lockers & such, reliant on modern technology. Courier goes up, enters auth code. It then asks you to scan a pkg. Then there’s the prompt, is the pkg: SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE, X-LARGE? Upon selection, it pops open a corresponding door. One pkg per locker. Rinse & repeat until all pkgs delivered to lockers, and recipients are notified of delivery.

    Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually super slick & helpful for everyone.

    Kind of related but not as high-tech or secure, some nice apartment complexes are being built with sizeable delivery rooms. Which works unless you’ve got a klepto in your complex.


  • With varying degrees of success, you can create accounts with the delivery companies & specify what you want done with your pkg. Deliver to any address you like, or hold at facility or an access point. This is your best option, to dig a little deeper, take some time & really take control of how you want your deliveries. As best you can. 🙂

    With most US residential pkgs, it is left because it’s easy & economical. A third to half of the time, it’s cheap bullshit. Theft or loss is often not a big enough problem to warrant not delivering the first time.

    Calling every person that doesnt receive their pkg in person is patently ridiculous. Full-time drivers have anywhere from 130 stops to 300+ stops. Let’s say 2/3 don’t accept the pkg in person (it’s more than 2/3); that is 86-200+ phone calls or 86-200+ stops’ worth of pkgs, per driver, to be recycled back through facility.

    The first time most residential pkgs are attempted delivery, the shipping company makes like 5-10¢ on that pkg. Say it goes back to facility, to be delivered tomorrow, as you said. That very low value pkg, to be recycled back into the system & taking up space, to be processed & put on a truck for delivery the next day, to be delivered for basically no profit/breakeven. Awesome 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻. Let’s say 2nd attempt is unsuccessful, and we can’t just leave the package on the doorstep when the person isn’t home because that’s such an obviously stupid thing to do. Driver starts swearing, sticks another notice on the door, 5+ people handle the pkg again…you know the deal…and the 3rd day it is delivered at a loss or, if failed, is held at facility for customer pickup. The company has lost money, and on some cheap foreign-made t-shirts from Kohl’s, no less.

    In short: they’re doing the best they can, every single day, by the numbers. 🙂 Looking at the big picture, it works pretty well! Except for Amazon, they suck, but everybody keeps giving them money so basically they can fail up forever until that changes.

    Hope this sheds some light on how logistics work behind the scenes. Leave some snacks, drinks out for your delivery drivers! The real-life Santas!








  • Of course the complaints sound legitimate. And idk I am inclined to side with them, if they’re honest & the complaints are based on fact.

    With their commercial launch fast approaching, the parties also expressed an expectation that competitors would continue to make misleading claims and draconian demands to further delay Commission action and limit service to American consumers. Indeed, each time that SpaceX has demonstrated that it would not cause harmful interference to other operators—often based on those parties’ own claimed assumptions—those competitors have moved the goalposts or have claimed their analysis should not have been trusted in the first place. These operators’ shapeshifting arguments and demands should be seen for what they are: last-minute attempts to block a more advanced supplemental coverage partnership and siphon sensitive information to aid their own competing efforts. The Commission must not allow competitive gamesmanship to stand in the way of lifesaving service for American consumers.

    I have seen a lot of this in my life, too. AT&T is a shitty company. Verizon is very good generally speaking, but overpriced. Some of you might not be old enough to remember, but SMS texting started out being sent over a never used emergency reserve 5% partition of cell towers. They were charging us all $10+/mo for something that cost them virtually nothing. All that to say, I don’t fucking trust AT&T, Verizon, or TMobile. ¯\(°_o)/¯ Do you??? Any of them will do anything to make a buck, and as SpaceX says, any one of them will say anything to sandbag their competition (while trying to copy ideas & build their own version). These cell phone companies are the worst of all; they’ve been allowed to lie, cheat, and steal for decades. Their claims don’t have to be true, they just have to “sound legitimate”.

    I’m thinking…this is all about a signal. A signal that can be turned on & off, a signal that doesn’t physically harm any equipment but might hamper their ability to send & receive their own signal. Both sides are making radically different claims, maybe there’s a little truth to both, but one has to be significantly closer to right than the other.

    In theory, blind tests could be performed without informing AT&T/Verizon. Or hell even the FCC, but it is unwise to piss off the US Gov’t Alphabet Gang. If there is this terrible interference, alright. We should be able to notice that, and quickly. Shut it down, turn the signals off. If it’s done and SpaceX, TMobile are correct & there is no discernible interference, this is where things could get really delicious. You just let it go for 6 months or a year. 🙂 Then you announce a testing date, they kick & scream per usual, it goes through… and then if they start saying “oH My GOd, ouR NetWErkz R goING CRazY becAUSe of this signal, that started on this date.” Yeah, and everything was fine before? 🤔 Oh man, we were great & everything was great, no problems before this date. Well guess what, you dumb bitch??? We’ve been using this signal for 6+ months before the test date. That means you’re lying.

    Anyway. I know it’ll probably never happen, even if it should. I’ve watched these people lie to us, spend money & effort tearing down their competition or fighting common fucking sense. Like Apple refusing to switch iPhones to USB-C, when they themselves were using USB-C on their Macbooks & iPads for years at that point. I don’t think it is an exaggeration when I say these people are hampering progress, innovation, and getting in the way of us enjoying a better world. They hamstring mankind, they hold back the greatness & potential of society. It’s high time we identify, label these people as such & treat them accordingly.

    Turn the damn satellite signals on. Do some testing. See. What. Happens.


  • Part of the problem is the Pixel phone, I mean that’s been a problem ever since it came out. Sometimes it’s alright but there’s a lot of people that have bought a Pixel & regretted it. My brother in law being one of many. I can say with relative confidence, Google Pixel phones have had so many problems & lack of support, I’m sure everybody reading this knows somebody with Google Pixel buyer’s remorse. Or maybe they are that person.

    This is a well-earned reputation. So yeah I can believe people aren’t jumping at the P9.

    The AI part is just another reason to not buy a Google Pixel phone.



  • I read the room, I know how it is trying to be used, and it only reinforces the fact that most people kinda suck. I refuse to respect it.

    I want campaigns based on policy, facts, and results. Not name calling & “feelings”.

    This is basically Democrat strategy; it requires no might or skill of any kind: a retarded kid throws a bucket of pig’s blood onto a brilliant white shag carpet, points & screams about how dirty it is, and the Republicans scramble to clean up the mess. Wasting time, money, and effort on a mess that will never truly be clean again. Kind of like writing out a logical argument on this rabidly liberal platform, to have it downvoted & sometimes deleted. One side takes 5 seconds, ruins everything, very “effective”. The other takes hours. Effectiveness…hit & miss. On its face, there is no way to win against the one throwing pig’s blood on the white shag carpet.

    But now the Democrats face Trump. Trump, at his best, doesn’t really care if he’s dirty or not. So that particular Democrat strategy is rendered ineffective. Lately he’s wasted time addressing allegations, AKA, “cleaning up the mess”. I want to see more debates on specific policies.

    Ultimately, we’ll see which side wins come November. Or perhaps there will be another assassination attempt. ¯\(°_o)/¯ It’s hard to say. I am inclined to think they’re going to kill him. I’ve said that for probably the past year.