cool to know! I think Smart and Final might be a regional thing because I’ve never heard of it. but yeah, one of the draw backs of Aldi is that when they get busy things get messy. In general, I love Aldi. It has it’s issues but overall the shittiness seems muted compared to the other big chain stores. I can at least afford the essentials from there and then, when I get special stuff, buy bulk.

I wish they carried butter beans though.

I’m sorry, but you must be a new Aldi shopper. The quarter thing has been their model for ages. Often, you or someone else will just leave a quarter in their cart when they put it back.

The self-checkout is new, but Aldi is one of those stores that actually does pass the savings on to its customers. It’s always 20–30% cheaper at Aldi than other stores in my area. The exception is big-name brand stuff, but the store brand is definitely cheaper. $4 for a 12-pack of knockoff Coke vs. $13 for the name brand at the other stores? It’s a no-brainer.

Edit: I’m not super current on it, but as I recall, Aldi does actually pay its workers well. It’s one of the places that has a reputation as “the good one.” I’m sure it’s not perfect, since it still operates in the U.S. economy, but Aldi has been up there with Costco for its business practices.

Lemmy isn’t perfect, but it is more honest than Reddit.

Lemmy’s problems stem mostly from tribalism, as different instance admins ban and censor anyone they don’t like. That makes the environment hostile to users who came here expecting to be able to speak their minds like they did in the old days of the internet.

The tribalism causes the niche communities of Reddit to generally steer clear of Lemmy because, even if you have the technical knowledge to get here, you may find that your fandom or interest is fractured between six or more instances, with three of them being defederated from the other three or being moderated with such heavy bias that the community is almost unusable. You can be shadow banned, silenced, or just plain banned from an instance at the whims of a bad admin, which is really disheartening. Reddit is a mess, but it’s all in one place still. With Lemmy, you honestly need multiple accounts on different instances, or else you have to choose between your favorite crochet communities or your favorite tech communities. Say one wrong thing, and suddenly you are robbed of interaction.

I love Lemmy. It reminds me of the Reddit of old. It’s also broken and sick. I had to be in five different Star Trek communities because my instance got targeted by vindictive admins. I have to have multiple accounts because some fandoms are locked into highly toxic communities. Some of the best queer memes I’ve laughed at were in a community that is outright pro-Russia and pro-fascism.

Reddit felt like a grand bazaar for a long time. You could find a community for everything, and it would be active. While there was drama, it usually boiled down to you having a new sub added to your list to interact with. Lemmy is more like the high school cafeteria. Everyone is cliquish, and even if you have something to add to the discussion about Stargate or TTRPGs, if you voiced the wrong opinion in a completely different space, then you can find yourself a digital pariah.

At least with old Reddit, the Reddit of 2010, that didn’t happen. We were still a community trying to run things the way Aaron Swartz envisioned. Even if you said something that upset people, the upvote system often allowed that comment to be judged by the community and not one person with an agenda. That’s what I miss. Being able to say something or share something and have the community decide its worth rather than a minority voice deciding what people should see and think. It happens on Reddit, and it happens here on Lemmy, just for different reasons.

I think John Brown is still a hero.

Not entirely a scam in theory. Though we are currently in a period of unprecedented corruption that is so complicated and complete that it might as well be. Even 5 years ago, I would have attributed certain actions to protect the market as an attempt to protect everyone. The systems in place are such that if a stock company fails, it creates far-reaching market upsets across industries worldwide. Essentially, if something fails, it takes everyone down with them.

The fix would be the state taking control of those industries to allow them to stabilize. Unfortunately, most state actors are also tied economically to those systems. That is, they’re corrupt as fuck and don’t care about people, but their own money and status.

So retirement funds and entitlements weren’t entirely a scam, but they are mostly so now. I doubt I will see a dime of mine if I don’t use it soon for school, expating, or buying a house. I certainly won’t see it when I retire.

I have some basic understanding of finance (and I mean basic), so take this as an observation rather than investment advice. If your retirement plan allows you to change your asset allocation, and you have a high-conviction thesis that a significant market event is about to occur, it may be worth temporarily rotating from a growth-oriented allocation into a more conservative allocation to reduce downside exposure.

Under normal circumstances, attempting to time the market is a bad idea, and financial advisors or plan managers will usually push you away from doing so. However, there are rare situations where it’s clear as crystal what’s happening. In those cases, reducing equity exposure and increasing allocations to lower-volatility assets for a short period may be a reasonable risk-management decision.

Using the recent SpaceX-related market activity as an example, I find it difficult to believe that any fund with a genuinely conservative mandate would have maintained meaningful exposure to assets directly affected by that event. A conservative portfolio, by definition, should prioritize capital preservation over aggressive growth and generally avoid concentrated exposure to higher-risk investments.

You generally can’t tell them, “I don’t want this stock,” when dealing with index funds, but you can get yourself out of the fund entirely while it’s poisoned. Unfortunately, my company was changing providers right when the SpaceX shit was happening, and I couldn’t make the change myself.

I haven’t been keeping up with the bond market but last I heard it was it’s own shit show so I’m not really sure anything is ‘safe’ these days.

you leave me and my dark humor out of this