That’s not an apples to apples comparison. I am buying a single thing at a pump: fuel. I boop my card. I stick nozzle in hole. I pull lever until it stops. Vending machines? Second verse same as the first. I boop card. I push button. I take chippies, I walk away. Vending machines specifically are purpose-built for self-service.

I spend maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes at these things. The only work I do is tapping my payment and pressing a button or two. Groceries are a whole different animal. It’s scanning, weighing, coding, bagging, loading, and paying. It’s a fuckton more involvement by the customer. I don’t think you can in good faith compare self-checkout to a vending machine.

The business is incentivized to trick you into performing labor for them. Part of the cost of my groceries is for someone to have a job doing that. If I’m gonna do that labor for the store, I should get an employee discount, at least.

And why is that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the business benefits by making the customers the employees, too? Would a business be in any way incentivized to make paying customers also perform labor for them?

The things boomers complain about aren’t always wrong. I ain’t their damn employee.

Doggy doggy WHAT now?

This is totally the kind of shit my wife would have on her car or her macbook. I’d love to give her one of these lol

My cousin and I once invented the “Booter.”

One would ride a bike.

The other would ride a scooter.

The bike would tow the scooter with about a half dozen bungee cords. If you accelerated really hard on the bike, the cords would store all that extra energy, contract, unhook from each other, and send the scooter rocketing past.

Great fun. We never wore pads or helmets. For weight savings, of course. We were engineers first.

Coffee has always made me shit from the time I started drinking it regularly when I was 21.

But now, a cup of water in the morning will trigger it. Like my body says, “MOISTURE?? I guess we don’t need this anymore!!”

I’ve stopped drinking coffee since getting on Adderall. Which is a shame. I was getting into some good stuff. But I’ve got a history of heart trouble in my family so coffee has been replaced by herbal tea. Gotta have a hot drink to truly wake up.

Not to mention how plastic recycling isn’t exactly easy anyway. Not all jurisdictions take all kinds of plastic. So you have to know what your recycling center can handle and what you’re tossing in or risk contamination.

I go out of my way to buy things shipped in paper, glass, or metal containers. Even though steel and aluminum cans do have a little plastic in them, it’s far less plastic than containers made entirely of it.

It would be nice if we could have more things sold in the bulk section so you can bring your own container. Like, if I could buy laundry detergent or shampoo using my own containers, that’d be sick.

We should give more swords to more women.

My cats are on automatic feeders. So when the time change happened in fall, I didn’t adjust those clocks. As far as they were concerned, they got fed on time.

Now that the time changed back, those clocks are right again lol

Good drivers miss their exit sometimes. Bad drivers never miss their exit. Pat yourself on the back knowing you’re on of the good ones.

I once missed my exit in the middle of nowhere and had to drive an extra 20 miles until I reached the next exit so I could turn around, go back those 20 miles, and take the right exit lol

Or my guacamole 30 seconds after I scoop it onto my plate.

Yesterday, I ate two eggs for breakfast, water for lunch, and chow mein, kung pao chicken, broccoli beef, two nutri grain bars, twenty-seven gummy bears, and a small milkshake for dinner.

My father in law (age 78) just got a new phone. His last phone cost $100 new, was only a year old, and took actual seconds to respond to most things. It finally got stuck boot looping to recovery mode so I lent him my old OnePlus 7T to use because we were gonna get him a new one for his birthday, but he just went ahead and bought a new (used) Samsung for $200.

The Samsung is actually a pretty decent phone, but he refuses to learn how to use it. He badly wanted to use his old phone, but it won’t work anymore. He made me put the SIM card in his old phone. I told him he’s free to use that old thing, but I won’t be helping him with it anymore.

He is finally learning how to use his new phone a month after getting it. The man refuses to shell out for a half decent phone, despite having the money to. He’d rather spend $150 every 18 months buying a new crap phone than spend $400 on one that could easily last 5 years.

He doesn’t even need a smart phone. He doesn’t understand what a launcher is. So he downloads whatever crapware is advertised to him, then gets really confused why his home screen is all fucky. I’ve told him he should really consider getting a flip phone and using a laptop for anything else. He doesn’t want to. He wants a smart phone.

I can’t save this man. My parents are in their mid 50s and have finally caught up. 20 years ago, I was telling them they do not need the crapware DVD that came with the digital camera to import their pictures. All you need to do is put the SD card in the computer and copy the DCIM folder to the Pictures folder on the computer, then delete everything in the SD card’s DCIM folder to free up space.

Since I don’t use Windows anymore, I don’t answer Windows questions anymore lol If anyone calls with a Windows question these days, I just nope outta that.

You either get busy living or get busy dying.

That quote has stuck with me for a long time.

Exactly thirty minutes later…

Anus: Hey, Brain - we’ve got a little problem here.

Brain: Can’t it wait? We’re driving.

Anus: Absolutely the fuck not.

Look, I get the hate because this looks appalling, but I’m thinking of the way these things might taste together, and, I mean, I wouldn’t say no. The sweet-savory combination would be a good contrast that lends some complexity. And the creaminess of the soup seems like it’d be a good fit for the flakiness of tuna and bready texture of the waffle.

Only thing I’m passing on is the olives. No thanks, bud.

At least, I’m not counting this out before I try it.

As for my wife…

I don’t think she’s a fan lmao

There is r/petloss for that. I lost my dog Nike (image link) in 2019, and it devastated me. About a week later, I posted her with this image (ext link: imgur) to petloss.

I don’t think these folks are disgusting for venting about their lost loved ones. It is hard losing a pet. I guess at that time, I wanted someone else in the world to know about her, the life she lived with us, how dearly we loved her, and how much she’s missed. It was a pretty long-winded eulogy. Conciseness was never my strong suit. Different people grieve differently.

But I do believe that you should look for the relevant subs/communities to post about losing a pet and refrain from making that kind of post on those for more general pet posting. At the same time, I think awareness is key. I’d reckon if you’re posting to r/cats or r/dogs instead of r/petloss, you’re probably not aware of it. I tend to assume grieving pet parents aren’t trying to karma farm.

The world is already shitty enough, and I don’t need to bring myself down with that kind of thinking anyway.

She must be an empath.

1. Install Debian
2. Experience stability.
3. No, really. It’s very stable.
4. Spend years growing old with the same packages.
5. Accept your fate.