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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: November 25th, 2024

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  • Some low flow models are created so that you just press it to run enough water to down a piss, but hold it to unleash all the stored water to down anything more. That was the point of them, save water by fixing the obvious problem of downing a tank of water over a little urine. But unless you bought the toilet or were told, you don’t know that, and that’s where a lot of the issue comes from. Same interface as any other, different expected input and results.

    On the other hand, I once had an old toilet that did require multiple flushes. It was not a low flow, and there was nothing wrong with the toilet. Years of accumulation had restricted the plumbing like 30 feet down. Plumber eventually sorted that out.


  • Mine used to, but they stopped.

    I asked why, and they said in the worst case some people would steal them. Maybe they just kept them or “lost” them, or they returned the cases without the game. With something like the Nintendo chips the theft would be obvious, but a couple of disk style ones had labels forged too. A stupid crime, given the last borrower would simply be fined.

    On average though, there were a lot of difficulties keeping them in working order. Apparently they were reported non-functional more than DVDs, and despite a contract with a cleaning and restoration company still had a high failure rate requiring frequent replacement. Which is really kinda funny given how 90% of the time the disk is just a DRM token for an online download, shouldn’t be that susceptible to failure from minor damage…

    Anyway between these costs and an analysis that physical game media was on the way out the door(probably mostly the costs), the program was discontinued and you can’t borrow games around here anymore.



  • Well, you see IRC and forums went together because they filled two different needs and we understood that back in the day.

    IRC was for chatting, short, quick real time communication that would be lost to the ether as soon as you signed off, unless you had a bouncer or log bot.

    Forums were for long information, be that long posts or posts that needed to endure for a long time. Sure you’d get some one liner responses to those posts, but forums were not at all instant like IRC. Though the information did stay much longer, and was much more searchable and organized.

    Discord has spoiled us, being quick and chatty while also allowing for longer posts and being searchable. At least within the Discord client. Shoot they even added those “forum” channels to replicate the old forum feel. But real time.


  • I think you have it right. Refusing the check is not alone sufficient grounds, and that is why if you (politely, no reason to be a jerk, they’re just cogs in a machine working for a pittance) refuse and walk away, they just turn to the next one.

    It is, as many have concurred, for show. The idea that you may get asked, the anxiety that develops thinking you might get caught, deters all but the most hardened thieves. Same with exterior lights on a home; before cameras what good did a lightbulb do to stop a thief? Does a lightbulb injure or detain a thief? Call the cops for you? No. It upsets their resolve. The light may make them visible to a witness they aren’t aware of. And a witness might call the cops or hurt them. On to a darker house, then!

    It’s not just about what’s legal for the store employees to do either. Were I a thief, I wouldn’t be worried the manager is going to ban me from the store, or the frail old lady they have at the door is a threat, I’d be more concerned what vigilante schmuck is going to “help” the store by taking matters into his own hands after he overhears me arguing with the greeter or manager. The store gives up after you leave the sidewalk, “hometown heroes” don’t.

    Straight theft aside, I imagine it does also help them recover some losses from mistakes. Any time they catch somebody with legit missed items under the cart and guide them towards fixing it, loss averted. Start noticing it happens a lot from a particular cashier or self checkout supervisor and get them corrected, more losses averted. I imagine you’d need a fairly wide sample set to figure it out?

    It’s not a…totally unfair concept in theory, but they really aught to find a way to make it feel less adversarial and it would be more tolerable.


  • I understand that each state makes adjustments to this which may grant more or less powers, but here’s a Wikipedia on the overall concept:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopkeeper's_privilege

    So for example during the aforementioned security theater at the doors, someone who is legally a representative of the company ownership(generally the managers making salaries are bonded to this) is doing their best to catch someone in the act of stealing, putting something in a coat, loading a cart and bypassing the register, etc, and this gives them grounds for some mild detainment. This apparently covers them stopping you at the door or firmly requesting you join them in their office to clear things up(and wait for the real authorities), and means no one questions if they grab the cart which is company property and doesn’t let you leave with it.


  • I once sat and chatted with one of these guys waiting for a bad downpour to stop. Being stopped sucks, I know, but here’s some insider information:

    They are stopping you for appearances. They absolutely are skimming your receipt, they really don’t care about you personally. It’s all circus.

    If they are looking, they are looking for the big loss items. That TV that gets rung up in the back, was it actually rung up? The water case under the cart coming from self checkout? Another big loser for the company. Coming with a tote or loaded cart from the wrong direction is a little obvious to everyone.

    Every other stop is for show. To remind the tote runner they are watching. To make the TV thief skittish. It’s all about appearances and breaking down resolve. The door guys can’t stop you, but they can make you afraid that they are vigilant and someone who can is waiting(and the salarymen can, shopkeeper’s privilege apparently in the US). It does work, loaded carts abandoned near the doors apparently testify to the effectiveness.

    Some door hosts get by with being passive, they are supposed to be pretty chill and friendly, and dial up the theatrics when someone is reported to be suspicious or when a “frequent flyer” walks in. But that just makes it seem discriminatory and unbalanced so apparently some managers want the theatrics 24/7 to avoid the complaints of unfair treatment.





  • Others are posting the well written explanations, so I’ll make the short comparisons.

    GitHub is like Reddit is to Lemmy. It’s the main player in source code hosting, proprietary and centralized to the profits and whims of Microsoft. But for that cost, you can easily bet a project you are looking for has a presence there, and it’s easier for a dev to pop from project to project with one account and identity.

    The others are like Lemmy, meant for hosting your own GitHub-like website with all the bells and whistles on top of the standard Git codeshare. There’s a lot of feature parity, though some softwares have more than others. But it comes at the cost of obscurity, Codeberg is a big player but any instance you find is isolated, and any devs you entice to help you need to register additional accounts personal to that instance. And the hosting costs are on you, it can all vanish with an unpaid domain/server bill unlike the central giant of GitHub.






  • Exactly. For the US reality version of this image, the Canada Fan needs to angle higher, propelling the fluid over Trump’s head, and into a crowd of Americans behind him. Because that’s how it is.

    Getting his own face would mean this affects him personally. It does not. He’s proud of it even, pissing into the wind without a care in the world. The rest get rained on.


  • I see that fight too. Teachers still working despite the issues. Paying out of their own pockets to keep the system limping along. Trying to pack the wound of under supported education.

    But there’s only so much you can do when your opponent vastly outnumbers you, and in fact now has the heavyweight punch of government behind it.

    “Knowledge” is still being shared. The problem is we are eroding the difference between correct and incorrect “knowledge”, and as things change we are losing the support of the government that used to help with that.

    “Truth” is now an opinion. Is Ivermectin a drug with some specific uses that may have had a secondary affected improving health for some patients who also had parasites eating at them, so they got a bit better because the parasites were dead and the immune response could work harder on fighting COVID?

    Or is the truth that it’s directly a cure for COVID, cancer, and everything else, so buy it from the pet shop if you have to because “they” don’t want you to have it?

    Different households will take different sides as truth. Different communities will take different sides as truth. And teach their young to make it their truth.

    Government controlled education is a double edged sword. Right now we are upset that it is or could be used to push an agenda that we see as false, but we depend on a central authority to take in the advice of the educated and enforce true knowledge in the learning halls that educate our next generation.


  • Firstly, such unity would be hard to organize. Work culture down on the lower rungs where there would be people wanting change, are drowned in a conflict culture. Don’t talk about your wages. Unions are evils. You are Replaceable. The threat of termination is welded like a cudgel. One of my previous jobs had a point system. If you were late, point. Called out without enough sick hours and a doctor’s note? Point. Missed a shift for any reason and didn’t call in? 4 points. 4 points was terminated.

    Would they actually follow through with it? A previous manager I’ve had absolutely would. Snow? Late? Should have shoveled your way over sooner. He changed someone’s schedule and they didn’t notice, failed to appear. Arguments were made, there was an appeal system after all to make it fair, right? They compromised on keeping the guy at 3 points. He spent the next while looking for a new job because he knew he was one mistake away from unemployed.

    Would they fire the whole team for organizing? I think so. I think they’d quickly offer to re-hire their favorites while they picked up new blood but they’d do it. Everyone would be back on probation and back in line.

    Another company taking over the country no longer has a fresh meat butcher department because they wanted to unionize years ago. Company made an example of them nationwide and now just does factory meat.