I got fed up with this shit and left. That should prove I'm human.

I’m not sure there’s a correct answer to that, because the answer is technically yes, I think I’ve been inappropriate sometimes but also yes, I’ve been been told to stop sharing by several peers as an adult in several different settings, but not by anywhere near the number of peers I had.

Logically, it doesn’t make any sense to let a tiny percent outweigh the majority. It doesn’t feel nice, though.

e: tried to clarify

I’m likely projecting, because

Could you give them something that doesn’t harm the plants, that might lure them where they won’t bother you, and that won’t make the problem worse in a different way?

Maybe they’d like something you normally throw away in relatively small quantities that won’t attract something worse or poison anything?

e: disclaimer: IANAG. I am terrible with plants.

Kinda makes you rethink how we typically define ‘society’.

Like it’s far more fundamental than we think, and we very narrowly define it by too complex criteria. And we’re too invested in making sure that definition stays narrow enough that we can justify harming others.

(Sorry, I’d normally put that in a slightly more cheerful way, but I’m just so tired.)

TIL some ants farm aphids.

It’s all good, lol.

I’ve been here for 20 years. If this place was gonna immolate me, it’s had plenty of chances.

Thanks for the info about what to look for, though!

It's dangerous as hell, but it's something people used to do on knob and tube wiring in old houses.

Christ on a bike, don’t say shit like that to me – my house was built in 1886. O.o

Codes changed after any number of fires…

Just keeps getting worse from there. Some outlets in this place have seen all the world wars.

There are more efficient ways to give me a heart attack, you know.

BTW, I think your detractor is probably too scared to take me on

I think you’re right. I was sticking around for the next volley of meme-facts, but it looks like the match has been called. :)

or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd.

I’d forgotten how much I should miss this.

e: also

Ad-free, and local access

This is what made Bob Ross a thing in the early 80s.

Thank you, that helps.

or it's some stupid power play thing where they think you're trying to challenge their status.

Although if it’s that, I’ll never figure it out. I can’t even begin to relate to that enough to identify it.

almost the size of a couch, so I have no idea what was on the back of it because I could never have moved it.

Oh yeah! Exactly! Mine was very similar to this, but a bit narrower. It was a behemoth, plus the cord was very short.

Thus the shimmying ass-upwards to hold the torch. There was scant space back there, and making more was work.

it was probably masonite or some kind of hard board on the back of the tv

I think you’re right. It was a dark, dense, and very thick board, but not actual wood. I had a radio or clock or something with the same backing, now you mention it. I hadn’t paid much attention except it was thicker than the ikea shit, lol.

And plugging a bad fuse with a penny,

Wait, what? I completely missed that growing up.

Brb.

. As an aside, I have to ask: Did you ever get sent up to the roof by your parents after a storm to reset the antenna? Or be the unpaid holder of the rabbit ears by the TV, moving this way and that so your old man could watch his game with the least amount of snow and rolling horizontal lines? I did.

I was a weird nerd, and some of my fondest memories are helping my dad do engine work on our wood-sided station wagon (I was such a cliché) and going with him to the tv shop to pick up vacuum tubes for the tv after a loud pop and faint waft of smoke, then shimmying ass-upwards on the wall like spider man to hold the flashlight at the correct angle whilst my dad pulled the particle-board (I think, maybe cardboard) back off the television and taught me what every single part inside did.

Best time of my young life, hands down.

e: I’ve never been afraid of technology or learning things in my adult life. Thanks, dad.
(And if you’re raising your child like this, thank you. You’re helping to make good people that way.)

It’s worth trying, even if you think you’ll end up cancelling anyhow. The last time I had to deal with them, they dropped my monthly bill from $150 to $80 for their highest speed broadband, and now I get roughly 1gb download speed for $80/mo. (eta in case it’s not clear: that wasn’t based on hypothetical sale prices; I’d been paying $150/mo out of pocket for half the speed; I now pay $80/mo for double the speed I had been getting.)

Your results will probably vary – I have 25 years of uninterrupted customer loyalty to leverage. (eta: not like I have a choice where I live, it’s them or dial-up, but their international agents don’t know that lol).

🤞

e: also if you follow this blueprint, let us know if it works. I didn’t come up with this pattern, but it did work for me.

Why are you so bent about this?

Again, how old are you? Do you actually remember this time? I gave one anecdote, but ask literally anyone my age and they’ll say the same. You certainly know people my age, don’t take my word for it, ask them what sleepovers were like before and after cable tv became a thing. Everyone my age remembers a massive shift, especially with Showtime.

With/without cable wasn’t an easy change. Lots of people didn’t accept it easily because it seemed technically complex. That’s part of why my family was an early adopter: my dad was an aerospace engineer, so it was a no-brainier.

The televisions sold in the late 70s were not set up for cable, so you needed a cable box and to configure your tv a certain way – typically by setting one of your two dials to channel 2, 4, or I think UHF 12 (?it’s been a while, but it depended on your tv, and you’d have an auxiliary dongle, too), you had to plug a cable box into your tv (which was nowhere near as simple as now), and then maybe sacrifice a goat. I joke, but the wiring out of the back of those things wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clear ports with matching inputs, but more like in the back of old school audio speakers, but more of them.

That doesn’t sound hard, but for most people the tv was a magic box that pictures came out of. These were your grandparents, they weren’t good at technology.

The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable.

In the late 80s, yeah. That’s after what I’m talking about. It sounds like you’re talking about the era of Nickelodeon and the height of Showtime/Cinemax porn. I’m talking about more than a decade before that.

Yes, by that point, cable had settled into the subscription + ad model I’m saying was the down slide. I’m talking about way before that, when it hadn’t yet devolved.

Again, I’m not making this up, and I kinda wonder what you think my motivation would be to do so, but I’m very curious how old you are and if you’re just going on things you’ve read or if you were alive for this.

e: clarification

How old are you?

I don’t need links to tell me what this was like when I vividly remember.

Yea, cable television first became available in 1948. Regular middle class families did not have cable television for a long time after that.

Mobile phone service was available in 1959. Guess how many people had it? A good friend of my family had a car phone in the mid 70s. Guess how common that was?

You can’t go by invention dates on stuff like this. You’ll be amazed at how long some things take to gain market acceptance.

I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.

Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.

My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.

I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.

The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.

Great example , thanks! Yeah, same thing.

In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.

It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.

e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.

e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.

There’s kind of a cheat code.

First, always call, don’t bother with chat. The first prompt you get, say ‘agent’. Don’t say anything else, and keep saying that until you get a live person (it should only take 1-3 times in the menu.

Once you have a person, threaten to cancel your service. You have to mean it (I always mean it if I’ve got to this point). They will escalate you to the customer retention team and they will listen.

e: oh, and also be nice, but firm. Angry tirades never work, but exasperated friendliness does.

And when are they appropriate or inappropriate?

This is my big problem. In a group where people are telling stories about themselves, when it’s my turn, my stories are inappropriate somehow. In 50+ years, I still haven’t figured out what I say that’s wrong,

I’ve spent ages analysing my stories compared to others and I can’t figure out the difference, and no one will tell me. Is it the content (seems comparable) or how I tell it?

It seems better to just say ‘pass’ in those situations and stop engaging.