Endymion_Mallorn

If you’re in the area i am, the place I’m talking about is on the 163 line.

You’re right. My markup % was off. I’m glad I have a computer calculating it at work.

I agree. But I think I sort of mentioned, what I found was that through serendipity, it works out to the packages being pretty accurate to 8 .25lb burgers, aside from the onion, mustard, ketchup, and pickles.

I would make a family meal out of that - in fact, I think I might this weekend. You’re right, time isn’t free. But I’m not going to pay more than double the retail COGS for a sandwich that’s produced on commercial scale and not cooked by hand. If that’s what they need to do in order to keep the lights on, then they need to cut overhead or negotiate more effectively to reduce COGS. But we all know that these are not ‘keep the lights on’ prices. They could cut the price and still make a profit.

If it was a locally owned small business where I believed that my support would be valued, or where they were reinvesting into the local community, I think I’d accept it. Heck, I do accept it. One of my local places serves a $13 burger. I buy it, because I know where they get their beef, and their veggies, and the staff and owners are in my area. Everything but the tax comes back into my local economy. That’s not how McD’s works.

Yup, and that’s just a burger. Mind you, I live in spitting distance of NYC, so I do admittedly have a cost that’s inflated due to high taxes and high minimum wage. But all my other costs were based on my local supermarket that’s within walking distance of the McD’s I used for price reference. If I’d used the Walmart that’s in the same lot, it’d be even more extreme.

I mean, I’m an American. I have a pro-American sentiment when it comes to food and drink.

I also happen to have an anti-overpriced-crap sentiment when it comes to the things I eat and drink.

In my area, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is $10.50. Now, I may not compare exact apples-to-apples here, but let’s go for it.

From my local supermarket, I can get 20 1/4lb. patties for $25 - that’s the premade patties, not from the butcher section. That means not only can I decide how well-done I like my burger, I can season it as I choose. And I have confidence in my local supermarket that when they put on the side of the box “Ingredients:80% Lean, 20% Fat Ground Beef”, they mean it. That makes each patty $1.25.

Now, if I want to buy the exact same ground beef, but not formed in patties, that’s $3.25/lb (usually in 2-3 lb. packs, but I can ask the butcher and get a custom size) - so now we’re down to $0.81 for the patty.

The rolls, I can get store brand. 8 for $1.50. That’s $0.19 cents a roll. That means that if I buy my own ground beef, I’ve now spent exactly $1 on a quarter pound burger. So let’s talk toppings.

The cheese first - one slice of American on theirs; I would go a different way, but stick to them. Springing for a little extra, $3.59 a pack for Borden Melts cheese, 16 slices. $0.22 per slice. Our burger is now at $1.22 COGS, and I have the makings for 7 more in buns and probably that in beef, plus I could make each burger with 2 slices of cheese, so each burger is $1.44 so far.

Onions, I can get for $1.50/lb (or less!), and each onion is less than that. But I definitely have enough to do a burger and meal plan - let’s say an ounce, about $0.10. Mustard, I’m not going to factor in the cost, because it’s so little as to be a joke. Buying a jar of good mustard can last you a year or more. Ketchup I’ll say the same for. It can last a long time and the amount per burger is negligible. So let’s be generous and say $0.10 each. Pickles can be more expensive if you get good ones, but store brand we’re talking $0.16 per ounce (with brine), and you’re not putting on a full ounce of pickle. So in toppings, we’re adding ~$0.50 value.

Total cost of the burger is around $2.00 at retail, not at scale; about $3 if you want premade patties. Sure, there are costs to be amortized like rent and tax and cooking - and the biggest cost, labor. But each individual burger shouldn’t be socked with an 80+% markup from COGS, and taste worse than the home-made version.

Why should I buy from McDonald’s ever again?

If it was guaranteed to be annihilation, I think I could accept it. The problem is, it’s not a guarantee. People might live, and they might not even get radiation poisoning. That leaves them alive in a wasteland. That’s the issue. Death is preferable to a life of suffering.

It wasn’t even a full Leeroy Jenkins. He always went in for full, unrelenting DPS and would go until he was dead unless protected. This was barely poking the (Pooh) bear, and then running like hell the moment it doesn’t look great. The full Leeroy would be a full embargo backed by the Coast Guard.

So basically we’re admitting that we lost the trade war, and the whole world is going to belong to China. Isn’t that swell.

I wish I could say that this upset me at all.

Time to remove de minimus.

That would be nice, but who’s going to pay for it? Because free hosting is pretty rare, nowadays.

How is it possible to filter out those images? The ads are easy, but LLM content is harder when it comes to automatic removal.

That’s how it should go, yes.

No, but have you ever had a typo?

And this is why you take aggregate data and specify outliers. Whenever you work with living beings, you have to account for personality. It’s not a mutation, it’s not a factor you can control. I know some individual plants that have had traits that could be related to human personality; I’d bet that it’s even the case with jellyfish. There’s always going to be one being who goes against the norm. And frankly we want that, because without that factor, no one would advance or grow.

“The Male doesn’t care about mating, and will find an appropriate provider for the service at the appropriate time. The Male is currently focused on feeding - anything between him and the refrigerator will face his wrath.”

ETA: Typo.

Trust, not exactly. But I do want to see if they can come up with that much printed money, and if cash is delivered, it should be a matter of public record what serial numbers those bills have, and where their recorded uses have been.

Cash upfront. Delivery after full payment.

Not flooding the world with more LLM-related slop really doesn’t sound like that bad a thing. A nation already known for widespread IP theft is better-equipped to double down on that. Then again, I’m one of those people who resembles that meme about the only network-aware appliance I have being a printer, and being ready to disable it if it makes any strange noises.

This is exactly what I was about to say.