I believe it. Iron Horse jams Metallica songs bluegrass style. (and many more artists!)

“It’s the big one!”

IBM supplied Nazis with the machines and punch cards to track the population. Throwing that out there for no particular reason. What where we talking about?

Mom turned me onto corn husker’s oil. Figured since we shared genes, and it worked for her, might as well. Shit is the bomb. Tiny dab’ll do ya, doesn’t leave your hands greasy, dries fast, works fast, cheap, all that.

My fingertips split in cold and dry air. Apparently I got a weird gene from great grandma, never met another person with the problem. Tiny crack across the tip, skin dies and turns hard, splits deeper, rinse and repeat. And the pain is stunning, like having an infected splinter stuck in your fingertip. Got that shit this year working outside in February and into March. Only took a few nights of using corn husker’s oil, GTG.

Yes. I’ve basically said that, not that I’ve had such a rude, direct question from an interviewer.

They’ll find it eventually, be patient. Did the same with woodpecker feeders. Took a month or two, but I got regulars now.

I’ve seen products like appliances go to hell in my lifetime. There are several issues besides planned obsolescence.

Used to be, you only had 3 or 4 refrigerators to choose from. They had to be close in quality and everyone knew what order they fell in for quality vs. price. People talked about their experiences and with a limited range of choices, it was easy to know what was best and what sucked. Hell, Lowe’s sells so many different fridges that finding the “best” is too hard to figure. Now I see people talking about manufacturers I’ve never even heard of. Does that make sense?

Another problem is low prices and will to repair. Stuff is so cheap now, relative to decades ago, that people simply throw stuff out and buy new rather than attempt any sort of repair. Our TV tubes would occasionally burn out. Dad and I would go to the store and consult the kiosk or, at worst, call a repairman. TVs were too damned expensive to not fix. Now people throw out TVs that only need a $60 board off eBay. I find and fix tons of stuff off the side of the road.

I’ve wrestled with mine a time or two. Tons of troubleshooting tips online for that exact issue, shouldn’t be too hard to figure.

I was the same, but now that I’m working my ass off at 54, I struggle to get enough calories down the hatch. Feel like I’m 20 again.

Good one! Bring enough and you would be rich as well.

Wouldn’t anyone needing insulin already be dead? Or is there a middle ground where a diabetic can go in and out of shock, yet survive without?

Came to say cell phone. Even as recently as the early 90s, no one on Earth had tech that was close. It would be plenty understandable by extrapolating current tech, but no one would believe it was a contemporary device.

That answer comes up because people are trying to sex a strange animal. Haven’t we all done this?

Assholes aren’t different, but you can sex many mammals by seeing how close the holes are. Close together = female. More spaced apart = male.

You can use this on juveniles and even babies.

(I’m walking right into it lemmy, don’t let me down!)

I was a kid in the Reagan years and I can certainly buy shitloads more now than as a young adult. As you say, housing and wages are shit, but I can afford things that were unthinkable back then. For comparison, I was making minimum wage as a 1990 college kid, basically am now at $15/hr.

I’m probably not making sense, but the goods available to me now are stunning compared to previous decades. And I’m not only talking about compute power, but while we’re there… Dad got me a VIC-20 in the 80s, $1,700 in today’s money. For that much I can outfit a family of four with decent phones and likely pay less monthly than our AT&T bill in the day. And what’s “long distance”?

My water bill was around $20 in the 90s, still is today. I had all the tools to cut my water, gas and power back on, I was that poor. Even at $15/hr. I can easily pay all that along with my wife’s $17hr. (Always had roommates or live-in girlfriends, same difference.)

Education and housing prices have exploded, but not so much other stuff. My first ever real shopping trip was $75 (1990), that’s $175 in 2025. $220 is our usual Aldi bill and I’m buying shrimp, chicken, beef, good stuff. Guess I’m saying that consumer goods and services are shitloads cheaper, or were. Give us a few months.

And as ever, I’m fucked once again on health care. Guess where I live.

My wife and I when she drags me to some party or event when I’d rather be sitting at home.

Any sort of shrimp makes me happy. Sounds expensive, but 2lbs. is cheaper than a fast food meal around here.

Easy? Bagel or English muffins with cheese, any sort, and powedered pepper and green onion tops.

Outlook is pretty damned bullet proof, Teams, OTOH, is a fucking mess. I can see IT wanting to keep everything in the same ecosystem, that’s perfectly sane, but I’m certain Zoom can be setup to honor AD credentials. We set it to use Google SSO.

Now I want a scene where Thomasin grabs Black Phillip by the horns.

“Why you little bitch! Get over here!”

Then she wrestles him down and slides pink pool noodles over his horns.

For anyone wanting to play around with this:

https://glif.app/@fab1an/glifs/clmqp99820001jn0f2xywz250