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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: May 26th, 2024

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  • I hate them, but if you treat it like a game and operate within their rules it can be fun instead of a pain. I think if it a lot like poker. I sure would bluff my own grandma to win a pot. Same thing in car buying. They aren’t your friends but your adversaries.

    I have bought 7-8 cars of my own over the years and helped 4 friends buy cars because they know I love doing it.

    First, if at all feasible bring several thousand dollars cash, no matter what your goal is. When you buy a car without cash the sales people get their cut at the end of the month in a lot of places but if your cash down payment is large they will usually get their cut immediately and this puts them a little more on your side at the close. Make sure you show them the cash when you’re safely doing a test ride and tell them you want to give it to them! Don’t do this if you can’t do it while feeling safe i’m very large and do car shopping mostly in big safe city areas.

    Second, don’t ever fall in love with a car. You always have to be prepared to walk away from a bad deal. And in fact you will find that your willingness to walk away can often get you a better deal. I balked once over a $300 dealer fee, that only popped up while signing paperwork. They bitched at me, a lot, (we had been at the deal for about five hours) but they got the fee worked off.

    Third, do not ever let them get you into the ‘four square’ that’s a suckers game. Negotiate the price of the vehicle directly or go to another dealership that will. I have been forced to leave when the sales guy told me flat out the four square was a requirement at their dealership. Smart for them but lame for you it’s like playing a complicated game for the first time against someone who plays it many times a day and is hugely financially incentivized to confuse you with it. Refuse it.

    If you are buying a new car (which i don’t really recommend) wait until they have given you the absolute rock bottom lowest price. Then tell them that you think there’s still a little room. On speakerphone call other dealerships in your area and tell them the price you’re getting offered on that exact make and model. If it’s actually a good price they will tell you they can’t beat it. I have been invited across town to save $1,000, whereupon the now angry sales manager agreed to match that price. You gotta do it on the speakerphone with them hearing the better offer though or you’ll have to drive to the other dealership. They have heard that ‘it’s $1000 cheaper over on the eastside’ before.

    Don’t be rude, don’t be an intentional dick, but play their sleezy game with their rules and you can save a lot of money.

    It’s a shitty system that should be abolished.





  • sure, it’s really easy and if you like hotc sauce it’s both fun and saves you money.

    The only special equipment I use are wire bale jars, a stick blender and xanthan gum for some sauces. Can get jars and bottles cheap at goodwill. I also keep sodium benzoate and add it to sauces i give away but just keep the ones i make in the fridge and they are always gone fast.

    My method: Boil a big pot of water and let it sit with a lid overnight to get all the chlorine out. We are counting on lactobacillus to outcompete any other bacteria and to provide us with the lactic acid that preserves the peppers. Don’t want to kill the lactobacillus with too much heat or chlorine but she can handle a little salt.

    Wash (with some of the de-chlorinated water) and cut a pound or 1000 grams of peppers up (it’s easier for me to buy a pound but easier to calculate the additives with a kilogram just go with whatever you got), leaving the stems on a few of them for flavor. You can add in garlic, onion, whatever. i have big jars that can hold this many at once but you might use less peppers or more jars as needed.

    Whatever amount of peppers you end up with, stuff them in your jars leaving a couple inches at the top. sprinkle them with 3 to 5% of their total weight of kosher salt. Then top it up almost to the top with dechlorinated water.

    Then I put a plastic bag filled with water in at the top of the jar so all the peppers are submerged and clamp it shut.

    brine may ooze or even spray out under pressure so i put a towel over the top.

    let it sit for a week or a few months and when your’re ready separate the brine from the soft pickled peppers, blend up the peppers and add in your cloudy brine until you like the consistency (lean towards watery), then add in 2-3% by weight of xanthan gum to stabilize it, thicken it and keep it from separating in the fridge.

    I put mine in those sealable glass bottles with the rubber gasket and wire clamp and they last months in the fridge and are so good! I get all my equipment at goodwill I wait until they are half priced or marked cheap and only pay $1 per bottle or jar unless it’s very big or has cool designs.

    good luck!

    oh yeah if you get farty smells or you just want a more mellow flavor or you are storing it in bottles without a rubber gasket seal you can cook the pepper mash and brine and that’ll mellow it out.


  • thanks for the very well written post!!

    I make my own fermented hot sauce and ginger bug but haven’t done cabbage yet and didn’t even think of saurkraut i was gonna do kimchi but my roommates love saurkraut so i’m excited to try this out.

    one thing i learned about dealing with headspace is to put a ziplock bag of water at the very top of of the jar. Nothing can squeeze past it except liquid so you don’t end up with anything solid poking out and getting moldy! I just did a sriracha that sat for months and it was heavenly. I don’t crack my jars though i use the wire bale type that’ll vent gas so i just look for the cloudiness from the lactobacillus.

    i’m gonna do this very soon.






  • yeah but when people go to add communities they ignore the little one with 3 followers when there’s a comm with the same name that has 3000.

    Is like saying oh you don’t like your local librarians? you’re free to make your own library!

    Okay well being free to do something doesn’t magically make it a real option. The truth is whatever comm gets the biggest following first is the one everyone goes to. Are there even any exceptions to that that aren’t entire communities agreeing to move together off instances?

    For literally the entire time I have been on lemmy I have heard laments about the centralization of comms on lemmy.world and seen attempts to mitigate it but every pie chart just shows lemmy.world with more of the pie because growing a comm on small servers isn’t simple!