Off the top of my head, not counting the plethora of gift cards:

• A first edition Kindle Fire a month after it released. For being tech-illiterate, she ended up loving it and upgraded a few times through the years.

• Several Roku boxes and Fire TV sticks, which are just now getting used because my parents are finally cutting the cord.

• Lots of concert tickets for various bands, including Foo Fighters, Green Day, and Kiss.

• 1-week all expenses paid trip to Nashville for some big New Year’s party that some celebs showed up to.

• $600 cowboy boots.

• $300 KitchenAid mixer.

• A full set of Paula Dean cookware, and she LOVES Paula Dean.

Not OP but my mom enters literally every contest she sees and has won a surprising amount.

3, 2, 1…

Yep, there is a vendor that shows up to farmers’ markets here called “CornHub” with the same design.

Yep, I’m never watching Linus after this.

In 2018, someone maintaining a ROM site was ordered to pay Nintendo $12 million.

In late 2021, someone was sentenced to 10 years of prison and to pay Nintendo $14.5 million. That person got out on good behavior last April, but 25-30% of their wages are going to be garnished until their debt to Nintendo is paid off - which will likely take the rest of their life.

Go sailing to build your magical fork collection.

I realize that I’m in the great minority of Redditors with what I learned, but my experience modding on Reddit was enough to land me a job as a social media manager for a tech company, and I’ve worked my way up to director of communications from that. So, I learned actual career skills from Reddit.

The host of a tech podcast I listen to has had a Mastodon instance for years. I knew of the Fediverse because of that, but I always thought of it as decentralized Twitter and not necessarily a way to decentralize all types of social media platforms.

Same reason here. I convinced both of my parents to get Chromebooks over the last few years, and the number of “service calls” I get from them have dropped drastically.

I know that Lemmy is years old, but as this is my first day on the platform, it feels like a whole new world.