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Ryan M

12:01 AM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange I need a spell to prevent spam on question-and-answer sites. Can they do those?

forest distrusts StackExchange

Yes but then the spammers might hire an even more powerful witch doctor.

Ryan M

It's all about driving up the cost, though. If they have to hire the more expensive witch doctors, then maybe they'll just go elsewhere.

forest distrusts StackExchange

There are so many witch doctor spammers though, so they probably have better contacts.

It's a war of attrition that will go in their favor. They have witch doctors, hackers, private eyes, and all the money from Nigerian princes.

Journeyman Geek

12:16 AM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange Yup. but it also affects the supply chain

Ryan M

True. They might even by doing an in-kind exchange of services. Spamming services for witch-doctoring services.

Journeyman Geek

Its one of the reasons the completion date of my new place is delayed again

forest distrusts StackExchange

@JourneymanGeek On the upside, it's helping many countries move away from fossil fuels.

Which is long overdue...

Journeyman Geek

@forestdistrustsStackExchange Well - in europe

its also causing food insecurity with knock on effect

Ryan M

@JourneymanGeek definitely thought this was going to be about the supply chain for witch doctors at first.

forest distrusts StackExchange

12:17 AM

Oh all witch doctors need is albinos and shrunken heads. I don't think they're in short supply.

Well, that and a proxy to spam with.

Ryan M

That and a steady stream of customers to pay off their student debt from witch medical school.

forest distrusts StackExchange

"I didn't spend four years in evil medical school to be called Mister"

Journeyman Geek

8:16 AM

→ 15 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

9:11 AM

@curious no, can't replace someone like him! :D

@MetaAndrewT. you get a chat shirt as reward!

@curious careful not to get cut from the sharp edge then! I assume from the "used to" that the cat passed away? :(

@Tinkeringbell thanks, you could say worse things about me.... :P

@forestdistrustsStackExchange it's all part of the Grand Plan.

@Tinkeringbell we have one website/app here that offers groceries delivery in same day, but they are going down, turns our their management is terrible. :/

Didn't find anything in English, you can translate this though.

Tinkeringbell

9:52 AM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar Over here, they promise delivery in 10 minutes. Which means a lot of 'dark stores' (buildings with blinded windows) in the middle of residential areas. I don't know how long that'll last, the municipalities are trying to take measures as these stores create some nuisance, mainly in traffic too

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Tinkeringbell 10 minutes?? Well that's insane. But didn't understand the dark stores, what do you mean?

Ideally, delivery will be made with drones, Amazon started doing it from what I read a while ago, but it's still far from being common.

With groceries, most efforts, and time, are spent on collecting what the client wants though, so it's different.

In the peak of COVID first wave here, I ordered online from a place that had tons of mistakes with the order, but had no better alternative, it was really annoying.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_store

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

(not same day delivery, it was a place offering pick up, i.e. I order the groceries and come to collect it when it's ready, either same day or day after.)

Tinkeringbell

For the Netherlands, you get stuff like this images.app.goo.gl/59ekiiNDh2jgGKxj7 where half the sidewalk is suddenly littered with bikes

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Tinkeringbell interesting, here many restaurants did it to survive during COVID, but ordinary shops never did it over here afaik. Guess it's something that started fine and didn't scale well in Europe.

@Tinkeringbell oddly reminds me of Stack Overflow and piles of crappy questions littering the place.... ;)

Tinkeringbell

10:06 AM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar Oh, it's not really a business trying to survive Covid thing here: supermarkets remained open anyways. These are entirely new corporations trying to profit off of people's laziness without much thought for sustainability

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar Well it is kinda similar! Imagine living in a perfectly nice and quiet neighborhood, and suddenly you get one of these, with delivery people racing to get anywhere on time, and making noise, shouting, the mess on the sidewalk.. if you're really unlucky there's also suddenly the noise of motorized transport and people delivering supplies to that store.

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Tinkeringbell Wolt did it here, big time. Anyway, going to restaurant now with all family, cya! :D

(and wish me luck, kids sometimes don't have patience....)

Tinkeringbell

Enjoy! (The food then, not the experience :P)

Fingers crossed. Kids and restaurants are horrible combinations, I still don't know how my parents survived that with me and my brothers.

DavidPostill

@JourneymanGeek Went shopping this morning to Lidl. Lots of empty shelves and way fewer choices than normal available in some areas like crisps, cereals and biscuits. I mostly managed to get what I wanted although I had to choose different brands than normal. I didn't notice the prices being any higher than normal. Probably got that to look forward to :(

Journeyman Geek

10:24 AM

@DavidPostill Oh, it's lower down on the supply chain so the effects are going to take a while :/

DavidPostill

Apparently the lack of crisp varieties is due to a shortage of Sunflower oil, as Ukraine and Russia are responsible for exporting around 80% of the world’s sunflower oil. Prices of other alternative oils have gone up as a result and most UK supermarkets are rationing the number of bottles you can buy.

Journeyman Geek

The other 'cheap' alternative is palm oil

and one of the two big producers has stopped exports so they can manage the internal market

DavidPostill

@JourneymanGeek Is that the same as coconut oil?

Journeyman Geek

Not at all!

Coconut oil is very different and less 'efficient'

Palm oil

Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from oil crops in 2014. Palm oils are easier to stabilize and maintain quality of flavor and consistency in processed foods, so are frequently favored by food manufacturers. On average globally, humans consumed 7.7 kg (17 lb) of palm oil per person in 2015. Demand has also increased for other uses, such as cosmetics and biofuels, creating more demand on the...

Basically oil palms are almost like oily dates on small trees, with giant giant bunches of tiny fruits

So they take these huge bunches, mash em, process them and... da

coconut oil is (commercially) made from copra, or dried coconuts (so the processing process takes longer) and probably is lower yield for effort

DavidPostill

I normally use extra virgin olive oil anyway. Nice to make salad dressing and ok to cook with as long as you don't cook very hot (it has a lower smoke point than sunflower oil). I don't think I've ever bought or used sunflower oil but it is used in a lot of grocery items.

Journeyman Geek

10:29 AM

(non commercially you can clarify thick coconut milk, but... that's tastier and has shorter shelf life)

Apparently gave my gran headaches, + my mom sticks to the traditional oils

groundnut for deep frying, gingelly/Sesame oil for normal cooking, ghee in moderation :D

DavidPostill

Never seen palm oil in the UK - but I've never looked for it either.

Journeyman Geek

Its more common in commercial use

IIRC its also used for making soap so... that might be affected too

DavidPostill

Sesame is good for asian style cooking but it does have a strong flavour. I might try it as I do make a lot of stir frys and it might also work in a salad dressing. I eat a lot more salads in the summer.

Journeyman Geek

Ah, our version is less strong smelling

chinese oil is made from roasted seeds, the indian style stuff isn't so its milder

....

India just banned wheat exports

cnbc.com/2022/05/14/…

Tinkeringbell

10:50 AM

Yeah, I'm heavily considering turning the front yard into a vegetable garden at this point XD

Joachim

11:26 AM

Is the review queue showing an item but when clicking on it it displays the "this queue has been cleared" message also caused by caching? (Apologies for that terrible sentence structure :|)

Journeyman Geek

11:38 AM

@Joachim IIRC the review queues shows if there's any reviewable items at all, so chances are you reviewed what's left in the queue already

Joachim

@JourneymanGeek But I haven't reviewed an item in a while, so that can't be the case, I think.

Another question (which I'm sure has been answered on Meta, but I can't find it): why aren't we allowed to (re)cast a close vote on a question? If a Q requires more details, and I flag it as such but that vote 'disappears', but weeks later I find out it's a dupe, I can't VTC again, which is somewhat impractical.

Journeyman Geek

That I don't remember off the top of my head

Joachim

It's still showing the 1 Suggested Edit. Very peculiar..

gnat

12:16 PM

status-declined looks outdated here: Add downvote option to Low Quality Review Queue list of potential actions. Any MSE moderator around to correct it to how things work now, which looks like status-complted for this request

Journeyman Geek

1:58 PM

@gnat we don't retag status posts in most cases. Flag it and staff periodically update these tags.

ymb1

8:57 PM

quick question please, if a user commented, and as I replying they deleted the comment, do users get notified by @ if they commented and deleted?

ymb1

10:05 PM

You should mention this only happens when you're not logged in. — Laurel 40 mins ago

so I replied thanks done

and it was deleted

if it's no longer needed, why not delete the now not needed comment? just curious

the way I operate is when I see "done" I delete my comment, and the other person does the same

now Laurel won't see thanks done, and I have to flag her comment -- her comment should have been deleted with my thanks is what is confusing me

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