No, Walmart is kind of an outlier by having a greeter. In other places that have a “greeter” it’s usually an extra layer of security/theft prevention, or it’s a place like Costco where you need a membership to shop there. That said, it’s basically standard for an employee to seek you out and ask if you would like help finding anything fairly soon after you walk in the store. It’s generally seen as good customer service, and in larger stores it’s not uncommon to be approached by several employees asking if you’d like help finding what you’re looking for over the course of your time in the store.

American customer service culture tends to be a little extra. There’s a premium on going the extra mile that’s tied into America’s self-image of the “land of opportunity,” and the hustle culture that goes with that. But when that’s what you’re accustomed to dealing with, the customer service cultures of other countries can be kind of jarring. I know from my own travels through Europe that shopping in some countries can range from feeling cold and indifferent, to feeling actively hostile.

That said, most Americans wouldn’t think of complaining to your manager about it. It’s only a specific kind of over-entitled asshole that does that. Sounds like you had a real karen on your hands.

On the plus side, considering the average lifespan of Samsung appliances, you probably won’t have to put up with it for very long.

Oh, it “has ties” to Tren De Aragua? Given Trump’s track record I have to assume that means they accidentally merc’d a random fishing boat from Guyana and are saying it was a Venezuelan drug boat so they can be like, “Um, it’s actually good that we murdered those people, actually.”

It’s supposed to blow through the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act and normalize military violence against US citizens; or against anyone who disagrees with, or tries to resist, the Trump administration.

Ibuprofen.

Or did you think people were just like, “Well, my knees were kinda sore going up the stairs today. Guess I’ll go slash my wrists?”

There are huge sound effects libraries that have been continuously built up and added to since sound in movies became a thing. Foley artists dip into them constantly. If you watch enough old movies you can pick out some almost 100-year-old foley effects that still get used in modern tv and movies. A lot of the time foley artists will toss them in as a joke or reference that mostly only other foley artists are going to catch.

But yeah there are a lot of foley effects that get used a ton. I hear the exact door opening/closing sound from the old AOL instant messenger used in a movie or tv show at least a couple times a year. There’s also a specific cat noise that gets used constantly which people who played Postal 2 back in the day will recognize instantly.

Just throwing up any kind of chaff they can find to distract from Epstein.

Hate is probably a strong word, but I don’t really care for their music. There’s nothing technically wrong with it, they’re competent musicians, but it all feels boring and generic to me. It’s bland and inoffensive, like it was written to play over a grocery store PA at a barely liminal volume for a middle-aged housewife to absent-mindedly hum along with as she compares laundry soap.

Because one of the many things shoe-horned into this bill was the removal of suppressors and short-barreled rifles from the NFA, this has been the subject of conversation in a lot of the gun subs on Reddit. It’s been fun watching some of the boot-lickingest right-wing gun owners absolutely shitting all over this bill on account of how bad it is. Even the AR15 sub, which doesn’t usually allow political threads, was like, fuck it, we’re leaving this one up because everyone needs to know what absolute garbage this bill is.

Weed whackers and weed eaters were used fairly interchangeably where I grew up in the US southwest and mountain west.

If the process and tradition of it appeals to you, then sure. You can find a cheap matcha set for under $20 (I think I saw one on Amazon a while ago for $10), so it’s not like you need to spend a ton of money to try it out.

I’m kind of lazy so I use one of those electric milk frothing whisks instead of a traditional bamboo one. But if you use that type of electric frother just be sure to use it in a vessel with high sides and a fair amount of extra room otherwise you’ll be wearing your matcha instead of drinking it.

“We were going to win this,” said the former senior ATF official. “These things are not like bump stocks."

Forced reset devices are actually exactly like bump stocks in that they’re legal because they force a distinct action of the trigger for every round fired. The legal definition of a machine gun is a firearm that fires more than one round per single action of the trigger. They haven’t bothered to amend or expand that definition, so these types of devices keep skirting by on a technicality.

I suppose the argument could be made that forced reset devices work in a very similar way to a machine gun’s auto sear, the difference being that they act on the trigger of the gun rather than the hammer, but it still doesn’t meet the government’s own definition of a machine gun.

Gonna be even more fun when all the empty trucks leaving from the empty west-coast ports I’ve been reading about for the past few days become empty shelves over the next few weeks. The real pain hasn’t even started yet.

Yes, comrades, Emmanuel Goldstein has struck again. Obviously this is all his doing.

I think that pretty much sums up the entire ethos of Silicon Valley these days.

Looking at this with adult eyes, no I don’t think you’re a jerk. It sounds like you’re trying help him see the reality of the situation before it causes him any undue emotional (or financial) suffering. It’s not, however, very hard to imagine how from his point of view he might feel like you’re being jerk, or maybe a bit hypocritical.

Is there any way you can get him playing with kids who are good enough to go pro? If he can start playing against people who genuinely have the goods, it’s probably not going to take him very long to figure out for himself whether he can keep up or not. And that way you don’t have to set yourself up as the bad guy as much, and you can play a more supportive role and be there to guide him to an alternative path once he gets sick of the other kids running circles around him. At least that’s how it worked for the couple of kids I knew growing up who were good enough at basketball or American football that they really thought they could go pro. It was playing against people who were the real deal that made them realize they didn’t have the shot they thought they did. It was pretty obvious that these other kids had something extra, and were playing on a level my friends felt they were probably never going to reach.

If it’s a person at all, and not one of those shit-disturber bots that get unleashed on non-MAGA spaces to start arguments over innocuous things and just generally sour the vibe. BlueSky was infested with them last month. They tend to swarm around celebrities, and posts about celebrities. Either way, a quick glance at their post history shows they’re only here to start shit with people.

There’s going to be a lot of that. I live in the Southwest, and the number of Trump-voting Latinos is shockingly high. There are a lot of conservative Latinos who straight up consider themselves to be white. Gonna be a real shock for them when it finally sinks in what the rest of their party thinks about that.

There needs to be a worker’s party. It doesn’t have to be the Democrats.

That there are only going to be two viable parties in this country is a mathematical inevitability of how our voting system works, but there’s no reason why the Democrats have to remain one of those parties. If what they’re doing right now is the best they’ve got then they shouldn’t be difficult to replace. A damp sandwich could do a better job.

Not off the top of my head, but the paint color is called “TV Yellow.”