[R+D] What Product Would You Pay $10 to Defund On KickStopper?

@Cerridwyn Sanofi, Novo Nordisk (Vyera filled for chapter 11, but they’ll probably come back)

Plenty of people i’d pay to kick too.

@Cerridwyn @pakopako ooh KickPeople

@Cerridwyn @jouest @pakopako If the $10 is to kick people directly I will get a second job to complete my list.

@jouest @pakopako @yakkoTDI
Ya know, if it were that easy, you wouldn’t really need much, because they would quickly run scared

@Cerridwyn @jouest @yakkoTDI hogties

@Cerridwyn Nestle. Cutting people off from water is pure evil.

@blaineg @Cerridwyn I’ve been waiting for a chance to use this one…

@MrGoodGuy shhhh

@phendrick At work I have to answer all phone calls that come in because about 5% of them are legit people that needed to call. Since I’m getting older but not growing up I sometimes mess with the scammers a little. Currently my favorite are the ones offering insurance to cover end of life costs-I ask if the cover cremation expenses, if they’ll cover that for others than just me, and how many cremations a year they’ll pay for. That’s as far as I’ve ever been able to get with that line-they always hang up there.

@algae1221 I usually lose them at the point when they ask me how I’m doing today and I reply that yesterday I was constipated so drank a glass of mineral oil but now I have diarrhea.

@algae1221 @phendrick My favorite junk call entertainment is to answer, then before they get into their spiel I say: “Hang on, the battery in this handset is about dead - let me grab another one.” Then I put the mic on mute and listen. I’ve had a few of them hold for over a minute before cursing and hanging up.

@algae1221 @macromeh @phendrick you still get human ones?

@macromeh @pakopako @phendrick If I suspect a scam I like to request verification that the caller is human by asking them to repeat the phrase “monkey nostrils.” Computers either can’t or won’t do it and half the humans refuse to. The other day one of them asked if I always say that to everyone so I asked him if I’ve said it to him before and he said I had

@algae1221 @macromeh @pakopako @phendrick That’s good!

For web bots “Say potato if you’re not a bot” seems to be effective.

@algae1221 @pakopako @phendrick
Well, I hesitate to call them “human” but they’re not machines.

@kittykat9180 maybe we could just defund corporate greed instead?

@sillyheathen if only I had a magic wand.

@kittykat9180 I have a lathe… once the less murdery shed is complete, I can make you one.

@sillyheathen but will it have magic?

@kittykat9180 only one way to find out!

@sillyheathen how?

@kittykat9180 @sillyheathen

@kittykat9180 @pakopako I mean I know I called it the murder shed, but I never actually sacrificed anything other than my own sweat and tears.

@kittykat9180 @pakopako @sillyheathen But no blood? That’s one of the things I usually give up while working on a project. (I help keep the band-aid makers in business.)

@kittykat9180 @macromeh @pakopako thankfully no major injuries when it comes to the table, band or scroll saws. Well any major power tool actually. Usually I cut myself with the Stanley knife sharpening a pencil or get a splinter from throwing wood around without gloves on.

@kittykat9180 @pakopako @sillyheathen

Related?

@blaineg @kittykat9180 @pakopako yeah my dad was laid off as an electrical engineer in the oil field for 45 years a few months before his official retirement. He lost his very healthy retirement package for a month of salary, a few months of cobra and a commemorative belt buckle. Again. Defund corporate greed. Or just greed in general.

@blaineg @kittykat9180 @sillyheathen
There used to be a site called Despair.com that put out these demotivational posters (though it might be demotivation now).

There’s a bit of irony when it comes to funding the ability to defund greed. It’s like it takes evil to fight evil; you just have to hope your evil™ goes away and doesn’t usurp Evil-classic (or a new thing fills the vacuum left instead of a change to the system). It’s really difficult to get common sense around (raising the bar).

@kittykat9180 @pakopako @sillyheathen That’s one of Despair’s, and they’re still in business.

One of my unfulfilled life goals is to replace some of the motivational posters in the conference rooms with Demotivators, and see if anyone notices.

@blaineg @kittykat9180 @sillyheathen
/image hang in there kitty

“Hang in there!” (Or hang together)

@kittykat9180 @pakopako @sillyheathen This one in particular.

@blaineg @kittykat9180 @sillyheathen
Such a majestic trash panda

@lisagd22 Yes, but I’d exempt SpaceX. I really like living through a second space age.

@blaineg @lisagd22 Temu space age, maybe.

@brainmist @lisagd22 Hardly, the Falcon 9 is the most launched (second place is pretty much “everything else in the world combined”) and most reliable rocket in history. Don’t confuse Starship/Superheavy development with Falcon 9 production.

Initially SpaceX speculated they might get 10 launches before retiring a Falcon 9 booster. A single booster made its 30th launch and landing last week.

Falcon 9 had plenty of “failures” in development, and a lot of people were laughing them, and saying rocket landing and reuse was impossible. And it was.

Until it wasn’t.

Now everyone else is trying to catch up, or making excuses for disposable rockets. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is probably the furthest along, but it has had a single launch to date. So they’ve caught up to where Falcon 9 was 15 years ago. And BO was founded two years before SpaceX. Their biggest mistake was hiring an “old space” guy as the boss. And he did a fine job of hobbling BO’s progress and making sure it ran as slowly as old space development programs. Their recent progress has happened since they replaced him.

Starship’s development is following Falcon 9’s pattern: Build hardware, fly it, fix what needs fixing and fly again. It’s been referred to as “hardware rich” development. There have been kabooms, but there’s also been a lot of progress. The last 2-3 test flights were failures even by SpaceX’s standards, as the Starships were lost before they got to test the new stuff. But test flight 10 was a full success.

Once operational, Starship will change everything about throwing stuff into space. The payload capacity is so huge that space scientists are going to have a field day designing new probes, telescopes, and rovers to take advantage of it. The fun is just beginning.

Got three minutes?

@brainmist @lisagd22 Yea, I’m a space nut. You don’t want to get me started on motorcycles either.

@ItalianScallion Yikes!!!

@ItalianScallion holy balls! I’m so glad I didn’t fund the most recent one I was going to pay for if that’s the case. Guess I need to do more reading before I consider that. I’ve always known it can be a risk. It’s why I didn’t buy the GF when it was on kickstarter. Too much money to tie up and not receive something. That’s bananas! Thanks for the heads up. I have more due diligence to do now.

@Kidsandliz Yikes, indeed. A recent project I backed cost me about $70 plus $15 shipping from China. The creator wouldn’t reply to backer inquiries about tariff costs and when they finally did they said they would cover up to a certain amount and then “ask” us to pay the rest. They wouldn’t give any details about how much the tariffs were, but billed us in the app used to typically collect shipping costs after pledges closed about $35 as “taxes” and $0 as “tariffs.” They still wouldn’t explain how they came up with that amount, what it was, and who it was paid to. I decided to wait it out and see what happened and one day the product arrived even though I hadn’t given in to their unexplained fee. I still get a reminder once in a while that I need to pay the fee, but I ignore them and nothing has happened. I’m done with that creator, of course, and done with Kickstarter until they get their together about tariffs.

@ItalianScallion @sillyheathen GF? They’re doing a kickstarter for girl friends?

@blaineg @sillyheathen Since so many Kickstarter projects are created in China/Hong Kong, I wonder if that’s true with the girlfriends too?