In case it hasn't already been shared ...

You wake up.

You're still a lizard sunning on a red rock. It was all a dream.

The concept of selling "feet pics" to pay back "student loans" is already losing its meaning as you open and lick your own eyeballs to moisten them.

Time to eat a bug.

For me: I had a moment today where all I could think about was that meme which went around a few years ago that was along the lines of ...

You wake up. You're still a lizard sunning on a red rock. It was all a dream. The concept of selling feet pics to pay back student loans is already losing its meaning as you open and lick your own eyeballs to moisten them. Time to eat a bug.

I'm thankful that in all my years of working in retail, I never had a gun pointed at me. Having said that, random people get so bent out of shape about the most ridiculous, inconsequential things and it can be close to impossible to predict who it's going to be or what is going to set them off.

Based on my experiences, if a customer is being indignant even after explaining that I was helping them out, I would apologize and remove the discount or ring the order up differently (if it was in my power to do so). More often than not, they calm down after they get what they want, even if it's to their own detriment. Granted, after calming down, a not insignificant number of these folks will realize their mistake and then they have to figure out a way to save face so they can ask for the discount to be reapplied.

It's really hit or miss. The communities generally have most of the same downsides as those on the corporate competition, but with added issues due to the small size of Lemmy/fediverse and inherent features of a decentralized platform.

I mostly stick to bigger communities and instances on Lemmy, which was not a thing I did much on the r-word site, and I admit that makes it trickier to make a one-to-one comparison.

My hobbies and interests aren't actually all that obscure, but the communities for them on Lemmy are functionally dead, fractured across multiple instances, or just plain non-existent as far as I can tell. Really little or no engagement. So, that sucks.

Another issue that seems especially apparent here is that it seems much easier for smaller groups with "loud" voices / strong opinions to overwhelm any kind of discussion or debate and give the appearance that their opinion is majority opinion, even if it is not. I'm not saying that doesn't happen elsewhere, just that it seems especially pronounced here. People would complain about group think on the r-word site, but it's often amplified here.

One thing I like about some of the bigger communities here is that it seems like it's more visible when unprovoked rudeness and incivility are called out. Not that it never happened on the corporate r-word site, but I do run across that a bit more here.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We've investigated the situation and it turns out that you weren't on the agenda. Rest assured, we've updated our records and you should expect to receive your first official solicitation in 5 - 10 business days! Please accept my personal apology for this oversight and have a gay day.

"Wipe" is a bit of a stretch and a bit specific when it comes to animal behavior, but many animals do clean their food or clean their living quarters in a variety of ways.

In addition to the other examples already given, I'll toss Eusocial Insects into the ring. This includes groups like bees and ants that live collectively in colonies. For example, honeybees will clean their colony's comb to keep it free of debris. Leaf cutter ants depend on a specific type of fungus that they cultivate for food, and they spend a lot of effort keeping their farmed good nice and sanitary.

The whole ordeal is/was a colossal screw up.

The student loan company I had to deal with lied to me and made no apologies about it. When I submitted an official complaint through the Federal Student Aid site, it wasn't handled by some government agent or a 3rd party supervisor, it was handled by a customer service rep working for the student loan company. It was literally "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong" kind of thing.

Having said that, you may still want to file a complaint if you have had issues with the USA's loan servicing - https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. It's probably delusional, but I feel like at least having an official record of the report could be helpful down the line at some point. Maybe one day the Federal government will seriously investigate, or maybe one day there will be a lawsuit and at least an official complaint could serve as evidence you were impacted.

There's nothing stopping me from writing a $480 million USD check either. Cashing it, on the other hand, that's a you problem.

Shitty wasps like Yellow Jackets give almost all the other wasps a bad reputation. Yellow Jackets are mean and spiteful, even when they aren't protecting their nest.

Most other eusocial wasps are pretty docile, unless you mess with their nest or really go out of your way to harass them.

In many parts of the world, like my own, there are far more species of solitary wasps than eusocial wasps. Solitary wasps are nearly all non-aggressive, they don't have communal nests to defend, and they basically don't have time to fuck around with stinging shit because they are too busy building a chamber for their eggs, collecting food for their upcoming progeny, and trying to stay fed and hydrated while doing it.

So what I'm getting at is that most wasps I encounter on a regular basis are pretty chill. Really, this goes for bees as well. Most of the ones I see on a regular basis are solitary types and non-aggressive. The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they'll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there's no threat. Male bees and wasps cannot sting, they do not even have stingers.

Maybe relevant:

You wake up.

You're still a lizard sunning on a red rock.

It was all a dream.

The concept of selling "Feet pics" to pay back "Student loans" is already losing its meaning as you open and lick your own eyeballs to moisten them.

Time to eat a bug.

Grow your own blueberry bushes and then you can have more blueberries for 3 weeks during the height of summer than you could possibly use for the next 2 years but it's too fucking hot to pick them and the birds eat them all so quickly that you end up having to buy those sweet blue balls from the grocery store for the other 49 weeks of the year regardless.

As soon as I saw this scene, I immediately thought of Lemmy users and how it would speak to them. So, not surprised to see this posted here and getting some love.

I think I have Disney PTSD from a former friend/acquaintance who had an almost supernatural ability to make any conversation into a conversation about Disney. So, now I'm super sensitive about it. Would almost rather a conversation start with "Have you heard about our Lord and savior Jesus Christ" than anything that includes the word "Disney".

Translated for the hard of hearing:

Master Lock closed down. I used to use Master Lock all the time when I was a little child.

I take mashter-lacka goomp een naste lots a naste liddum puzzles yah puddum.

I distinctly remember my last time in a Circuit City. I don't recall the date, but I'm going to say it was circa 2006. I had purchased a Nintendo Wii at one of CC's competitors but the competitor did not have any suitable Game Cube controllers. So I went over to Circuit City to see what they had since they were essentially in the same shopping complex. In a surprising turn of events, they actually did have Game Cube controllers in stock, they had the style/brand I was hoping for, and the price was actually reasonable.

They had dozens of employees out in the various sections of the store, at least one per department. There were a plethora of customers. However, they had literally 1 cash register open. The line was backed up into the aisles. I am pretty sure I waited 45 minutes just to check out with this one single item, and that's only because the customer service manager came over after about 40 minutes and offered to check out anybody with only 1 or 2 items.

Might be a complete surprise to the former corporate overlords, but for some odd reason I decided never to go back after that.

Based on the size and proportions of this, I'm guessing this is a drumette and not a drumstick. But, I'm also I'm not sure a photo of a single piece of chicken from a single order is really evidence of much of anything.

Understatement, I know, but I find this so annoying, and it certainly feels malicious.

I was just commenting the other day how ridiculous it is that google search results literally serve up malware to people via paid ads. My neighbor was running into issues where her computer kept getting "infected" and a full screen scam would take control, blaring out a loud message that her computer was infected with a virus, that it was infecting microsoft's servers, and she had to call them now to fix it.

After investigating, I found out that these types of scams are stored as blobs on Microsoft's cloud service, but the links are spread via ads in google search. When I tried searching for the exact search terms my neighbor was using on my own devices and my own network, I found out that google was serving me the exact same ads, aka sponsored links. They look like legitimate results for things that people search for, like showing what appears to be a link to Amazon when searching for a product, even the links will say "www.amazon.com".

Obviously I told my neighbor not to use Chrome and suggested some browser alternatives. I installed uBlock on all the browsers (including chrome) just to be safe. Then I showed her how to tell when things are ads, even when they are deceiving, and to never click on ads or sponsored links under any circumstances.

But it's definitely infuriating that they are serving up malware in their ads, don't respond to reports in a timely manner, are getting people caught in scams that they allow to advertise on their network but then somehow object to people managing those risks by blocking ads from untrustworthy sources, like google.

Wonder if they'll go light on him given how many medals he just won in the Paris Olympics for team USA.

I'm usually a patient gamer type. I think I got Hades in 2022 or 2023 on discount. I've also never purchased an early access game. But I'm seriously considering this one.

Main thing holding me back is that I just don't get to play games very much this time of year, and I probably won't have much time again until Fall.

Eons ago when I was working in retail, pretty much all the training on "shrink" (aka losses, including theft) emphasized that the overwhelming majority of it comes from employees (and not necessarily from employee theft). Things have certainly changed in the post-covid era, but the fundamentals haven't changed all that much. So, I have been skeptical about some of the retailers' shoplifting claims.