• 0 Posts
  • 175 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: April 4th, 2025

help-circle




  • American cars have sucked compared to Asian cars since the 1970s. I don’t understand why people are acting all surprised that this is true in respect to BYD. Sure in the past products designed in China were stereotyped as poor quality knock offs of western designed goods, but in the past decade Chinese engineers have increasingly proven themselves as perfectly capable of making solid, innovative designs that improve upon those of their competitors. I think it’s kind of fucked up that everyone is so suddenly upset about China’s role in the world economy since everyone was completely fine using them for cheap labor over the past several decades and are just mad that Chinese companies are beating them at high skill labor and technology. Chinese companies do have an “unfair advantage” given how much they are backed by the Chinese government but American companies receive all sorts of money from the government for all sorts of things as well.



  • This was my favorite phone I’ve ever had. All metal case, big front facing speakers, slim form factor. Apparently according to this article the processor was bad and the camera wasn’t great but I didn’t notice or care. I never bothered with Bluetooth speakers with this thing because it sounded great and it was waterproof. It also had a radio tuner built in that you could use with wired headphones acting as the antenna which I used a surprising amount when waiting in places with poor cell service and at least once trying to get weather updates during a bad storm. I wish more phones went with just weird features like this.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_One_M9




  • I have to take an expensive medication (Humira) to be able to walk. If I don’t take it for long enough, I will be unable to work and therefore unable to afford the medication, and therefore unable to get back to work effectively. It’s illegal to discriminate for disabilities but it would legitimately make it very difficult to do my job with severe arthritis symptoms. CVS Specialty Pharmacy, in conjunction with CVS Caremark makes me spend 20+ hours a year on the phone getting this medication, overcharges me, and has intentionally built all of their systems to be as inefficient as possible, even when it doesn’t really benefit them to do so. One time I was pissed off enough about an issue that I looked up a list of executives and sent every permutation of all of their names @ cvs.com an email explaining my displeasure about this and with them as human beings who should be ashamed of themselves. It accomplished nothing except getting me in contact with an “executive care coordinator” who was just another useless customer service drone who wasn’t actually allowed to do anything to fix anything. I have been dealing with this for years at this point. I am not able to switch to another pharmacy or benefit manager due to how my employer’s insurance works, and realistically the only other alternative in this space if you work for a big company is United Healthcare, and they are apparently just as bad. I have tried to complain to my employer about the unacceptable state of their health insurance benefits and they don’t give a shit. I have contacted my government representatives. They don’t give a shit. I have done literally everything I can think of and nothing has changed, nothing will change, and I don’t think that in the current system that anything can change.

    So yeah, when I saw what a particular beloved Mario brother did, I laughed my ass off and cracked open a beer when I got off work to celebrate. I am legitimately surprised it took so long for someone to lose it and do something drastic. Every time I have to deal with these fuckers I just think about how much angrier and more desperate I could be if my medical issues were worse or if it was my kid I was fighting for. It was inevitable that someone would be driven to violence, and unless something changes, it will happen again. I don’t really condone violence like this because I don’t think it’s good for society or for the person committing the violence, but when the system is designed in this way, these companies are effectively committing violence against all of us disguised as bureaucracy and hidden behind human shields of front line customer service staff. It is, therefore, completely understandable, and in my opinion, inevitable, that some people are going to respond with violence of their own when faced with such hopeless injustice. I’m just glad he got the right guy in this case and didn’t go off the deep end and decide to shoot up a call center or hospital.


  • So? I know it sounds harsh but that’s not my fault- it’s their employer’s. The only way I have to interact with these companies is through their front line staff so I am not going to back down and accept shitty conditions just because these guys are also victims. I have started to view them as conscripts on the opposing side of a war, who have done nothing wrong to me in particular but have been pitted against me by forces beyond either of our control. “Oh we shouldn’t shoot the German soldiers because they’re draftees just like us and it’s really Hitler we’re mad at.” Well guess what? Those guys are between us and Hitler qnd they’re following his orders to shoot at us so unfortunately they are our enemies too regardless of their own personal culpability. What do you think we’re supposed to do when dealing with customer service? Just give up and drive an unsafe car? In my case, I have to spend at least 20 hours a year on the phone with CVS customer for the privilege of getting my medication that allows me to walk, should I just give up and say “Oh bother! This customer service rep is so nice and even though they hung up on me when I was trying to get my vital medication, it’s not really their fault!” Fuck that. If they want to be mad, let them be mad at their bosses. I am not going to stop fighting for my rights through the only means given to me just because these fuckers are using human shields to hide behind.



  • One of my favorite games of all time, The Talos Principle, is on sale for $5. There’s a remastered version but honestly the original holds up really well. It’s a first person puzzle platformer game similar to Portal but the main point is the story, which is a really thought provoking philosophical exploration of humanity, machine consciousness, and self determination. It is legitimately the most interesting game I’ve played in the past 5 years and it has really caused me to think about these topics in ways I hadn’t before.

    Myself I am buying Persona 5, Pizza tower, and the Phoenix Wright trilogy. I have been wanting to play Persona 5 basically since it came out, and I got to try Pizza Tower a few weeks ago at a friend’s house and really loved it as a fan of the Wario Land games. Phoenix Wright is just nostalgic for me and there really aren’t similar games out there.


  • Sauce plus and dropout as well. Basically run by youtubers to make content without relying on YouTube. A lot of this is running on pre-existing tech for running a streaming service and I assume it’s dependent on AWS (Amazon) hosting but yeah lots of smaller paid streaming services run by youtubers because YouTube sucks. I believe sauce plus is essentially the same as Floatplane on the backend, they mentioned working with LTT to make it.





  • The stench and biohazard. A non-functional ATM isn’t an emergency because it won’t get more broken just sitting there. An ATM with a fish taped to it is an emergency because the longer it sits there the worse the smell gets and the more disgusting the ATM gets as the fish decays. Plus more people will go out of their way to complain about an ATM with a rotting fish taped to it than they will about one that simply isn’t working.


  • American evangelicals when the government suggests getting a vaccine for a deadly virus- “IT’S THE MARK OF THE BEAST DON’T GET IT OR YOU’LL GO TO HELL”

    American evangelicals when people they voted for say you need to wear something on your wrist to participate in society - “This is fine”

    A wearable computer is much more similar in form to what is described in the Book of Revelation than a vaccine is, but these dumbasses don’t see that because they’re not operating on logic but instead are just doing what they’re told.