As a cyclist that drives, this was an interesting, although unsurprising read.

The expectation drivers place on other drivers is that they must be going as fast as physically possible at all times regardless of road rules. This creates an environment where motorists are literally breaking the law constantly. Other drivers will literally harass or even put your life in jeopardy if you drive the speed limit. Going 10-20kph over the limit is expected. Rolling through stop signs is expected. Cutting off buses is expected. Drivers do not tolerate anything that will even remotely slow them down for the tiniest fraction of a moment.

and yet if a cyclist rolls through a stop sign at an empty intersection then drivers will deeply criticise them to a level they never would if that same person was behind a wheel instead of handlebars. Other drivers are certainly disrespectful to each other but the hatred drivers have for cyclists is, quite frankly, goddamn disturbing and terrifying. Drivers will regularly drive in ways endanger the lives of cyclists even if the cyclist is following the rules to the letter. There are so many helmet-cam videos of drivers intentionally intimidating cyclists or even taking faux swipes at them - and these are just the ones that were recorded. It happens constantly.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cyclist-drivers were significantly faster at detecting the appearance of fellow cyclists.

Cyclists that drive tend to have a unspoken understanding and respect for each other because we know the bullshit that we have to put up with. We also have a better understanding of the roads from the additional perspective and know what areas are dangerous, where to watch for cyclists, what laws cyclists need to follow, etc. I cycled for years before I got behind a wheel. This meant I already knew the laws and layout of my local roads before I even began.

The scummyness of this company knows no bounds.

I lived close enough to my school that I was able to walk every day. Every morning I had to deal with self-centered parents dropping their crotchspawn off at school. I nearly got run over numerous times while crossing the street- a few of which got close enough that their front bumpers touched the backs of my legs as I walked. One parent cut in front of me instead of behind me, and I was able to punch the back of their car as they sped off.

Keep in mind I was a child when this was happening. These were parents that were very nearly running over a child willingly.

I put some of the blame on retailers as well. Retail stores just don’t want to carry inventory anymore, especially tech-focused ones with many of those just turning into glorified showrooms. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard some version of: “Sorry, we don’t have that in stock but we can bring it in for you.”

We needed a short length of garden hose here for the house so I went to two hardware stores and one garden centre looking for one. Nothing. Not even in their dedicated gardening sections. I had to order it off Amazon. A goddamn garden hose.

Amazon has done a lot of damage for sure but retail is suffering from several self-inflicted wounds too. Home Depot, for example, is a multi-billion dollar corporation and even they have a weaker retail presence now. That’s not Amazon’s fault.

Giant anteater

“Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye.

Was played seemingly every hour back when I worked retail. Both in the store I worked in and many others. So incredibly overplayed.

2nd place would be any of Queen’s absurdly overplayed songs. I don’t even hear them as music anymore; they’re just annoying noise.

For the kind of work I have been doing I have not needed to hand over any psd files. Photoshop is(was) only a small step in my workflow and the main thing I get hired for is 3D modelling services. Regardless, I still work with NDA’d content and Adobe’s terms are invasive as hell.

Just cancelled my Adobe sub. Even if I was comfortable with how they use my data (and I am most assuredly fucking not) I’m also uncomfortable with them helping themselves to the NDA’d projects I do for clients. I trialed Affinity Photo and it meets 98% of my needs and is on sale 50% off right now. Bite my ass, Adobe.

Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music

This is just flatout theft. This is stealing of customer property. Incredible.

Round #451 of telling people to stop using Spotify and consider one of the many, better alternatives.

On the plus side, the industry is rapidly moving towards locally-run AI models specifically because they don’t want to purchase and run fleets of these absurd things or any other expensive hardware.

With all the studio buyouts, closures, layoffs, etc to pile on top of all the usual greedy macrotransaction crap - it’s really hard to give a shit about games right now. Seriously, the only upcoming game I’m even remotely interested in is Tiny Glade.

Welp, there goes my morning. Now I have to spend a few hours unfucking everything.

Never trusting this app ever again.

Steam needs to pull this from the store and start issuing refunds.

It’s amazing that these companies spend ultraquadrillions on advertisement platforms and algorithms and all they ever seem to do is just spam products at you that you have already purchased. Where is all this money going?

Not surprising. They archive information that powerful people would rather we forget.

They have to. They, along with every other tech megacorp right now, have invested unfathomable amounts of money into AI and have their investors and shareholders creaming their pants as they ride high on the fumes of their own farts. They’d be drawn and quartered if they suddenly did a 180 or in any way admitted their product is massively overvalued and nearly useless.

Lack of proper disposal facilities and/or fees for using said facilities. Easier to dump something in a lake or in the bushes than driving 40 minutes across town to a special facility and paying $30+ to dispose of it properly.

This is disabled if you turn off telemetry in the settings, which users should already be doing anyway. I don’t see this as any worse than what they already do.