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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I think if you had just left it at “Got a substitute?” and left off the snark you wouldn’t be downvoted into oblivion. I’ll try to give you my honest take. It’s a fair question. Amazon is a really nice service. I was a prime member for many years. About 3 years ago I cancelled because: the price kept going up, the usability of the site keeps getting worse, (alphabet soup pop up “brands” poisoning search results) and the customer service has gotten worse.

    My process now is, search for what I want with one or more search engines, or, a website with reviews I trust like wirecutter, seriouseats, rtings, gamersnexus, etc. Once I decide on the item, see if the manufacturer sells it direct. Then, I price compare using a google shopping search. If Amazon comes in at MUCH cheaper than everyone else, I might still buy from them. If it’s close, especially if it’s a small business, I try to go more direct. If your cart is over USD $35, shipping is still free but slower. If I have smaller things less than $35, I sit on them and wait until I need enough to put me over or stock up on basics like garbage bags. If I need something fast and Amazon is the only place to get it, I can still pay for shipping several times a year and spend less than I would on the prime subscription. I typically only need to pay for shipping once or twice a year.

    You can make Amazon compete and behave better without completely cutting them out of your life. Cancel prime, and shop around.




  • In another thread earlier this week about republican endorsements, someone suggested an alternative possibility that I thought was insightful: they are endorsing her to try to get people to the polls by any means possible. They fear Trump has become so disenfranchising to everyone other than his most fervent base that republican turnout will be horrible. My own opinion: this helps in three possible ways.

    1. By telling people it’s ok to vote for Kamala you get them in the building and expect that they will vote heavily R down the ballot.
    2. You get people in the building thinking they are going to do 1) but end up voting for Trump anyway in the end because in that final moment they just can’t bring themselves to vote (D)
    3. You weaken the confidence of the general ® voters by making it seem like Kamala has a very strong chance of winning and whip them out of complacency to get them into the building.

    I’d really like to think that it’s actually because of patriotism and genuine care for the wellbeing of the country, but I wouldn’t put any of the above past them. It could also be a little bit of both.




  • I’m going to agree with you 100% but offer an anecdote, my lg tv has an hdmi 2.0 port but didn’t support Dolby vision at 120 hz out of the box. After an update, it now supports it. Should LG have had that ready to go by the time of manufacture ? Maybe. With design and manufacturing timelines maybe the spec wasn’t ready to implement by the time needed. Is Samsung going to use this to enshitify the tv? Maybe. But the time from design, to manufacture, to retail is such a long process there are cases where a feature update can be justified



  • It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that the DNC would rather lose than have an actual progressive win. None of the shitty things that Trump wants to do will hurt them, (stupid take if they cared at all about their descendants but they’re either too arrogant or too ignorant to worry about that) but actual progressive policies that helped average people WOULD hurt their way of life. Marginally. Like, the tiniest little amount. Like, your yacht can only have one master bedroom instead of four. But why give that up when you don’t have to?

    “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”

    I’m voting for Biden though, and I’ll keep voting as progressively as possible in the down ballot elections. If a progressive movement from the bottom up can start by doing things like getting rid of FPTP, we still have a chance. And to anyone thinking about not voting, please do. The president is one person. They are the single most powerful person individually, (taking aside impact on the judicial system) but the collective impact on your day to day life is far more influenced by down ballot positions. Research your down ballot candidates and vote. Many of those races are decided by only a handful of votes. Yours matters.



  • FWIW I didn’t downvote you for this. I read the Ars article and saw the bit about them making it unlimited during the early pandemic days, but it seemed to imply that is was above board during other times. So if the whole case hinges on their actions during lockdown when people lost access to their own local libraries it becomes a letter vs spirit of the law thing to me personally. They broke the letter of the law, did they break the spirit of it? Was what they did immoral? The justice system isn’t perfect and as a society we continually refine and redefine our laws and have been forever. The state of Louisiana just signed a law into effect that requires poster sized copies of the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom, kindergarten through college. If someone breaks that law, what side of history will they be on?

    If unlimited lending was something that IA was doing all the time, I can see it both ways. If it was for a few months during lockdown, then I think the court got this wrong.