I’m just impressed they managed to hole saw multiple overlapping circular cuts into that mirror without breaking it.

That is some dedicated jankery.

Knife, flashlight, lighter…

👀

…

…

…No.

Another factor to add is that major retailers use anything they throw away as a tax write-off “loss” and they are therefore extremely cagey about giving any of it away for any reason, even to employees, I guess because if this is found out it could have some kind of implications, I dunno.

My nephew works for Target and apparently they do this. He tells me a manager will stand there and watch them crushing perfectly good floor model TV’s and other electronics in the trash compactor so he can sign off that they did it and none of those items were used for any beneficial purpose whatsoever, because weaseling out of $0.02 in taxes is apparently more worthwhile to corporate than giving a dedicated employee a new but slightly scuffed TV they were going to throw away anyway.

It’s positively infuriating. I’m sure the perishable goods/food sector is even worse.

Here is the anti-story to the above:

Back when I was in school I needed a handful of 35mm film canisters for some damn fool project or another. I don’t remember exactly what I was planning to use them for. So I went to the local camera store and asked the clerk there if I could just buy like 20 or 30 empty film canisters figuring they’d have a fair few lying around. This was, of course, in the days when 35mm film was still the predominant photography standard, and consumer grade digital cameras that could even achieve one real world megapixel were very new, very exciting, and very expensive.

Apparently I was right, because they guy said, “Good god, please take some” and gave me an entire shopping bag full of the damn things. For free. Apparently just to be rid of them.

I was using film canisters to store everything and anything for years after that.

Yeah, a shotgun is probably a better choice.

That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t even part of an arcade. Just standing forlornly by itself in the center of the concourse of a largely empty section of the mall. I know these things are typically privately operated and not part of the mall itself or whatever establishment they’re in. There may or may not have been a bank of gumball machines behind it, I don’t remember.

Anyway, that mall got bulldozed a couple of years ago and given the state it was in, I wouldn’t be surprised if that machine were still in it at the time. And good riddance.

Here’s the story about those damn cut-the-string machines I repeat every time I see one of these.

There used to be one on my local dying mall. Noticing this, and being the clever dick that I am, I came by one day with a powerful laser and cheesed it by slicing the string in half right through the glass.

I subsequently found out that the iPad box that was dangling from the string was, in fact, empty. No “call this number and use this coupon to redeem your prize.” Just, empty. Too bad about your fifty cents, kid. Get fucked.

Do you know, I don’t feel bad in the slightest about cheating that damn machine.

And the landscape of US politics is so fucked at this point that which “side” somebody is allegedly on based on donkeys and elephants, or whose podcasts they listen to, or who they retweet is really only an entertaining starting point to determining what the hell their views actually are.

I’m sure plenty of “right wing” Republican voters actually would agree with us here on a lot of things once you broke down individual topics – possibly with a little bit of rephrasing of things, and after you punched through the layer of bullshit, lies, racism, identity politics, and incessant fearmongering over non-issues that the GOP slathers all over everything they say nowadays.

Liberals and conservatives generally actually agree on these two core concepts, vis-a-vis:

• We want the government to provide for us what we think everyone ought to deserve to get, and
• We want it for “free.”

INB4 he finds out it’s not easy being green.

Here is a completely noncontributory comment.

I stumbled across a copy of a physical book from the author of the comic this is from. I wondered to myself if this meme is in it.

It is.

Yeah, but the point is if they’ve already shut off their servers and moved on to the next thing, who cares? Just let the dedicated fans and other nuts run their own servers and they can wash their hands of it entirely. They weren’t going to make any money on it after pulling the plug anyway.

Did he also eat sugar? Did you know Hitler ate sugar, too?

You’ll put your eye out, Fido.

Well, they’re deluding themselves into beleiving they are, anyway. There is no actual “relationship.”

Dur hurr, 3d printer go brrr.

Yeah, I’m pretty poor, too.

I ain’t got no suppressors, either. What a drag.

This was literally the basis of the National Firearms Act, which is a federal gun law we very much already have and have done for a long time. It was originally enacted in the 1930’s with the express purpose of preventing the blacks poors from achieving arms parity with which to defend themselves from whites the rich, and had a specific focus on “concealable” arms which could conceivably be used to take out high profile political targets. Which is something that was at the forefront of every seedy politician’s mind in the era coming right out of Prohibition and leading into the Great Depression, I’m sure. Boy, that sounds eerily familiar.

The NFA bans a wide swath of arms and arms adjacent things including short barreled rifles and shotguns, fully automatic guns, and silencers/suppressors.

Oh, wait. Did I say “banned?” It actually just slaps a mandatory $200 federal tax on them with a ton of paperwork, with failure to comply under penalty of the ATF kicking in your door and shooting your dog. Note that in the 1930’s $200 was an exorbitant amount of money that would be absolutely unattainable for the working classes simply to afford a shooty toy, but was easily within reach of the robber barons of the time. Oh, and the police and military also got a full exception. Of course. For reference, $200 in 1934 dollars (when this was passed) is equivalent to $4,711.40 today. And for further perspective, a nice shotgun in 1935 would cost you around $40 in the currency of that time.

“Sure, boy, you can own that gun. All you have to do is file all this extra paperwork and pay us five times more than what it’s worth in taxes.”

Related fun fact: The original incarnation of the NFA was originally intended to apply to all handguns. Think about that one for a minute.

(Edit: This was meant as an addition, not a correction.)

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