The theater folks I used to know back 15+ years ago were pretty vocal about the fact that Maher is pretty nasty to work for and that he’s a giant asshole. I don’t know if that’s common knowledge or common experience, but seeing these folks’ passionate distaste for him left an impression on me.

I cancelled Amazon Prime awhile ago when the customer service took a nose dive and I realized too many of the 3rd party vendors were using Amazon as their defective products outlet.

But I actively and permanently skipped out on an Amazon Prime subscription because they refused to give me a pro-rated refund on the remaining 8-9 months of service after I cancelled. They literally told me that they start with the pro-rated amount, then subtract out the cost of all the “free” movie/show/music rentals as well as all the “free” shipping on orders during the time you’ve had prime, and you only get whatever remains (if anything). Within the first 3 -4 months, I had already accrued enough “free” $5.99 shipping and $3 - $4 rentals that it exceeded the $100 or whatever cost of a prime membership was back in those days, so I got no refund. Bunch of crooks.

No surprise, I’m completely on board with folks kicking Prime to the curb.

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.

It’s not a “usually” thing, but yes there are bone-in and boneless (aka de-boned) chicken wings available in the USA. It’s quite common for establishments, especially fast food or convenience restaurants, to offer both options but not all places offer both.

The higher quality boneless wings are typically made from drumettes like the piece in OPs picture above, but with the meat pulled off the bone. It’s often cut into “nuggets”, breaded, and deep fried. Sometimes other cuts of meat are used, though, like the breast.

The lower quality boneless wings are usually just barely more than ground up chicken parts mixed with binding agents, similar to mass produced chicken nuggets but usually not quite as uniform in shape and texture. Basically one step up from “pink slime” or chicken dough based nuggets.

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.

Where I live in the USA, that’s not a particularly unusual day time high for this time of year. I always like when it’s not bitterly cold at Christmas and New Years, and some of my favorite childhood Christmases/holidays were spent in shorts and t-shirts. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced snow on Christmas, perhaps a flurry at best around New Year’s Eve is the most I can recall off the top of my head.

Granted, I live some place where that’s been the norm for the past such and such number of decades since the age of the brontosaurus which is what they were called back then.

They’re called lizards. Didn’t you read my comment?

But all kidding aside, yes, there are scorpions in Kentucky. They aren’t large or aggressive and from what I was told their stings don’t really hurt very much. Mostly I would see them hiding under rocks and in crevices during the day.

I don’t know how common it is, but in some very rural parts of Kentucky and Tennessee in the USA, people frequently referred to scorpions as lizards. Also, regular lizards were called lizards. And newts were called lizards.

It was very confusing to me when I was a young kid. Still is confusing to me if I’m being honest.

Snark mode activated: After reading through the “Threads Federation” comments, and seeing what opinions/comments are currently most popular, I’m going to go with YES.

But jokes aside, my actual personal opinion is no.

There’s a theory that certain emails scams are so obvious and easy to spot because that acts as a self-selection mechanism. A person who sees the obvious scam and immediately recognizes it as such was probably never going to fall for it. The ones that respond in spite of all the signs tend to be easier or more lucrative targets.

I could see forcing people to download an app just to see the content as operating on a similar (but not 100% analogous) principle. The type of person who willingly installs the app to see the content (without knowing if it was worthwhile/relevant beforehand) may be exactly the type of person that they prefer to join their site. Perhaps they are easier targets for marketing, less likely to understand /complain about the ramifications of changes to the site that are user adverse, care less about privacy, etc and that makes them more lucrative?

an Achilles heel is the fact that AI can’t come up with enough believable unique names for all the posts you want your AI bots to make

That seems counterintuitive to me in the context of modern AI approaches. I’m wondering if you could elaborate on that a bit more.

It could be incompetence. Lemmy.world has similar and significant issues with sorting as well and I presume you’re not also implying that paid content has anything to do with lemmy sorting.

I can appreciate that a lot of effort went into creating this, but I can’t help but think of that line from Jurassic Park – something along the lines of “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” and I know that science and scienticians have little to nothing to do with this abomination but the pertinence of the message is never the less relevant.

I mean, so what exactly is an NFT and how does someone steal one again?

FouR444Forty4Fourforfourfourtyfor4!

I get paid for my posts. In fact, because of Kellog’s Morningstar Farms faux vegan corndog nuggets and my willingness to mention their superior taste and nutritonal profile compared to inferior faux vegan cordog nuggets, I am left with far more time to post stuff on social media. I’m not saying Kellog’s Morningstar Farms faux vegan corndog nuggets will solve all your financial problems the way they have solved all of mine, but they’re a pretty tasty distraction. Move over non-vegan corndog nuggets, there’s a new nugget in town! At least that’s the thing I am contractually obligated to work into everything I post online, including this comment!

It’s mostly the same here.

Grocery prices have definitely gone up overall in my part of the world, but outside of outliers (or outright liars), prices aren’t double. But lots of people around here will claim their grocery bill is double what it was before covid. In general, I’m not willing to say any specific person’s “twice as much” isn’t true, I don’t know their circumstances, but my experience and pretty much all the reports I’ve seen don’t bear that out (again for my part of the world).

The egg thing was a prime example. People were going around saying “eggs are $10 now” but then when I’d look at the local grocers, it was only the premium brands’ free range, organic, woman-owned, holistic, fair-trade type eggs that were anywhere close to that – and it was always the type of person that you know never bought those types of eggs to begin with.

I have seen a lot of convenience and luxury grocery items that I used to buy have gone up around 50% or gone down the shrinkflation route. And for sure, there’s been an uptick in temporary shortages and price spikes.

Restaurants around here are also like you mentioned. Prices have really gone up there. I don’t eat fast food often, but a month ago I was traveling and decided to get fast food breakfast at one of my old favorites. A biscuit and a drink used to cost around $3, now it’s nearly $8. Last year, I had a craving for Wendy’s and it was similar, the food that used to cost me just over $4 back in the day is now a bit more than $11. But then again, eating out is a luxury in pretty close to all circumstances.

I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying, but taken at face value, I do not agree that two buttons always have to offer opposite choices. But, that also didn’t seem to be the point that OP is making, which was that the button is somehow disguised.

To me, sans any context, the asshole aspect of the design is that there’s no explicit button and comparable button to decline the offer / close the window/pop-up/whatever. Though it’s also very possible that this was specifically cropped so as to exclude context such as the existence of a close button or other clues that might offer some rationale for this design.

I don’t see the Buy now button as being disguised as anything, personally. This just looks like there’s standard theming in place where one button is classed as a primary button and the other as a secondary or perhaps default button. Pretty vanilla stuff and a common approach when there are choices like this.

Would people still pirate, as they just bearly reached what piracy offers, or would ppl just be happy that they can pay and then actually watch shows?

It’s not an either or thing. No matter what, some people will pirate. No matter what, some people will choose to pay. Those aren’t even mutually exclusive, some people will pirate and pay.