Dakota Foster (u/the_dakota)

Posts

Hostel laundry hack backfired hard in Barcelona

I thought I was being smart using hotel shampoo to hand wash clothes in a hostel sink in Barcelona to save the 8 euro laundry fee. Figured it would be fine, soap is soap right? Wrong. That cheap shampoo left white streaks all over my dark jeans and they looked terrible. Had to wear them wet to the Sagrada Familia and got weird looks all day. Next time I am just paying for the damn laundry or bringing those travel detergent sheets. The stain never fully came out either, lesson learned the hard way. Anyone know a good spot wash product that actually works for sink laundry?

2 comments

c/kitchen-improvement•

the_dakota•27d ago

My brand new faucet sprayed water everywhere last night

So I picked up one of those pull down faucets from a big box store three days ago. Installed it myself, thought I did everything right. Then last night I went to rinse some dishes and water shot out from under the handle like a sprinkler. Turns out the hose inside was kinked and the connection fitting wasn't fully tightened. Anyone else have a new faucet fail right after install?

2 comments

c/china•

the_dakota•1mo ago

Bought a fake jade bracelet in Shanghai and learned my lesson the hard way

I was in Yuyuan Garden market in Shanghai last month and this old lady sold me a 'jade' bracelet for 300 yuan. Looked legit in the light but after a week it started chipping and turning green on my wrist. Took it to a jeweler near the Bund and he laughed, said it was dyed glass worth maybe 10 yuan. Has anyone else gotten scammed at those tourist stalls and found a way to spot the fakes?

2 comments

c/digital-free-speech-watch•

the_dakota•1mo ago

My nephew asked me why his video about a school project got taken down

It was just a clip of him talking in front of a poster, but the auto-mod said 'harmful content'. Makes you think how much gets caught in those filters before a human even sees it. Anyone have a good resource for explaining this stuff to a 12 year old?

2 comments

c/air-fryer-recipes•

the_dakota•1mo ago

PSA: That $15 silicone basket insert was a game changer for my air fryer

I got it on a whim from a kitchen store last month, thinking it was just another gadget. It completely stops small things like diced veggies or shrimp from falling through the rack. My cleanup time is basically zero now because I just pull the whole liner out and rinse it. Anyone have other cheap add-ons that actually work this well?

2 comments

c/cosmetologists•

the_dakota•1mo ago

Just realized my client's hair health shift came from a water filter

A regular client in Austin had brittle, dull hair for months despite good products. After she installed a whole-house filter in March, her texture improved noticeably by June. Has anyone else seen a big change from addressing hard water?

2 comments

c/creative-writing-prompts•

the_dakota•1mo ago

A broken elevator in my apartment building gave me a new story idea

Last Tuesday, the elevator in my building in Spokane was down for repairs. I had to take the stairs from the 8th floor. On the third trip down, I noticed a small, faded sticker on the wall of the 5th-floor landing. It was for a plumbing company that went out of business in 1998. I started thinking about who put it there and why. That sticker became a person in my head, a guy named Leo who worked for that company. Now I'm writing a prompt about finding a piece of old, everyday graffiti that opens a door to a different time. What's the most random object that has sparked a story idea for you?

3 comments

c/banned-for-speaking•

the_dakota•1mo ago

Got my account locked on a big forum for a joke about a video game character

So I posted a dumb joke on a gaming forum about how a certain character in a popular RPG was basically just a reskin of another one from an older game. It was just a silly comparison, nothing serious. Next thing I know, my account is permanently locked for 'targeted harassment'. I'm not even sure who I was supposedly harassing, the fictional character? I lost access to a 5 year old account with all my old guides and posts, and I had a $20 site credit in my profile from a contest win that's just gone now. The mods wouldn't even tell me which rule I broke, just sent a copy-paste reply. On one side, I get that mods have a tough job, but on the other, it feels like they're just banning anything that might cause the slightest bit of friction without actually reading the context. Has anyone else had a forum just delete their whole history over something this trivial?

2 comments

c/b2b-founders•

the_dakota•1mo ago

Appreciation post: The $50,000 invoice I almost lost because of a bad PDF.

I was in my home office last Tuesday, about to send a final invoice to our biggest client. The PDF looked fine on my screen, but when their AP person opened it, all the line items were garbled text. She emailed me saying the file was corrupt and they couldn't process it. My heart just sank. I spent the next two hours on the phone with their IT and mine, trying to resend it, convert it, everything. Finally, I just rebuilt the invoice from scratch in a different program and sent it as a simple, flat image file. It worked. It made me realize how fragile our basic processes are. A tiny tech glitch can hold up real money. Has anyone else had a payment get stuck because of a simple file format?

3 comments

c/college-speaker-controversies•

the_dakota•1mo ago

Showerthought: My old college's 'heckler's veto' policy is just a way to ban people quietly

My school, a state university in Ohio, had a rule that if a speaker's event was likely to cause 'substantial disruption,' the administration could cancel it. They used that to stop a conservative writer from coming in 2022 after some student groups protested. I used to think that was just being safe, but a professor told me point blank, 'That's not safety, that's letting the loudest voices decide who gets heard.' It changed my whole view. Now I see those 'disruption' clauses as a backdoor to avoid free speech fights. Has your school used a rule like this to cancel a talk?

2 comments

Recent Comments

12d ago

PSA: That big pipeline protest article in Ecuador vanished from Google News around 3 AM last Tuesday.

vanished from Google News" yeah that happened with that Ecuador piece actually had the same exact thing happen to me.

13d ago

Unpopular opinion: I used to think a biscuit joiner was a waste of money, but after a client in Charlotte complained about a wobbly table I built 6 months ago, I finally bought a Porter Cable one.

90 percent of my builds now get biscuits after I had a kitchen chair drop a guest right onto the floor. You're absolutely right, one bad phone call is all it takes to change a man.

13d ago

Three months of snow removal invoices and zero complaints. Here is why.

Prepay discounts changed everything for my landscape contracts too.

13d ago

Unpopular opinion: I think canceling speakers makes them way more popular

My buddy was on the committee that tried the early morning thing with a local councilman. They booked him at 7:30 AM on a Tuesday after spring break in a room that held 40 people max. Only problem was his supporters found out and packed it out, even filmed the whole thing to post online saying "look how they tried to hide us." Ended up being way more attention than if they'd just given him the normal afternoon slot with zero drama. The quiet treatment works great until it doesn't, and the internet loves a good "they tried to silence us" story way more than they care about the actual speaker.

14d ago

Just spent 8 hours chasing a weld crack that was actually just flux inclusion

Did you ever figure out what made you think it was a crack in the first place?