Viral ‘dopamine sites’ are letting users shop without actually spending money
The sites feature nonexistent products, reviews, and promotions, and let users checkout and track their “courier” all without actually buying anything
We can’t own anything anymore. Adobe, Notion, Spotify, cloud storage the list goes on. You don’t just buy something once; you’re stuck paying for it every single month. Even movies now require a recurring fee. Everything demands money forever. Is no one else bothered by this?
The cost just to visit Chuck E. Cheese is now extremely unaffordable
For this small personal pizza and a few chicken wings, the cost is over $34….
Chuck E. Cheese was bought by a private equity firm
Just since 2019, prices have increased over 60% on large pizzas and up 50% on most menu items
In 2014, Apollo Global Management, a major private equity firm, acquired CEC Entertainment which is Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company
Since being purchased by a private equity firm prices have gone up 100%+ across menus items
Take this Personal pizza and wings combo: This is now routinely $30–$40+. This used to be much closer to $15 range in the mid-2010s
Private equity firms never make anything better, it just gets way worse quality and more expensive
Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???
The President is about to literally have a backyard brawl next to a construction site for his own birthday party like we’re turning DC into a trailer park.
I don’t even have a joke for this one because what the fuck.
Please stop. I don’t want an AI summary of my Google search. I don’t want an AI summary of the text message from my friend at work. I don’t want an AI summary of the email I’m about to read. Please just stop.
🚨BREAKING: Apple’s next AirPods will have cameras built into them.
Not for photography. The cameras are designed to feed visual information directly to Siri, turning your earbuds into an eyes-on AI assistant that understands what is in front of you.
Point them at your fridge and ask what to cook. Walk into a room and ask what you are looking at. Siri sees what you see.
A privacy LED will light up whenever visual data is being transmitted, so there is always a visible signal when the cameras are active.
Enhanced Siri arrives in September. Production on the camera AirPods is already underway.
Source: Mark Gurman, Bloomberg.
Someone asked if @McGillins had a ladies entrance back in the day. It turns out we did! Our former bartender, Sal, got this old photo from his friend's uncle, who installed an AC here ages ago. And jJust by our side door, under the Ortlieb's Beer sign you see "Ladies Entrance."
Spotify, $SPOT, and UMG have announced a licensing deal allowing fans to create AI covers and remixes of songs from participating artists and songwriters signed to UMG.
It is directly across from the park you have been building out activities around for years. And now it is lifeless asphalt.
Would have been better if you left as a patch grass for the Sat market.
Huge fumble by @citywildwoodnj by allowing that plot on Pacific and Cedar to become a parking lot. You talk about bringing back Pacific Ave but they you turn a literal keystone property into a parking lot.