We did a little tour on our own into Germany one spring, about 20 years ago. It was only a few days, we didn’t have much money and we absolutely didn’t know what we were doing. We rented a car and just started wandering. It was just at the point of technology where GPS was still new. We didn’t have any so we just started driving with a shitty map and no clue.

We had done some traveling in other countries before and we had met several famously obnoxious German tourists. We had partly expected to meet equally arrogant Germans in their home country.

Instead we met the most open, kind hearted, brilliant people ever. Everywhere we stopped, we’d meet three or four locals who were more than happy to give directions, recommend restaurants, bars, tea shops and sites to see.

At one point we met a truck driver who gave us a ton of information and showed us a driving route on a big format ringed binder map book. When he was done talking, he left the book. We told him he was forgetting his book and he said we could have it as it had detailed updated map info of the entire country. It was an expensive book and I knew it, so I told him not to give it away. He insisted and said he didn’t mind.

I still have that map book on my shelf and whenever I see it, I think of that trip and all those people we met.

Totally loved Germany after that.

If I ever run into that scenario … that would be a great reason to raise the Jolly Roger

I don’t need to be reminded of how dumb America is

Don’t know … I can’t afford internet credits in order to access a connection.

9/10 for your grandma … Looks like a dual boot setup … a modern fast core system with multiple speed settings on top … and an older OS that is manually operated that can be revealed from underneath (although once the power goes out, you’d have to lose the LEDs)

It sounds like you’ll fit right in … great to have you here … have fun!

I was making light of your question … partly to have a bit of fun … and partly to show that the community enjoys sharing these silly little bits of movie quotes that act like memes. The one I was using is from the movie “The Naked Gun” (the original film from 1988 with Leslie Nielson)

A lot of the meme communities enjoy old slapstick movie content as there is a lot of memeable content there … films like ‘The Naked Gun’ series, Hot Shots, any of the Mel Brooks films and Monty Python.

Don’t be afraid to test your boundaries, comment as you like but with an open mind and kind heart … people will let you know if you’ve said or implied anything negative or positive. Don’t be discouraged if you get no response either … it’s not a popularity contest. The longer you stay, the more you comment, the more you get to know people and the more they get to know you and eventually you become a regular part of the community.

Welcome to Lemmy and welcome to the fediverse.

Just you wait another few more years and I’m gonna vote so hard it’ll make your head spin

Then tell them they’re part of the gang and to join everyone else as we go wedgie and noogie the next new guy

“I’m sure we can handle this situation maturely, just like the responsible adults that we are. Isn’t that right, Mr. Poopy Pants?”

Take advice from Detective Frank Drebin

“Like a blindman at an orgy, I was going to have to feel my way through”

The fact that we all casually talk about how big money is almost a requirement to get into, run, manage, and maintain politics … goes to show you how democratic the system is.

We used to do quite a bit of travelling ten years ago and we used booking.com quite often. In those early days of booking online, there was a period when you could call the help line and actually talk to someone from America or Canada. And they were always helpful. We got messed up bookings back then and we always got help and figured things out. At one point, we were booking so often, we got to know one or two of the operators we kept talking to in London, Ontario.

Fast forward ten years later and I would not recommend any of them any more. All of them send you to a call center in either South / Central America, Philippines or India and like your comment said, they do absolutely as minimal as possible to do anything and keep you waiting on the phone as long as possible.

None of them work any more and it is far better to use them to shop around for quality, reviews and recommendations … then book directly with the hotel.

Use the sites and services as a guide, then find a direct phone number to the hotel and book directly with them.

$40 for a cheap meal delivered to my door ready to eat … made by someone who doesn’t like their job, made with the cheapest ingredients, in a questionable kitchen, by a worker I trust follows proper hygiene, processed by a series of people who will take care of my food to be handed off to some guy who I trust will take care of my food as it travels to my house with everyone being paid as minimally as possible so that several companies can squeeze as much profit out of the transaction as possible.

Or I just take a few hours every weekend to make a ton of good food to eat for the entire week.

Which now renders their site useless … I’ll go on your site to look up basic info … then go to your store to get what I want and even visit some other store or service that could give me the same product.

It’s a disincentive to want to use their site in the future.

I’ve stopped using several store websites because of this. Then when I want an actual product … I’ll call the store and ask them to look for the product for me. If they have it great, if they don’t, I’ll look for it elsewhere or figure out some other solution for myself that doesn’t involve any of their dumb websites.

I’m regressing from the internet and use people contact more and more because of this stupidity. I’m going back to the way I did things in the 90s and early 2000s where I would just use their store flyer as a guide, call the local store to ask for something and then go look for it myself because the online services today are so intrusive and needlessly complicated that its faster and more useful to not go online.

Top 3 are still the same from previous years

1. 12345
2. 123456
3. 12345678

It’s official: “123456” has once again claimed the controversial title of the world’s most common password — and one of the weakest. That marks six out of seven years this password has topped our chart

Don’t ask for permission … ask for forgiveness

The age old mantra of authoritarians and corrupt officials. What use is it to point out wrongs from the past if nothing will ever be done about it … and worse will be repeated again in the future?

The greatest fear that government and our wealthy overlords have about UBI is the fact that it would create an entire population of thinking, creative people who would have time to think about how unequal the world is … and then move on to act on those thoughts because they would have the time and the energy to do something about it all.

It’s far better to control the population if you perpetually keep them on the edge of losing everything.

Imagine getting it punctured inside a public bus … or an elevator.

I remember reading about something along those lines a few years ago.

When we were kids running around with our childhood friends every summer, we thought it would never end, that we would be and stay friends forever.

Then one day, we run home, wave goodbye and say ‘see you later!’ … and without us knowing, or being aware of it, that was the last time we saw our childhood friend.

We might have lived next to one another, or went to the same high school later on or even went to the same college … we never saw our friend again.

We never knew and we were never aware of when we said goodbye or saw our friend for the last time.

I think about my old childhood friends … I’m middle aged now … some of those friends died young, some got married and had a bunch of kids … a few had hard lives and became addicts … one of them is a vegetable after having suffered an overdose … and many of them just went on and had small families and did OK.