I’m with y’all there. On top of dealing with customers, it was pretty gross work: dumping the sticky bins when the bottle return was full; Mopping up messes; Emptying trash and throwing it in the compactor. Weather permitting, carts were definitely the easiest.

Going for stray carts at the outer edges = quiet walk without any customers or managers.

Wait and hope. I’ve long struggled with suicidal ideation, and I continue to work on it. I don’t know you and I know you’re not asking for for suggestions, but I can’t see someone else struggling this way and say nothing.

The economic system is fucked, so fitting in is not necessarily a good thing. “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” I know there are real financial pressures and struggles, I don’t mean to minimize that, but thinking “I will participate as little as necessary” instead of “I’m not doing well at their game” has helped me find a sense of worth outside “success.” Without you our team gets smaller. I think there are a lot of us, we just haven’t had great ways to organize, but I see even being able to connect here on lemmy as a reason to hope.

As for what to do, doing nothing is better than doing something in an unjust system. Some of the things that have helped me: going to the library and walking the isles looking subjects that interest you (while we’re on the subject, might I recommend “How to do Nothing” by Jenny Odell); Finding a natural space or park that you can go for a quiet walk; Working on personal projects, drawing, writing, etc which can come from and feed into time at the library.

I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds. I know when you’re feeling hopeless, suggestions can feel like a condescending nuisance. I hope this is not that. I hope you hang on. We need more people who can see this is bullshit.

First of all, thank you for replying. There’s probably many on the subject who would down vote a counter point without even reading, let alone replying.

it opens up the “well since he put the cart wherever he wanted I can do the same” mindset

This seems to make multiple incorrect assumptions:

1. there’s not already multiple carts that could inspire that mindset. There’s usually many out of place for much longer. This cart was literally there for less than 15 seconds.
2. people are biased towards replicating negative behavior. As I said, I grabbed the cart on my way in, but that won’t inspiring order the way leaving it inspires chaos?
3. most people are unable to differentiate between where a cart is easy to grab and where it’s just going to linger or get in the way. I know I’m not the only one grabbing carts on my way in. It doesn’t take years of cart collecting to notice.

I feel depressed when I see assumptions that seem to view people as really dumb and requiring hard-line, no-exceptions rules. It gets uncomfortably close to an authoritarian worldview. I wrote my previous reply because, while I believe people should put their carts back, and model that behavior myself, I also believe things are rarely black and white and it’s valuable to interrogate when that might be.

Edit: add opening thanks

Okay, at the risk of down votes, I’ll take the bait.

My first job was more than 3 years of collecting carts. In that time it’s easy to see patterns like where carts often end up. Some are left out in the open, near a slope where the slightest breeze will animate it. Others pushed up on the sidewalk to the side of the store where there’s not much traffic and they just pile up. And others still will be left along a common walking path, not blocking the path, secure but not stuck.

Those last ones often take care of themselves because so many people walk along that path, it’s trivial to grab it on your way in, and it’s faster than pulling a cart backwards out of the entryway where they’re stored.

Years later, I’m picking up something for my nephew’s birthday party. I park the car. There’s a cart in the position mentioned above: on my way, not blocking anyone, secure but easy to grab. So I grab it, walk inside, do my shopping, come out, unload it. Nearest return is back inside the store, or I can put it back where I found it securely, along the way, but out of the way. I choose the latter. Before I even get in my car someone has grabbed the cart on their way in.

I fail to see the problem. However, the person who grabbed the cart was talking loudly to her grandchild so I could hear, “his legs must be broken since he can’t put the cart back” 😤

TL;DR In a post about returning your carts, a job which I had for over 3 years, the most obnoxious person I encountered was not someone who put their cart in the wrong place, but a passive-aggressive, self-righteous, loudmouth who was so narrow minded they couldn’t see there are spots carts can be left that save both parties time and create no additional work, even as she benefitted.

Same. Lots of systems and a place for everything. EG if I leave the room and want to remember what I was doing when I got back, it’ll be the one thing that’s out of place and somewhere obvious. Unfortunately, it’s easily thrown off by others who forget to put stuff back.

What’s your relationship with travel? I struggle to pack up and mobilize so many systems. It’s been getting better as I develop travel-specific solutions (like having a dedicated toiletries bag that remains packed).

Potassium is also an important electrolyte for heart health, so have a banana with your salt water, if you can. source: https://www.cdc.gov/salt/sodium-potassium-health/index.html

To add another layer: allowing homelessness is one of the most widespread and visible acts of violence perpetrated by the state, supported by the market, and accepted-- or at least tolerated-- by most of the public. I wonder if institutions don’t address it because scares people into obedience.

Reflect on the focus of violence in stories about slavery. Hypothetically, without violence, slavery is still awful: robbing a human of their autonomy, spending their lives bettering the lot of those in power rather than their own. But we focus on the violence, not only because of the obvious, visible horror, but because you can’t rob someone of their autonomy without violence.

When it comes to homelessness, the violent act is not only inaction: failing to address risks and pitfalls, or add safety nets (focusing on growth, instead), but also what your original post is about: removing public facilities, forcing people to play the line-go-up game in order to have nice things, lest they have a string of bad luck and end up on the street, exposed to the elements.

The state and market didn’t cause the blizzard that may kill unhoused people, but they did nothing to try to get them out of its path. Isn’t that the purpose of these institutions? Yet homelessness is everywhere and it makes being unemployed all the more terrifying-- to be that much closer to the streets. “Better to take what you can get,” participate in an unjust market or it could be you.

I know it has a cult following, but in case there are others who are like me: I had hard time getting into King of the Hill when it aired. I’m really glad I gave it another shot. Most episodes are solid with great character moments, and a handful are right up there with the best of Simpsons and Futurama.

Side note: the game “Baba is you” was named after this effect, and features a character named kiki.

From my research, Patreon takes a smaller cut than YouTube Premium. Comparing YouTube Premium to its own ad model is a “Worst Negates the Bad” fallacy. From what I gathered (not easy to find and has changed over time) YT takes 30% from the former and 45% from latter. Seems insanely high. More than taxes. May be why so many creators need sponsors and hawk merch.

YouTube never supporting 3rd party apps seems like a negative.

Lots of suitable alternatives to youtube: read a book, listen to music, go for a walk, hang with friends, play games, etc, but to your point, sounds like a monopoly. Their search was once great, then ubiquitous, now terrible. YouTube Premium is just in the “entice users and creators” phase of its inevitable enshittification.

Don’t mean to dump on something you like, just disagree with the reasoning. If you’re not fine with Premium and hate giving money to google, sounds like you’ll eventually seek out alternatives when they go into profit maximization mode. Hopefully enough resources will have been invested in viable alternatives by that time.

[edit: break wall of text]

Happy to see it get love and spread the word. alternativeto.net is my go to. Worthy of muscle memory. I’ve also found great options in the awesome lists on github. Especially awesome self-hosted if we’re talking software. I thought I remember an alternativeto-like site geared towards cli, but I couldn’t find it last time I looked. LMK if that rings a bell for anyone.

I had a similar change of heart years ago, watching a docu-series on PBS and realizing I wanted more of that content in the world. Even though you can stream PBS for about $5 a month, I canceled Netflix so I could pay PBS $20 a month to start making up for all the time my money was flowing in the wrong direction.

We’re likely to get more of the things we invest in, and less of the things we don’t. That investment includes attention in ad-driven market, not only money.

I know I’m not the first person on lemmy to have this realization, it’s one of the many reasons I like it here.

I’ve had audio sync issues on kodi myself-- specifically osmc on Vero V which is optimized for playback. I tried checking my notes, because it was some time ago. Nothing definitive, but it may have been related to a random crashing issue that turned out to be a bad hdmi port-- which was the last thing I considered checking after triple checking everything else. Anyway, good luck with the troubleshooting. Audio sync issues are a pain but I can also attest yt-dlp has been solid.

downvotes? I’m guessing you may have offended some folks by badmouthing their favorite toy.

I’ve enjoyed Zim in the past but not being able to access it on mobile caused me to migrate. Do you have a way to access your notes on the go?

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. My only source of income for more than a decade has been creating media that people stream or watch in theaters, so I must disagree. Under the current capitalist system, people do get paid, but I’m with you that it’s exploitative. People commonly burnout and run themselves ragged trying to make ends meet. I know I did.

I’m skeptical that piracy hurts CEOs and shareholders as much as you think it does. Piracy is nothing new-- CEO wages and capitalism doesn’t seem to care. Those with power can increase prices on paying customers, decrease employee wages or headcounts, and/or start legally pursue pirates. The latter being least relevant to my point, but with digital steganography, watermarking, intrusive tracking, and corporate-friendly laws (see post)-- it’s worth making clear that CEOs and shareholders have plenty of tools already in place to make themselves whole. Heck, pirate from Prime Video and Bezos can increase AWS rates and extract it back from most folks via services they (or their families) do pay for.

Not to say it’s hopeless. I’d like to shine a gigantic spotlight on your last sentence:

indy games/music/etc bought directly from the creators

That’s the way forward. Heck, toss it on a jellyfin server and share it with a few close friends and family. The knowledge gap to do that is shrinking. When many folks know someone who knows how to host, they can start pooling their resources.

The false dichotomy of stream vs pirate mentioned in my first reply could be rephrased as: spending money and attention on media giants vs spending just attention on them. Why not spend neither money nor attention on media giants? Save it for individuals and small teams making cool things. That creates a market and draws in more people to make more cool things and does more damage than piracy. Personally, I don’t see anything on Disney+ (or prime, netflix, etc) worth prolonging the current state of media, so I don’t waste any time on it. I’ve come across a lot of good books, music, and inexpensive hobbies to fill the void in the meantime.

TL;DR: Current state of media sucks, but pays more than pirates. More pirates not paying is not as effective as retraining money and attention. If a pirate occasionally goes through the extra steps to pay someone instead of finding a torrent link, they’re still dedicating significant time engaging with the winners of the current capitalist system instead of seeking out and boosting better, lesser known options. It drags out the current state instead of nurturing existing solutions.

I agree with (and experience) the problems surrounding access to media that you described, but I would also describe myself as pretty anti-piracy. You can be anti-middleman and anti-rent-seeking without being pro-piracy. While piracy circumvents the problems you mentioned, the question it leaves unanswered is how the creator of the pirated media will afford basic necessities like food and shelter. Alternatives to streaming are scarce, but they do exist-- especially DRM-free music and books. These are not static systems. The market will follow the money, so if folks buy into the false dichotomy of stream vs pirate, industry will continue to invest in DRM and anti-piracy measures and creators will continue to submit to streaming services / media silos. I’d prefer a system with as few layers as possible between creator and consumer. Piracy only offers a solution for the latter.