It’s not their fault per se but more in the way their delivery system is setup. I live in a building with over 300 apartments. A place where ordering anything that will be left on the floor of the lobby for more than a few hours is going to be stolen.

If I order from eBay, they use the local post and my stuff is either left in my mailbox, or I have to go get it at the post office. It’s never left on the floor.

If I order from Amazon, they will usually (not always) put my packages in the secure lockers. And if I’m waiting for something rather pricey, their estimate is good enough that I can stay home that day.

But ordering from AliExpress is a huge gamble for me. I don’t live in a house, don’t have a door giving on the outside, and their courriers are not consistent. Sometimes they call me on my phone and they (apparently) want me to open the downstairs door, but I can’t do it this way because they have to ring my apt # on the doorbell. So they lose patience, hang up and I can’t find where the package was left. I have never had a delivery that went smoothly with them. I tried with cheap items first and delivery was always spotty. That’s why I should have known better. Ordering from them and have packages delivered where I live is a taking a risk. Their delivery estimates is also all over the place. The package was supposed to arrive yesterday but it arrived on a Friday evening while I was out of town for three days. I just can’t stay home for two to three weeks waiting for the AliExpress courrier to leave my package on the floor of my apartment’s lobby.

It would probably be much better if I lived in a house and they simply left the package in front of it. Like, if I ever order from them again, it will be at my parents’ house. But because I live in a tower with a lobby, they just dump the packages on the floor of the entrance, mark it as “delivered”, and I usually never find them. I would really really prefer if they used the local post instead of weird random inconsistent courrier companies.

Yes, same for me.

I’ve been working nights for about 20 years and it was easier when I was younger. Now that I am in my early 40ies I find it more difficult to just go to bed and sleep.

Some weeks I can keep a steady schedule, sleep during the day and feel well rested, but other weeks I can’t get more than a few hours during the day and feel miserable when I work.

However it’s also changing with seasons and things I do during the weekend. I tend to sleep less in summer because of the heat and the light. Also I go camping during the weekends and have to sleep during the night, then switch back to day sleeping during the week. It’s much easier in winter because it’s always cold and dark and I just stay home.

So, it varies a lot for me.

Not great for money but could be worse.

I should have known better than order from AliExpress, as I’ve had a $200 package probably stolen. It was delivered to the floor of the lobby in a building that has 300+ apartments, a Friday evening, and I couldn’t get home until Monday. There are secure lockers but they were not used. So yeah, no package and AliExpress is like “but it was delivered so it’s your problem”.

Also, winter is coming here and I hate it, so I’m trying to plan a short trip in the Carribean in a few weeks, and maybe a longer one in January. It’s probably going to be St-Martin for now. Hopefully, the planning and the trip itself will help me take my mind off all the recent shitty news.

Yeah pretty often. It goes even further, as in, I don’t want to participate in society, or forced capitalism, in general. I’m aware I’m part of it but I always tried to not be a part of that shitty system. I’m not buying a house, no car, no gas to buy, no superior education, no certifications or high paying job. I just wasted my “potential” and will continue to do so.

To me it looks like a big chuck of people have some sort of Stockholm syndrome towards capitalism and how our society makes us think this is some sort of meritocracy.

That being said, my behaviour can also be linked to my spicy brain. I’m probably neurodivergent but the health system where I live doesn’t help adults with that.

In short, I’m disappointed by what I see around me and I don’t want to join the game. I don’t want to join the competition of poors against poors

I’m not sure about the circlejerk thing. I am vehemently anti car and would like to circlejerk on one of the many “fuck cars” communities, but any post that gets some attention gets filled by comments of people not from those communities.

So I very often see posts where I agree with the content but the discussion and the comments are all over the place, from car apologists that are like “but IIIIIIIII live in the woods therefore public transit is not feasible for anyone”, and it makes “circlejerking” difficult.

Like, if you have a community about mushroom and want to have enthusiasts discussing mycology, it’ll be fine until a thread becomes popular and fills with users not from that community, asking what is mycology and why they should care.

To be honest, I had the same issue on reddit too and that’s a major reason why I stopped going there.

Sorry

You don’t even need to go live somewhere else; just visit.

I’m from Canada and went back to visit Germany and Belgium a few months ago. I already went to Germany and the Netherlands a few years ago and just used the trains. I had no fixed itinerary and was deciding where to go a day in advance before buying a train ticket to go there. It was obviously fine (most of the time) but because of how trains “work” here, I was anxious about buying tickets a day in advance, thinking it was “last minute”.

Then while I was in Belgium I had to plan a train ride in Canada a week later, and there was no affordable tickets left. I was sitting in Liège, and just bought a train ticket to Bruxelles that was departing in the next hour… while trying to book a train a week in advance in Canada, and failing to do so.

Every time I have to use a train in Canada, or just any kind or intercity service, even a coach, I’m painfully reminded of how bad it is here.

Nah. Not good enough for me. I thought I would just do that but the thing still has to boot android in order to show you the HDMI input. So it has to constantly suck power like a vampire in order to keep a SoC running, and if it loses power, it has to boot the system again.

I got a cheap TCL and it smells like burning plastic, even when its “off”. I suspect it’s because of that SoC constantly running.

Next time I’m buying a computer monitor instead of a smart-but-not-connected TV.

FYI, ‘fin’ is feminine. La fin du monde.

How’s it feel rest of the world? To have English seep into your language after so many centuries of only having your languages seep into English.

French:

Although, aside from the great vowel shift, we gladly contributed at fucking up English orthography.

I don’t know for dogs but I read that other species have different “accents” depending on their group and where they live.

Apparently, animals like dolphins, orcas and whales have different “accents”. And birds apparently also sign differently depending on their group and location.

Like, some ducks quack differently, from one region to another. I don’t think this can hamper simple communication, but there is apparently variation in their calls.

Is this more common with Tesla than other EVs?

Electric vehicles can catch fire if they are inundated by saltwater, though the problem is rare

It makes a good title, and I’m not really here to defend Tesla. I hate cars in general and I think we should have much much more public transit rather than push EVs on everyone, but won’t/couldn’t this kind of news dissuade some people from getting EVs, and make them think ICEs are safer?

I guess it’s good to let people know about that small possibility, but it shouldn’t deter efforts to move away from oil.

I face the same specific issue. I started with the French (Canada) layout years ago but now Windows sets the default to Multilingual/CSA because it has been made the official one by the government a number of years ago.

So now everyone that got used the “old” one has to fiddle with keyboard settings every time they use a new Windows session/computer.

And it’s not exactly a breeze to switch, as Windows often keeps the multilingual one and switches back to it when you use a different application. Gotta make sure to delete the multilingual and leave only one layout. It’s a real annoyance.

Well, the tower was also supposed to be temporary and yet, it’s still there 137 years later.

Why is it sad? No lawn to care about. No snow to remove in winter. No garbage day. No electricity bill. No roof or windows to change. No water heater to worry about.

I much prefer to rent than be stuck owning a condo where I have to deal with the other owners and plan maintenance. And I wouldn’t want an “affordable” house that is much too big, in a suburb or in the middle of nowhere, where a car would be a necessity, and another thing to own (or rather pay for).

As far as I am concerned, owning a home is a social construct. A goal imposed on us by capitalism. Our collective dream, should be to own a home in the middle of nowhere before we’re too old to have a family, with obviously, a car! But I never wanted to have a “death pledge”, nor a family, nor a house, nor a stupid condo. Renting is perfectly fine for a whole lot of people. It’s not something to be sad about. The only sad thing is that we don’t have enough cheap housing of any kind for everyone.

Around here we have “half furnished” apartments that include appliances.

I’ve always lived in a place where they are included with the rent. So I don’t have to move them up and down the stairs or the elevator every few years. Also, if they break, the landlord just change them.

To me, winning a refrigerator would be a burden. I’d have to store it and sell it. I’d prefer what it’s worth in money.

deleted by creator

Four to five weeks of vacation is pretty standard in Europe and I don’t think it has anything to do with productivity. AFAIK, a German or Belgian would pretty much get the same amount of vacation. I’m in Montreal and the standard by law here is two weeks but my contract with a local employer is giving me four weeks. And, I’m still working when I’m working, even if I have some vacation time at some point?!

I took eight weeks this year. So you’re saying I (or a French person?) am not getting anything done when I work, because I took some extended vacation time?

I know this behaviour from big corporations is not exclusive to French companies but my type of work allows me to work from home and I’ve never seen a company despise WFH so much than my once French employer.

This was before the pandemic and I had the habit of working from home with my previous employer when I was sick. When I changed employer to work for a French hosting company in Montreal, they were adamantly against WFH. Even if sick. They preferred that you missed a day (or two, you know, take your time to recover!1!!) from work, taking “generous” sick days, than letting anyone from the lower ranks WFH. This was a pretty big red flag for me. Anyway their work culture was pretty toxic and I ended up quitting after a few months, but the “no work from home even if sick” policy is the first thing that hit me when I started there.

My current employer allows me to WFH and I’ve been looking a bit around to see if I could find something else, but they mostly all seem to require some sort of hybrid schedules at the office now, which obviously sucks.

deleted by creator