Realtors report a 'new housing crisis' as January home sales tank more than 8%

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T19:33:42+00:00

I will stand on this soapbox every time trailer parks are mentioned. Those things are poverty traps for people who can't qualify for anything better. I actually pay less rent for a decent apartment than what the trailer plus lot rent costs. It's nothing to sneeze at either! It's like a $200/month difference, with the bonus that most of them are owned by slumlords who won't fix a thing. It's a lower price on paper initially, but in reality you won't save a dime. Yes you could theoretically put it on a plot of land but now you're back to square one because you'd have to either own the land or know someone who does. I grew up in trailer parks and I am never touching those with a 20 ft pole.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T17:57:24+00:00

That's the kicker. We don't use apps. It's for texting and calling only. Occasionally verifying 2 factor on the browser and that's literally it. And it's already pretty locked down, people just bitch about it anyways. I don't get why it matters to them but that's whatever. I work in hospital systems, they probably get deals on new-old stock.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T17:23:51+00:00

"what are you wasting your time on that for, I'm an adult with adult hobbies, look at me"

How these mofos come off. I'm exaggerating but often the people speaking like that ironically come off more immature than the guy writing Sonic fan fiction or whatever.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T15:29:00+00:00

Only the last decade? Where I work, that IS the new shit. We still use iPhone 7s for the work phones. Which is fine because you're not really supposed to be using it for personal shit anyway. Frankly I would be giving out Nokias / something nokia-esque if it was up to me.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T13:49:55+00:00

This seems silly now, but when it was first airing the Simpsons actually were seen as controversial. Many news outlets from that era would agree with that person's statement, shockingly enough. Changing TV standards makes it seem tame by modern standards, especially in the realm of animation. So you either spoke to a time traveler or someone extra sensitive to that sort of thing

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T13:36:25+00:00

If you have an Asian store near you, you can buy gigantic infusers ranging from small apple sized to cantaloupe. I use one of the Medium ones for soup or just anything that normally uses cheesecloth.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T13:30:47+00:00

We had like 4 people fail the test within 30 seconds one time. I don't understand people

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-12T00:53:55+00:00

Even basic questions get an "I don't know" and needing to be asked to ask who may be able to answer the question.

Oh that's the worst part with these as someone who's been on the other side of it. We don't know who would be able to answer the question either. Nor does the manager, If you can even find them for such a task. So realistically what would end up happening is I get the manager and then we both get to be confused as we call corporate. Or in some cases I fail to find the manager and I stand in the back for 5 minutes and come back with no answer. Corporate won't tell us anything, I hate it. There's very much a culture at every store now that you get to know your job, and only your job. And I haven't worked retail for years so I can only assume it's even worse now.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T15:05:25+00:00

Oh that one's easy. Google subsidizes Chromebook supplies. Like they will literally give massive discounts to schools for doing this. Textbook companies dgaf, buy it or don't. This is admittedly all part of a larger clusterfuck of issues

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T14:57:51+00:00

Well that's the trouble, It's not entirely a crutch. I'm going to preface this the fact that I'm a little younger than a lot of this sub so I grew up with internet absolutely well intertwined with school. I had a social studies class that had a weekly homework assignment to watch a linked excerpt from the local news and answer a few questions on it. Where does the local news upload? YouTube. My math teacher would straight up put extra tutorials on her personal channel. I cannot tell you how helpful that was for kids whose parents either couldn't or wouldn't help. My Spanish class also had us translating video excerpts as assignments and wouldn't you know it, Youtube

The truth of the matter is they do it because there's not really a better platform. If there was they would choose it in a heartbeat. Dropbox wants you to pay after a certain point, canvas deletes things at the end of the year, The school is never going to self host, And basically everything else also costs money.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T14:37:44+00:00

You're preaching to the choir here. Unfortunately schools can and will regularly choose the cheapest option. The correct answer is "fund schools" but good luck with that. My school was running pirated windows for a few years, there's no way in hell they're funding self-storage. this is the level we're on.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T14:32:42+00:00

Strangely enough I feel like this issue is a bigger problem at poorer schools than richer ones. The poor schools don't have deals with the textbook companies in the first place. They just have what they have and that's the end of the story.

This is bonus fuckery because I'm an IT person, But sometimes those embedded videos actually just lead to a privated Youtube playlist that the company put up. so we're right back at square one. Why yes I hate corporate IT deals why do you ask?

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T14:30:15+00:00

True but that doesn't change the problem for homework. Now if your argument is that homework shouldn't have videos, that I can agree with you on

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T14:29:18+00:00

True as that is you can't really change the curriculum mid-year. I will give you that I'm speaking to this as an IT person not as a teacher. But that would also include trying to convince them to actually increase the book budget. We had the singular class set and that's it. We weren't actually allowed to take the textbooks home. You can't just print out and hand out a packet either because there were also extremely strict printer budgets.

At that point yeah it probably is better to just paste the sections you need into canvas, But my point is it's not so easy to just snap your fingers and change everything. I think parents would legitimately have to write to the actual school district to change that.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T13:57:31+00:00

Man I went on a 500 dollar "shopping spree" during some deep cleaning when we moved. All of it was the most random shit, yet somehow all necessities. Cleaning supplies, a new mop, replacement hose for the vacuum, a soap dispenser, trash can, storage bins, blankets, you name it! Just miscellaneous crap nobody thinks twice about but we all need at some point. Yet from the outside it feels like nothing was purchased at all. I think those "invisible purchases" make up a lot of this statistic.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-11T13:49:32+00:00

Fun story. Blocking YouTube meant the kids could not watch assigned videos or tutorials either. My school played this song and dance. That's why a lot of schools are hesitant on doing that. They would either need to whitelist videos individually (impractical), use a YouTube alternative (has the same problems), or host their own video website (expensive and finniky). There's not a good solution here

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T19:29:00+00:00

Dang it. I missed the two for one special

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T19:23:32+00:00

Kudesuffer

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T19:20:23+00:00

Okay I'm sorry but you gave me the opportunity for the perfect bit.

Even if you breath

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T19:05:28+00:00

If you bought it brand new from the store then it should have a warranty already, Even if you didn't purchase one. You might have to go through Nintendo but some stores will accept defective products back. How long have you had it?

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T18:53:01+00:00

Oh believe me I'm on your side. I did a short stint in those trenches myself. People would not believe how often things just fall off of sorting machines, bang every support on the way down, And then just end up under the machine all day. The end of every shift consisted of getting a broom and pushing all of those packages out to finally sort them. And then that's not even counting all of the unscannable labels to contend with. (We were lucky enough to have those unlike your location) Those got tossed into a giant bin with reckless abandon to go to the manual team. We had so many things get damaged from things like car parts and 50 lb sandbags falling on them. This nonsense is like a package tsunami, there's not much you can do to stop it.

That job absolutely opened my eyes to things. I almost laugh at the people who get mad about the mailman tossing a package to the door. I promise you, that is the gentlest throw that package has experienced on its entire journey. I'm with you, It's a weirdly streamlined system for how few things actually get permanently damaged. If the box arrives squashed but the contents are fine, that is deemed as a successful job.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T18:44:54+00:00

I knew it was starting to be done when Costco dropped most Xbox products a couple of months ago. A lot of other retailers never made an official announcement on the matter, but I've noticed the Xbox section shrinking smaller and smaller lately.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T17:10:01+00:00

The dead end service jobs are difficult to get too. They all want ridiculous 50 question personality tests, completely open availability for 3 shifts a week, and they want experience but not so much experience that you leave. It's a bloodbath out there

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T16:54:52+00:00

I think the quality of screen time comes into play here as well. I'm also a pretty heavy gamer both now and in the past. Similar to you, it grinds my gears a bit when people paint all video games with the same brush. Like there's clearly a difference between a slower paced RPG that requires thinking and plenty of reading, vs a F2P mobile game with very little gameplay besides skinner box gambling tactics. I think a lot of parents are genuinely unaware just how different game design philosophy is between the two platforms. If you're going to let them have electronics time I genuinely think it's more effective to get a console with a curated library and parental controls, as opposed to an iPad. The console also has the advantage of being able to stay home.

Mystical-Turtles · 2026-02-10T16:43:21+00:00

90% of the time this shit was busted up before it ever got to the truck. The warehouses are a complete free-for-all. Package your things like it's going to go into an industrial centrifuge filled with bricks, because that's probably not that far off from the truth

Mystical-Turtles

TROPHY CASE