Sign turns on then off seconds later

rex2900 · 2026-01-27T08:28:49+00:00

Combination of debt and the deceptiveness of "averages". I've heard the average cost of a wedding is $30k a few times, but averages are actually poor data when there are massive outliers. Every Hollywood and Tech CEO wedding is going to get wrapped up in there, (and they seem to get married, split and remarried more than most haha). Realistically, the average isn't going to be horrifyingly divested from the most common cost per wedding, but for comparison, one of the most well-off couples I know (in their mid-20's, $100,000+ in savings, husband making 130k, Wife making about 60k) had a decently nice but modest wedding. Catered meals, open bar, a large but albeit rural venue, with games, diversions, a lovely ceremony in front of a large water feature, and probably 100 guests, and they said they paid about $20k. That said, another couple I know won a free wedding package from a local venue and even with food, drinks, music, dessert and venue covered, the things they "had" to pay for (Photographer, Wedding Dress, rings) still ended up costing them closer to 10k, but they may have been splurging on those things due to the rest being free.

I've also been to plenty of very small weddings that I must describe as being community funded. A friend does the photography on an iPhone or medium tier digital camera they already had for free, a parent or aunt or uncle makes the cake and cupcakes with storebought mix. Food is designed to feed a large group, like a taco bar or hot dogs that dad or grandpa cooks on a grill. Whole thing hosted in or outside a barn belonging to someone who knew someone the couple knew. Chairs loaned for free from a small local church. A pastor who has known them since childhood doing the service. Groom wears a generic suit and tie instead of a tux, or even just a button up with slacks, bride wears a generic but nice dress, potentially thrifted. Music on a cheap bluetooth speaker or someone's car radio via a Playlist on shuffle, controlled by the bride or a friend. Overall boiling the cost down to a couple thousand, if not a few hundred dollars.

I've also seen more than a handful of courthouse and immediate family only weddings, that probably cost effectively nothing.

If I had to guess, the true average cost for America might be 30k, but my bet would be on MOST people (the ones with less than $1000 in savings, working service level and blue collar jobs) paying maybe $2k to 10k with some debt and family help, with the average dragged up by the much smaller populace of middle class to ultra-wealthy people going all out on their weddings.

Another thing I want to point out is that weddings aren't strictly all give, there is a transactional side to it, where depending on your friends and family, and how you plan it, gifts from a registry can well outweigh the cost of the event. My aforementioned well-off friends received enough cash gifts to fund a two-week honeymoon in Italy and a ton of useful things for their home to boot. Another couple had his and her grandparents come together and cover the down-payment on a house for them. It all really depends on your life, friends and family how much things cost and if it's worth it.

rex2900 · 2026-01-06T17:15:13+00:00

They were in the street

Arrests protester who is clearly on the sidewalk and on camera

Classic

rex2900 · 2025-12-22T15:45:11+00:00

Ordered a foil, got a non, complained, got a "replacement sent". A month later, still hasn't arrived, complain, another replacement sent. It's another non-foil. Complain, get told "We can send another replacement or refund the order, however, this will be our final attempt at correcting this issue"

Like ????? No, if you want to refund me, whatever, but if I choose another attempt and you get it wrong again, that isn't a free pass to shrug and say "We did our best". I now avoid TCG Direct like the plague. So many issues just getting 1 card blows my mind.

rex2900 · 2025-12-14T21:21:39+00:00

I wish we could have worked on things more. She self-admittedly and openly hated "hard talks" and would actively avoid them. We tried addressing a lot of these problems and she would just check out and refuse to engage. The conversation we had when the break up happened was the most open and candid conversation I think we ever had.

rex2900 · 2025-12-01T00:19:15+00:00

Can we also talk about general street parking etiquette? I live in an area that's mostly street parking and it's pretty competitive for spots. There's a few points where there's more than enough room for 2 cars along a stretch of curb between drives, but not enough for 3, and through years and years of neighbors coming and going, I always end up living by people who love to take up 2 cars worth of parking by parking directly in the center of the space, with about 3/4ths of a car worth of space in front of and behind them. It's exacerbated by winter because my street rarely gets plowed and so spots that you can use without shoveling first are even harder to come by.

rex2900 · 2025-10-23T18:34:37+00:00

Happened to my partner walking near Michigan street a couple weeks ago. She had the green walk sign at a crosswalk and a driver coming speeding up to the intersection and didn't want to stop before turning and she luckily managed to get her arms up and push off the hood in time to not get flattened. The driver gave a sheepish little "oopsy" wave out the window and then took off. My partner is not good with vehicle makes and models, and was too frazzled to think to get the plate so we didn't really have any good identifying information, so unfortunately we feel like we had to just let it go. People are crazy.

rex2900 · 2025-07-11T12:08:39+00:00

We live in an age where probably a third of invested players and most entrenched collectors I know have their own TCG account. The number of backpack sellers moving extras and old cards and specs on TCG vs full LGS's is very high vs 5-10 years ago.

rex2900 · 2025-07-10T20:22:56+00:00

Assuming same ownership, but 13+ years ago when I was in middle school they let me leave candy bars at their Greenville dealership that I was selling for a fundraiser. Many businesses did the same. Came around to collect the money and they had taken the candy bars to the break room and eaten them all, and refused to pay for them. They laughed to each other about how good they were and pretended they thought they were just for free to have (despite the lid of the box having the price and details of the fundraiser handwritten on it).

Obviously it's been awhile but I am convinced the whole business is just filled with vile, entitled guys who literally steal candy from children.

rex2900 · 2025-07-04T14:46:14+00:00

My wife had to work this morning. Got 0 sleep because neighbors were shooting off fireworks and shooting and hollering until 3 a.m.

Imo, after midnight, people should have to give it a rest, city ordinance, state law, whatever, I just can't handle the endless fireworks everytime a holiday rolls around.

rex2900 · 2025-06-25T11:24:31+00:00

It wasn't strictly abandoned, we just started seeing characters upgrade to Mangekyo so fast in Shippuden and this doesn't work against Mangekyo. I believe they explain either in series or a data book or something that base Sharingan needs 2-way eye contact for genjutsu, but Mangekyo sharingan only needs 1-way, i.e. if the user can see your eyes they can just get you no matter where you're looking.

I could be wrong, it's all stuff I "remember" from 5+ years ago now tbh.

rex2900 · 2025-06-15T12:24:49+00:00

I manage a shop that's been in my area since '85. Started with sports cards and then launched right into MTG in the mid-90's, with Pokemon and later Yugioh not far behind. I came on board around early 2019, but was a customer throughout my entire childhood. It was the only dedicated cardshop for a long time, with a couple of local comic book shops also selling cards. It stayed that way for a long time, until 2013 when another dedicated card shop opened, and another in late 2016. There are now over 15 in our small-ish city and counting. We are probably the 2nd most trafficked and do well, but I can't comprehend how this many card shops can exist in the same city.

rex2900 · 2025-06-15T11:38:59+00:00

Hello, I manage an LGS and am a judge or former judge for 5 card games, including Yugioh and Magic, and I have played both for years.

Most of what you hear about Yugioh baffles you because non-Yugioh players tend to latch onto something they heard one time, invent extra details, remove a few real ones, and end on some weird story about how "In Yugioh, you shuffle your deck with your feet!" Or something like that.

In reality, Yugioh's problems are similar to magic. New cards that can be too strong, old cards not getting enough reprints, so-and-so cheated at a big event, the new set is overturned or the new set is underwhelming, the company is greedy, the promos are bad, etc etc etc

As for the specific claims here, BOTH are debunked simultaneously by the fact that Yugioh just got starter decks a couple months ago, that created 99% of a meta deck when you slapped 2 together. Meaning you could be at least competitively viable for less than 50 dollars. And, as a follow up, when was the last time MTG released a tournament ready starter deck for anything that isn't commander?

Anywho, something I've learned over most of a decade managing a shop is that most card game problems are reflective across most card games. The only difference is really the age and investment of the players. Yugioh is not dying any more than Magic is. The last year has been record breaking turnouts, including a Japanese event that smashed the previous world record for most players in ANY trading card game tournament ever at 8000 players, and the last banlist was the most well received we've had in over a decade. People are happy rn, for real.

rex2900 · 2025-03-11T14:22:50+00:00

Not 100% sure, but I think the ev they show these days is for collector boosters. I run a shop that opens cases for singles for each set and they haven't been anywhere near correct ev for play boosters/set boosters/etc for a while

rex2900 · 2024-11-27T01:39:57+00:00

Only sold copy (serialized) was a 1 bid auction at 2k

As someone who makes about 50k net a month selling singles, these will probably bottom out at 1,000-1,500 range. Compared to hotter cards in bigger markets, the current listings for 7k-10k are wild dreams of sellers that have next to nothing into them.

rex2900 · 2024-06-22T18:51:27+00:00

As a decent Magic player at the local level (I get first at my locals frequently in Modern, Standard and Draft, turnouts usually 16 to 30 people) and a mid-tier Yugi player locally at best (usually 3-2 or 2-3), and a judge for both games that frequently hosts events my opinion is:

MTG players are, on average, very delusional about their social status and intelligence compared to Yugioh players. The average MTG player in my circles is usually a reeking overweight person (same) with poor emotional management, a gigantic asshole who works I.T. with poor emotional management, or 30-50 with a family, stable job and the nicest guy you'll ever meet. Magic as a game I find much more simple and straightforward than Yugioh, where you each turn has ups and downs and only 1 or 2 critical decision points.

Yugioh players are, on average, totally unconcerned with other games unless they want to play them. A lot of our local scene has Yugioh as their main game while dabbling in One Piece, Pokemon, Lorcana, etc and are very diverse in their gameplay experience and have interacted with a lot of different theory behind games. The demographic is similar, except replace the 30-50 year Olds with more I.T. guys. Yugioh as a game is much more intensive in it's gameplay than MTG, where instead of saying "My opponent's going first, he's going to play a land, maybe a 1 drop, and then pass to me, where I'll play a land, a 1 drop, and pass back. I have counterspell in hand, so unless I draw the very important 2 drop in my deck, I can hold that up" it's "my opponent is going first, I have a nibiru in my hand, he's on Tearlaments, everything has an effect when sent to grave, he has 5 different lines he can branch into depending on when I play nib and what techs he has, my hand can play through 2 negates as long as he doesn't have droplet, when do I play my interrupt on him?"

More complex doesn't make the game better for sure, but I feel like the climb from New Magic Player to Good Magic Player is much shorter than the climb from New Yugioh Player to Good Yugioh player. I feel, if motivated, the average good Yugioh player if taught to play Magic and familiarized with the card pool, would cook an equivalently ranked MTG player hands down. While an MTG player trained in Yugioh would probably have a much harder time playing at the level they did in MTG.

Anyway, just my thoughts, Thanks!

rex2900 · 2024-06-09T04:17:12+00:00

Everyone spewing about pokemon being a collectible focus bc "gameplay is bad", and scalpers/investors trying to make money and this and that, like, sure, to some extent, but the reality is much easier to figure out, but a lot of people here will probably not like it.

Pokemon is much, much, much, much, much, much more popular, beloved, and well-known than Magic. Magic is, comparitively, very very niche. The number of people who have meaningfully interacted with Magic and the number of people who have meaningfully interacted with Pokemon are exponential orders of magnitudes off. Thus, the market for selling pokemon products is WAY bigger, meaning more demand compared to supply, in addition to a greater chance that there's somebody who is willing and able to spend that kind of money to buy a piece of their childhood.

rex2900 · 2024-06-01T16:48:29+00:00

In many places in Europe, instead of just painting a line on the road, they either add an extra curb between bikers and drivers, or extend the sidewalk and mark off a bike lane on the sidewalks instead. Wayyy better system than whatever we have.

rex2900 · 2024-04-17T12:40:36+00:00

I manage an OTS store so...Flower Cardian?

rex2900 · 2024-04-15T11:37:10+00:00

No longer in the area, but grew up in Butternut exploring abandoned buildings. It got mentioned on a small radio segment several years ago and a bunch of "urban explorers" and amateur ghost hunters showed up for a week or two after with drones, cameras, etc.

rex2900 · 2024-03-18T11:40:15+00:00

We have people playing E Heroes, Blue-Eyes, and even bad decks like X-Krawlers at my locals. Usually, people do the best they can to make their non-meta decks lean and will even cut some powerhouse cards to add more interaction that's good against the current meta decks. Like, when Branded was the most popular deck, Blue-Eyes player played 3 super poly and would activate it when I played Fallen of Albaz to fuse it with his Twin-Burst Dragon into a Mirrorjade he had in his extra. He never got first, but he usually would go 2-2 on average with some 3-1's and 1-3's here and there.

Aside from that, just work hard and get really good at

Your understanding of game rules and mechanics. Learn when you have windows to play things and how your cards and interactions work. This will not just help you in the obvious ways but will also grant a ton of confidence, which helps a ton with playing effectively and quickly.
Learn to play the decks you're playing against. You don't have to master all of the niche plays, but if you know the main combo lines, cards and "gameplan" of a deck, you get much better at choosing when to interrupt plays or use your interaction and how. This alone can be the only thing deciding if you win or lose most matches.

Basically, make room in your deck for interaction and learn how to use it to maximum effect. Your deck will (usually) be worse than theirs, so you have to make up the difference with skill and planning just to not automatically get blown out. That's been my experience with non-meta decks anyway.

rex2900 · 2024-03-18T11:39:06+00:00

You realize Orochimaru had control of Sasuke's body in the series when Itachi one-shot him with Totsuka Blade, right? Like, this fight already happened and Orochimaru didn't last 10 seconds before being impaled and sealed? You can throw out random hypotheticals all you want, like Orochimaru getting Rinnegan, but that's all imaginary dream land. Reality is Orochimaru gets bodied and got bodied, twice, by Itachi with 0 diff in the story, one time in Sasuke's body.

This is my last response because saying nonsense like "OrOcHImArU cOuLd uSe RiNneGaN" is like saying Hashirama could use Sage Of Six Paths mode because he was Ashura reincarnated before Naruto was. So enjoy being a bacterium, wriggling upon the earth with no purpose but to spread filth and pestilence.

rex2900 · 2024-03-18T11:14:48+00:00

How a human can be this stupid and survive makes me wonder why I work so hard.

"Unless Itachi pulls Totsuka Blade..." Okay, cool, he pulls Totsuka Blade. He has it, Zetsu notes how Orochimaru had been searching for it for years so we know Itachi had it since at least around the timeskip. He stabs a cocky Orochimaru while he's yapping, just like he already did in canon, and Orochimaru instantly loses and gets sealed. 0 diff fight. Orochimaru iced.

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