Car sales ads with a HUGE signing payment- "You can get this $60000 2026 Bronto with only $100 a month- for 60 months, and a up front payment of $59999!
Two of the things that infuriate me well beyond their actual importance came together in a YouTube ad. The first is the robot voice that’s all over YouTube. I watch an unhealthy amount of YouTube and that voice is everywhere. I actually get pissed when I hear it. The other thing that bugs me is when a person is talking to you through the camera, and then they switch to a side camera and the person continues to look straight ahead. And then they go back to the regular camera. Even trump was doing it in some of his campaign videos. Now there’s an ad for something to do with wine, and it’s pure AI of a bearded guy from the side as he’s looking straight ahead, and they use that robot voice.
On TV, the little ads that show up for another show the network is plugging, that are on the bottom of the screen during another show. CBS does this far too often. Those ads make us want to NOT watch whatever show is being plugged.
I cooked up some “Marry Me Gnocchi” last night, but it turned out to be more of a mercy fuck.
Just curious, how did that go? That was a rather bold move and I am impressed
I find that a good fucking helps clear things up
A fucking while
A fucking lot
Ambiguity eliminated
Recipes that give volumetric measurements for vegetables, e.g. 1/2 cup chopped celery, 1 cup chopped onion, etc. I find it much more useful when they just give a quantity of the vegetable, like 2 stalks of celery, 1 large onion. The slight variations in size isn’t going to make much difference. Also, it tells me the recipe writer trusts you to use your brain and figure out that the small inner stalks of celery are smaller than what they meant, so you should probably use more of them, or if you have a super gargantuan onion maybe you don’t need to use the whole thing.
Huh. I prefer volumes, exactly because I don’t have to try to figure out how large a stalk of celery or an onion they think I should use.
Of course, as you say, it usually doesn’t make too much difference.
Two things about my wife’s mobile phone usage. One, her battery always seems low, like she doesn’t even pay attention until it’s down in the teens. And she never turns her display off before sticking it back in her purse. Not sure why either of those drive me nuts, but they do.
I am sure I mentioned it upthread, but I am really struggling with the lackadaisical attitude toward communication among many younger folks.
One of my bandmates has a dream. She wants to record some music videos, and her technique is for us to record a studio perfect version (just a trio this time…piano, drums, bass) and show up at a cool venue and play our instruments for real for the video while listening to the golden mix, then swap in the golden mix during post.
I feel like I am pushing the stone of Sisyphus uphill every single day on this.
Not only is she (the pianist and most critical person involved) leaving the country at the end of the month, but my drummer isn’t answering any texts about when he will bring a kit over to my house where I set up a studio in a spare room.
Pianist’s husband does all of her post processing, and he provided the three songs she had performed, perfectly recorded for us to use…but they have an intense amount of reverb.
I ask him “Can you send me the dry mix for them. We have to wait to get our parts into the mix, and then we use reverb to tie it all together, as if we were in the same room”
“Sure thing,” he says. That was Thursday. No response from him since them. I have prodded, and no response.
Admittedly, I am treating this as a work project, expecting work teammates to collaborate and reply within the hour, but on this personal project (again, it’s for our pianist), I feel that my workplace team in India who never replies within the same day is more responsive to questions.
Pianist asked me a technical question yesterday and I said “no, I don’t think so…” but then I spent an hour in Reaper trying experiments and came back with a good demo, and sent multiple messages saying “You are good to go. Do it exactly as you planned” because I fear she reads the first thing and ignores the rest. I don’t want to waste time because she thought it was not possible. Still no response from her.
Darn it, it sucks dealing with people who just don’t make communication a priority!
And the answer from anyone is always “I’m so busy, I don’t have a chance to go through all of my texts…sorry.”
Especially infuriating when you know they spend all their time just checking their texts…
So I bought a pistol. Sig Sauer. Good stuff. It came with a little lock box for it. Good idea.
They locked the instructions on how to use the safe it in the safe. Ummm… 
I got it open, cause, well default codes are usually something like 1,2,3,4 (as was the case). But really. Come on. The gun and lock box/safe was $1200.
I’ve been seeing videos in my newsfeed which I find very annoying. They are for supposedly Easy and quick to prepare breakfast foods. Prepared in a large skillet and big enough to feed a small army, using dozens of ingredients and apparently taking an hour or more to prepare. That is not an easy and quick to prepare food.
Granted, only the first serving takes that long to prepare, but I’m unlikely to eat the whole thing in less than a week. There’s no way I’m going to make that stuff. Cold cereal takes about a minute to prepare and oatmeal takes not much more.
Cooking lite magazine is the same way. “Only three steps!”
Step 1 -
- Grow wheat
- Grind into flour
- Make bread
Yes, of course I exagerate, but sheese. Easy my ass.
It reminds me of my mom when I compliment something she’s cooked. “Oh, you could make this. It’s easy. All you have to do is … some 14-step process that features melon ballers, and garlic presses and clove hitches or whatever esoteric kitchen implement I’d never own, along with directions to drain, and braise, and poach, and grate, and whisk, and beat, and fold.” I could never pulled it off in a million years.
I always bring my plastic bags to Target to put in their recycling collection bin*. Lately, like since California banned plastic bags altogether and stores started giving out paper bags instead, I’ve noticed people have started putting paper bags in the plastic bag recycling bin. It annoys me enough when people put random trash in the recycling; I assume those people just don’t care and just put their trash in the first bin they see without paying attention to what it’s for. But now it seems like people are intentionally putting their paper bags there, like they think it’s the general bag recycling bin regardless of material, even though it’s labeled “plastic bags/films”. If these people are genuinely trying to recycle paper bags, they can be placed in your household recycling bin, just like a cardboard box. There’s no need to bring them to the store for recycling like with plastic bags.
*Yes, I know there are potentially issues with plastic recycling. But I’ve been trained to not put them in the trash and it’s a hard habit to break.
Seat belts that don’t fully retract, and just hang down so you slam the door on them.
That annoys me also, sometimes I try to fix it, but usually after a can or two I give up.
The plastic recycling here in the UK is appalling/disgusting.
It’s decades since I first heard of the problem with plastics, and
since then, retailers now charge 5/10p per plastic bag, and.. that’s it.
I buy supermarket brand peanuts and cashews. The cashew packet says
to “recycle at supermarket”, the peanut packet says “not recycled”.
Same with rice. One flavor’s packet is recyclable, another’s isn’t. Because
they just don’t care and there are no rules or guidelines.
The whole “bring your clean plastic grocery bags back to the store and put them in the recycling bin there” thing never made any sense to me. If you’ve brought your clean grocery bags back to the store — why not just take them in and use them for your shopping? The store can’t take them to put other people’s groceries in; but there’s nothing stopping them or you from re-using them for your own next load. Except the plastic industry’s desire to sell the store a new set, of course.