• 0 Posts
  • 36 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 28th, 2023

help-circle





  • I disapprove of other people’s choices only when it negatively impacts the life of others. If sex work is legal and regulated and taxed and there is a robust social safety net, then all that’s left to disapprove of is the sex itself, which is for religious zealots, not normal people. Sex is a drive honed over hundreds of millions of years, there is literally nothing more normal.

    If it has been made illegal, then I may disapprove of the laws which make it illegal (ie: we don’t disapprove of anti-trafficking laws), but if such laws are in place, I cannot approve of the illegal work, because unsavory shit comes along with it that negatively impacts other people.



  • Dollar, Thrifty and Hertz are all the same company now. They intentionally overbook. I don’t know the exact reason why, short of naked profiteering and not giving a fuck.

    The last time I rented with them (initially Dollar) I booked several months beforehand and when I got up to their kiosks, I ended up getting one of the last cars that they had on hand. I know I got one of the last because as I was waiting (for hours), they first closed the Dollar storefront, then they closed the Thrifty storefront - funneling everybody into one line ultimately ending up at the Hertz storefront. Shortly after I got up to the desk and they were finally giving me my paperwork and keys, they began to shut down the Hertz storefront. At this point there were still literally more than a hundred people standing in line (it was a holiday). So closing up left a whole bunch of people carless and very, very angry. So even waiting for hours through this bullshit, I was one of the LUCKY ONES.

    I booked the car online at the extortionate price of $800 for a week, but ever since the pandemic, rentals have been overly expensive so whatever. Subsequently, they proceeded to apply every possible extra to the rental, without my knowledge. Extra insurance, top tier insurance, full tank of gas, roadside assistance - everything - all of which are also at inflated prices. Not until I got home did I notice that the actual cost of this rental was going to be almost $1500, TWICE THE FEE I HAD BOOKED ONLINE. I had no choice but to accept it and get on with my driving vacation, but I never forget.


  • I truly do not know. I was using Budget, my truck was in the shop and two days’ rental was going to be $142. Two hours after reserving it my mechanic tells me he’s going to have me done today - so I cancel the reservation.

    Because I chose “pay now” rather than “pay later”, I’m charged a $150 cancellation fee on a $142 rental (the fee posted on the website - $50 - is not for “prepaid” “same day” cancellations - not that the website told me this anywhere obvious, of course).

    So I literally would have done better financially to drive the fucking thing around for two days for no good reason.

    Protesting to customer service gets me a resounding “go fuck yourself.”

    I’m now open to suggestions, I was using Budget because they had the best prices of what remained to me, but never again.



  • Everybody is blaming SEO, which is true - but Google is also hamstrung by walled gardens.

    Before Facebook, most content posted to the web was open. It could be viewed by anyone without logging in. Reddit even uses this paradigm.

    But then Facebook started putting everything behind their account login and suddenly, Google can no longer spider a significant amount of the conversation going on on the Internet - and it can’t link you to it either, because the link would be dead if you weren’t a logged-in Facebook user. And of course it’s not just Facebook.

    This is why appending site:reddit.com has come into fashion in the past couple years. Reddit, being open, viewable without a login, is a fantastic source for finding people who are talking about exactly what you’re searching for.

    And it’s another reason why Meta is cancer: all the conversations going on about whatever problem you are experiencing that made you do a search in the first place, if they exist in private groups on something like Facebook - they are useless to you and useless to anyone but the members of that private group. We are losing our giant public knowledge base because capitalism.




  • But I don’t think they can grab that explorer fanbase again, they are just against procedural generation in general, they probably wanted Outer Worlds but bigger.

    I don’t think that’s true. Elite Dangerous is one of my favorite games and it’s procedurally generated. I think the issue is that that’s not exactly what Starfield is.

    When you “land” in Starfield (outside a handcrafted city or similar), you land in a procedurally generated box made just for you. It isn’t repeatable by anybody but you. Other people who “land” in the same spot will not see what you saw, they get their own procedurally generated box. The contents of the box are similar (the terrain is the right color, the flora and fauna are the same). If you were to see something particularly cool in your box (although I never did when I was playing the game) - ie: “unusually tall mountain range” or “unusually deep valley” - you can’t tell someone “hey go to coordinates x,y and check this out!” You CAN do this in Elite Dangerous. All worlds, all settlements - everything is the same for everyone, and if you explore through it all and you find something interesting, you can share it with people.

    In Starfield, your box always contains an uninteresting/unremarkable patch of terrain and magically, literally everywhere you land, there are structures and ships within walking distance - none of which anyone can get to but you.

    There is literally no WAY to explore. Everywhere you land, it’s just another box and it will always contain the same variation on the same things. That isn’t exploration. Exploration implies things that exist whether you are there or not and which can be found by someone if they look long enough.




  • This is going to sound like hyperbole, but this thing changed my life and I always love it when I get a chance to share it with somebody. It requires no electricity, it has no moving parts and in the 11 years I’ve been using one, it’s never broken. I give you: Omega Paw.

    It requires clumping cat litter, so if you use that you’re golden. When it’s time to clean, you roll it - and as you roll, the loose litter flows through a grate, but the clumps and waste stay on top of the grate. As you continue to roll it, the waste falls to the ceiling. When you roll it back, the waste all falls into the drawer, which you pull out and dump. Cleaning the litter box takes literally 10 seconds. It’s awesome.