Not sure what age I was, maybe 4. I thought the music on the radio was live, that the musicians went to the radio station to sing and it was broadcast from there.

Congress basically believed what they were told by the warmongers.

The protests were amazing, nothing like it before or since. The media suppressed coverage of them as best they could. They couldn’t totally ignore them but gave almost 0 coverage. Masses and masses of people packing the streets. Wish we’d had drones back then to get some good aerial footage.

Kind of a combination maybe? Since Mastodon lets you find new people with similar interests by browsing what’s on your local timeline or hashtags of interest, and you can still follow people of interest without any chatting. I don’t know much about chat apps but don’t you have to already know the people beforehand, or come across them via a mutual acquaintance or invite to a chat room?

Of course, Mastodon can be and is used for broadcast/consume interactions, but not as much, since most broadcasters want a huge audience with little interaction, which means a big platform, while the ones on Mastodon are probably looking for a bit more interactive experience with a smaller audience.

Beware the self-checkout.

Mastodon is more for people who like to have interactions or conversations back and forth with other people, while the big platforms are for influencers/broadcasters and consumers/viewers-- any back and forth interactions there are more between commenters than with the influencer/broadcaster. Of course there is some overlap and exceptions to that characterization, but that’s how it generally seems to me.

So IMO it’s not a competition, there’s plenty of room for both types of SM. Depending on a person’s preference they may use just Masto, just big SM, or use both, each for different reasons. The problem is when people expect Mastodon to be just like xitter/bsky/threads and get upset that it isn’t. Relax and use whichever platform(s) you like.

What statement are you referring to? The point that it’s far more expensive to travel from North America to a country in Europe for example, than it is to travel between countries in Europe? Maybe Thailand would be as expensive for both, though, I don’t know. Or the point that most Americans get much less vacation time than Europeans so again, only the more privileged Americans generally have the time off to take an overseas vacation.

Of course some regular people also take those vacations, but it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime big deal that they saved up for a long time as a dream. Those aren’t the ones acting entitled, they are appreciating the opportunity.

Just remember that any Americans vacationing in other countries are Americans who can afford to travel to take a vacation in other countries (and can even take that long of a vacation at all), and that explains the sense of entitlement and rudeness you see which gives Americans a bad name.

Also except for Canada and Mexico (and even for them depending on where in US you live, to get anywhere is a very long, expensive plane trip).

I say it because every time I try to speak in someone in their language, they immediately switch to English. (even the one I’m pretty damn good at)

Because of the dominance of English, many people learn it and that’s enough to talk to people from many countries, but what are we supposed to do? We can’t learn all the other languages.

I mean your hands have teeth who could beat that

The correct way to do this is by making them into meatballs and make a meatball sub.

They came out all right at the end.

“snap to join” Ah, now it makes sense.

I’d rather have a linux OS on the phone that can run Android apps.

Sounds like a stupid system.

Yes! Now you’re getting it. I’m glad you have a system you like in your country, but this thread is about Walmart in the US. Yet for some reason you want to keep telling us we’re wrong about something you have no experience with, somehow thinking we’re talking about what you have in your country.

In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.

I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.

I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time. This is to try to prevent theft. If you have more items than will fit into one bag, you have to periodically remove that bag and start a new bag. If you bump something or move things around while you bag (there’s very little room to work with), you often get one of these errors.

Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.

I’ve never been in a store that has this. What stores in what country are you referring to? The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts. It probably has to use RFID or something and be able to effectively compare all items you’re walking out with to what all was in the transaction. Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?

Anyway, I think most of the people who are raving about how great self-checkout is are those who only buy a handful of items at a time, probably not stocking up on groceries or buying enough for a family.

If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them, people with full carts and the lines move very slowly compared to the ones with a cashier, where for the same length of line, my wait time is much shorter and then someone who’s better at it than me, with a conveyor belt and ability to scan quickly does it, and there is usually also another person bagging, or if not I can bag as they scan (depending on the store).

That’s an adorabug.

I usually see lines at the self checkouts too, and they move a lot slower.

So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven’t worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc), they’ve lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.

(edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.

No, boomers invented forums (and the internet itself). Millenials invented Web 2.0 (as they called it), the corporate takeover of the internet.