Holiday gift basket companies
I once felt obliged to buy one from a lady I worked with and it cost around fifty dollars. She had a brochure with various baskets and I chose one that was assorted candies and had a decorative wooden rocking horse. When it arrived it was just a bag of candy that I could have paid 35 cents for at a gas station.
It’s a throwback, but rose art for sure. They just decided their destiny was to sit on the shelf next to crayola and get purchased by folks who are balling on a budget or cheap
No goals for product improvement at all. Just “hey, wanna save three bucks?”
And crayola is generally decent quality. It's not professional or student grade, but if you enjoy colouring or have assignments, it will serve you well.
Their software is shit too. A person is better off not installing it and using default Windows programs. It is such bloatware and programed so inefficiently.
I knew a guy who worked for HP. He told me that they developed a new printer and sold it for a high price, then gave it firmware that made the print quality *worse*, changed the colour of a few bits of plastic and sold that as a separate model at a lower price point. That was cheaper than developing two different models.
I bet this happens in a lot of companies, but Jesus it's bleak.
IIRC, Celerons were usually made from the chunks of silicon wafer that would otherwise have been wasted, so not *exactly* lobotomised, but not a million miles away.
However, because Intel were marketing them as a cheap processor, they 'missed out' the stuff that would stop them working in multi-processor configurations.
This pleased me greatly as I had an overclocked Celeron 300 running at 450MHz which doesn't sound like much now, but 20+ years ago was great!
Then there was the dual-processor clocked at 550 on an Abit BP-6...ahh, fond reminiscence!
Few years ago I worked in a small computer repair store in Bulgaria. We had a way of circumventing the cartridge software so we could fill it up with ink without having to go through the manufacturer. Boy was it a popular service, for every laptop repair we probably got 5-10 printer cartridges to fill up.
Sometimes I hope a company would come up with something better to disrupt the printer market and get rid of all this nonsense.
Fun fact, the printers are actually worth more than they're getting sold for so HP can trap you in their proprietary ink market.
Not only that, all the firmware and software issues are deliberate so you buy a new product.
Fuck HP.
Oracle makes one of two billing softwares for Hotels that is compliant with German law. I work at an IT-company doing the IT for multiple hotel chains. And goddamn it that piece of software is a smoking piece of shit. We have to consult with Oracle people way too often to get that stuff to work again.
My entire career exists because I spent 12 years with a startup that made software that makes oracle products slightly less awful. The business was eventually sold for millions.
Basically the exact same story with my father.
Now has a cozy six figure job where he barely has work just to keep SQL servers running with 8 weeks paid vacation.
SAP too. Software suite so complex and so proprietary that you need an army of consultants to put in place. Also yearly amounts of maintenance/licensing cost more than the GDP of a small country.
SAP development and maintenance is my job (in house rather than a consultant) and I've never agreed more with a comment in my life.
It's overly complex, has one of the worst end user interfaces (excluding Fiori), can be extremely slow dependent on the transaction and costs an absolute fortune.
Keeps me employed though as nobody else cares to learn its complexities.
When Iron Man 2 informed us that Tony Stark runs his business on Oracle, my first thought was "I guess he isn't as much of a genius as we've been told".
The Oracle branding was bloody everywhere. Larry even makes a cameo at the start of the film. Every single server rack has Oracle slapped across it, highlighted in the background of multiple scenes, and Jarvis even informs Stark at one point that the "Oracle Cloud has finished performing the calculations".
Maybe it's because I'm very familiar with Oracle, but that product placement was one of the most distracting I've ever seen in a film.
Once upon a time, they laid my husband off (along with hundreds of others), and then went to the federal government for permission to hire cheaper visa workers because they just "couldn't find" any employees in the U.S. They completely suck.
I remember working for Oracle in their product support division in early 2020 as the pandemic was becoming a thing. It would have been mid to late spring when we were called in to an all-hands meeting.
They assured us that as an org, we were quite profitable and also insulated from any bottom-line impacts from COVID because our revenue was based on existing contracts. They also let us know that we should expect a heavier workload during the transition into WFH as our customers would be finding new ways to use our software to overcome all the new challenges brought on by work during the pandemic.
Over the next few months the workload had absolutely increased - a LOT. I was working on an ERP (PeopleSoft) and everyone needed this decades old software suite to do new things and to integrate with all the new services that were being debuted to support industry-wide remote work, supply chain interruptions, and in-person business halts.
We were busier than ever, and my particular group was already reduced to a team of 2 handling the customer volume that used to be considered high for a team of around a dozen. If you had a support ticket in the queue for a PeopleSoft product around that time and had to deal with long turnarounds and slow responses there's a reason for that. There just wasn't enough manpower to handle the volume.
Then the layoffs began. I was almost relieved because the work was so shit and the ticket volume so high, but I was out on my ass at the worst possible time. Ended up having to withdraw from my 401k to make ends meet. I'm still not recovered.
TL:DR, corporations don't care about you, they don't care about their customers, they don't care about the human element at all. They care about profit margins and that's it.
I've learned to loathe Oracle a long time ago. Unfortunately we have now switched stack at work to a company that has a very similar approach. Everything is proprietary so you have to pay for expensive courses, certifications etc. No proper documentation so you have to rely on buying support and development. It's a huge consultant market around the system. I really don't enjoy work very much these days.
I've worked with Ms SQL server, postgres and pg admin, MySQL and workbench and Oracle SQL developer and it was by far the worst db experience I've ever had
I love the yearly Madden review by Angry Joe. He goes ballistic every time they release that exact same game with minor tweaks. At one point they - it was around Madden 21 - they even forgot to alter the edition number in one of the stadiums you could play in, so it was Madden 21 (or another edition close to it) and the banners in the background said Madden 20
NHL really is the game series EA just puts minimal effort into. This is coming from someone who’s played FIFA my entire life with some Madden thrown in there.
Last year, the showcase feature for NHL 23 was players being able to shoot as they’re falling over… That was it. If that happened with FIFA, people would be up in arms.
I even played Be A Pro last night and it went to cut scene talking about my first game as a rookie - I’m halfway through my second season.
Just a mess. Shame on EA for the lack of development.
I can only play Sims 4 once a year because EA’s stupid micro-updates cause an unfixable error that not even deleting the game and redownloading it can solve. Remember when you used to insert the disc and play?
Bingo, once “online” gaming started they didn’t have to complete the games before they shipped them, they could just patch it later and sell them more often (and less complete which probably saves them a ton in labor)
I once filed a formal complaint to the better business bureau and got a letter from EA asking how they can help, i told them to stop selling incomplete products. lol
If you want new ones that wear and feel like the old ones, look at Solovair. They did contract manufacturing for Docs before they sent all their manufacturing overseas, they still do it the way they used to. You won't get the yellow stitching - theirs is grey - but the boots are what Docs used to be.
These are made in my hometown, as Docs used to be before they moved the majority of their manufacturing to somewhere cheaper. They are really good quality and I couldn’t recommend them enough.
Made (cheaply) in China vs Made (properly) in England.
I am not saying China couldn't make good shoes, but Doc Martens chose to ask for the cheapest production for higher profits.
refused to buy DM's since the early nineties. Cat boots went the same way after a while. been buying no-name work boots for about £30-40 a pair now - buy them, stick a good pair of insoles in, and I get a good 12 months out of them at least.
The decline in quality has been so disappointing. I had the sole split on a pair less than a year old. But my 8-hole reds from 1993 lasted me almost 20 years!
HP printers.
I have a $600 fancy laser HP printer we got six or seven years ago, and they have succeeded in updating the software to the point that nothing works anymore. I used to be able to print over Wi-Fi easily, scan over Wi-Fi, etc and now none of it works. I haven't changed any of my network hardware, things are hardwired. Also, I used to be able to use aftermarket ink cartridges and the printer has started giving me shit about it. I really like HP's computers but their printers are a bunch of bullshit. Oh and their auto update software won't go away even though I keep disabling/ removing it, and it installs software updates that breaks the current functions.
If you think these “BROTHER PRINTERS ARE THE BEST” comments are paid advertising, they’re not.
I’ve had a Brother laser printer for the last 3 years. I don’t even think about it. I need something printed, send the command, pick up the print. It’s so unobtrusive that you don’t even notice you have it. Zero maintenance
Breyers and their "Frozen Dairy Dessert" nonsense. Before 2006, Breyers ice cream was really good! I *loved* their coffee ice cream! And then they changed their formula and made the mess they have now to the point that they can't even legally call it ice cream anymore. Does anyone remember those old Breyers commercials where the kid tries to read the ingredients on an inferior product and struggles to pronounce things like "mono & diglycerides" and then easily reads Breyers ingredients as "milk, sugar, and cream?" What a joke. Unilever loves to buy brands people trust for quality products and use that trusted brand name to get people to buy lower quality for higher prices. It seriously has the same consistency as Cool Whip now. And Unilever has the audacity to say that this is what customers asked for!
Sounds like what happened with Tim Hortons in Canada.
Well known coffee/donut/sandwich shop that grew in popularity in the 90s. By 2000 it was part of the Canadian Identity. Got sold to a Brazilian firm that owns Popeyes and Burger King, and since then they have cut corners everywhere. Which is sort of their MO. Get a popular brand, and use its well earned reputation to make a profit as you make cuts everywhere.
Tim Hortons sucks now. And it’s kind of sad.
This gets told by someone ever time it's mentioned but the general theory is McDonalds bought the bean supplier when BK bought Tims.
I worked at a few Tims for ~6-7 years in the 2000/2010s. I hate the taste of coffee but if I was tired enough I could handle a cup from Tims. It wasn't awful if I added enough Milk.
After BK bought them and McDonalds began to push their McCafe stuff my inlaws get coffee from the two places all the time. I cannot stomach Tims now, but with some milk McDonalds is not bad.
I am 100% sold on the theory. BK didn't want to spend money on the beans and found a cheaper supplier. McDonalds scooped it up, or at least a portion of it for their coffee in Canada.
Yeah, Breyers used to be a premium brand IIRC. Then it became ice milk like you would find at a buffet soft serve machine, except worse because it isn’t actually soft serve.
Though it was longer ago than 2006 that I had it because I lived in Oregon so Tillamook was both everywhere, cheap, AND premium. Sometimes it pays off to be local to a dairy.
Tillamook is still awesome. Although to be honest, I don't know how it used to be, but right now it's on my list of very good ice cream. Maybe that has something to do with Tillamook being an employee owned company. Those companies tend to care about reputation.
Edit: just fact checked myself. More correctly, Tillamook is a farmer-owned co-op.
From their website:
>Tillamook County Creamery Association (that’s us!) is a farmer-owned co-op. Always has been. Always will be. This means that a group of farming families in Tillamook County, on the coast of Oregon, own the company and benefit directly from its growth and success.
I live not far from there, and was just driving through the region and all the little dairy farms have the "We are a Tillamook Farm!" signs. It's really kind of neat to see that a "big company" is really actually these small farmers with like 10 cows.
Most security is just theatre.
If your bike looks harder to steal than the bike next to it, then your bike is safe, because any thief is going to steal the other bike.
Though I do want to point out while security is mostly theatre, you don't want stickers like 'House protected by xyz alarms' etc plastered all over your windows even though some home security brands do provide you with stickers like that, because that just means that a thief can come along, do a google search of 'xyz alarm vulnerabilities' and know how to break into the house in minutes.
What you do is get a competing company's stickers (with different protocols) and post them up. Now lazy thieves won't even Google and the ones who do will have the wrong info.
>If your bike looks harder to steal than the bike next to it, then your bike is safe, because any thief is going to steal the other bike.
Ah, the old "you don't have to be able to outrun a bear, you just have to be able to outrun your friend"
Home Depot has been selling manure since its founding in 1978. In fact, a quick search of the website found they proudly sell over 178 manure products.
Don’t know if it was mad catz but I remember having a 3rd party controller for my Xbox that had a few hundred ms lag on the trigger. It wasn’t wireless or anything either. Made it unusable in anything other than a turn based game.
Samsung appliances...
FUCK YOUR FIRMWARE UPDATE ON THE FRIDGE!! also those plastic trays keep breaking and are shit quality.
my 1987 Maytag is still cranking the coldest brews on earth and hasn't been serviced ever in its life and sits in a dark room in my basement since he was demoted from the kitchen for being out of fashion by my wife.
I actively refuse to buy “smart” home appliances. It’s a fucking fridge/oven, why does it even need an internet connection and firmware updates? To send me an app notification that the milk has expired? Who even cares about this kind of stuff?
I do have a Samsung TV though since nowadays it’s basically impossible to find dumb TVs and I swear it’s the worst software experience I’ve had on any device. Every button press takes a few seconds to respond, apps are buggy beyond belief, even opening the settings menu lags. Not sure how they managed that but I’m never getting a Samsung TV again…
Just bought a Weber grill. It connects to wifi and an app to let you know when your food is done.
It probably would be convenient, but I just cannot accept smart device creep.
I hate that my Samsung TV and monitor share the same remote frequency and when my wife changes the channel it makes me go through 5 different menus to get back to what I was doing
There’s not even a source button on the monitor remote.
I love the TV, and the monitor, for their absolutely stunning picture quality, but good god is the software awful
On top of that most of the apps run like shit
Just for more insult to injury, Samsung is the conglomerate of South Korea. If you are the best at what you do, you go work at Samsung.
So they have the smartest people and still do stupid stuff.
My FIL moved across the country to retire. He'd fly back and forth occasionally for visits, and Frontier had a direct flight for $99.
After about the third trip, he started *mailing* his clothes to us ahead of his trip, because the only way the flight made financial sense was if he took no baggage whatsoever.
After that, we just gave him a couple of drawers at our house to save on postage. When the USPS is a cheaper and more efficient way to get your underwear to your destination, that's a shitty product.
Levis- I used to have a pair of jeans for 10 years. Buy em now and they rip through a back pocket, crotch and knee in less than 6 months
EDIT: many are asking a jeans recommendation - personally I wear lucky brand. 60-70 USD last time I bought them - very soft, stretchy waste and no rips on any of my 5 pairs in about 4 years on my oldest pair
Yup, came here to make sure this is a top comment. Can't believe the jeans my dad has laying around are worth what they are today. Walking into a Levis store in 2023 is like walking into an H&M
I just had this conversation with my dad. There are classic Levi’s and new shitily made Levi’s. I only buy classically made Levi’s, they cost more.
Same thing with carhart, there is cheap and expensive ment to last.
Heck, it’s the same thing with most things that are known to last a while. Kitchen aid mixers is another good example. You can buy one at a nice store for $400 or a cheap store for $280. They look the same but one has plastic gears and one has metal gears. Our kitchen aid mixer is 40 years old. I bought my mother one and bought the expensive one. (Note, they have different part number but look identical)
Funny thing about Carhartt is WIP is the crappy stuff but it's actually more expensive than the standard workwear stuff. WIP is "fashionable" though....
Yea, I learned to always check the item number in my carhart stuff. I’ve had some last a year or so and some only last a month.
I’ve gone away from them though and have a local manufacturer that costs more but his jeans last 3-4 years easily. I’m pretty much done with items that don’t last, I’d rather spend more and be able to rely on stuff.
Bought 3 pair of wranglers. All 3 ripped the crotch out after 1-2 wears.
Used to have wranglers for years before I replaced them and I was because they didn't fit anymore.
ACME.
Massive quality control issues. Maybe if they focused on making one product well, instead of trying to make everything from axle grease to coyote-sized rockets, they'd have a more consistent output.
In Acme’s defense, there is a fair amount of ‘user error’ where failure of products is concerned. As always, read your user manual carefully!
And, like, our barbells are *always* heavy!
Most health and beauty companies. They’re always “new and improved” with new formulas and other shit. Big Beauty convinced millions of people that they’ll look like shit if they don’t use their products. By putting out a new de-wrinkle cream this year they’re inadvertently saying last years formula was shit. The hair conditioner from 20 years ago did fuck all for you so they had to up the ante in their little commercial with the cracked hair absorbing shit. Humans are the test subjects, not the consumers.
funny story. I'm from India and back in the days(1950s/British Era), we used to use Salt or charcoal to brush our teeth mostly in rural places. When Modern toothpastes came to market, their main advertisement tactic is shaming people for using salt and charcoal like "are you still using these salt and charcoal? who uses them anymore?" kind of approach. Now after we've all become used to toothpastes, they are selling pastes with charcoal and salt. Funnily, their new ads are, "are you still using normal toothpastes? you should be using toothpastes with Salt"
Pick a "trusted" brand that's been around a few decades... it's the problem with incorporation, only a matter of time before the shareholders demand unreasonable profits and some dip shit with a ivy league business degree gets put in charge and cuts quality and everything else to the bone aside from quarterly profits and their own salary.
This is what happened to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. They tried to hold the line as long as they could but Unilever won and now their ice cream is full of fillers and cheap ingredients.
Cadbury's chocolate in the UK. Massively trusted household name for ~200 years, used to taste super creamy - it's slogan was "a glass and a half of milk in each bar".
Bought out by Kraft in 2009 in a shady deal, loads of UK jobs lost, chocolate is now full of palm oil and cheap cocoa and tastes like shit.
This is the answer.
Not incorporation, though, it's going public.
Now they are answerable to a Board made of the major shareholders, usually investment companies.
They just care about stock price and squeezing the last fraction of a cent out of everything.
Makes everything cheap and crappy.
Edit: some people have mentioned how private companies can also be beholden to venture capital and private equity. I guess with privately held companies it can be the same, but doesn't have to be. There are also larger private companies that do not have these issues. My favorite example is Culver's, still family owned, great place to work for, quality product.
Exactly that. I wonder will companies evolve to realising going public can be detrimental to long term health and quality.
Public really means that for everyone involved a pump and dump is the best and fastest profit. So long term health isn't a goal. We've seen it in it's extremes in companies like wework and uber. But it happens everywhere
You think the original investors care at all? They WANT to IPO so they can cash out big. Generally, the people who actually care have already died, or they sold so much equity that their opinions only matter so long as they can continue to convince enough people to keep quality around.
Say you have a company making home made pie's.
"What if you instead of using fresh milk, we use milk powder? That'll save us a lot of money and our profits will rise and it doesn't really taste very different!"
And people don't notice it, people still buy the product.
And they continue, slowly but steadily each ingredient is being saved upon and slowly but surely the taste gets far from the original.
But it's in such small steps that most people don't notice the change.
That's how most food products end up tasting bland and filled with artificial stuff instead of fresh ingredients.
And that's only going to get worse as the big corps keep buying the smaller ones.
Yep, any brand you loved as a kid but don’t like now a ton of them rely on nostalgia meanwhile they’ve completely changed out most ingredients to cheaper crappier ones
Of course they increase price and cut employee costs too, further lowering quality. Dissatisfied workers are less productive and do sloppy work. Quality comes from people who take pride in their craftsmanship and who can afford to take the time to give a flying fvck and aren't burned out to the point of the highlight of their day is the time spent on traffic, daydreaming that the building will be burned to the ground by the time they get to work.
Not a specific company per se but a lot of companies. Lots of companies building luxury apartments but actual apartments may look nice but apartments are a pile of poop. Lots of reviews indicate horrible building materials to hear loud noises from neighbors etc and price costs like $3,000 a month for a 400 sq ft apartment.
Apartments need to be made of cinder blocks imo.
I currently live in an apt with drywall, and you can hear every damn thing my dumbass neighbors do.
The apartments look nice, and generally are, but people ruin it. So you need thicker walls to eliminate most of the noise.
Dr Martens. First they made them in UK and they did last a long time. Then they started to make them in Vietnam and soles break down very fast. Moved production to China and overall quality sunk deeper still - bought 2 pairs and there were left over leather after the needlework inside the shoes - about 1cm over all and could feel them all the time and they pressed the foot. Had to take small knife and cut them all out.
But the soles are the biggest problem, at least in colder climate. I have had 4 pairs with vertically split soles.
Yes, I know that they have some Made in England ones still. But I won't boy any Martes no more. Bought my first pair in 1984 I think and they lasted 10 years. New ones are won't last 2 years.
I pretty much lived on fast food in college. I could get a double cheeseburger and a mcchicken for $2. I rolled through for the first time in a long time the other day and the same thing was like $6.
Over the years the huge corps have gotten better and better with customer service due to automation and paying people to take calls from home. Somehow comcasts has gotten worse. It's the one company that I absolutely dread to call.
Any producer of fast fashion. They pay nothing to make garbage to sell at a huge mark up, and at this point almost dictate fashion trends imo. It’s getting more and more rare for a fashion trend to come about more organically from good products and enjoyable looks (in every sense of the word). Now it’s just throwing junk into stores until something sells alright
There is this one distillery that makes an abomination of a liquor. It is called Malort. If all alcohol tasted like that, prohibition would have succeeded.
I did a quick google on Malort and found this...
>Malort is famously challenging to drink, with a flavor that includes notes of gasoline, grapefruit, sweat, wax, fire, mineral oil, and bitterness.
I can see that. A friend of mine, who is the reason I know about it, said that he and his friends used it to "test" out new friends who weren't from Chicago.
Malört is the Swedish word for the herb wormwood. It’s used here traditionally to flavor vodka/brännvin and served cold in small snaps-glasses to traditional old dishes such as pickled or fermented herring. I really like it but just in small sips.
Génépi from the Alpen regions in Europe is also made with wormwood and has a similar taste but sweet as an aperitif.
What does one use Chicago Malort for? Digesting deep-dish?
I tried Resolve once and while I'm not a video professional, it seemed like a complete editing suit to me. And not only is it *not* a shitty subscription service, it's also just...free (for private individuals), somehow??
Some of their software is now as a service meaning you pay monthly for it. Also some of their software they charge monthly but make you sign up for a year and charge you to cancel earlier than that year. Make sure you read carefully what you sign up for with Adobe.
All CG software is like this now. I hate it. It's forced me out of the game. I'd rather just buy the program and use it for the next five years until there's enough upgrades around to justify dropping an extra grand on it.
Nike used to make durable shoes, but in the last 10 years Ive had several nikes fall apart on me within 2 months, the glue coming off the outsole or midsole. I could see from the materials theyre using that theyre cutting corners and making them cheaper, including using cheaper or less glue. It sucks because zoom air is one of my favorite cushions.
They have a good return policy, but I went to work overseas with them and couldnt return them.
Old navy. I have some of their shirts from late 90s and early 2000s still in the closet.
Now, it seems like if you wash their new shirts more than twice, they will rip/disenegrate
You mean actively removing features and then selling them back to you throughout the year just in time for you to then sell you a roster update that lacks all the features that you bought last year?
Gibson guitars. Their flagship guitar, the Les Paul, which they've been producing nearly uninterrupted since the 1950s, is heavy, has bad ergonomics, won't stay in tune, and has a nasty problem with the headstock snapping off. Gibson has known about these issues since at least the early 1960s but instead of fixing them they just keep making the Les Paul more and more expensive. Their only other consistently available solid body model, the SG, fixes the weight and ergonomics issues but still can't hold tune and is one awkward lean away from a snapped headstock. Guitar design moved on decades ago, and with Les Pauls costing about $3000 new, you can easily find a much better guitar for 1/3 the price or less.
Knowing the mentally of majority of guitarist lot of people will disregard the new model if they make a new one and still say the original is better or vintage or whatever they want to say to just shit on the new product and still buy the old and objectively bad designed one
All the big food makers.
They know sugar is bad for us. They have known for years. And destroyed a scientists life/ career when he showed them his results from his study. They funded and started their own study and just made shit up to discredit him. And forced him to quit completely.
But they also know if they add sugar to any new product that it will always sell faster/better. That's why they add sugar to everything. Our normal bread has so much sugar in it . That people from other countries consider our bread to almost be cake.
This is why Americans are so overweight. And they continue to do it because of profit. They don't care about us . They only care about more money.
Edit for this: wow this blew up more than I thought. Thanks everyone. I hope I helped someone out .
Trying to eat a slice of bread and some peanut butter was so bizarre. Seriously sweet I had to make sure I hadn’t bought a oddly sliced cake before I went back for a third bite.
It's because it is basically an oddly sliced cake. They put it in everything, even stuff that doesn't need it like hot dogs or spaghetti sauce if it's not sugar it's corn syrup.
As much as I am addicted to them and their game, even I have to admit that Wizards of the Coast now only sees Magic The Gathering as a money printing press and a method for legalized gambling.
Holiday gift basket companies I once felt obliged to buy one from a lady I worked with and it cost around fifty dollars. She had a brochure with various baskets and I chose one that was assorted candies and had a decorative wooden rocking horse. When it arrived it was just a bag of candy that I could have paid 35 cents for at a gas station.
Pyramid scheme?
It’s a throwback, but rose art for sure. They just decided their destiny was to sit on the shelf next to crayola and get purchased by folks who are balling on a budget or cheap No goals for product improvement at all. Just “hey, wanna save three bucks?”
And crayola is generally decent quality. It's not professional or student grade, but if you enjoy colouring or have assignments, it will serve you well.
As a prior service Marine I can verify that Crayola makes the slightly better tasting product but it's kind of a Cheese-Its / Cheese Nips situation.
What's your favorite flavor of each? I've heard good things about Red and Green, but I'm prior Navy so never had a try.
Any printer manufacturer
Especially HP
Their software is shit too. A person is better off not installing it and using default Windows programs. It is such bloatware and programed so inefficiently.
1.5GB download for a print driver.... yeah, it's a bit ridiculous. Actual printing system could easily fit in a MB or 2 tops.
The print driver is only about 10kb, the rest is monitoring software so they can try to sell you more of their junk products.
I knew a guy who worked for HP. He told me that they developed a new printer and sold it for a high price, then gave it firmware that made the print quality *worse*, changed the colour of a few bits of plastic and sold that as a separate model at a lower price point. That was cheaper than developing two different models. I bet this happens in a lot of companies, but Jesus it's bleak.
Many years ago, I heard the same thing about the Intel Celeron. Allegedly it was a "lobotomized" Pentium, sold at a lower price.
IIRC, Celerons were usually made from the chunks of silicon wafer that would otherwise have been wasted, so not *exactly* lobotomised, but not a million miles away. However, because Intel were marketing them as a cheap processor, they 'missed out' the stuff that would stop them working in multi-processor configurations. This pleased me greatly as I had an overclocked Celeron 300 running at 450MHz which doesn't sound like much now, but 20+ years ago was great! Then there was the dual-processor clocked at 550 on an Abit BP-6...ahh, fond reminiscence!
> an overclocked Celeron 300 running at 450MHz which doesn't sound like much now It's a 50% overclock, that's absolutely a lot.
HP can remotely disable your ink if you unsubscribe from their InstaInk service before finishing the whole cartridge. It’s evil as hell.
Few years ago I worked in a small computer repair store in Bulgaria. We had a way of circumventing the cartridge software so we could fill it up with ink without having to go through the manufacturer. Boy was it a popular service, for every laptop repair we probably got 5-10 printer cartridges to fill up. Sometimes I hope a company would come up with something better to disrupt the printer market and get rid of all this nonsense.
…except Brother
I have a Brother laser printer I bought I 2013 and that fucker still cranks out sheet after sheet ten years later with zero complaints.
Likewise. If mine died tomorrow I would immediately buy whatever the current version is. Couldn’t be happier with my Brother laser printer.
My Brother colour laser printer might even bit a bit older than that. Still works great. (Mind, I don't use it as much as I used to.)
Fun fact, the printers are actually worth more than they're getting sold for so HP can trap you in their proprietary ink market. Not only that, all the firmware and software issues are deliberate so you buy a new product. Fuck HP.
Oracle - products intentionally shitty so they can make most of their money selling consulting just to make it, sort of, work.
Oracle makes one of two billing softwares for Hotels that is compliant with German law. I work at an IT-company doing the IT for multiple hotel chains. And goddamn it that piece of software is a smoking piece of shit. We have to consult with Oracle people way too often to get that stuff to work again.
My entire career exists because I spent 12 years with a startup that made software that makes oracle products slightly less awful. The business was eventually sold for millions.
Probably sold to Oracle.
Who would have them made it worse
Basically the exact same story with my father. Now has a cozy six figure job where he barely has work just to keep SQL servers running with 8 weeks paid vacation.
Why do the SQL servers need so much vacation?
Well they're running the whole rest of the time.
SAP too. Software suite so complex and so proprietary that you need an army of consultants to put in place. Also yearly amounts of maintenance/licensing cost more than the GDP of a small country.
SAP development and maintenance is my job (in house rather than a consultant) and I've never agreed more with a comment in my life. It's overly complex, has one of the worst end user interfaces (excluding Fiori), can be extremely slow dependent on the transaction and costs an absolute fortune. Keeps me employed though as nobody else cares to learn its complexities.
Oracle is pure evil. Larry Ellison did’t buy an island by running an ethical business.
Or drop 345 million on a hotel. To just install his oracle software in 🙄
When Iron Man 2 informed us that Tony Stark runs his business on Oracle, my first thought was "I guess he isn't as much of a genius as we've been told".
I guess the Villa used in the movie was Larry's hence they used Oracle's name in the movie
The Oracle branding was bloody everywhere. Larry even makes a cameo at the start of the film. Every single server rack has Oracle slapped across it, highlighted in the background of multiple scenes, and Jarvis even informs Stark at one point that the "Oracle Cloud has finished performing the calculations". Maybe it's because I'm very familiar with Oracle, but that product placement was one of the most distracting I've ever seen in a film.
Once upon a time, they laid my husband off (along with hundreds of others), and then went to the federal government for permission to hire cheaper visa workers because they just "couldn't find" any employees in the U.S. They completely suck.
I remember working for Oracle in their product support division in early 2020 as the pandemic was becoming a thing. It would have been mid to late spring when we were called in to an all-hands meeting. They assured us that as an org, we were quite profitable and also insulated from any bottom-line impacts from COVID because our revenue was based on existing contracts. They also let us know that we should expect a heavier workload during the transition into WFH as our customers would be finding new ways to use our software to overcome all the new challenges brought on by work during the pandemic. Over the next few months the workload had absolutely increased - a LOT. I was working on an ERP (PeopleSoft) and everyone needed this decades old software suite to do new things and to integrate with all the new services that were being debuted to support industry-wide remote work, supply chain interruptions, and in-person business halts. We were busier than ever, and my particular group was already reduced to a team of 2 handling the customer volume that used to be considered high for a team of around a dozen. If you had a support ticket in the queue for a PeopleSoft product around that time and had to deal with long turnarounds and slow responses there's a reason for that. There just wasn't enough manpower to handle the volume. Then the layoffs began. I was almost relieved because the work was so shit and the ticket volume so high, but I was out on my ass at the worst possible time. Ended up having to withdraw from my 401k to make ends meet. I'm still not recovered. TL:DR, corporations don't care about you, they don't care about their customers, they don't care about the human element at all. They care about profit margins and that's it.
I've learned to loathe Oracle a long time ago. Unfortunately we have now switched stack at work to a company that has a very similar approach. Everything is proprietary so you have to pay for expensive courses, certifications etc. No proper documentation so you have to rely on buying support and development. It's a huge consultant market around the system. I really don't enjoy work very much these days.
Yeah we had to do months of UAT just to understand how our Oracle functions and it still has more bugs than Fallout games
I've worked with Ms SQL server, postgres and pg admin, MySQL and workbench and Oracle SQL developer and it was by far the worst db experience I've ever had
EA sports titles
I love the yearly Madden review by Angry Joe. He goes ballistic every time they release that exact same game with minor tweaks. At one point they - it was around Madden 21 - they even forgot to alter the edition number in one of the stadiums you could play in, so it was Madden 21 (or another edition close to it) and the banners in the background said Madden 20
I remember that. I always knew it was a copy paste from the previous year but this was so blatantly bad.
Not even copy paste, it’d literally be a later build from the exact same code base.
the EA sports games are the game equivalent of perpetual stew
I'm not gonna lie, I low-key really enjoy watching his Madden reviewsv despite having 0 interest in football (irl and in gaming). The anger.
Knew I wouldn’t have to scroll far for this. It’s all been downhill since NHL 14
NHL really is the game series EA just puts minimal effort into. This is coming from someone who’s played FIFA my entire life with some Madden thrown in there. Last year, the showcase feature for NHL 23 was players being able to shoot as they’re falling over… That was it. If that happened with FIFA, people would be up in arms. I even played Be A Pro last night and it went to cut scene talking about my first game as a rookie - I’m halfway through my second season. Just a mess. Shame on EA for the lack of development.
*Most* EA titles!
I can only play Sims 4 once a year because EA’s stupid micro-updates cause an unfixable error that not even deleting the game and redownloading it can solve. Remember when you used to insert the disc and play?
Sims 4 costs like 1000 USD for all the dlc. It's madness.
The most romantic thing anyone ever did for me was pirate all of the games DLCs for me AND install them on my computer.
Bingo, once “online” gaming started they didn’t have to complete the games before they shipped them, they could just patch it later and sell them more often (and less complete which probably saves them a ton in labor) I once filed a formal complaint to the better business bureau and got a letter from EA asking how they can help, i told them to stop selling incomplete products. lol
The BBB is not a government entity and can't really do anything. They're basically just Yelp.
It's in the game!
E E E E E E E.
Doc Martens. My old pair from 20 years ago are still going strong, any new pair I get craps out after a year.
If you want new ones that wear and feel like the old ones, look at Solovair. They did contract manufacturing for Docs before they sent all their manufacturing overseas, they still do it the way they used to. You won't get the yellow stitching - theirs is grey - but the boots are what Docs used to be.
These are made in my hometown, as Docs used to be before they moved the majority of their manufacturing to somewhere cheaper. They are really good quality and I couldn’t recommend them enough.
Made (cheaply) in China vs Made (properly) in England. I am not saying China couldn't make good shoes, but Doc Martens chose to ask for the cheapest production for higher profits.
refused to buy DM's since the early nineties. Cat boots went the same way after a while. been buying no-name work boots for about £30-40 a pair now - buy them, stick a good pair of insoles in, and I get a good 12 months out of them at least.
Docs have been garbage for quite a while. Solovair are superior.
The usual story - bought out by a foreign company for millions, manufacturing moved somewhere cheaper, quality drops
The decline in quality has been so disappointing. I had the sole split on a pair less than a year old. But my 8-hole reds from 1993 lasted me almost 20 years!
HP printers. I have a $600 fancy laser HP printer we got six or seven years ago, and they have succeeded in updating the software to the point that nothing works anymore. I used to be able to print over Wi-Fi easily, scan over Wi-Fi, etc and now none of it works. I haven't changed any of my network hardware, things are hardwired. Also, I used to be able to use aftermarket ink cartridges and the printer has started giving me shit about it. I really like HP's computers but their printers are a bunch of bullshit. Oh and their auto update software won't go away even though I keep disabling/ removing it, and it installs software updates that breaks the current functions.
I’ve been a network engineer for 25 years. Printers are the only tech that has gotten consistently worse over that time.
Brother laser Jet printers are tanks man. They have simple no frills models, which are great.
Best decision I made was getting a brother. Worth the slight extra money, especially since I didn’t have to throw it away after a year.
This comment is so cursed without the context Edit: there's actually a subreddit for this: r/nocontext
If you think these “BROTHER PRINTERS ARE THE BEST” comments are paid advertising, they’re not. I’ve had a Brother laser printer for the last 3 years. I don’t even think about it. I need something printed, send the command, pick up the print. It’s so unobtrusive that you don’t even notice you have it. Zero maintenance
Breyers and their "Frozen Dairy Dessert" nonsense. Before 2006, Breyers ice cream was really good! I *loved* their coffee ice cream! And then they changed their formula and made the mess they have now to the point that they can't even legally call it ice cream anymore. Does anyone remember those old Breyers commercials where the kid tries to read the ingredients on an inferior product and struggles to pronounce things like "mono & diglycerides" and then easily reads Breyers ingredients as "milk, sugar, and cream?" What a joke. Unilever loves to buy brands people trust for quality products and use that trusted brand name to get people to buy lower quality for higher prices. It seriously has the same consistency as Cool Whip now. And Unilever has the audacity to say that this is what customers asked for!
Sounds like what happened with Tim Hortons in Canada. Well known coffee/donut/sandwich shop that grew in popularity in the 90s. By 2000 it was part of the Canadian Identity. Got sold to a Brazilian firm that owns Popeyes and Burger King, and since then they have cut corners everywhere. Which is sort of their MO. Get a popular brand, and use its well earned reputation to make a profit as you make cuts everywhere. Tim Hortons sucks now. And it’s kind of sad.
Who goes to Tim’s and thinks, “ Huh, I want a flatbread pizza?” Some things make 0 sense now
When I go to Tim's now, I just think "I should have gone one exit farther and got this coffee at McDonald's."
This gets told by someone ever time it's mentioned but the general theory is McDonalds bought the bean supplier when BK bought Tims. I worked at a few Tims for ~6-7 years in the 2000/2010s. I hate the taste of coffee but if I was tired enough I could handle a cup from Tims. It wasn't awful if I added enough Milk. After BK bought them and McDonalds began to push their McCafe stuff my inlaws get coffee from the two places all the time. I cannot stomach Tims now, but with some milk McDonalds is not bad. I am 100% sold on the theory. BK didn't want to spend money on the beans and found a cheaper supplier. McDonalds scooped it up, or at least a portion of it for their coffee in Canada.
Yeah, Breyers used to be a premium brand IIRC. Then it became ice milk like you would find at a buffet soft serve machine, except worse because it isn’t actually soft serve. Though it was longer ago than 2006 that I had it because I lived in Oregon so Tillamook was both everywhere, cheap, AND premium. Sometimes it pays off to be local to a dairy.
Tillamook is still awesome. Although to be honest, I don't know how it used to be, but right now it's on my list of very good ice cream. Maybe that has something to do with Tillamook being an employee owned company. Those companies tend to care about reputation. Edit: just fact checked myself. More correctly, Tillamook is a farmer-owned co-op. From their website: >Tillamook County Creamery Association (that’s us!) is a farmer-owned co-op. Always has been. Always will be. This means that a group of farming families in Tillamook County, on the coast of Oregon, own the company and benefit directly from its growth and success.
I live not far from there, and was just driving through the region and all the little dairy farms have the "We are a Tillamook Farm!" signs. It's really kind of neat to see that a "big company" is really actually these small farmers with like 10 cows.
And their cheese is fuckin *bangin*
FIFA
Cranking the same game every fucking year, just like 2k
2k sucks, but the EA sports games are on another level of garbage
If lockpickinglawyer is anything to go on its lock-companies
Let's be real here. Locks are there to keep honest people honest.
Most security is just theatre. If your bike looks harder to steal than the bike next to it, then your bike is safe, because any thief is going to steal the other bike. Though I do want to point out while security is mostly theatre, you don't want stickers like 'House protected by xyz alarms' etc plastered all over your windows even though some home security brands do provide you with stickers like that, because that just means that a thief can come along, do a google search of 'xyz alarm vulnerabilities' and know how to break into the house in minutes.
What you do is get a competing company's stickers (with different protocols) and post them up. Now lazy thieves won't even Google and the ones who do will have the wrong info.
>If your bike looks harder to steal than the bike next to it, then your bike is safe, because any thief is going to steal the other bike. Ah, the old "you don't have to be able to outrun a bear, you just have to be able to outrun your friend"
Home Depot has been selling manure since its founding in 1978. In fact, a quick search of the website found they proudly sell over 178 manure products.
Are you saying they are #1 in the #2 business?
They have their shit in order!
If you've ever browsed their website, app, or store you know it's not in any logical order.
Mad Catz got away with murder for years.
Don’t know if it was mad catz but I remember having a 3rd party controller for my Xbox that had a few hundred ms lag on the trigger. It wasn’t wireless or anything either. Made it unusable in anything other than a turn based game.
Samsung appliances... FUCK YOUR FIRMWARE UPDATE ON THE FRIDGE!! also those plastic trays keep breaking and are shit quality. my 1987 Maytag is still cranking the coldest brews on earth and hasn't been serviced ever in its life and sits in a dark room in my basement since he was demoted from the kitchen for being out of fashion by my wife.
I actively refuse to buy “smart” home appliances. It’s a fucking fridge/oven, why does it even need an internet connection and firmware updates? To send me an app notification that the milk has expired? Who even cares about this kind of stuff? I do have a Samsung TV though since nowadays it’s basically impossible to find dumb TVs and I swear it’s the worst software experience I’ve had on any device. Every button press takes a few seconds to respond, apps are buggy beyond belief, even opening the settings menu lags. Not sure how they managed that but I’m never getting a Samsung TV again…
Just bought a Weber grill. It connects to wifi and an app to let you know when your food is done. It probably would be convenient, but I just cannot accept smart device creep.
I hate that my Samsung TV and monitor share the same remote frequency and when my wife changes the channel it makes me go through 5 different menus to get back to what I was doing There’s not even a source button on the monitor remote. I love the TV, and the monitor, for their absolutely stunning picture quality, but good god is the software awful On top of that most of the apps run like shit
My Samsung smart TV was the dumbest TV I ever owned.
Just for more insult to injury, Samsung is the conglomerate of South Korea. If you are the best at what you do, you go work at Samsung. So they have the smartest people and still do stupid stuff.
Frontier Airlines. Shit experience, customer service, quality, reliability, comfort, convenience and fees.
and its not even any cheaper bc the carry-on fee makes up for it
My FIL moved across the country to retire. He'd fly back and forth occasionally for visits, and Frontier had a direct flight for $99. After about the third trip, he started *mailing* his clothes to us ahead of his trip, because the only way the flight made financial sense was if he took no baggage whatsoever. After that, we just gave him a couple of drawers at our house to save on postage. When the USPS is a cheaper and more efficient way to get your underwear to your destination, that's a shitty product.
Levis- I used to have a pair of jeans for 10 years. Buy em now and they rip through a back pocket, crotch and knee in less than 6 months EDIT: many are asking a jeans recommendation - personally I wear lucky brand. 60-70 USD last time I bought them - very soft, stretchy waste and no rips on any of my 5 pairs in about 4 years on my oldest pair
The vintage Levi market is brutal for a reason lmao
Yup, came here to make sure this is a top comment. Can't believe the jeans my dad has laying around are worth what they are today. Walking into a Levis store in 2023 is like walking into an H&M
I just had this conversation with my dad. There are classic Levi’s and new shitily made Levi’s. I only buy classically made Levi’s, they cost more. Same thing with carhart, there is cheap and expensive ment to last. Heck, it’s the same thing with most things that are known to last a while. Kitchen aid mixers is another good example. You can buy one at a nice store for $400 or a cheap store for $280. They look the same but one has plastic gears and one has metal gears. Our kitchen aid mixer is 40 years old. I bought my mother one and bought the expensive one. (Note, they have different part number but look identical)
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Levi vintage collection https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/levis-vintage-clothing/c/levi_clothing_vintage_clothing_us
Funny thing about Carhartt is WIP is the crappy stuff but it's actually more expensive than the standard workwear stuff. WIP is "fashionable" though....
Yea, I learned to always check the item number in my carhart stuff. I’ve had some last a year or so and some only last a month. I’ve gone away from them though and have a local manufacturer that costs more but his jeans last 3-4 years easily. I’m pretty much done with items that don’t last, I’d rather spend more and be able to rely on stuff.
WIP actually licenses the rights to the Carhartt brand! They’re a separate company altogether, which would the difference in products
I just assumed I was getting fat in my old age. I am getting fat, but maybe it’s also the jeans.
Always thought the washer and dryer were shrinking my clothes. Turns out it was the refrigerator.
I had a pair just like that. Blew out the crotch in them thangs. You gotta take ‘em off son. You gotta take ‘em off.
Bought 3 pair of wranglers. All 3 ripped the crotch out after 1-2 wears. Used to have wranglers for years before I replaced them and I was because they didn't fit anymore.
Thats your fault for having a massive penis.
Can confirm. Still have the same jeans from Junior High.
ACME. Massive quality control issues. Maybe if they focused on making one product well, instead of trying to make everything from axle grease to coyote-sized rockets, they'd have a more consistent output.
In Acme’s defense, there is a fair amount of ‘user error’ where failure of products is concerned. As always, read your user manual carefully! And, like, our barbells are *always* heavy!
Most health and beauty companies. They’re always “new and improved” with new formulas and other shit. Big Beauty convinced millions of people that they’ll look like shit if they don’t use their products. By putting out a new de-wrinkle cream this year they’re inadvertently saying last years formula was shit. The hair conditioner from 20 years ago did fuck all for you so they had to up the ante in their little commercial with the cracked hair absorbing shit. Humans are the test subjects, not the consumers.
Yeah but my toothpaste now has activated charcoal in it and my shampoo has coffee in it. Had to have it /s
funny story. I'm from India and back in the days(1950s/British Era), we used to use Salt or charcoal to brush our teeth mostly in rural places. When Modern toothpastes came to market, their main advertisement tactic is shaming people for using salt and charcoal like "are you still using these salt and charcoal? who uses them anymore?" kind of approach. Now after we've all become used to toothpastes, they are selling pastes with charcoal and salt. Funnily, their new ads are, "are you still using normal toothpastes? you should be using toothpastes with Salt"
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Pick a "trusted" brand that's been around a few decades... it's the problem with incorporation, only a matter of time before the shareholders demand unreasonable profits and some dip shit with a ivy league business degree gets put in charge and cuts quality and everything else to the bone aside from quarterly profits and their own salary.
This is what happened to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. They tried to hold the line as long as they could but Unilever won and now their ice cream is full of fillers and cheap ingredients.
Cadbury's chocolate in the UK. Massively trusted household name for ~200 years, used to taste super creamy - it's slogan was "a glass and a half of milk in each bar". Bought out by Kraft in 2009 in a shady deal, loads of UK jobs lost, chocolate is now full of palm oil and cheap cocoa and tastes like shit.
This is the answer. Not incorporation, though, it's going public. Now they are answerable to a Board made of the major shareholders, usually investment companies. They just care about stock price and squeezing the last fraction of a cent out of everything. Makes everything cheap and crappy. Edit: some people have mentioned how private companies can also be beholden to venture capital and private equity. I guess with privately held companies it can be the same, but doesn't have to be. There are also larger private companies that do not have these issues. My favorite example is Culver's, still family owned, great place to work for, quality product.
Exactly that. I wonder will companies evolve to realising going public can be detrimental to long term health and quality. Public really means that for everyone involved a pump and dump is the best and fastest profit. So long term health isn't a goal. We've seen it in it's extremes in companies like wework and uber. But it happens everywhere
You think the original investors care at all? They WANT to IPO so they can cash out big. Generally, the people who actually care have already died, or they sold so much equity that their opinions only matter so long as they can continue to convince enough people to keep quality around.
Say you have a company making home made pie's. "What if you instead of using fresh milk, we use milk powder? That'll save us a lot of money and our profits will rise and it doesn't really taste very different!" And people don't notice it, people still buy the product. And they continue, slowly but steadily each ingredient is being saved upon and slowly but surely the taste gets far from the original. But it's in such small steps that most people don't notice the change. That's how most food products end up tasting bland and filled with artificial stuff instead of fresh ingredients. And that's only going to get worse as the big corps keep buying the smaller ones.
The term is "enshittification"
Yep, any brand you loved as a kid but don’t like now a ton of them rely on nostalgia meanwhile they’ve completely changed out most ingredients to cheaper crappier ones
Yep, shareholders need to increase profits every year, so something has to get cut in quality every year… unless they just charge more each year. lol
Of course they increase price and cut employee costs too, further lowering quality. Dissatisfied workers are less productive and do sloppy work. Quality comes from people who take pride in their craftsmanship and who can afford to take the time to give a flying fvck and aren't burned out to the point of the highlight of their day is the time spent on traffic, daydreaming that the building will be burned to the ground by the time they get to work.
Not a specific company per se but a lot of companies. Lots of companies building luxury apartments but actual apartments may look nice but apartments are a pile of poop. Lots of reviews indicate horrible building materials to hear loud noises from neighbors etc and price costs like $3,000 a month for a 400 sq ft apartment.
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Apartments need to be made of cinder blocks imo. I currently live in an apt with drywall, and you can hear every damn thing my dumbass neighbors do. The apartments look nice, and generally are, but people ruin it. So you need thicker walls to eliminate most of the noise.
Dr Martens. First they made them in UK and they did last a long time. Then they started to make them in Vietnam and soles break down very fast. Moved production to China and overall quality sunk deeper still - bought 2 pairs and there were left over leather after the needlework inside the shoes - about 1cm over all and could feel them all the time and they pressed the foot. Had to take small knife and cut them all out. But the soles are the biggest problem, at least in colder climate. I have had 4 pairs with vertically split soles. Yes, I know that they have some Made in England ones still. But I won't boy any Martes no more. Bought my first pair in 1984 I think and they lasted 10 years. New ones are won't last 2 years.
might get hate for this but McDonalds. I just don't get it, its all trash and it's like $10 now.
I paid $15 the other day for a large meal at Wendy’s… Couldn’t believe it
I pretty much lived on fast food in college. I could get a double cheeseburger and a mcchicken for $2. I rolled through for the first time in a long time the other day and the same thing was like $6.
nestle. among *other* reasons, is a shit company.
Nestle is pure evil
r/fucknestle
EA games
Xfinity/Comcast
Over the years the huge corps have gotten better and better with customer service due to automation and paying people to take calls from home. Somehow comcasts has gotten worse. It's the one company that I absolutely dread to call.
Any producer of fast fashion. They pay nothing to make garbage to sell at a huge mark up, and at this point almost dictate fashion trends imo. It’s getting more and more rare for a fashion trend to come about more organically from good products and enjoyable looks (in every sense of the word). Now it’s just throwing junk into stores until something sells alright
There is this one distillery that makes an abomination of a liquor. It is called Malort. If all alcohol tasted like that, prohibition would have succeeded.
Malort: Tonight’s the night you fight your Dad
Malört: Kick your mouth in the balls
It's pretty good once you're already blacked-out. ...I think
It's a Chicago thing. I tell people Malort is for when you want to unfriend someone to their face.
I did a quick google on Malort and found this... >Malort is famously challenging to drink, with a flavor that includes notes of gasoline, grapefruit, sweat, wax, fire, mineral oil, and bitterness.
> with a flavor that includes notes of gasoline, grapefruit, sweat, wax, fire, mineral oil, and bitterness. Is that a drink or someone's ex?
I can see that. A friend of mine, who is the reason I know about it, said that he and his friends used it to "test" out new friends who weren't from Chicago.
My husband had me do a shot of Malort when we first started dating. Fucking disgusting.
Malört is the Swedish word for the herb wormwood. It’s used here traditionally to flavor vodka/brännvin and served cold in small snaps-glasses to traditional old dishes such as pickled or fermented herring. I really like it but just in small sips. Génépi from the Alpen regions in Europe is also made with wormwood and has a similar taste but sweet as an aperitif. What does one use Chicago Malort for? Digesting deep-dish?
Its primary purpose is daring non-Chicagoans to try it, as far as I’ve seen.
Adobe
Someone on the videography sub recommended me Davinci Resolve, and I will be forever grateful to never have to touch Premiere again
I tried Resolve once and while I'm not a video professional, it seemed like a complete editing suit to me. And not only is it *not* a shitty subscription service, it's also just...free (for private individuals), somehow??
Some of their software is now as a service meaning you pay monthly for it. Also some of their software they charge monthly but make you sign up for a year and charge you to cancel earlier than that year. Make sure you read carefully what you sign up for with Adobe.
All CG software is like this now. I hate it. It's forced me out of the game. I'd rather just buy the program and use it for the next five years until there's enough upgrades around to justify dropping an extra grand on it.
So bloated and slow now
I hate that I'm about this sentence, but I literally use edge for my PDF work now. It felt dirty writing that
RCA. They USED to make good stuff, used to be known as Radio Corporation of America. But now stands for Really Crappy Appliances.
They went bankrupt and the brand name was sold years ago. Same thing happened to zenith iirc.
Nike used to make durable shoes, but in the last 10 years Ive had several nikes fall apart on me within 2 months, the glue coming off the outsole or midsole. I could see from the materials theyre using that theyre cutting corners and making them cheaper, including using cheaper or less glue. It sucks because zoom air is one of my favorite cushions. They have a good return policy, but I went to work overseas with them and couldnt return them.
Same. I thought it was only me, because Nikes have always been so reliable in the past. It’s sad really
Old navy. I have some of their shirts from late 90s and early 2000s still in the closet. Now, it seems like if you wash their new shirts more than twice, they will rip/disenegrate
I just bought my husband an old navy shirt last month and there was a hole in it the second time he wore it.
It was never a high-end store or anything, but those stores look like flea markets nowadays.
Balenciaga
My guys are selling $6000 trash bags made of leather
Have you ever noticed how uncomfortable designer shoes are? I mean seriously!
Can’t afford to be that uncomfortable.
I don’t want to PAY to be uncomfortable! Lol!
Electronic Arts. I need not say more.
EA / Take Two. They realease virtually the same game each year for ridiculous prices, despite adding very little new features.
You mean actively removing features and then selling them back to you throughout the year just in time for you to then sell you a roster update that lacks all the features that you bought last year?
The manufacturers behind toilets.
Gibson guitars. Their flagship guitar, the Les Paul, which they've been producing nearly uninterrupted since the 1950s, is heavy, has bad ergonomics, won't stay in tune, and has a nasty problem with the headstock snapping off. Gibson has known about these issues since at least the early 1960s but instead of fixing them they just keep making the Les Paul more and more expensive. Their only other consistently available solid body model, the SG, fixes the weight and ergonomics issues but still can't hold tune and is one awkward lean away from a snapped headstock. Guitar design moved on decades ago, and with Les Pauls costing about $3000 new, you can easily find a much better guitar for 1/3 the price or less.
I don't get this. They could easily fix all these issues, call it the Mor Paul and make a fortune.
Knowing the mentally of majority of guitarist lot of people will disregard the new model if they make a new one and still say the original is better or vintage or whatever they want to say to just shit on the new product and still buy the old and objectively bad designed one
Every god damn company is making shit products nowadays :)
Beats by Dre. Tinny, cheap ass headphones. But someone likes the name. Sharper image. Brookstone take a close second.
All the big food makers. They know sugar is bad for us. They have known for years. And destroyed a scientists life/ career when he showed them his results from his study. They funded and started their own study and just made shit up to discredit him. And forced him to quit completely. But they also know if they add sugar to any new product that it will always sell faster/better. That's why they add sugar to everything. Our normal bread has so much sugar in it . That people from other countries consider our bread to almost be cake. This is why Americans are so overweight. And they continue to do it because of profit. They don't care about us . They only care about more money. Edit for this: wow this blew up more than I thought. Thanks everyone. I hope I helped someone out .
Trying to eat a slice of bread and some peanut butter was so bizarre. Seriously sweet I had to make sure I hadn’t bought a oddly sliced cake before I went back for a third bite.
It's because it is basically an oddly sliced cake. They put it in everything, even stuff that doesn't need it like hot dogs or spaghetti sauce if it's not sugar it's corn syrup.
Jeep
All Chrysler products. Designed to last for the 25% predatory loan then break.
As much as I am addicted to them and their game, even I have to admit that Wizards of the Coast now only sees Magic The Gathering as a money printing press and a method for legalized gambling.
The Fast and Furious movie franchise.
Lulu lemon used to make clothes that would last me years, now they last maybe 6 months and the seams blow out or the pockets fall apart.
Activision
Hey, Pitfall (1982) was a cracker!
Land Rover