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Cake day: July 12th, 2024

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  • I think this shift will be the end of me buying newer games, period.

    I am that person who doesn’t ever buy digital. I have not bought a single digital game thus far (I haven’t pirated a game since like 2006, either). I have certainly played some, like with the PS+ subscription I got for a year when it was pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t buy them because I can’t be sure I own them, and there’s really no way to transfer the license to resell them.

    If I can’t buy physical media, I simply won’t buy the games. Maybe I’ll use subscription services now and then, but more likely I’ll either find a way to play free or won’t play them at all and find other stuff. I want the physical media because I’m poor, and having the option to sell them in a pinch is important to me if I’m going to shell out a significant amount for something I’ll probably only play once, particularly since there won’t be a used game market to reduce my spend. I haven’t had to sell my games in a very long time, so I have some 400 discs, but it’s something of a savings option that inflates alongside currency, and sometimes much more.


  • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.nettoComic Strips@lemmy.worldGrocery Shopping
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    14 days ago

    Afaik, the closest walmart is way further than an actual grocery store, since we shut down their plans to pave a marshy woodland to set up a super center eyesore just across the highway (walking distance from my place; that would have been a nightmare). idk, I haven’t shopped there in over 20 years. Don’t really plan to start now for the sake of convenience, since that’s how we got that mess in the first place, but I appreciate the info all the same :)


  • Around here, that stuff tacks on a huge convenience fee for pick and pack, making it actively not worth doing. Last I looked, it was some $18 fee no matter how many items, and I’d still have to drive 20 min to pick it up, so might as well just… do my own shopping. (For reference, I live alone in a semi-rural area, so each trip is like $100)

    Now if I could get it delivered (same fee, but nobody has a service area that overlaps my address), that’d be a different story.



  • Yeah fair. I don’t have many options here, unless I want to pay 2-3x as much as a normal grocery (and I think probably zero options that don’t donate to conservative shit, realistically). We only have piggly wiggly locally, and those are so freakin expensive for almost everything (probably because they know they have a truly captive market in the people who can’t go that far, and everyone else is pushed there by sheer distance to the next option - if you run out of sugar, you’ll pay the extra $2 to save an entire hour) The closest real grocery store is 20 min by highway, and it’s also not very good.

    I’ll keep that window trick in mind, thanks! Won’t work for baked-in-situ, since that’s all timer based, but I’m thinking that’s the full source of the failures anyway (it rises, but it’s pretty dense and then collapses a bit. My slices no longer look like Batman, but they still fall a half inch or so during baking… I’ve had to tone down the yeast, which alters the flavor and texture I’m sure)

    Anyway, it’s cheap enough that I don’t mind trying a thousand iterations to find the lazy method that works, even if that does include just using the dough setting and transferring to my silicone bread pans. It’s fully edible, great for croutons, it’s just dense and a bit overly sweet most of the time. I wish I had the brain for fully hand-made bread, but I’d never remember to do the next steps on time to have it turn out properly.


  • Most people actually get paid either weekly or every other week, rather than monthly. So it really still won’t match up properly.

    Most people here just intuitively understand how our pay/bills system works, because we are so accustomed to it. I’m not saying this to be flippant or anything but we have basically two types of standard employment job. We have hourly workers, who typically can tell you their hourly rate, but won’t really know what their take-home for a given pay period will be, due to inconsistent scheduling, tips, whatever, so using the whole year’s income (a number you have to use for taxes anyway, so you definitely know it) makes sense. Then you have people who have fixed hours or who are paid salary, and they usually describe their compensation package annually, because the specific monthly amount doesn’t matter so much as having it consistently, and it’s presented to them by their employer as an annual number because big numbers feel better when all the numbers are pretty small overall.

    It makes adequate sense (in an “it functions well enough” sort of way) when you live in it your whole life and are used to it and nothing else, but I can see it being mighty confusing from the outside.


  • Oh hey, bumfucksville is right down the way from me! I feel your pain. Everything got wicked expensive super quickly, and wages suuuuuck, especially if you aren’t in/around Madison or Milwaukee. Even kwik trip bread has gotten wildly overpriced. I think that’s currently sitting around $5 for 2 (just a few years ago, used to be $1/2) And their eggs, used to be $0.99/12, now almost $4!! (I haven’t even looked at a regular grocery for those things lately, can’t afford them.)

    I’ve started making my own bread. I have a bread machine I got used decades back for $20. It’s not very good bread yet, and I’d probably be better off not baking it in the machine, but it’s nearly free and stupid simple, so whatever. And if I can get my city to permit me for chickens (which they do, thankfully, up to 6, as long as your neighboring houses are either more than 100 feet from the coop, or they agree that it’s fine). Due to a company warehouse sharing my lot lines, I only have one neighbor, and I think it’s maybe more then 100 ft from where the coop will be. I have a (quite large) compost pile that will be included in their run, for them to scratch in and eat bugs, scraps, and mushrooms from (I added some leftover blue oyster spawn to the pile this year to help with the breakdown, since it’s largely sawdust cat litter, and for future chickens to eat), so I think they will end up being great nutrition for fairly limited cost.

    Never thought I’d be the type to keep town chickens (we had a dozen growing up in the country, so I know exactly what effort is involved), but with costs being out of control, here we are.


  • Street dealing is desperation, a symptom, almost always socially inflicted.

    If telegram is keeping the streets clean, that says a lot about the society in which it functions.

    :)

    (Every country has its own illicit market, it’s just where that takes place and what is restricted that matters… no legislation is ever going to rid the illicit market. Ever. It exists for a reason, whatever reason. Just make the majority of it (self-harm drugs and the like) legal and the illegal rings for other stuff are a lot easier to spot. Those will be the things that should be illegal, not drugs which primarily harm adults able to consent to doing them. Let’s do the Portugal method of decrim and social support. Even if it isn’t perfect, it’s good.)








  • Nah, that only works in super close-knit, small town communities.

    I don’t know any of my neighbor’s last names and I’ve lived here for 12 years. I’m in a semi-small town. I know my direct neighbors first names, and that’s about it, because anything more is unnecessary.

    If I got something sent to a random name at my address, I’d treat it the same way as junk mail addressed to me; recycled without a second thought. I still get stuff for 3 other former residents, including pension stuff, despite being here over a decade so…