Not really. That’s the sad part. They seemingly have a death sentence either way. They’ve tried to rehabilitate captive whales multiple times and it’s not been successful. If you dumped them in the wild they would essentially just starve to death.

Just evil, the whole situation.

If they talk bad about other people, especially if you don’t know the would-be friend very well. If they’ll bad mouth other people to you they’re gonna bad mouth you to other people.

You’re not far off. Any license for collectibles certainly restricts the print run to ratios determined by the licensor. The person granting a license doesn’t want the person using the license to devalue it.

I think you may be conflating fakes with counterfeits. While technically not “fake” cards they were fraudulent counterfeits. I know it’s muddy as frequently fraud and forgery and fake and counterfeit are used somewhat interchangeably colloquially but they aren’t all the same thing.

Counterfeit was the term they used in the lawsuit so I reflected that, though it’s usually used to imply a believable forgery. Counterfeit is the correct term but I can see the confusion as usually counterfeits are a fake product pretending to be real. This is a “real” product that is not supposed to be sold.

Upper deck was not licensed to make cards for the US market. Even if they were - they are not allowed to just print whatever cards they wanted. The ratios, print runs, and distribution were predetermined by Konami per their license and contract.

So they were printing genuine productions of the cards - but without a license to do so. Then they began selling those behind Konami in a market they weren’t permitted to distribute in. Upper deck took all the profit from those sales. That’s multiple levels of fraud.

I’m honestly surprised UD somehow managed to survive the lawsuit. Konami had a slam dunk. They had to have paid Konami some ungodly amount of money to get out from under that, not to mention the personal legal liability of whatever executives were involved in scheming up that fraud.

Upper Deck was the king of sports trading cards and even though they were making hundreds of millions in the 80s, they got caught creating counterfeit versions of the most desirable cards to make even more money. Once they got caught there wasn’t much to be done as it wasn’t actually illegal for them to do so. It soured the collectors market for a long long time.

Circle back around to around 2000 and upper deck somehow got a license to print Yugioh cards in Europe. Only, they decided to start also making counterfeit cards of the 10 most desirable cards and made 50K of each of them and started seeding the collector market in the US by selling them in the states to make even MORE money. It wasn’t long before they got caught and then sued and settled out of court for some insane amount of money.

Somehow they’re still around and printing sports cards. It’s kind of mind boggling.

White noise. The white noise knocks me out almost immediately.

I love they have to sensationalize the title because if they said “raised prices by a dollar” most folks would wonder why it’s a headline.

What kind of antiperspirant are you using that doesn’t require soap to remove it? They almost always have a residue that keeps them in place that doesn’t normally just wash off.

In practice, yes. Absolutely.

With your grandmother, no. Unless your grandmother is a raging asshole and doing it on purpose to sleight you - your grandmother likely loves you very very much. She’s not doing it on purpose.

(If your grandmother is intentionally sleighing you, ignore the following completely. Fk her if she is.)

Your grandmother likely has zero frame of reference to contextualize what she is inadvertently doing. She’s been doing and saying the same idioms for 60, 70, 80 years or more. I COMPLETELY understand the frustration but she’s not repeating them to sleight you.

If you have a good relationship I’m sure if she’s doing something that is especially triggering - she would be more than happy to adjust with gentle reminders after you’ve had a discussion about it and a gentle reminder when ever she falls back into old habits.

We all know kids learn language fast and more easily with immersion. Adults are exponentially worse. Can you imagine what it’s like for an Octogenarian, let alone with zero immersion? You are likely their ONLY point of reference. It’s going to take time to unlearn those habits. It’s like they’ve only spoken English their entire life and suddenly everyone around them speaks fluent Spanish and those around them are frustrated with them that they keep speaking English. They haven’t changed or moved - everyone else is changing around them, and although for the better your grandparents are understandably confused at the resentment.

Regardless - If she actually knows certain phrases bother you she will change. It will take practice on her part. But give her some latitude.

If she refuses to change, family is who you choose to surround yourself with, not who’s genetics you share. If you’re young and compelled to acquiesce to the whim of your parents in the meantime to tolerate your grandparents, know you’ll be able to choose for yourself who your family are sooner than to think.

But what I wouldn’t give for even one more day with my grandmother who loved, accepted, and supported me like no other even when she didn’t completely understand. Even when she got it wrong she tried so, so hard to get it right. She’d even correct other people and shoot me a grin afterward - so proud of me and proud of herself for advocating for me and being a better person.

Get mad at others especially ones that don’t care about you - but be patient and love your grandmother unconditionally like she loves you.

And hug her big for my sake. Maybe twice.

What an odd take.

Every dev I know must be terrified of technology as they all use apple laptops. I don’t love apple but they make a pretty sweet *nix laptop for dev work.