I’m disappointed to hear that that about Josh’s Frogs. I’m a fan of the company overall and had great experience with them, but I have never bought live food or live animals from them. So, I’m a little surprised to hear that they’re shipping roaches and crickets this way. Otherwise, they’re my go to for a lot of other hobby related stuff, so I hope they have made some improvements on that front.

For clarity, I imagine that the species of roach you ordered were likely something like dubias.

For anybody that might see this, most of the roach species used as feeders (or even kept as “pets”) are not associated with diseases in humans and would be highly unlikely to become an infestation issue in most domestic situations outside of fully tropical climates (and even then it would be unlikely). These are critters that need stable, warm temperatures and fairly high humidity, as well as appropriate food sources and surprisingly clean environments just to keep them alive in cultivation. Your home or the post office (in North America) is unlikely to be conducive.

Of all the critters that people feed live “bugs” (i.e “bugs”) to, snakes are one of the least likely.

Food items like live crickets are usually fed to animals like lizards (probably most common example), frogs and other amphibians, fish, birds, predatory invertebrates (like spiders and scorpions), etc.

In the case of pinhead crickets, those are usually purchased (in large quantities) by people breeding insect eating species since the young are too small for anything larger than the youngest and tiniest food items or for people with a large collection of animals like poison dart frogs that need very small, fairly fragile food items.

As for the debate of local pick-up versus online orders, there are pros and cons to each, and different people have different situations and needs. At the end of the day, in my part of the world, pretty much all the places I’d go to pick up crickets locally are just getting them shipped in from large scale cricket breeders anyway, so if you need a bulk order of 1000+, it’s likely cheaper and easier just to order them online and have them shipped. Also important to note, these aren’t just random crickets someone collected in their back yard, these are a specific cultivated species that’s been grown in relatively sanitary conditions so that they aren’t carrying harmful parasites and disease or covered in dangerous pesticides and chemicals.

I like big butts and I cannot lie.

I don’t even have ADHD but this photo is very, very relatable. At this very moment, I should be cleaning but I’d rather be playing vidja games, and yet here I am looking at Lemmy and writing a comment.

Same way we test everything else on animals. It all starts with the mice.

When I was a kid, we used to coax wild anoles into biting our ear lobes and wearing them around like earrings. Maybe the kitty is doing the same as a labret piercing.

So, looks like I’ve played 19 of these games. Although not all of them were my thing and some of them I’ve barely played more than once briefly, I’ll agree that they were all pretty solidly good.

A few of the others are on my wish list (especially now that they’re available on PC) so maybe one day I’ll be able to agree or disagree.

I enjoy seeing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on these greatest games lists because back in the days when it was originally released, it seemed like it was practically ignored in my social circle. At the time, if a game wasn’t using low fidelity, standard definition polygon-based graphics (aka 3D), it had to be a fighting game or it would be completely ignored. Yet, that particular game was one of my favorites of the era and I didn’t get to enjoy it with anybody else at the time because they just saw it as a lame 2D game.

Doing the lawd’s work, so I also thank you.

As I recently lamented in another thread, I’ve had to give up on Taco Bell. I’ve given it a couple of tries post-Covid and it’s no longer good, no longer cheap, and no longer fast based on my recent-ish, terrible experiences. I don’t eat at fast food places often, so I definitely don’t claim to be an expert here, but of the fast food places I’ve eaten at in the past 5 or so years, Taco Bell has declined the worst, by far.

Also, I learned how to make my own crunch wraps at home with black jack and hookers. I mean with higher quality ingredients tailored to my and my family’s preferences. It’s not difficult, just a little time consuming. Still not something I’d eat regularly, but nice to have once in awhile now that Taco Bell fails so hard.

Look at the privilege showing through, able to afford eggs for more than one meal a day in the USA.

A lot of people are saying that the US government banned TikTok, but from what I’m understanding, that’s not really what happened and what’s happening. Or have I misinterpreted things? From what I understand, they were told they had to divest and sell, but they fought that and now are opting to shutdown rather than comply. Is that not the case?

Either way, I’m gonna go all “I walked to school uphill both ways barefoot in a meter of snow” on this and say that my very little experience with TikTok users seems to suggest that its not much more than pure, unadulterated brain rot. So regardless of the fact(s) (i.e. shutdown / banned / etc), there’s maybe the tiniest sliver of a net positive here. Or not. It doesn’t affect me one way or the other and given where this country is politically (as well as where it is headed), I don’t give a rat poopoo.

This happened to me once in real life, sorta. I was several miles deep into a trail along the base of a mountain when a couple of loose dogs and I crossed paths. Of course there was no cellphone reception, so I was a bit at a loss as to what I should do. Neither one of them would actually come up close to me, but they were close enough that I could see they didn’t have collars. I feel like there’s a learning opportunity there, always keep your dogs on a leash when you’re out in public.

Anyway, first I tried to follow them as best I could, thinking they might pull a Lassie and lead me to their owner or owners. Maybe it was someone in need of help, after all. After what felt like hours of walking, still no sign of the owners. At this point I was getting tired and running low on water, plus it was getting late and starting to sprinkle.

I decided to turn back. Figured I’d call the cops or something once I got back to my car and could get close enough into town for my phone to start working again. Go figure, the dogs followed me. That whole time I thought I was following them. Anyway, get to the stairs leading up to the parking lot, and this lady at the top belted out a screech that could have shattered adamantium. Apparently the dogs were “wild coyotes”. Like I was supposed to know that somehow?

I was alive when the when there were more than 8 elevens.

Not only did I accidentally break up your marriage 12 years ago, I’m also incredibly abrasive, smell like I’ve not showered in several days, and when I visit your house I always remove the toilet paper roll and make sure to put it the opposite direction when I put it back into the holder. And I hissed at your cat.

Oh, if Alton said that then it must be true. Who’s Alton?

Edit: I need to see what dried beans I have and maybe go shopping. I will give this a try with a couple different types of beans and report back if I fart or not.

Hope you have some alpha-galactosidase at your disposal.

The simplified explanation: A reason beans give some people gas is due to certain types of sugars and carbohydrates they contain. Those sugars are water soluble. Seems like brewing beans would concentrate those sugars and lead to epic tootage.

Also, one method for reducing how much gas that beans cause is to soak them in lots of water. Basically, soak them for up to 8 hours, drain, rinse, and repeat a couple more times. It works on the same principal, that the soaking process will remove at least some of the problematic, water soluble sugars. Supposedly adding a small amount of baking soda helps, too. I’m less certain about that.

Sure, they love it. Till they see the bill.

Time to round that guy up.

When I post something totally innocuous on Lemmy that I’d think nobody would ever take exception to, I generally only get 2 or fewer “AAAAAAAKSCHUALLLLY” type replies that I can see so long as I stay away from the crazy Lemmy instances and communities and block enough of the insane users who still manage to break through.

On Reddit, there’s much more "AAAAAAAKSCHUALLLLY"s and no upper limit known thus far, sometimes with dozens of people repeating more or less the same “AAAAAAAKSCHUALLLLY” but perhaps worded slightly differently.

Earlier this year one of my relatives came for an extended visit. We were discussing what we might have for dinner that week and both of us were on board for the same ingredients, such as asparagus. My relative was also happy with the video services I’m currently subscribed to because I have a couple options they don’t have at home, so they were telling me about how they were rewatching some older Harrison Ford movies. And then there’s the age-old (or old age) conversations about our current health issues.

In the following days, my relative kept bringing up the fact that their phone and tablet are listening to our conversations. Proof? After we had the food conversation, their news feed was suddenly filled with asparagus recipes. They were also getting ads for more Harrison Ford content on the service that they don’t subscribe to. And to top it off, they were seeing ads for a prescription my dog takes but that they had never even heard of before our conversation the day or two before. Isn’t it obvious? They’re listening to our conversations.

To me this was easily explainable by Occam’s Razor. All our devices are on the same IP address. After we discussed the asparagus I went online that night and did a search for asparagus recipes. And when we were talking about my dog’s health condition, I used my phone to look up the active ingredient because I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Plus, when Hulu or whatever random service sees you’re watching a lot of Harrison Ford movies, it makes sense they’d advertise others you might like.

That makes a lot more sense and is a lot less complicated of an explanation than “our devices are always recording our conversations and uploading them to the internet as a basis to send us advertisements”.

Sure it’s technically feasible, but if it were happening, surely they would be a lot more incontrovertible proof than a questionable and likely misinterpreted news source that seems to be more of a “sly” advertisement for a tech solution that the big players aren’t actually using.