I really think it would be a great movie plot. Could even be a slasher film.

Yeah, it’s very similar, but at home in the US I can think of a few situations where it might be ok to say it looks bad from my personal life.

It’s not really transactional. It’s just a situation where you got left out of the birthday and happened to go out to the same place where the birthday is being celebrated. However, it’s interesting to note that there is no such thing as a surprise birthday party. The birthday boy or girl is the one that throws the party because of the reciprocity aspect. You wouldn’t be caught dead attending a birthday without a present for the person whose birthday it is. You also wouldn’t be caught dead letting people bring you birthday presents AND buying you dinner. It’s more like “tit for tat” than “transactional.”

In the USA, the birthday thing is the best thing about the USA. It’s all about being selfless (I’m American btw, been living in Spain for so long I’m a citizen) and it’s actually something that creates conflict in interpersonal relationships between natives of Spain and the friends they make that are not from here. It is a huge drama that somebody needs to make a documentary film about now. This birthday thing has no age. It could be a 20th birthday or a 100th birthday. You ain’t invited, you didn’t know, you didn’t bring the presents, you just keep to yourself in the public venue. It’s harsh. It’s harsh because you were excluded and you don’t care, because you’re American, you just want to be nice and wish them a happy birthday. Spanish people are all nope on that shit. It’s all about the presents and who bought you the drinks and food.

It’s more like after they bought the new clothes. Like, your friend bought new clothes and wants to show you what they bought. It could be a friend, a brother, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, anybody. While shopping for clothes, before they buy the clothes, is the right time to criticize. It’s perfectly acceptable, and desired, to be out shopping and trying on clothes before buying them, to say whatever you like. “That makes your ass look huge, don’t buy that!” is desired, not discouraged. Never trust the salesperson. The employee of the store is going to tell you it all looks good so you buy it, even if it looks bad. They even try to sell you more crap, saying things go together when they don’t. I’m talking about after they bought the clothes and they’re showing you what they bought because you’re their friend or relative or whatever.

Just misunderstanding social cues. Where I live (Spain), there’s a script you’re supposed to follow for certain things and newcomers, understandably, don’t understand the script. One famous example is buying new clothes. They all look great on. The idea here is that the poor person spent their hard-earned money on the new clothes. Damned right they look great on! Another would be birthdays celebrated in public venues. Perhaps someone you know is celebrating their birthday in a public venue and you had no idea they were celebrating their birthday on that day. You walk up to them and wish them a happy birthday, BUT you were not invited to this celebration. Since you weren’t invited you did not come prepared with a present for the birthday person. The safe thing to do is to ignore, socialize with the people you came with, and make like that person isn’t even there until they approach YOU. When and if they approach you, you make pretend you’re all distracted and you have to be like, “Ahhh! I didn’t see you! What’s up?” The reason: that person is buying all the invitees the drinks and food. In exchange, the invitees have brought presents. It’s a very nuanced and weird situation all of us have encountered. We err on the fear of not having brought a present because we had no idea because we were not invited.

Yeah. When I was using windows I just refused to install adobe and used Firefox as my default pdf viewer. It took me some time to figure it out. Adobe doesn’t care that they invented the pdf last Millenium. They just want in on the Microsoft bucks. Those two must have some boardroom deal.

Was it ever cool garbage, or even temperate garbage?

Exactly. Ya know, I had this one game I liked. Kept me dual booting until I finally got it working on Linux. Single boot now. Linux forever. I am now the owner of multiple computers and not a single one has Windows installed. It feels good. And it was worth all the time and effort I put into figuring out how to make it work to eliminate that one corner of my house that still had windows on it, advertising to me and pulling this shit. Linux just keeps getting better. People just gotta get behind it and learn to troubleshoot to keep themselves free from this kind of bullshit.

This already happens with other file types. For example, if you click something from your widgets, it is a file type that forces Edge to be opened. Other browsers can’t open it. Microsoft is trying to make Edge its new Internet Explorer. I mean, just click on the Weather widget. See what app opens. Try to make another browser open it by default. You can’t on Windows 11. Smells like anti-trust courtroom action, take three.

The problem is the opposite. People are still going to the cinema. If they didn’t, cinemas wouldn’t get away with this crap. They would either go away or knock it off.

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The funny thing about Twitter for me is that I think I have a Twitter account and it’s kind of like floating out there since 2010 or so. I never bothered with it. It was so tedious for me. I’m actually surprised about all this Twitter news now. I never actually could “get” Twitter as a social media platform. So, I don’t know. I dislike the man. I can’t remember my password. If it goes away I guess my internet security is better off.