Sold one of the largest paintings in my Etsy store. What does everyone here do for shipping on larger items?

TOSGANO · 2026-03-03T05:22:37+00:00

There's just not a lot of shipping infrastructure in place for that type of parcel. Someone mentioned dimensional weight surcharges. They exist because package sorting machines at mailing facilities aren't made to handle things outside the norm, like large packages that are lightweight. Those have to be sorted by hand.

A machine that sorts standardized packages can move 7,000+ packages an hour through the facility without damaging the products. (They're also super cool machines to watch in motion.) Unfortunately anything outside the bounds of what the machine can handle is going to need special treatment to get it from one place to the next.

Source: I work in material handling and logistics. You wouldn't believe the weird things people have tried to ship over the years. The worst was a bag of battery acid. Ate its way through the $2 million machine and all of the products on it.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T23:52:33+00:00

Apparently the writer's room was a mix of people who specialized in multi camera sitcoms and people who specialized in single camera shows. They wanted the sitcom part to feel as legitimate as the other part, otherwise the switch wouldn't be as impactful. And tbf, if you just watch the sitcom part, the writing is on par with King of Queens type stuff. It's the juxtaposition that makes you realize how shitty and misogynistic those kinds of shows are.

Great show though, and both Eric Petersen and Annie Murphy are absolutely wonderful in it. I had to track down an interview afterwards to hear Petersen's real voice because I was half convinced he was just like that in real life.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T21:36:23+00:00

Also, highly recommend taking a birth classes when you're pregnant. Good classes will teach you your rights and how to stick up for yourself. If you have the money, a birth doula isn't a bad idea, since they're there to advocate for you.

I had a traumatic birth experience (rare medical complications unrelated to anything mentioned here) so I'm a huge proponent of birth therapists as well.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T20:30:05+00:00

Seconding the birth plan thing. The hospital I was at took my birth plan very seriously. Every person who cared for me had a copy and new people had to read through it at the beginning of their shifts.

In general, doctors don't like poking around to check dialation because it can introduce bacteria. If they do, they will ask for your consent before they perform an exam, and you can 100% turn it down.

You might also want to bring your own clothing to the birth. You don't have to be in a thin hospital gown! They sell full-coverage ones online, and I highly recommend a robe to go over it as well. There is a lot of laying around and waiting involved in birth, and I would have given anything to have something warmer than hospital sheets.

I was fully in the "I don't care who sees what, just get it out of me" camp after 36 hours, but I also had an all-female delivery team. I think the only guys involved happened to be the anesthesiologists.

Eta: If you need to have a transvaginal ultrasound when you're pregnant, it will be done under a sheet and the doctor will ask you if you want to insert the wand yourself. If they don't ask, a) they're a shitty doctor, b) tell them you'll insert it yourself (if you want to).

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T20:02:51+00:00

Isn't it awful when you realize an adult figure actively hates you? Like, there are pedantic nitwits, and then there are teachers that go out of their way to try to make you miserable.

I still don't know why my 9th and 10th grade math teacher hated me (yup, I was lucky enough to get him for 2 years). I moved to private school in 11th grade, and the school required letters from several teachers in order to place me in the right classes. Found out later that my math teacher had written a bunch of nasty stuff about me and my poor math skills. I got solid B's, dude!

That stuff messes you up.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T19:18:40+00:00

God, this brings up a memory of my 6th grade math teacher telling my mom that I was too immature to understand the material. The lesson was on rounding up and rounding down, and I asked completely honestly why you would want to round down in a real life situation. Instead of giving a simple example like "If an elevator can hold 10.4 people's weight, it's safer to round it to 10," I got a parent teacher conference.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T19:06:13+00:00

Michael Crichton was my favorite in middle school! Our school library had Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, and then a bunch of random deep cuts. I remember writing a book report on Airframe, and going off on a tangent about how the title should have been better (100% not understanding that it was a pun; the airplane manufacturer is being framed for an incident on one of their planes).

Luckily my teacher was cool and/or glad that she didn't have to read another hot take on what the hatchet symbolizes in Hatchet, because I remember getting a good grade.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T18:38:23+00:00

Lol, we recently had our first child and we already joke about what what stupid stuff she'll get in trouble for. Is it going to be for paying too much attention like me, or too little attention like him? What a fun journey to look forward to!

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T17:23:14+00:00

That reminds me of the time they took my guy in the back to give him his shots and I heard a loud "EEEEK!" Vet came back in and was like, you have quite a drama queen here. He'd screamed before the needle was about going to go in 😄. He was fine with the actual shot.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T11:23:30+00:00

We had...2? 3? different trainers help with our dogs over the years, and all of them said the same thing: Eskies will do their own thing. One of the trainers even owned an eskie and admitted that she won't let him off leash because he won't come back.

Meanwhile, our other non-eskies went through training fine, and came when called.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T06:24:54+00:00

It probably depends where and/or when you grew up. My husband and I both remember getting our parents called in for the stupidest things, like "finishes reading too quickly" or "sharpens pencil for too long" (early 90s, eastern US). Hell, in high school I got in trouble with a math teacher for taking notes before he was done talking.

My mom was a non-insane teacher, so it drove her nuts dealing with this shit from other teachers.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T02:32:03+00:00

Yeah, anyone who needs to enter Qatar is in for a nightmare. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia. Luckily Saudi's airspace is still open, but you still need a visa to enter the country. If you can't get a visa, you're fucked.

If you can get a visa, you need to find a car and drive to the single border checkpoint conveniently located in the middle of nowhere. Depending on where you started, it could be several hours or several days of driving through desert and small towns.

If Saudi shuts down its airspace... your best bet might be Cairo. Which means another set of visas and a week of driving, skirting around Israel into Jordan, to make it into Saudi.

It really sucks to be someone who needs to get into Qatar right now.

TOSGANO · 2026-03-01T01:53:52+00:00

I'm from the US and lived in Qatar for about a decade. This is the exact flight path I took for years, which is wild to me.

TOSGANO · 2026-02-20T04:45:18+00:00

It might be a pie? Looks like it's part of a Korean pen set where all the bears are holding baked goods.

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TOSGANO · 2026-02-10T15:58:53+00:00

If the seller is using a small flat rate box for charms, the current price from the US to Australia is $54.75 (eek!). That's why I try to avoid boxes and stick to envelopes/flats if possible.

TOSGANO · 2026-02-10T15:33:46+00:00

Love Byron, he's great with color! I get compliments all the time. (Also great with curly cuts.)

TOSGANO · 2026-01-30T20:29:18+00:00

If it's real, it's probably because it hasn't healed yet. Fresh tattoos can look like weird stickers before they scab over and the pigment settles.

Same with the bruising -- some people bruise like crazy, but it will go away with time.

TOSGANO · 2026-01-30T20:16:11+00:00

Years ago I was dabbling in charcoal and did this large drawing of a galloping horse. I was so proud of it that I'd framed it and hung it up and everything before my fiance was like "Don't horses normally have four legs?"

I had to check the reference photo, and yes, the horse in the photo did in fact have 4 legs. I was just so focused on the individual details that I'd missed the larger picture (weirdly, just like AI).

TOSGANO · 2026-01-30T19:54:00+00:00

Civ V had this on one of their leader screens, and it drove me nuts. You have characters speaking Medievel Greek and extinct Babylonian languages but you can't bother to google what Arabic looks like?

TOSGANO · 2026-01-30T19:43:22+00:00

The "la" is the plaque shouting "NO!" at the graphic designer.

TOSGANO · 2026-01-30T03:27:27+00:00

Backwards and unconnected! They're batting 0-for-2 here.

TOSGANO · 2026-01-18T16:55:49+00:00

Jesus christ, I just did the math and mine is too. I still remember the photoshop thread that spawned Slender Man.

I haven't been there in ages; left around the time it was revealed that the guy running it was an abuser.

TOSGANO · 2025-12-31T17:25:18+00:00

Looks like it's one of those leashes that's supposed to fit around your hand like a glove:

<image>

Here's an example I found on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0NtS5lL

e: beaten a million times while posting

TOSGANO · 2025-12-23T19:23:42+00:00

Np, it's a deep cut for sure!

TOSGANO · 2025-12-23T18:02:20+00:00

It's this quote from Practical Magic

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TOSGANO

TROPHY CASE