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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • For reference, that business model is called the loss leader pricing scheme. It’s the one where you sell a product for cheap with the expectation that the customer will buy something else that’s more expensive alongside it. It’s more common than you would expect.

    For instance, eggs and milk are placed at the back of the store because there’s a higher chance of you picking up other things to buy on the way to the back.

    IKEA does something similar with their food court.

    The Steam deck is sold at a loss, because Valve makes their money back via game sales. The same is true for all gaming consoles

    All F2P games operate on the same principle

    My understanding is that Costco gasoline is so cheap because it’s offset by product purchases in-store. Also, Costco food court




  • Translation appears accurate, but misses the cultural element. In my admittedly limited experience, this is pretty par for the course for Chinese humor. Compared to Western humor, Chinese humor is more brash and abrasive, and almost boastful when viewed from an outside perspective. I can definitely envision someone receiving that sort of response as a joke (“What, you didn’t receive game of the year? Why did you even go?”). And it would certainly agree with my impression that he makes a lot of crude jokes on his social media that don’t translate well into English (see: the IGN article on how the developers are sexist). It can really be quite difficult for inexperienced people to determine what statements are humorous and what statements are earnest, since the difference is often really subtle, even when read in the original language.

    I’m not necessarily defending him, since these sorts of jokes do have a nugget of honesty to them, but my read is that he plays them up for humor.








  • That’s actually a misunderstanding. Sure, regular bacteria can’t thrive at boiling temperatures, but some of then can at least survive boiling temperatures for brief periods of time. In the same way that tardigrades can survive the vacuum of space - they’re not really doing anything in space, but they can enter a state of hibernation that’ll allow them to survive


  • No, but it may as well be considered sterile for normal purposes. Boiling doesn’t actually kill everything - endospores and also fungal spores are ridiculously hardy, and you’d need to autoclave (steam at high pressure) in order to really kill everything. And microbes are everywhere, so the tea is going to get colonized again really quickly unless you pay special attention to making sure that that doesn’t happen. Don’t attempt to can or store the tea, if that’s what you’re trying to do. Also, if you’re attempting to use unsanitary water to make tea, be aware that some bacteria and fungi make toxins that can’t be destroyed by boiling, so even if you manage to kill off the microbes, you can still get sick.