Louisiana? Those drive-thru daiquiri shops blew my mind. I had been told that leaving a bit of paper on the straw counts as a “seal,” but when I went to one I didn’t even get a paper on the straw.

It appears that selling beer at PA gas stations requires a special license and is limited by local laws. One town might allow it, but the next town over doesn’t.

I guess because the laws about it weren’t confusing enough already.

Oh, this is awesome. I remember a post recently about wanting more community activities on Lemmy, and /r/Place was one of the things I said I’d missed the most.

For those who want to participate and can’t figure it out (since there’s no instructions) -

• Follow the link to http://canvas.fediverse.events/
• Ignore the immediate pop-up - it’s not important for contributing to the artwork. Just click the X and move on.
• Look at the bottom of the page, it should say, “You are not logged in” with a Login button. Click that button, follow the instructions. Don’t worry, it will not ask you for your password - it will ask for your full Fediverse handle (including the @lemmy.instance part) and it will send you a code instead.
• Check the inbox of whatever username you entered to find a message with a 5-digit code. Go back to the Canvas page and put in the code.
• Click the “approve” button that pops up next.
• After that, you should be logged in. Now you can contribute! Find a spot you want to add to, pick a color from the bottom row, and go for it! Note that if you leave the page idle for a bit, you may be asked to connect again.

There’s a cool-down counter in the bottom left of 180 seconds, after which you’ll earn another pixel to place. You can have up to 6 pixels ready to go. Once you have 6 pixels, the countdown disappears until you place one. If you lose connection or have to sign in again, it will save the pixels you accumulated. In writing this post I went through the process again to make sure I got it right, and I still had 6 pixels to use when I reconnected.

There’s also an Undo button that appears immediately after placing a pixel, but it only lasts for a few seconds. If you accidentally click a pixel onto the image when you’re just trying to scroll around, that button is your friend.

Note: I am not affiliated with this project in any way. I’m just sharing what I learned because it wasn’t intuitive and I figure others might need a little help getting started.

Select “Other” and type in “0”. Sometimes that’s the only option I find.

I don’t know about Alabama, but Pennsylvania also has state-owned liquor stores. For PA, you can get beer and wine in a lot of places, including gas stations, supermarkets, and beer stores. However, if you want hard liquor, you have to go to specific stores just for that. If you go to a beer store looking for rum, you’ll be out of luck.

ETA: Only certain licensed gas stations sell beer and it differs by local laws, so YMMV.

Okay, I got a picture. Sorry for potato quality, but I had to take it quickly before a kid entered the room.

See the little symbol of a hand over a dot? That’s all it gives as far as instructions. I thought the picture was of someone pushing a button, but no, it’s apparently a hand hovering over a circular sensor. Which doesn’t even match what the sensors actually look like. The real genius move was choosing to make two of the three sensors black so they blend in with the rest of the machine. I only figured out the water part (right side) after I figured out the ice part (left side) first.

Meanwhile, vandwellers are out there counting up the cash they aren’t spending on rent.

It’s a shame there’s a significant stigma to that lifestyle. The last time I was homeless, I was ready to go that route and save up the money I would’ve spent on rent. However, my girlfriend was terrified of the idea. She found me the place I’m staying in now, which I’m glad for; but the last time my bank account was this low, I was only working part-time. Rent is like a money-vacuum.

I get that. I’ve worked hard to calibrate my filter so it’s appropriate to different situations. It’s difficult to figure out the line sometimes. The best I can do is take the misunderstandings and turn them into self-deprecating jokes. I might end a spiel with, “Okay, I’m done nerding out now” or something along those lines. Usually people are cool about it. Maybe it’s the acknowledgement of my own awkwardness that helps?

Otherwise, I often hear, “Huh, I never thought about it that way,” and honestly that’s my favorite response. I want to make people question things. I want them to reflect on why they do what they do. I know it can be uncomfortable, but it’s better than living a life unexamined.

I came back from vacation this week, and it was quite a moment when I saw the sun rising in the morning, through a yellow haze, colored a fluorescent shade of “apocalypse pink.” Very reassuring, very comforting.

I should’ve stayed up in the mountains a while longer.

It’s a different machine. I will try to take a picture later.

Edit: Picture added in new comment.

Slightly tangential, but along the same “stupid design” line. My workplace recently got a new water filter/ice machine. It has no buttons. At all. No switches, no tab you press the cup against, none of it.

Instead, it has a no-touch sensor. There’s no instructions for it, no labels saying how to use it. You’re supposed to hover your hand over the sensor to make either water or ice come out, and it takes a second to respond. It took me about a day of trial and error to figure out how the hell it works.

So now when I want to fill my water bottle, I have to set it under the spout and hold a hand awkwardly over the sensor. If my hand moves slightly, the water stops coming out. I’ve found it easier to lean my hand against the machine, right over the sensor (but not touching it directly, or else it won’t work.) Which defeats the purpose of a “no touch” design in the first place.

For a bonus, the sensor reacts when people walk too close in front of it. I work with kids and the dispenser’s right in front of the fridge where they store their lunch boxes. Every day, kids line up to put their stuff away, and every day, the dispenser will get triggered by someone standing too close. Then there are ice cubes sliding around the floor, turning into puddles…

I wish we just had a regular water fountain at this point. So much of modern design has gotten too stupid to be practical.

There are some places in Europe where practically entire towns will take a month off for vacation. Stores close, people travel, and it’s normal. Bosses don’t come down on employees about it, it’s part of the culture to have a work-life balance. Add up those months over the course of a lifetime, and that’s a lot more “time off” than the mere weeks some women get in the US for maternity leave (if we’re lucky enough to have a job that allows for it.)

I understand that time off can lead to “lost productivity,” but that misses the point. The point is that a culture that prioritizes “productivity at all times” has it backwards. There’s so much more to life than working. A month off here or there doesn’t make the world stop spinning. If the culture at large respected the need for work-life balance, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

Complaining about the sunlight hurting my eyes.

The other day, my mom was driving and the sun came out. It had been cloudy all day, so I hadn’t brought my sunglasses. She had two pairs of sunglasses in the car and fished around to get them, saying I could use one.

Unbeknownst to me, I distracted her right when she needed to make a turn. We had to make a quick U-turn and get back on track.

Moments later, we had to stop because the road ahead was blocked. Apparently someone had been speeding and there was a fatal accident. We heard the details of the news later that day.

My mom was moved by how, if we hadn’t missed that first turn, we could’ve been at the intersection where it happened. I mean, my mindset is more, “Maybe the accident wouldn’t have happened?” But there’s only so much we can account for in life. If she sees it as, “Hey, our fuck up turned out to have saved us,” I can support that.

Actually, I appreciate that the date was included. So many posts get shared for years, to the point that nobody can tell if it’s current or old news, all because the only time stamp says something like, “Thirty minutes ago” or “Two days ago.”

Granted, if this post gets reused someday, it’d be a trivial task to edit the date stamp out. But at least there was an attempt to keep it tied to current times.

Not a single vegetable or fruit either (because of course I’m not counting the wine or lemon juice.) At least throw in some celery for fiber.

It’s both. Whether making a baby the old fashioned way or adopting, there’s an upper age limit to when most people would prefer to have kids. Adoption is expensive as hell. I might have the money to adopt by the time I’m 50, but I don’t want to be nearing 70 when my kid graduates high school.

Don’t forget she’s also Peggy from King of the Hill!

Also for the Bob’s Burgers fans, Sarah her sister Laura play the twins Ollie and Andy Pesto, respectively.

I get that this might not be your opinion, so this isn’t intended as an attack, but damn it’s a messed up way to frame things. How dare humans follow their biological calling and build families instead of “being productive” for a boss!

And it’s all the more reason to make parental leave universal for all parents, regardless of gender. Women wouldn’t be discriminated in the work force, and fathers could bond with their kids during a crucial part of their lives

With how long it takes to become financially secure, women are particularly screwed. Millennial women are in their 30s and 40s, nearing the end of our fertile age, with many of us already in the “high risk” category if we even tried. I’m in that group and still struggling to make ends meet. That’s an entire generation getting passed over for reproductive opportunities due to the economy, and the most bizarre thing is how predictable this all has been. The realities of our biologies is completely overlooked by those in charge.