Got_Bent

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to news in Target CEO says shoppers are pulling back, even on groceries

I dunno man. You’ve got that whole slathering your French fries in mayonnaise thing.

I think I’ll continue living in my shit hole, no healthcare, hopeless wage slave, daily mass shooting, christofascist dictatorship because I need that sweet, sweet sugary ketchup.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to news in Target CEO says shoppers are pulling back, even on groceries

The people who spend a thousand on concert tickets or five hundred on shoes will be complaining about their credit card debt on Facebook next month.

It took me a while to get it through my head why people who I knew were making less than I do had significantly nicer stuff. The difference is that I own what I have. They don’t.

I’m fortunate that after many years of struggle and single parenthood that I’m finally in a place with a comfortable income and free of debt except a small mortgage. Nonetheless, give or take a couple of cheap flights to go see friends a couple times a year, I still live like I’m struggling. That shit will burn into your mind if you suffer through it long enough.

Caveat: In spite of what I just wrote, I still have to work until I collapse and die at my desk. It’s a pretty great future for me presently in my fifties. Only another thirty or forty years to go before I can afford to stop working entirely. Save your money when you’re young if at all possible, kids.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to memes in Long in the past, all the way back in 1993...

Event television would be a big thing. I was a senior in college in 93. Seinfeld, Simpsons, Frasier, you had to schedule your day around that. The bar I worked at would even put these shows on instead of playing music and market it as a reason to come in.

Yes, we could record shows on VHS and watch them later, but that was mostly done with daytime soap operas - also a thing that has mostly gone by the wayside.

Landline phones with answering machines would throw a teenager from today into chaos.

Smoking everywhere. Not even California had introduced smoking bans yet.

No TSA. Flying was fun.

Weed possession was a decades long sentence.

You could play around with all kinds of things that were different.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to retrogaming in How Did Anyone Beat This In The Arcade?

The mechanics of that game were more like a very fast choose your own adventure than the traditional move joystick left, spaceship go left mechanics.

Because the graphics were coming off a laser disk, they didn’t generate on the spot. There were predetermined outcomes to every move.

When people figured this out, information started to collect in the magazines, and the game became beatable.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to nottheonion in 'Scripture is very clear': New House Speaker tells Congress God has 'ordained' them

So did things somehow just get even worse?

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to news in Fight over Texas anti-abortion transport bans reaches biggest battlegrounds yet

Very few of those remain. It was rough when I got here twenty years ago.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to news in Fight over Texas anti-abortion transport bans reaches biggest battlegrounds yet

There was a much smaller town, I believe more in East Texas, that brought such an ordinance up. I was pleasantly shocked that they eventually came to the conclusion that their proposed “papers please” environment was a wee bit too much like what many of their older residents had fought against.

Sadly, I’m not confident that clearer minds will continue to prevail.

Further, as I type this, I’m in an airport in Dallas headed to Nevada where I’m going to gamble, have sex out of wedlock, consume cannabis, and potentially purchase and consume an alcoholic beverage between the hours of two and seven in the morning. Somehow, no Texas legislator has any interest in prohibiting my endeavors. Seems inconsistent.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to mildlyinteresting in "Do you live in the Midwest?" by self-report

I went to Tulsa once ten years ago and was very pleasantly surprised by it. Really a nice little city.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to mildlyinteresting in "Do you live in the Midwest?" by self-report

I never have figured out how to categorize Oklahoma, but Midwest has never been on my Oklahoma bingo card. It’s more like a less affluent extension of Texas that is full of bogus slot machines and smells like weed everywhere.

There is some surprisingly pretty land up there though. Growing up I always thought of it as a barren dust bowl wasteland. Lots and lots of trees in reality, at least in the eastern half. Don’t know what’s in the panhandle. I’m not sure anybody does.

Edit: Just as I finished typing this, a commercial came on the TV. To quote, and no I’m not kidding, “Live the flyover life. Move to Oklahoma.”

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to news in USPS warns of scam involving texts requesting information for package delivery

Just looked in my text spam. I’ve gotten several of those over the past week. Huh.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to news in Alec Baldwin may be recharged with Rust gun death because of 'additional facts'

It was 2019 and the defense attorney raised no such argument. He planned on appealing the guilty verdict and did so unsuccessfully. I think making that argument would’ve been an implicit admission of guilt making appeal impossible. We had guidelines of anywhere from 2-99 years or life.

Let me tell you, it was tough to get the “hang the black kid immediately” jurors DOWN to thirty. About three of the twelve just immediately said 99 years and took hours and hours to come down at all.

If memory serves, the true max before eligibility for parole was thirty years. With the thirty year sentence, he’s eligible at fifteen years. Life or 99 would be eligible at thirty years.

Where the defendant got lucky was that it was over a weed deal gone bad. The gist is that the deceased showed up, and there was either an argument over price or the defendant tried to rob him and it went haywire.

Had the police been able to find evidence of marijuana, which they did not, it could’ve been a capital crime eligible for the death penalty - murder while in the commission of a felony.

Got_Bent , 10 months ago to news in Alec Baldwin may be recharged with Rust gun death because of 'additional facts'

It varies from state to state.

I’ve been watching a case out in California where it ended in conviction for voluntary manslaughter instead of murder.

The basic situation was two random guys who didn’t know each other got into an argument outside a bar ending in one shooting and killing the other.

Under California law, the intent to kill was there, but it was an in the moment fit of rage, not planned or premeditated.

I was on a jury in Texas with a similar situation that ended in a murder conviction because under Texas law, the intent to kill in and of itself is murder regardless of planning or premeditation.

The sentences between the two cases were twenty years in California and thirty years in Texas, but either or both could’ve gone longer or shorter.

Same effective crime and punishment, different labels.

Got_Bent , 11 months ago to lemmyshitpost in Equally as good

My daughter’s high school years in the 2010s definitely seemed bland to me. Maybe I was being aloof via nostalgia, but it just seemed like the whole thing was devoid of cultural flavor.

Then she got robbed of any meaningful college experience because COVID hit during the spring of her freshman year just as she was getting her bearings.

I genuinely feel sorry for that generation, not because of the stereotypical old person lens of “those damn lazy kids,” but rather they didn’t get any opportunity to be damn lazy kids up to no good.

Got_Bent , 11 months ago to lemmyshitpost in Equally as good

I was born in 1972 and appreciate that I’m able to remember my sister’s early eighties Fast Times at Ridgemont High days, went to high school myself in the eighties, then college in the nineties right as Nirvana was hitting the scene.

It hasn’t been the economic sweet spot, but it’s been a great cultural spot.

Got_Bent , 11 months ago to technology in I have never seen an ad in the past 6 years. I use android phone, windows PC and Android TV. Keen to hear when was the last time you saw an AD ?

Laptop/desktop, almost never

Phone, getting better, but don’t quite have it sorted, especially since I’m constantly playing browser bingo and situations like links from Lemmy frequently get me watching cancerous websites because I’ve got the wrong browser that worked last week but not today set as default.

I know I’m not supposed to use it because something something the owner is a terrible person, but Brave has been the most effective YouTube browser since vanced died and I’m not savvy enough to get revanced.