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Seconded, I use a Define 7 and it’s fantastic. Best big black box I’ve ever owned.

It’s 100% worth it. Not only does it get rid of the pollution, it tastes a lot better too.

So Google Search, even back in 2000, was an AI?

Not a lawyer but a guy with shoulder problems from teenage antics. I just want to add that you really need to aggressively pursue treatment for that shoulder. The better you handle it now, the more you’ll thank yourself.

Please stop spreading misinformation. You’re on the internet. Kindly fact check yourself in the future. It’s better for everyone, including you!

We had ours during the pandemic. While my friends and coworkers griped about toilet paper shortages, it was like having a hidden superpower.

Ooooh, that sounds like the Göta Canal, making you Swedish! The Masurian Canal was built far too late to be correct but my brain was fixated on the uselessness aspect.

I think you’re referring to the Masurian Canal, so you could be in either Russia or Poland.

I like that you’re thinking of alternatives, though! Don’t ever lose that, it’s less common than you might think.

Seriously. If these “media pros” are actually concerned, it appears my personal server adheres to higher standards than their industry.

It’d be bad. Real bad. An algae bloom of massive proportions. It has one huge issue.

Enough algae to make the rivers run green will use up enough oxygen at night to kill off fish and oxygen hungry invertebrates, starting a chain reaction of death.

Now you have a river full of dead organisms, so they start decomposing thanks to microbes. You know what many types of bacteria love? Oxygen. So they start using up oxygen, multiplying all the while. Night hits and the algae need to use oxygen, but a bunch die because there’s not enough. Now the river is full of literally hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of decomposing matter. The river largely goes anoxic (meaning there’s no oxygen) so things start dying left and right. A bunch of those bacteria can live with and without oxygen, so they use up what they can and keep on chugging without.

Now we’ve moved from aerobic respiration to anaerobic. You know what the primary byproducts of anaerobic respiration are? Organic acids and alcohols, which smell. The river begins to smell like an infected wound. It’s no longer green but deep, murky brown from the suspension of decomposing organisms. This continues until the river flushes everything out, but it kills what’s downstream as it continues until it hits the ocean, where it likely continues to kill everything in the vicinity until it becomes dilute enough.

I’m a microbiologist and worked with algae and cyanobacteria as an undergrad. Never underestimate the impact of uncountable billions of trillions of living organisms.

No no, you really weren’t off base. Even if they were owned by Walmart, I doubt they could do worse.

You have no chance to survive make your time.

That’s great, I’m glad you got some deals!

The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!

I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.

So, I’m not trying to be the “ackshually” guy.

Value Village isn’t owned by Walmart.

Buuuut, you’re still right. They’re absolutely a shit company. I was an assistant supervisor at Value Village a couple of decades ago. First, they’re 100% for profit but advertise in such a way that consumers believe they’re a charity. What they do is buy donations from charities by the pound. Any donations accepted at the store on behalf of a charity are paid at a drastically reduced rate, so of course they push HARD for customers to bring donations directly to the store.

The shit cherry on top was the stores lying to charities about the quality of received goods to avoid paying. If clothes, for example, were soiled, they’d refuse to pay for the entire batch. Stores would find a few dirty shirts, claim the entire cart was crap, claw the money back, and sell the rest of the cart.

The company makes a HUGE profit but pays their employees peanuts. Our head cashier had worked for the company for eight years and capped out at $7.25/hour in 2003, about $14 today. One year, they announced no raises, no reason given. My then girlfriend and I discovered the owners had purchased a cabin in Northern California for use by the c-suite douches. The store manager was pulling in $60k a year, plus bonus, in a very low cost of living area. Me? $8.25 per hour.

What else? They incentivize under staffing by making a supervisor’s paltry bonuses tied to their staffing budget. Staying at budget meant no bonus. They had to come in under budget for any bonus, and the more “savings” the higher the bonus. I got chewed out when I first started scheduling because I used all the hours allotted in the budget. The store went from a shit hole to being fairly respectable but it would eat into my boss’s bonus. Her maximum annual bonus? $2.5k.

So they may not be owned by Walmart, but they’re the Walmart of thrift stores. Fuck those guys.

It’ll go to over 9000!

🎶 Toxic marine threatened turtles, toxic marine threatened turtles, toxic marine threatened turtles. Revenge in a half shell, turtle chowder!🎶

Totally understandable, there’s always a risk that a quick, snappy comment conveys the wrong meaning. My wording definitely could have been better, but I’m leaving it for posterity so future generations might learn to do better.

And thanks to you too! Good conversation.

I agree with your point, but want to highlight that at no point did I suggest people can’t be upset about multiple things. No offense intended toward you personally (or anyone really), but your response now seems to be the standard reaction to shut down anyone pointing out the disparity in media/public reaction between things like people dying or being repressed and material goods being vandalized or destroyed. It’s getting better, but the theme of reporting tended to be that property damage is a tragic loss of irreplaceable treasure, while genocide was more akin to “some people went to sleep and didn’t wake up again, maybe they should have complied”.

Of course people can be upset by multiple things. When the magnitude of upset over precious but ultimately replaceable things being destroyed is greater than that for irreplaceable people being destroyed, then we have a problem.

At least that’s my take and I’m anything but infallible.