The copy of Homeland I bought from an Anazon vendor was shipped only in a thin grey plastic wrapper. (But it was a fiver, so.)
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I bought a chisel from amazon a few years ago. They put it in a padded paper envelope. the envelope arrived with a chisel sized hole in one end. (this was a brick chisel, so not actually sharp, just pointed. And heavy.) When I asked for a refund, they insisted I send the packaging back.
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When the courier handed me the parcel today, the rattling immediately told me something was wrong.
I’ve done the next courier a favour and taped up all the loose pieces so they don’t think they’ve broken it. 
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Popped in Game today out of idle curiosity as they do stock boardgames now. I was passing after getting school socks from M&S for my eldest.
Spotted amongst the random pile. An expansion for the rhombus version of Azul, no base game. An expansion for Power Grid, no base game. Finally 1880: China was also there, you know family style stuff.
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I’ve seen various cases where this means “we slap a shipping label on whatever box it’s already in”. Lots of miffed board game buyers.
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Ah yes, my brother had ordered a high end computer monitor that was sent this way, for some reason it disappeared… so he ordered a replacement, which was sent the same way, but was dropped off by the garage (opposite side of building), so the only person likely to take it was the garbage guy 
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Seen that from Target and Walmart. Really annoying most of the time.
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The loudest, most annoying fly was driving me crazy. Our ceilings are high, and this part of the house is open-plan, so it had plenty of space to roam, was mostly out of reach, and was also flying really fast and never stopping; so although I could hear it continuously I barely ever saw it, and when I did it was past me before I could attempt to swat it. After spending about 20 minutes standing in the same spot, staring at the same wall, just hoping to see it flying at me in time to have even a chance of getting it, I was ready to give up. It’s night time, so I hadn’t wanted to open doors/windows as I figured I’d most likely just let things in; but then I wondered what it would do if I turned off all the inside lights, opened the door, and turned on the outside light (I simply had no idea whether a fly would be particularly attracted by the light – I’ve never really thought about it). I took a torch outside for good measure, pointing it back into the house to give it an obvious target. It was outside within about 10 seconds. I wish I’d thought to try that sooner! But glad that it occurred to me at all, and that I learned a thing. Sharing in case it proves helpful to others.
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It saves an immense amount of packaging. The box the factory put it in is better than anything a warehouse shipping worker would ever do. Putting it in another box is not just a waste of a box and an increase in truck space, it increases the rate of damage, because it is going to rattle around in the outer box.
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Replacement arrived today, massive gouge in the box but the contents survived!
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Increasing the rate of damage is arguable, as I’ve had plenty of packages where the outside box was damaged, but the contents were okay due to all of the included packaging. But otherwise, yes, it obviously saves a ton of packaging.
However, I do not like the idea of an item I purchased sitting on my doorstep in clear view of anyone driving by. I feel that an item that can clearly be seen has higher odds of someone deciding to steal it over a random brown box that could contain anything, depending on the item in question, of course.
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That’s why occasionally you send yourself a bobcat
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There are fireworks, gunfire, and screaming within earshot.
School is cancelled on Wednesday.
Why?
Oblong ball related events.
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For the first time that I can recall, one of our free-to-air TV channels is advertising the Superbowl this year, and I’m quite perplexed – I simply can’t imagine that there are enough interested people in this country to make that worth whatever it must have cost. All I can think is that they’re banking on the novelty garnering them enough viewers from outside of the pool of regular fans, as it’s a really low-profile sport here.
gunfire
I don’t even know what to say about that, but I hope it’s the worst thing I read this week.
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There’s a real push from the NFL to expand beyond the border of the USA. I imagine because they have market researched it and decided that they are pretty much at saturation in the US. Much like our premier league teams going over to countries in Asia.
Anyway, that result is one half of the conspiracy theory that it’s all a fix to rig the election. Now we’re just waiting on Swift/Kelce to publicly support Biden.
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Because celebrity endorsements worked so great for Hillary. 
I was half hoping the Chiefs would lose just to shut people up about this stupidity, but I figure if they had, the claim would be the NFL backtracked on the plan because the theorists had called them on it. You can’t win in an argument against idiocy.
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Over here I‘ll have my morning coffee alone b/c someone in the house wanted to watch. I am not sure if it is the half-time show or the butts of the defense team… or maybe the excuse to eat snacks and drink beer (beer was long gone by the time the game comes around past midnight over here)
PS: it is really difficult here to find the OG English commentary here and it‘s a drama every year. He refuses to listen to the German commentators.
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I used to stay up and watch it (I even played it for three years at University - UK college American Football is not like the US version… 
) but with small kids, I just can’t take the hit anymore!
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The funniest part was after the kiss of the couple, it switched to a Pfizer commercial.
The Deep State always wins 
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As a rural westerner, i can say i don’t understand the appeal at all. I’m arguably one of the most American of Americans, but i still find American football the least impressive of any sport. Kick a ball, somebody grabs it, everyone falls in a heap. Move a few inches in one direction depending on who was at the bottom of the heap. Why do people watch this?
The only silver lining is the consumption of beer related to the outcomes…
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