Not sure if it’s already covered in another comment or if you are already aware, however … Depending on where in the world you live, there may be a semi-local official UPS drop off location at a store or business near you. I live outside of a very small rural town, yet there are UPS drop off options here. They even print, text, or email a receipt to confirm they’ve received it.

Still not as convenient as an at-home pick-up, but it’s something to consider if you didn’t already know.

It’s infuriating (mildly may be an understatement).

My neighbor ended up getting “a virus” on her laptop. It wasn’t actually a virus as best I could tell, but instead, it was a full screen pop-up browser window with no window controls.

The scam had a bunch of scary messaging and loud sound playing an alarm with someone stating that the computer was infected and that it was also infecting Microsoft’s servers. Further, the scam insisted that she call the number on the screen or she will face legal issues.

For an older non-technical person, it was frightening.

After this happened a second time, I did a little more digging to see if I could figure out what was going on. Virus scans showed no infection and I couldn’t find much online with specifics about what I was seeing.

Turns out, my neighbor was going to Google, searching for terms like “Amazon”, and then she was clicking the first ad / sponsored link in the results expecting to be taken to the Amazon website. Instead, the sponsored ad on Google search was linking to a blog on Microsoft’s Azure hosting services, which then triggered the full screen non-closable scam.

I even tested it out on one of my old laptops. Went to Google search, tried the exact search term she used, and sure enough, the same exact thing happened. I reported the ad, it is clearly malicious and a scam. It’s ridiculous that Google actually serves up malicious ads like this. And the ad was up there for days after I reported it. I sincerely hope nobody actually got scammed by it, but I definitely feel like Google should be responsible for any damages/losses.

I did go ahead and install ad blockers on all her browsers, removed google search from being the default search engine, and showed her how to avoid clicking on ads and sponsored links if/when any slip through the cracks. So, hopefully it won’t happen again.

I think there’s a piece of pepperoni between my bicuspids I could probably use his legs to help me dislodge.

As luck would have it, I’ve got a similar number of anuses.

The Ukranian is kind of hot, if you know him give him my insta @numberfor002

Dog: Yeah, you see the problem is it’s already in my mouth. If you would have asked a bit sooner, this could have turned out differen – SQUIRREL OH MY GOD SQUIRREL DID YOU SEE THAT SQUIRREL IMMA MUNCH IT

Is there an all encompassing term for xylophones and all the instruments that are “Xylophones” with X feature(s)?

Yeah, of course. I buy one towards the end of every November. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition.

This bird, guys.

There’s nothing stopping me from writing a $480 million USD check either. Cashing it, on the other hand, that’s a you problem.

Ya’ll listen up up here’s the story about a little guy that lives in the blue world.

Not me. I’m reading this Lemmy post in browser.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying it’s bad or that it’s worse than the competitors.

But, it’s one of the chains where I’ve experienced employees that very clearly smelled strongly of weed (like they have just freshly smoked up or had some in their pocket) while making my food or serving it to me. At least in my region where weed isn’t legalized, it kind of has a reputation of being one of the cooler “stoner friendly” chain restaurants in terms of employment opportunities and the few people I’ve known who worked there at some point are or were heavy, frequent users.

I’m not hating on people who use drugs, but I don’t think it’s all that far fetched to believe that working under the influence is going to increase the odds/frequency of silly screw ups similar to the BLT-less BOLT in the photo and given the reputation of that company (in my circle, region, etc), it doesn’t seem at all like a weird joke to make. Really, it applies to a lot of restaurants in general.

I feel like this is on brand for Jersey Mike’s, though. I’m pretty sure the only way to get fired from Jersey Mike’s to show up sober for your shift.

While I agree that evolution would progress roughly the same way, I don’t think it would result in exactly the same people.

This implies that you think I was saying it would be the same people, but I actually said the exact same thing as you, just in different words: “it wouldn’t be the exact same people, living the exact same lives, at the exact same time as now.”

With powerful people (like kings, emperors and their courts) being different, history would be different too

For sure, but from the timescale we’re discussing, the whole of human history is literally just a tiny fraction, a blip, at the very end. And until very recently, you could even argue the vast majority of human history was almost entirely inconsequential.

Well, I don’t think time travel backwards in this manner is possible, but if it is, it would have to operate under the laws of thermodynamics which means the energy (and maybe even some of the atoms) that was “transported back in time” would represent a paradox.

The energy and/or some of the atoms in you and the time machine were already somewhere in the past when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Which presents a paradox (and this is probably not even the only paradox), so how does the universe conserve energy in that situation?

Somehow the “original” atoms and energy that became you and the machine would need to be reconciled with the duplicates that suddenly turned up.

So maybe there’s a mysterious process that obliterates energy? What would it be and how would it work? Would that be equivalent to the false vacuum that could fundamentally destroy the universe as we currently know it?

Or maybe there’s nothing to actually stop duplication of energy and atoms and it’s entirely feasible to go back in time. You take the time machine back, see some dinos from space, and you managed to otherwise not change a thing. That means in some dozens of million years, you and that machine will be sent back to exactly the same time and location again because nothing has changed. Bam, now you and that time machine are in triplicate. But, with nothing really changing, the same process will occur again and again. Does it reach a point where there’s so much duplicated energy / matter that something fundamentally different has to happen? Would all those duplicate yous and time machines coalesce into a giant cosmic object that comes crashing down to the Earth like a giant asteroid, thus killing off most dinosaurs and paving the way for human evolution? Hmmm.

I don’t believe that kind of time travel is possible. But, if it were possible, the odds of finding that exact individual (who probably didn’t actually exist) at that exact time are so minuscule that for all practical purposes, it may as well be impossible. But, if that were also possible, it did happen, and that was the only thing that happened differently, then I’m thinking the most likely outcome is that evolution would pretty much continue on the same course, probably even with humans eventually evolving.

It’s common to think of the evolutionary process in a more or less linear fashion that could theoretically be traced back to a figurative Adam and Eve, but the reality is, it’s so much more messy and convoluted than that. Evolution is a culmination of many factors such as the environmental conditions and populations that exist during a given time frame. So even if there was one specific common ancestral individual who happened to live at the exact time the dinosaurs were alive, which that individual is not a thing that existed, there would almost certainly still be a population of others of the same species living in the same conditions – so theoretically would still ultimately lead to the same evolutionary outcomes in most instances.

So, I think it’s very possible people would still exist. But, it wouldn’t be the exact same people, living the exact same lives, at the exact same time as now.

On the other hand, who is to say that the common ancestor hadn’t already produced the offspring that specifically lead to you and I being born before it was eaten? Who’s to say that individual getting scared and eaten wouldn’t have happened anyway, regardless of whether you were there or not? Who’s to say that wasn’t actually the defining moment that ultimately resulted in the evolution of people (and you and I specifically)?

I dunno, this is all getting a little too timey-wimey for me.

And so much more: Like burning away the hair growing out of your ears without also burning your fingers!

realistically no one reading this post is influencing global events on any significant scale.

I’m not really sure where influencing global events comes into play with my prior comment, but I agree with you. However, when I posted my comment, I really mostly only saw people discussing relative and personal changes they’d make, so I’m also sort of thinking that global events are mostly irrelevant.

Especially if you’re just doing normal kid stuff. A random kid ordering spaghetti instead of chicken nuggets is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The same goes for just about any choice you’d likely be presented with.

If you’re focused on the ramifications of any one specific choice, then I feel like you’re missing the forest for the tree (to coopt a popular idiom).

Every choice you make and everything you do differently will change things in some way, even if only to an imperceptible degree. From the moment you arrive back at your 6 year old self, you will constantly be making different decisions and doing things differently, whether you want to or not. The cumulative effects of these minute changes over time will make things increasingly more unpredictable and the new timeline and old timeline will necessarily diverge.

Then consider that some things in life are literally a cumulation of everything that you’ve done and everything that happened to you up to that point. Even small changes will have an impact. For instance, think of someone with biological children who goes back in time. The children they end up the second time around will be completely different people because of how random the process is that leads to two specific gametes being involved in the fertilization process. Literally eating spaghetti as a 6 year old could affect the outcome there, let alone the millions/billions/trillions of different actions that person would make over the decade(s) leading up to their child/childrens’ conception. Perhaps having completely different kids is still inconsequential, but that’s literally just one example, so I wouldn’t get too hung up on the specifics.

Ten million USD in 2024 is more than enough for me and my family to live out comfortable lives, to be honest. I’d just take that, live off the interest. It will present its own problems, of course, but I’m sure I can figure those out.

Going back in time with any specific goal or intent (like making lots more money than ten million dollars by 2024) is almost certainly going to end up being its own kind of hell in this situation and especially so when there’s no guarantee that I’ll actually be successful in that pursuit. No guarantee that I’d arrive at the new 2024 with more than ten million dollars, no guarantee I’d be able to “fix” anything without causing worse problems for myself and others, no guarantee that I’d get here alive again, sounds like quite a bit of a risk.

Plus, once I go back to age 6 and start making different decisions, a different future will necessarily emerge. Think about it this way, in order to not change the future (until you’re at a point where you can reasonably execute a plan to reach your goals), you’d have to make exactly the same decisions you did when you were 6. Pretty much nobody has that kind of memory/recall, so it would literally come down to sheer luck. And the further along in time things progress, as you make more and more different decisions than you did originally, the more uncertainty it would introduce to the new future. Eventually, you may even find that you basically have no more ability to recall/predict the future than you would have otherwise.

So if you’re in it for the money, just take the guaranteed money.