this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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I'm drinking boxed wine tonight but I accidentally set the box in a puddle of water on my kitchen counter and the bottom of the box fell apart, so I had to just take the bag out and realized boxed wine is really just bagged wine. So now there's just a plastic bag of wine sitting on my table and for some reason that felt a bit cyberpunk to me, you just buy a big bag of booze when you want to get fucked up in Mega-City 1.

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[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This one haunts me. The hardest part about living under a society where the ability to profit is the primary objective is mourning for all the wonderful and amazing things we could be accomplishing if the objective was to actually give people better lives.

[–] lukecooperatus@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Billionaires and pop music stars fucking off to space for fun on a whim, while the rest of us try to figure out how we're gonna eat next.

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago

We get close to Elysium every day

[–] Red_Eclipse@hexbear.net 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're basically fucked if you don't have a smartphone nowadays because it's like your wallet/keys/money/bank/email/notepad everything in one. And yet at the same time it spies on you and spams you with notifications and ads.

Overall the necessity and ubiquitousness of our tech but it's also hostile to the user and almost inescapable.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

My car insurance provider didn't mail me an insurance card, I need to have their app on my phone, but I forgot to reinstall the app after I switched to a newer phone. Of course I got pulled over and couldn't provide proof of insurance. By the time I downloaded the app again the cop said "we're past that" and I had to go to the court house to prove I had insurance at the time of the stop.

So convenient!

[–] TheWolfOfSouthEnd@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago

That cop was a complete cock, but we’re way past that (with cops).

[–] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I bet the app spys on your location data to judge how you are driving/get an excuse to increase your rates.

[–] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yup! I did one of these a year ago, against my better judgment because we really needed the discount.

Had to give the app unrestricted permissions, had to run it for 6 months straight, and it kept a running list of "incidents" ranging from crashes and hard stops all the way to slightly fast turns and even driving at more risky hours of the day.

Luckily, my agent is a family friend so he gave me the lowdown - this one lets you view the reports, and you can mark any negative incidents as "I was a passenger" and clean up your record as you go. So when the 6 month period finished, I had an absolutely impeccable score, basically the best you could possibly get.

You also don't get any discount at all until a year after the start of the program, so it was all in the understanding that eventually some day we'd get the discount. Also this company does some discount for length of service, so we would be getting that as a discount when renewal comes.

My insurance just renewed with the new discounts a month ago. After all that, here's the big savings:

cw insurance company fuckery:Price went up about $10/mo (roughly 10% of the original price).

[–] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That spoiler-tagged ending lmao agony-deep

[–] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah seriously. I suppose I should have said it only went up by that much, as I assume it would have gone up way more otherwise (despite having no claims or additional coverage between those times).

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you live in America look into switching whenever your coverage needs to renew. Elephant insurance is a pretty good one that doesn't advertise as much so it's not as well-known.

[–] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah we go through an independent agent, so in theory they are shopping around for us on every renewal. I will ask them to look into that one though, so thanks for the tip.

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I have a programmable AI that controls my house for me. I can personalize to my preferences completely. I cannot afford my prescription toothpaste that has slightly more floride in it.

[–] dannoffs@hexbear.net 29 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Americans think goon is a weird slang for wine, but also think Dick and Randy are just ordinary first names.

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

we shouldn't call ourselves that either

[–] Weedian@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There was a pro baseball player named Randy Johnson and its one of the funniest names ever

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

Dick Butkus

[–] Aradino@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago

It was called that long before gooning got the new meaning

[–] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 14 points 1 week ago

"In my day we called them Space Bags." sanae-boomer

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Probably the self serve checkouts that use AI to falsely accuse you of stealing.

"DID YOU SCAN THAT?"

[–] GenderIsOpSec@hexbear.net 17 points 1 week ago

"DID YOU SCAN THAT?"

no i didnt you fucking narc, now shush

[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've found passive aggressively holding up the item to the camera jiggling it and then putting it back works well and makes me feel better than it should.

[–] blame@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago

3d printed guns maybe

drones

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You know those drink dispensers that can mix fifty flavors in any combination you want? Closest thing to replicators IRL.

[–] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And the most cyberpunk part about them is that they started cool like that, hey mix any combo you want from this huge list, but now it's basically: yeah you can have plain coke, cherry coke, or vanilla coke. You can have plain root beer or vanilla root beer. Here's about 6 other drinks with 1 extra flavor option each.

It feels like the tech was too much work to keep clean (also true of all other soda fountains), so they canned any interesting interactions pretty quickly.

Feels like it should have a flashing neon sign hanging about it banging on about "over a million flavor combos!" but with the last part perpetually turned off and dropping sparks on you and into your cup during the process.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah the machines are going away in most places too. They were just too good for a failing society like ours.

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Went to an amusement park and they had bar codes on the bottom of the cups so you only got one refill every 15 minutes. I hope those machines die

[–] ClathrateG@hexbear.net 20 points 1 week ago

A military parade thanking its sponsors including Coinbase(crypto company)

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 18 points 1 week ago

blinding headlights of cars 😡

[–] peppersky@hexbear.net 18 points 1 week ago

Climate change

[–] buh@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago

app slave operated burrito taxi

[–] godlessworm@hexbear.net 13 points 1 week ago

militarized police that only exist to protect corporations and their government dogs

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 12 points 1 week ago

Puppygirl Hacker Polycule. doggirl-kiss They put the punk in cyberpunk.

[–] FedPosterman5000@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Cw weed lmaoI got an induction heater for the dry herb vape I use, and it’s like whoa I’m smoking with magnets stalin-smokin
Fr though- wealth inequality; mythicization of regional differences pitting the proletariat against one another under false pretenses; cameras everywhere/expansive police state (including technology we surely don’t know of yet); predatory, electronic buy-now-pay-later; development of technology for the express purpose of spying on/advertising to/dividing/alienating/pacifying the proletariat/reddit; declines in reading comprehension/critical analysis/thought terminating declarations that any person one disagrees with is a “bot/putin/china”; vr porn/ai chatbots as a solution to alienation; lack of clean drinking water/air in major cities and massive public health disparities based on class differences; widespread virtual gambling; companies predictably selling genetic data people paid them to take; commodification of every aspect of modern life/encouragement of predation on one’s neighbor via forms of landlording; shit-tier techno solutions (eg e-scooters) for private profit instead of structural solutions (eg transit); rolling blackouts which primarily affect poor neighborhoods; ceos crashing their planes into people’s homes; expansion of mercenary/private police forces; books (primarily nonfiction) being treated like a mythical source of “old” knowledge one needs an advanced degree to understand; neon signs (😍 on the last one)

[–] Infamousblt@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago
[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Obviously there's more serious stuff but I rented a moving truck recently that was ancient with a big touch screen mounted rather ad hoc to the dashboard, it was slow AF and I remember a very clean white Tesla tailgating me along a one lane either side road before silently overtaking me near a solar farm almost having a collision with a truck going the other way.

All felt cyberpunk to me

[–] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah that's a vibe, for sure. Could make a fun short film, though I'd give it a slightly different ending. sicko-blur

[–] calidris@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago
[–] m532@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 week ago

Mobile phones and watches turn us into cyborgs

[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Drones recently have been fucking me up. Just zip tie some explosives to consumer quadcopters, drive a truck somewhere, and boom instant attack

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Are you familiar with slaughterbots?

(I'm sorry. But it's better to be aware.)

[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

oh lovely

"As of 2020, DARPA was actively working on pre-operational prototypes that would make swarms of autonomous lethal drones available to the US military."

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

yea

The best defense imo is to make yourself either useful economically or culturally, or at least not specifically hated by anyone powerful.

The future of warfare, and of organization in general, is distributed. One might even say "swarm-based".

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Not answering your question, but bag wine is the best drink to smuggle into a music festival. Best volume (to minimise wees and concealability) to alcohol to pleasantness ratio.

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I went to a show yesterday, expecting to pay at the door. The people running the ticket counter had no physical tickets and were not taking cash, but said "Can you log in on Facebook? That's the best way to do it."

It must have been important to be able to reserve a specific seat in an auditorium that had 4x as much capacity as the crowd that attended.

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 week ago

Fake guardrails are the biggest annoyance of mine.

I had a coupon for a free smoothie so I decided to go use it at a place close to my house.

Partner wanted a chocolate banana smoothie so I asked for one and the dude at the desk was like "we don't have that".

They have 30 items on the menu with chocolate and another 30 with bananas! You have the items there! Fake rules like that turn my brain to mush.

In Colombia we went to a restaurant and my partner noticed they had no vegetarian options so we asked and the owner was like "I'll make you something don't worry." And he did! Plantains, rice, eggs, beans! Best meal I had there!

I used to work at a pizza shop and we didn't make calzones, someone came in and asked for one and I offered to make it and my manager said we couldn't because the computer didn't have a menu item for a calzone. I tried to tell him it's the same ingredients as a medium but he started getting pressed so I dropped it.