cobysev

My dog licks his metal food bowl clean after every meal, regardless of wet or dry food. When I had another dog, he’d lick her bowl clean too, when she was done eating. I give the bowl a good rinse before filling it at every meal, then wash it with soap and water maybe once every couple weeks.

Same with the metal water bowl. Every meal, I dump out whatever water is still left in it, give it a good rinse, then refill with fresh water. Then I do a soap and water clean every two weeks or so.

I live out in the countryside, so we have well water with lots of minerals in it. My dad used to just top off the dogs’ water bowl every day and it started forming a calcium mineral ring along the top edge. Now that I rinse it a couple times daily, it stays pristine. No more water rings.

My dog is also an indoor dog, so the cleaner I keep his food/water bowls, the less germs and bacteria he spreads around the house. I don’t have to fend him off if he wants to lick hands or faces now.

My favorite is, “Are you subscribed to my OnlyFans?” Not only stops the conversation, but they’ll avoid you for the rest of the night.

In certain communities, some people are known for posting specific types of content regularly.

For example, I started a series of essay-style video game reviews in a games community and they were pretty popular for a while. But I’m not updating them nearly as much as I used to, so I’ve just become another anonymous member on Lemmy now. Which is fine, I’m doing it for me, not for any Internet accolades.

Which reminds me, I should probably make a new one of those. It’s been a while.

I post based on what makes ME happy. And maybe based on some recommendations from whatever small audience enjoys my stuff. I don’t give a shit about algorithms. If my stuff doesn’t become popular overnight, oh well. If I lose followers because I don’t post regularly, whatever. I enjoyed making it anyway and I’ll continue posting whenever I personally feel motivated to do so.

Future archivists can find my various content and enjoy it all in one sitting, but I won’t be pressured by corporations to keep pumping out sub-par content just to keep an algorithm going so they can make ad money off me.

Europeans got it right; work when you want to, take a few months off in the summertime to go travel/fishing/relaxing, and your business will be open whenever you’re available. That’s the philosophy I live my life by.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t like live concerts. They’re too loud, the crowd is too noisy and disruptive, and unless you pay top dollar, you’re not even going to see the band all that well. I don’t get the celebrity worship thing that most people have; celebrities are normal human beings just like the rest of us. The only difference is that a lot of people know who they are because of a thing they did/do.

So I don’t get excited over meeting celebrities in person. I’d much rather listen to their albums at home, where I can hear a high-quality studio recording and really enjoy every bit of sound, every instrument, every enunciation of lyrics. Plus, it’s way cheaper. I can’t believe people shell out hundreds of bucks for what I’d consider an inferior experience.

Regardless, my wife has dozens of bands on her “want to see live” list and she inevitably drags me along with her. And despite not having a good time for most of them, there are a few that stuck out to me as being pretty interesting.

I can’t remember the dates very well, but we saw Papa Roach as one of the openers for Shinedown (the other opener being Asking Alexandria). I think it was around 2016 or 2017 in Nebraska. The other two bands were meh. The music was fine, but they had no stage presence. They just stood there and performed their songs. I might as well have put in my headphones and listened to their albums on my phone.

But Papa Roach was spectacular! They had real stage presence, addressing the audience constantly, and dancing all over the place while jamming. Their visual performance was very entertaining to watch.

And then the lead singer just ran off into the crowd! In the middle of a song, while still singing, he just ran up and down the aisles, shaking hands and high-fiving people. He covered 90% of that stadium over the course of 2 or 3 songs, and it was a pretty big professional basketball court. Dude had some serious energy to burn.

At the end of the night, my wife, who went specifically to see Shinedown and Asking Alexandria, agreed that Papa Roach was the best band that night.

A close second would be The Hu. We saw them at a tiny venue in Maplewood, MN a few years ago (2023 I think?). My wife paid for VIP passes and we actually sat in a room with them for over an hour, listening to them talk about their history, music, and Mongolian culture. More specifically, listening to a translator talking, as they didn’t speak much English. We even got to ask a bunch of questions, which their translator relayed back and forth for us.

At the end of the VIP meet & greet, they did video recordings with everyone. It was a normal photo op, but instead of a photo, they did a quick video with your phone where they did a vocalized grunt along with you. It was pretty unique.

Their concert was fun. Being in a small venue, it was more like a dance club than a giant stadium performance, so it felt more personal. My wife and I claimed a couple seats on a couch and had a blast listening to Mongolian Folk Metal all night.

My wife likes to buy VIP tickets everywhere she can, and no other band has had such a personal meet & greet as The Hu. We’ve gone backstage before and done photo op’s with some bands. But almost none of them spent a whole hour just hanging out and chatting with us. Skillet did an hour-long pre-concert for VIP pass holders when my wife and I saw them around 2020 (right before COVID shut everything down), but it was mostly just them talking a bit on stage, then performing some new songs before doing a photo op.

Taking this in another direction, my wife and I enjoy the stand-up comedian Bert Kreischer. My wife, who escaped from a redneck family and white trailer trash upbringing, especially relates to his brand of comedy. So of course we needed to go to his live shows.

If you thought his Netflix comedy specials were raunchy, his live performances are extremely graphic. He doesn’t have Netflix breathing standards down his neck, so he can really let loose and tell some of the most unhinged and perverse stories to the crowd. And he’s drinking beers the whole time he’s doing his routine, so his stories get crazier the longer he stays up on stage. He even shared some very personal (and embarassing) stories about other celebrities he knows that I haven’t seen told anywhere else. It felt like bonus content that you can’t access unless you attend the live shows.

We’ve seen him live twice, and the second time, he dragged his wife out to the stage to help him re-tell a story because he couldn’t remember the details. Which you could tell was not planned because it took a couple minutes to track her down. He even called her on his phone when she wasn’t responding from backstage.

She was really awkward being on stage, too. She wasn’t used to being a part of his set. But once she got a little more comfortable, she practically took the mic from him because he was messing up all the details of the story. The crowd was rolling every time he started to tell the story and she’d be like, “That’s completely wrong, it went like this…” Then they would argue over telling the “funny story” versus the “real story.” Because his version of events was funnier, but the actual story was kind of boring. Married life, am I right?

He also asked the audience’s opinion on his set, because he prepared a bunch of new material for this tour, but people kept asking for some of his classic stories. He decided that after this event, he was going to try and mix old and new stories into the rest of his tour. So he’s not just working on a strict script; he’s pretty loose and willing to shake things up live.

He also didn’t seem to be tied to a strict timeline for his set. I think we saw him perform on stage for over 3 hours on that second show. He had kind of wrapped his planned material when he asked if we had any favorite stories we wanted to hear, then he went on for another hour or so, retelling classics.

Despite the lengthy show, the place stayed packed until the end. We were all having fun with him; it wasn’t just him talking to an audience, it felt like we were all just having a good time hanging out with a hilarious friend. And this was a massive stadium too, not a small venue! I’ll definitely buy tickets to any Bert Kreischer performances that pass through my area.

Aziz Ansari is incredible at improv humor. I remember the first time I noticed it was one of the Comedy Central Roasts (the James Franco one, I believe) where his set was just roasting things other comedians said during their time at the mic. Most people show up with practiced roasts ready to go. He just winged it on the spot, and I think he was better than most everyone else at that roast.

They’re likely saying that data collection/analysis on customer’s eating habits is getting to the point that they can almost predict when you’ll be hungry, and the next step is to deliver food to you before you even order it.

If you order a burrito at 11:30 every day, their goal is to have a burrito delivered to your door at 11:30 every day, without you even ordering it.

Which honestly, is kind of terrifying. I don’t want a company knowing my habits so well that they predict what I want and then order it without my consent.

2016 was the year that a bunch of celebrities started dying all at once. The world has never been the same since.

He does not, sadly. He lived a pretty wild party life for many years that got him addicted to heavy drugs, and he became a gay prostitute for a while. He completely disappeared for a handful of years into some creepy sex cult and popped up again when he was rushed to the ER one day. Almost dying in a hospital was the wake-up call he needed.

He’s been through rehab and recovery and as far as I know, he’s working a pretty normal office job now. I’m good friends with his family, so I see him every time he’s passing through town. And he still asks me if I’ve pooped that day.

This reminds me of my high school days. In health class, we were taught that a healthy digestive system had at least one bowel movement per day. Throughout the course, we were also encouraged to promote generic healthy habits with our friends, family, and classmates; basically help each other stay accountable with their health and nutrition.

One of my friends took this to heart. He started going up to people - literally anyone - and asking in a concerned tone, “Did you poop today?”

If they gave any answer besides “yes,” he would go off about all the health benefits associated with a daily bowel movement and what kinds of healthy foods and exercises would assist in having one. He would even offer to provide moral support from outside a bathroom stall if they needed it.

We all got a kick out of how deadpan and serious he played it. When the teacher asked him to knock it off, he insisted he was just concerned about promoting healthy habits, then would ask her if she had also pooped that day. To a room full of teenagers, there’s nothing more hilarious than asking a teacher if she’s pooped. No matter her response, the whole room was rolling in raucous laughter.

It’s been over 20 years since then, and every time we meet in person, he still greets me with, “Did you poop today?”

How are so many things now worse quality and higher priced than their own knock-offs?

They earned public trust and brand-recognition over many years. Then, once they became the de facto product, they started min-maxing their production. Smaller portions, cheaper ingredients, automating as much of the production line as possible to cut employees, reducing wages for “less work”, etc. They’re hoping no one would notice that the product you’re buying isn’t living up to the original standard.

If you’re willing to pay the same price for cheaper production, then the company can literally make money without having to sell more product. They can show in their shareholder meetings that sales are going way up, even though consumer purchases may not have changed much at all. Heck, even if sales are going down, profits could still show an increase!

Then of course, there’s “inflation,” which they use to justify raising prices over time. Even though the product is worse than the original, you’re now paying way more for it.

This is the endgame of capitalism. Maximize profits at the cost of consumers. When money is the primary focus of a business, quality of goods and services will always degrade over time.

Sonic the Hedgehog for me. I love the franchise, but I stay clear of the fandom. So many weird people latch onto Sonic stuff and make it all icky and creepy. I guess that’s what happens when a company like SEGA claims “Everything is canon.”

[…] if you said introducing them to true local food […]

I did. I took my family to locally-owned restaurants, not food chains or fast food places. Just because I mentioned a couple familiar food types doesn’t mean I bought them from a fast food joint. Still, my family didn’t care for them. They wanted recognizable American fast food instead.

In one case, a Japanese friend of mine invited my family over to her parents’ house to have a home-cooked dinner. My family were weirded out by the food and barely ate. It wasn’t even strange foods; they had grilled marinated meats, rice, some local vegetables, etc. My dad did enjoy the sake though.

Growing up, my family has always accused me of being a picky eater, and it comes up every time we’re eating together. Every family get-together, it’s always a big deal whether I’m going to eat the prepared meal or not. My sister especially likes to offer to make a separate meal just for me because I’m “sooo picky!”

I can’t get it through their skulls that I’m less of a picky eater than they are - I’m just vocal about the very few specific foods I decided I don’t like. Which happens to be in a lot of recipes my extended family makes.

I spent 20 years traveling the world with the US military and I made it a point to try local cuisine everywhere I went. I became a bit of a foodie, and some of my favorite foods are from foreign countries. Every time family members came to visit me in other countries, I’d spend half of their visit just introducing them to amazing cuisine in the local area.

We’d eat out practically every day to give them a taste of the local culture. And surprisingly, most of them didn’t care for it. They wanted their “American food” instead. They weren’t very adventurous when it came to trying new things. There’s nothing worse than going to a ramen shop in Japan or a döner shop in Germany and having your family ask if we can go find a McDonald’s instead.

But sure, I’m a picky eater because I’ve hated squash since I was a child, and that’s apparently a staple of every family banquet.

Flock is a private security company which has been making contracts with city and state governments all over the US to put up their cameras in public spaces. These cameras use AI to monitor the public and report any potential crimes to law enforcement.

Unfortunately, AI is in its infancy and highly fallible. So most of the “crimes” reported are false. Just hallucinations by the AI. However, this doesn’t stop police from responding to every report and treating innocent civilians like criminals before they’ve done a proper human assessment of the situation or any real detective work.

On top of that, police (and government officials) are using these cameras to spy on American citizens and stalk them. Harassment of “suspected criminals” is at an all-time-high thanks to these cameras, and biases (read: racism) are being encouraged. Especially with all the issues with ICE going on right now.

The cameras aren’t even encrypted properly, and some more tech-savvy folks are finding it easy to connect to the Flock camera network and browse cameras themselves without any actual credentials or authorization. You never know who is actually looking at you through these cameras.

The issue with your phone being scanned is a whole different thing unrelated to Flock cameras. Law enforcement can set up fake relay “towers” for cell phones in a mobile van, which your phone will connect to automatically while searching for the nearest strong signal. Then they can track all data that comes and goes from your phone, effectively watching everything you do on your device.

The problem is, they can’t pinpoint specific phones to connect to, so everyone in the area will automatically connect to their relay and they can effectively collect data on dozens of wireless devices all at once. It’s a short-range relay, so it’s not like they’re tracking everyone in the city. But if they’re looking for someone in particular, everyone in the area will have their private data accessed without their knowledge.

Can someone scan your phone and remotely access all of your data? Yes and no. With the right equipment, software, and skill, your phone can be remotely hacked. But no one is just pointing a device at your phone and stealing data that way. Especially not Flock. Their AI is just (falsely) reporting on what their cameras detect. They’re not actively scanning signals in the area and attempting to hack them.

Most hacked devices are either random (hackers scanning networks until they find an unsecure device), targeted attacks by someone with a purpose, or just a regular person accidentally clicking on a bad file or website link that installs a virus on their device that allows hackers to access it.

I remember software in the 90s having limits on how many computers you could use an application on (however rarely enforced)

I remember software in the '90s having “limited licenses,” but operating on the honor system. Because you could just install it on as many computers as you wanted and there wasn’t really a way for companies to stop you.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s when I started seeing licenses verified through the Internet and actually limiting their usage.

Don’t forget the blue silicone wedding ring. They pushed those at the BX/PX as a way to show your marital status without taking your valuable ring to a deployed site.

Wait, why would you move back to a town everyone left? If i retired at 38 I’d be traveling and not living anywhere near my home town.

I spent 20 years traveling the world and living abroad with the US military. I’ve explored most of Europe, Asia, a little of Africa, and a brief visit to the Middle East (that last one was not fun travel), and as much as I enjoyed it, I realized I was starting to miss my hometown.

My hometown is nearby to a massive US city, so most people here just move to the city. Or get their college education there and then move on to another large metropolitan area in the US. My hometown is a beautiful place to settle down, but most people my age aren’t ready for that yet. Hence why all of my friends have left town.

My wife and I still have plans to travel, but we’re waiting for our elderly dog to finally pass away. He gets stressed with us just being gone for a day, so leaving him in a kennel while we go on vacation might kill him.

We paid for an expensive kennel where he got his own “suite” with a soft bed, tons of toys, TV playing doggy films all day, and multiple one-on-one play sessions with employees outdoors, and he still lost 5 lbs from stress in a week! And it’s a place he’s familiar with; we used to send him and our other dog there before she passed away. Since losing his partner, he just can’t handle being away from my wife and I for extended stretches of time. He’s extremely needy and anxious.

So one day we’ll get back out and revisit some of the wonderful places we lived abroad again. But for now, we’re just enjoying the quiet life back home.

The military was stressful for us, always having to be somewhere, accomplishing something, and adhering to a strict schedule. Our personal lives were always secondary to our jobs and you couldn’t just quit. You were locked into a multi-year contract that could only be broken by doing something illegal and going to jail. So having the freedom to plan my own schedule and do whatever I want with my life is kind of nice.

I retired young, at 38 years old, and moved back to my old hometown. All my childhood friends have since moved away from this place, so I had no local friends when I came home.

I’m now 42. In those past 4 years, I’ve made exactly 3 friends. None of which live close to me. None of which I visit more than once or twice a year.

My wife has made no friends in that time. She’s a bigger introvert than me, choosing to stay in bed 60-70% of the day and going weeks without ever leaving the house. She laments not having any friends, but then won’t make the effort to get to know anyone.

Trying to make friends later in life without kids is hard. Especially as an introvert. And it’s not like I just sit around the house all day like my wife. I’m actively going into town and doing stuff. But it’s hard to strike up conversations with strangers and find common interests.

I’ll definitely look into that. Thanks for the recommendation!