• anomnom@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Red lobster couldn’t afford the bugs either. Put em out of business.

      Well that was the excuse. Thy real reason was because the holding company that bought them out with debt also sold all the locations to a land lord and rented them back at higher rates.

      Funny money fucked them.

  • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    There’s something deeply unsettling about American suburbs, rows of identical houses, and not a human being in sight, no noises, just this artifical maze, my Uber took a detour though one once and I looked up from my phone and saw that I didn’t realize where I am and it all looked so identical it was disorienting and I freaked out a bit, had to open Google maps to realize where I was. The movie Vivarium captures this feeling well. Why don’t y’all get out and go for a walk and talk to your neighbors.

    • skittle07crusher@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 month ago

      I am an American, and I once found myself far from home traveling through what I later learned was a ‘bedroom community’ in New Jersey just trying to find a place where we could all pull over and eat something, but apparently “restaurants” were just supremely exotic anywhere within in those, Idk, 300 sq miles.

      It was EXTREMELY unsettling… even for an American!

    • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      The suburbs are bad enough but what really gets me when play Geoguessr type games is how much of towns are just a highway with a strip mall and parking lots. Gives me a weird dread-like feeling, kinda like being inside a dying mall right before it’s closing.

      • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 month ago

        Yeah separating commercial and residential zones so much creates such dead zones, and a huge car dependency. Where I grew up everything I needed was in walking distance, from the optometrist to the bodega, never needed a car and my neighborhood felt so lively.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Even in the deepest suburbs it’s not that hard to form community and connection with your neighbors. Hold a few yard sales, make small talk, greet people walking their dogs, get to know who lives where. That’s literally all it takes, that and actually going out.

      We complain endlessly, particularly on sites like Lemmy, about the US’s lack of “walkable cities” and other systemic obstacles to having better sense of community and social contact, but we hardly ever see people doing something about it.

      I get that it’s less “fun” to go out and make friends if you don’t got a riverwalk and cafes, but the most important ingredient is still there, which is other people you just need to step up and make things happen.

    • Anomalocaris@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 month ago

      the aetheric monotonous nightmare of commie blocks, with absolutely zero advantages, high cost, and HOA control

    • expr@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 month ago

      Most places don’t actually look like this. You see stuff like this when a single developer buys up a bunch of land and stamps down a bunch of houses with the same 2-3 layouts. It’s pretty shitty and I’d eager most people don’t actually like it.

      Most suburbs here are much more heterogenous as the houses are added incrementally over time.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      These types of identical house suburban hellholes are the exception, not the norm. Mostly it’s the newer developments being built out in the middle of nowhere that look like this, and presumably so the builders can skimp out on construction costs by making (or attempting to make…) everything the same for each one. Plus the HOA, “but muh resale value!” factor.

      I live in an American suburb. All the houses in my neighborhood, and all the others in town, are different. We don’t have an insane HOA and I can paint my house whatever color I want. We have quite a few services, shops, and various eateries (to be fair, three of them are fast food joints) well within walking distance. With sidewalks. And in some places, even a bike lane.

      This area was built up in the 1940’s through the late 1950’s in the post-war boom.

  • 🇨🇦 tunetardis@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 month ago

    My mom’s childhood was partly spent in a war-torn country where they had no choice but to eat crickets for protein. Years later, I showed her an article about how some gourmet restaurants are experimenting with cricket preparations. She looked pensive, and said “They should harvest them from the rice fields. I think the rice-fed ones taste best?”

    • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      But there are a lot of places in the world where crickets are just part of the cuisine even when they have other food available

  • Harvey656@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 month ago

    Endless shrimp destroyed the company. So fuck it, eat the bugs you little pod child, EAT THE BUGS!

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 month ago

      No, the Red Lobster insolvency was driven by declining sales and increasing debt, amid some shady corporate shenanigans with their finances. When they filed, they were about $30 million in the hole (even assuming their high valuations for their intangible assets).

      Private equity owners (Golden Gate) made them sell off the land they owned, only to lease it back at above market rates. Then sold the chain to its biggest seafood supplier (Thai Union), who used the restaurant as an outlet for their wholesale seafood rather than as a standalone profitable business (which resulted in huge quality drop off and declining sales).

      They were headed in the wrong direction, and the $11 million they lost on endless shrimp didn’t make a big difference. It was circling the drain anyway, based on big strategic errors (or just plain old private equity fuckery).

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      the “bug hate” meme is entirely a product of meat industries worried about people actually embracing alternatives.

      I can describe cow and chicken meat with equally disgusting terminology, eating living things in any capacity is objectively weird and gross, we’re just more used to eating some living things over others.

      Sooner or later we’re all going to be eating things like cultured meats and processed insects, it’s just a matter of how many people are going to resist and struggle against changes to the way we stay alive.