I answered that elsewhere, so lemme just cut/paste:
Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out it wasn’t.
The spindles weren’t the only thing I donated, just so we’re clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.
As a religious organisation, they are allowed to hire based on characteristics that you usually aren’t allowed to discriminate with. They’ve repeatedly supported legislation that would allow them to refuse to hire LGBT people.
Across several countries, they’ve campaigned against the right for homosexual sex, marriages, inclusion in media.
They refused a $3.5m contract from the San Francisco city gov because it would’ve included giving the same domestic benefits to same-sex couples.
They said they’d leave New York if they were forced to offer the same domestic benefits to same-sex couples.
They campaigned against UK local councils including gay people in media like leaflets and the like.
High ups in The Salvation Army has said if you support gay rights you shouldn’t donate to them.
They’re extremely transphobic too, of course.
They did a bunch of child sexual abuse in Australia.
In the UK they own a lot of property that poor people stay in, and the conditions have been so bad that it was unlawful.
For the most part it’s just that they’re homophobic as fuck.
Underneath the thin facade of being a charitable organization, they’re really a disgusting Protestant sect of Christianity who loath homosexuality and have a fair share of controversies. There’s a few listed on Wikipedia if you want a starting point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salvation_Army#Controversies
While they have acted shady pertaining to American labor legislation, they operate globally and they do not deny aid to those in need. There isn’t a checklist of criteria you have to meet in order for the Salvation Army to help you.
The people who took care of me were genuinely of God. I suppose YMMV depending if you live in a sane country or not. We do live in the single most atheist country on the planet though, so I guess it’s not globally representative…
If you are donating stacks of discs to a thrift store, make sure there’s nothing on them you don’t want to give away first. I bought a pack of CDs from a thrift store a while ago. I checked a couple at the top of the stack before I bought them and they were blank. I used about half of them without issue and when I put the next one in the drive, it mounted and opened. Someone gave away a whole bunch of banking info and tax records. I used them for target practice, but someone certainly could have used that info for identity theft if they chose to.
I went through every single disc before I donated them, yeah. Actually I did some organization so one spindle was all Anime, another was all SciFi, so on.
…found a fair bit of porn. I kept the porn. TV series are ephemeral. Porn is eternal.
My backup method was almost entirely optical. Oh well. I’ve kept myself from feeling too bad by keeping in mind that I am waaaaay too lazy to ever go digging through it anyway.
The Salvation Army is the shit tier of “charities”. Not only are they anti-LGBTQ but they have a long history of anti-union action and supporting strikebreakers. Ever wonder why so many US Labor Movement songs are to the tune of hymns? It’s not because of their familiar tune. It’s because the Salvation Army would send their band to labor actions and play as loud as possible to try to drown out organizers and make attendees uncomfortable.
I try to be more positive on this platform but with these scumbags, I cannot. They’re in the company of the Pinkertons and other murderers and thugs for hire.
They are also the shit tier of thrift stores. They’re over-priced and their stuff isn’t as good. If you’re in King County, WA, Value Village is king. I’ve found so many great deals at Value Village. 90% of the stuff in my house is from VV.
Buuuut, you’re still right. They’re absolutely a shit company. I was an assistant supervisor at Value Village a couple of decades ago. First, they’re 100% for profit but advertise in such a way that consumers believe they’re a charity. What they do is buy donations from charities by the pound. Any donations accepted at the store on behalf of a charity are paid at a drastically reduced rate, so of course they push HARD for customers to bring donations directly to the store.
The shit cherry on top was the stores lying to charities about the quality of received goods to avoid paying. If clothes, for example, were soiled, they’d refuse to pay for the entire batch. Stores would find a few dirty shirts, claim the entire cart was crap, claw the money back, and sell the rest of the cart.
The company makes a HUGE profit but pays their employees peanuts. Our head cashier had worked for the company for eight years and capped out at $7.25/hour in 2003, about $14 today. One year, they announced no raises, no reason given. My then girlfriend and I discovered the owners had purchased a cabin in Northern California for use by the c-suite douches. The store manager was pulling in $60k a year, plus bonus, in a very low cost of living area. Me? $8.25 per hour.
What else? They incentivize under staffing by making a supervisor’s paltry bonuses tied to their staffing budget. Staying at budget meant no bonus. They had to come in under budget for any bonus, and the more “savings” the higher the bonus. I got chewed out when I first started scheduling because I used all the hours allotted in the budget. The store went from a shit hole to being fairly respectable but it would eat into my boss’s bonus. Her maximum annual bonus? $2.5k.
So they may not be owned by Walmart, but they’re the Walmart of thrift stores. Fuck those guys.
Yikes! I’ve never thought they were a charity. It’s always been pretty clear to me that they’re a for-profit business, but I wasn’t aware of all those shitty policies. As a shopper, they have a lot of great stuff for dirt cheap. I got a $1000 amp there once for $45. Similar deals all over my house. Oh, we got a $4500 high quality 6 person dining table for 40 bucks, and four chairs worth $600 each for 12 bucks a pop.
The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!
I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.
Oh I forgot all about that. My wife got a Hermes leather wallet that cost $2,600 for like $5. It’s awesome when the employees don’t know what they’re pricing. Haha. We used to sell stuff from yard sales on eBay back when the 08 crash happened, and after we moved here we both noted how we could have been doing really well for ourselves if we had access to VV back then. We lived in a city where the thrift store was basically just a garbage dump though, so that didn’t happen.
It’s unfortunate that they have such shitty employee policies, because we really love what the store itself has to offer. Heck, it’s so good that Macklemore wrote a hit song about it!
Here in Australian even, tried to donate stuff, and was loading things up, then was told they only accepted clothing that weekend. So had to reload it all back into my car.
Then they said they didn’t want my pots and such.
At least here in Australia, they don’t care about any donations unless they can sell it (they don’t seem to care about actually giving anything less sellable to the poor for free).
They’re not even selling the stuff for cheap either (so its bad for the poor too)
Started giving away a lot of it on Facebook for free… Was extremely painless. And the savers nearby also had no issues accepting a lot of it too.
Never going back there. They suck for donations, for buying they’re too expensive too.
That’s my go-to, personally. MSF (Doctors Without Borders) could nearly get away with puppy murder and still be “good”. The amount of risk that they take on to help those in need is remarkable.
In college I had support to do something very similar to engineers without borders just under a different name but in conjunction with the program. They required a certain donation level to ensure that the work we did had the needed materials paid for and could compensate the local workers involved. That’s what I was told. I wasn’t auditing anything but it seemed above board. I was able to engage with doctors without borders members while there. All were committed to the cause. Many were from the same part of the world if not “state/province” and giving back after they were able to make more money elsewhere. Just about all were hardcore. We have 5000 to treat in 7 days type of hardcore. Bedside manner wasn’t what you’d expect in the US, but it was about helping as many people as you could as effectively as you could. Truly eye opening though. I can’t say anything about the organization, but the people who were first hand there either gathered the donations or donated themselves and went there to make a difference. I respect the hell out of those people.
Child’s Play is my go-to. They provide video games and consoles to hospitalized and often terminally ill children who literally can’t go out and play. It was founded by the creators of Penny Arcade back in the early 2000s and so far to my knowledge hasn’t had a single controversy or hint of anything nefarious. It’s just nerds helping other, young, sick nerds/would-be-nerds get their nerd on.
I mean Doctors Without Borders definitely does more important work on the balance, but giving pediatric terminal cancer patients countless hours of joy isn’t a trivial thing either.
There’s always Charity Navigator, they rate charities based on financial health and accountability, at least. I’ve not heard any controversy with it, for what it’s worth
When charities are written in law as a way to get tax discounts, it’s no wonder the majority becomes scams. Charities are also a great example of the govt failing to do it’s own damn job
Another great charity evaluator is https://www.givewell.org/. Their mission is to find charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar spent, and their findings are research-backed and evidence-based. 100% of your donation goes to the charity you support. They also evaluate the lowest cost to save a human life, which is currently about $3k-$5k. Their top rated charities are involved in malaria prevention:
Of course any article can be biased, but this one has cited sources, at least. It would take further digging to determine if those sources are credible.
In my opinion and based on my past reading on the subject, the simple fact that it’s a religious organization is enough to dissuade me from giving them anything. It is no small statistic that religious organizations are corrupt, hypocritical, expect obedience over tolerance, anti-union, anti-LGBTQ, ultra-conservative, and generally support the notion that people must be submissive to their authority.
I’ll continue to donate to secular organizations that do genuine good.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of primary sources. Would need to dive into some academic tools to find sufficient sources for Wikipedia’s requirements. I’ll make a note to do so, when I get the time to do so.
Greenway suggests that the Wobblies stumbled upon this modus operandi as a means of combating the street bands of the Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America, who frequently would drown out Wobbly speakers in a “cacophony of cornets and tamborines.” One enterprising IWW organizer, wishing to combat the forces of obscurantist “pie in the sky” theology, "retired long enough to organize a brass band of his own.
Denisoff, R. S. (1970). The Religious Roots of the American Song of Persuasion. Western Folklore, 29(3), 175. doi:10.2307/1498356
I try to be more positive on this platform but with these scumbags, I cannot.
Thank you for making this effort, by the way. The community on Lemmy versus the other platform we all know about is night and day because of people like you.
And I absolutely agree. I went to read a bit about the Salvation Army and I had no idea about their stance. I’m glad I came across this post. Truly appalling.
Thank you for making this effort, by the way. The community on Lemmy versus the other platform we all know about is night and day because of people like you.
Thank you too for that bit of positivity. I found myself being negatively impacted, psychologically and emotionally on corporate social media. Life is just too short to engage in that sort of unhealthy behavior. And I know that I’m not the only one who has experienced such - it’s pretty well established in research data.
So, while it certainly makes me feel a bit better, more important to me is the fact that engaging positively with people and encouraging them gives them more opportunities to feel better about themselves (we all need that sometimes, some more than others), grow, and, I hope, be more inclined to spread it about (and make quality shitposts and *nix porn). The world is fucked up enough as it is; lashing out, belittling, and the like only contributes the the problem.
I’ve been through a lot in life so far and close to those which been through even more and know first-hand how dark the depths of despair can get. If I can manage to put even the idea of a smile into the mind of someone that needs one I’ve won more than is possible in getting someone to rage-quit a “debate” thread that’s 50 comments deep.
Do you have any advice for burning media to discs? I’ve plenty of media, and have Linux based media servers it sits on. Servers even have disc drives. Not sure if burn capable but just looking for general advice and best practices here
The slower the burn speed, the better. Less chances of error.
Aside from that discs are kind of pointless in 2024 when you can have much cheaper, smaller and easier to use flash storage.
Unless maybe you’re archiving something on special, heavy duty DVDs, otherwise why bother?
Burning DVDs I’m not sure I get, CDs though? There’s still people driving cars that lack Bluetooth, and some people like listening to a whole album uninterrupted by phone distractions and there’s something nice about physical media - it makes sense for most of the reasons vinyl makes sense, it doesn’t, but it’s fun anyway.
Most people with old car stereos these days use Bluetooth FM transcievers, I can’t imagine having to burn CDs and then fiddle with them while driving in 2024. It makes more sense to use physical media at home but in the car? I really don’t see the point.
Almost all FM transceivers that aren’t put inline with the actual car antenna are crap. FCC rules limit their broadcast strength severely and even crosstalk from an adjacent FM frequency can be enough to overpower them, or at least seriously disrupt them. Inline transmitters don’t have that problem, but at that point you have to pull the radio anyway so you may as well replace it with something that has bluetooth or at least an aux input.
The only time an FM transmitter is a good solution is when you’re dealing with things like early 2000s Chevy vehicles, where part of the cruise control module is in the stereo. The best practice for replacing one of those stereos is “add a long wiring harness so you can keep the original stereo hooked up and stashed in the back, then wire the new stereo in to the actual speakers and nothing else.”
I donated some spindles of burned media and programs to Salvation Army expecting they’d throw 'em out
Good for them for not throwing them away, but if you assumed they would, why “donate” (more like dump) them to charity in the first place? They’re not there to provide guilt free disposal for your garbage…
Yeah, I interned at a second hand (can’t remember if charify or not but probably) store for 4 weeks or so when I was in primary school (internships are part of the curriculum), and fucking hell.
People really like dumping a shit ton of clothes and random stuff. I recall testing like 10 pairs of in-ear headphones some of which were pretty disgusting and covered in makeup and often earwax. For some reason, they were apparently sellable. Some pairs looked brand new, but most didn’t.
Somehow they even sold quite a few.
And no, I didn’t stick the headphones in my ears, fuck no.
I know that old media/tech platforms have a use that can be helpful. Where should I donate unused/functional tech that can be more than e-waste that isn’t something I want to make money from? If I’m sitting on floppy discs and know they are going to help someone, who do I give them to?
Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out it wasn’t.
The spindles weren’t the only thing I donated, just so we’re clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.
I honestly thought you were meaning to give them trash. I never feel bad about dropping off old furniture and junk at chain thrift stores making profit run by wackadoos.
Dropping off after hours saves me a trip to the dump. Much cheap for me too.
There are three in my town of <9,000 people. One benefits the homeless shelter, one helps fund things for people living in the old folks home, and the other is for disabled veterans. I know the employees make money (one of them is 100% volunteers) but no one is getting rich from them.
“Thrift” doesn’t mean it’s a charity either, take for example Value Village. There are also a ton of “consignment stores” that are for profit businesses and will get real mad if you call them a thrift store.
Well yeah, consignment stores and thrift stores are inherently different business models. A thrift store owns the donated items they’re selling. A consignment store offers a storefront for items that people want to sell. Sort of like Facebook marketplace or eBay. The consignment skims off the top for operating costs and service fees, and then sends the rest of the money to the actual seller.
Say you have an item that you know is worth $250 on the market, but you don’t have an easy way of selling it yourself. You take it to a consignment store, and they add it to their shelf listed at $250. It sells. The consignment store takes $25 from the sale, and sends you the remaining $225. You made less than if you would have sold it yourself, but you were willing to pay $25 for the convenience and foot traffic of a storefront. Because again, you didn’t have the means to list it yourself, so you found a place that was willing to list it for you.
i agree that it shouldn’t be a police priority; but i would still not visit a pub using black market meat… i like cheap food, but i love my intestines more lol
No I wouldn’t either and the place was a dive but the meat wasn’t being sold for the pub to serve, police went in there trying to sell to anyone that would buy, the land lady just happened to be the one interested in buying the stollen meat
Who would? You think reps from the music and film industries would shut you down for selling stacks of CDs from a table? Lol. Would they roll up in front of your table in black vans?
I haven’t seen a library with software to lend since I was a kid, I used to go and get a ton of games n random software and rip them all lmao. But there was a lawsuit from software companies (ofc, can’t have any fun in this world) at some point in the mid 2000s against a library district and it all got pulled. The lawsuit was based on the fact they had to share non-transferable, non-shareable license keys to make it work, which is why we still have movies and console games at libraries, because there’s no license key involved.
Yep, loaning physical media with software isn’t a thing anymore for that exact reason. Any software or digital platform we offer (ancestry, language learning, ebooks, etc) we either have a ‘one copy one user’ licence which essentially functions like a physical copy, we’re directly paying for each time something is accessed, or we have a subscription specifically made for libraries. We can loan out things like Kindles loaded with ebooks that we’ve purchased, but there’s still a grey area with loaning out a tablet that has the major streaming services installed (with accounts paid for by the library), so we haven’t gone down that route yet
Dude never donate to SA. They’re profit driven religious wackadoos who have no idea how to run anything. The charity angle is just another religious scam.
Also, frankly, here in the Reno area it’s basically impossible to find a thrift store that’s not run by incredibly religious wackadoos. Best you can do is Goodwill, which is far from irreligious. Salvation Army is one of the few that isn’t blasting Jesus Rock on the speakers when you’re in there.
They often have no damn clue what they’re selling and clearly just make up prices on the spot. I’ve flipped a few things for a 500%+ profit from the super-ultra-Jesus-ey thrift stores. Computer hardware in particular is something they just don’t grasp the value of. If you ever need a managed switch or a spare monitor, check the thrift stores.
Got Wii Sports for $1 at a thrift store like that, whereas their glassware was usually significantly above comparable eBay listings (despite the labels sometimes claiming otherwise). Unfortunately, at least where I live, the odds of computer stuff showing up are few and far between.
You can act according to your faith and still be a nice and accepting human being. Doing charity only as a promotional device would be a negative for conscience at least.
Theyre the only people to help during actual disasters though. Good luck getting the fucking Red Cross out short of anything but a federally declared disaster.
This is false and dangerous misinformation to spread. The Salvation Army will absolutely not deny services to LGBTQ people. They even run initiatives to help rescue trans people from sex trafficking, and run a trans dorm in Nevada.
The problematic part of the SA is that they lobby against gay rights in politics. So you should vote with your wallet and not support them. But if you are homeless and need help, they WILL help you.
Thrift stores are getting in on the piracy game I guess. Can’t say I’m disappointed.
Look, I might have better copies now, but if someone wants to spend $3 and get the first 150+ episodes of Bleach and Naruto burned to KDVD I’d say they’re gonna walk away happy with the deal they got.
This is hilarious. If I had some spare cash (and a lot of spare time), I’d absolutely love to do something like this. I’d love to do some modern blockbuster movies.
The thought of burning some BD5s filled with a bunch of new series and/or movies fills me with a joy that’s hard to describe. Getting stuff for myself is one thing. Making it easily accessible for others is just a different level entirely. I’d love to know that I’ve given someone down on their luck countless hours of entertainment for a $3 investment.
We’re not yet at the point where people are huffing drugs made from fermented cow poop, but I feel like that’s not as far away as polite society would like us to believe.
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Why are you donating things you expect to be thrown out? You’re just costing a charitable organization money. But fuck the salvation army.
I answered that elsewhere, so lemme just cut/paste:
Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out it wasn’t.
The spindles weren’t the only thing I donated, just so we’re clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.
Donate, then rat them out to one of those piracy groups that apparently pay you to snitch lmao
Why are you mad at the salvation army?
Probably things like homophobia.
People can simultaneously entertain good and bad positions on things.
They refuse huge sums of money if some of it has to be spent to help gays.
To me, that means they care more about hurting gays than helping people.
I think they care more about helping people than hurting gays. I also think that they really like to hurt gays.
As a religious organisation, they are allowed to hire based on characteristics that you usually aren’t allowed to discriminate with. They’ve repeatedly supported legislation that would allow them to refuse to hire LGBT people.
Across several countries, they’ve campaigned against the right for homosexual sex, marriages, inclusion in media.
They refused a $3.5m contract from the San Francisco city gov because it would’ve included giving the same domestic benefits to same-sex couples.
They said they’d leave New York if they were forced to offer the same domestic benefits to same-sex couples.
They campaigned against UK local councils including gay people in media like leaflets and the like.
High ups in The Salvation Army has said if you support gay rights you shouldn’t donate to them.
They’re extremely transphobic too, of course.
They did a bunch of child sexual abuse in Australia.
In the UK they own a lot of property that poor people stay in, and the conditions have been so bad that it was unlawful.
For the most part it’s just that they’re homophobic as fuck.
Didn’t they also fund a genocide campaign in Uganda?
That was Chik-fil-a.
Chic-fil-ation Army.
…THE PLOT THICKENS
Fellation army you say?
Salvation army fed me when I was living on the streets, and they treated me with kindness and respect, that’s all I know.
Only if you’re straight.
I fucked a transvestite once. Still got fed.
Elaborate
Underneath the thin facade of being a charitable organization, they’re really a disgusting Protestant sect of Christianity who loath homosexuality and have a fair share of controversies. There’s a few listed on Wikipedia if you want a starting point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salvation_Army#Controversies
While they have acted shady pertaining to American labor legislation, they operate globally and they do not deny aid to those in need. There isn’t a checklist of criteria you have to meet in order for the Salvation Army to help you.
He’s just as hateful as he’d like you to beleive they are.
They use money donated to them to hurt gay people. Fuck em.
They told me I would need to renounce my homosexuality or else they wouldn’t provide me with any services. Fuck the Salvation Army.
“I can’t, Jesus is too sexy and I find myself wondering which hole would be the most fun. I’m thinking probably the left hand.”
And then Jesus came.
Because of your dirty, dirrrrty sins!
“Come to Daddy”
removed by mod
We do believe them + who asked.
You must believe every bullshit sob story.
How did they know you were gay?
The people who took care of me were genuinely of God. I suppose YMMV depending if you live in a sane country or not. We do live in the single most atheist country on the planet though, so I guess it’s not globally representative…
I mean that’s good for you. But you really might want to look into other things they’ve done.
Nah, I’m good, just happy to be alive.
TBH it would be pretty fun to play Russian roulette with this stuff for just three dollars.
This time is going to be some rare audio compilation, some interesting program or a ransomware that bricks my computer?
99% of the time the label is a lie and it’s filled with porn.
Yes… I remember finding my dad’s CD labeled “Need for Speed Most Wanted” when I was 5. Taught me a valuable lesson.
Thats his own fault, should have labeled it “Taxes 2008” or something that a kid wouldn’t care to check out.
If you are donating stacks of discs to a thrift store, make sure there’s nothing on them you don’t want to give away first. I bought a pack of CDs from a thrift store a while ago. I checked a couple at the top of the stack before I bought them and they were blank. I used about half of them without issue and when I put the next one in the drive, it mounted and opened. Someone gave away a whole bunch of banking info and tax records. I used them for target practice, but someone certainly could have used that info for identity theft if they chose to.
I went through every single disc before I donated them, yeah. Actually I did some organization so one spindle was all Anime, another was all SciFi, so on.
…found a fair bit of porn. I kept the porn. TV series are ephemeral. Porn is eternal.
Not optical disks, though. Especially burnables. They have a shelf life. Make sure to replicate the data in time.
It is so depressing how much I lost as a kid.
My backup method was almost entirely optical. Oh well. I’ve kept myself from feeling too bad by keeping in mind that I am waaaaay too lazy to ever go digging through it anyway.
Good point. For all I know I’ve got the last viewable copy of “Sodomy Cream Pies” in existence.
Better share the love while you can.
You might have shot somebody’s last wishes, you Ponce
What is there last wish identinity theft?
Press X to Doubt.
“X”
The Salvation Army is the shit tier of “charities”. Not only are they anti-LGBTQ but they have a long history of anti-union action and supporting strikebreakers. Ever wonder why so many US Labor Movement songs are to the tune of hymns? It’s not because of their familiar tune. It’s because the Salvation Army would send their band to labor actions and play as loud as possible to try to drown out organizers and make attendees uncomfortable.
I try to be more positive on this platform but with these scumbags, I cannot. They’re in the company of the Pinkertons and other murderers and thugs for hire.
They are also the shit tier of thrift stores. They’re over-priced and their stuff isn’t as good. If you’re in King County, WA, Value Village is king. I’ve found so many great deals at Value Village. 90% of the stuff in my house is from VV.
I miss Value Village. I got so many things there for super cheap when I was a kid.
Value village is Walmart.
They don’t come any shittier than that company wise.
So, I’m not trying to be the “ackshually” guy.
Value Village isn’t owned by Walmart.
Buuuut, you’re still right. They’re absolutely a shit company. I was an assistant supervisor at Value Village a couple of decades ago. First, they’re 100% for profit but advertise in such a way that consumers believe they’re a charity. What they do is buy donations from charities by the pound. Any donations accepted at the store on behalf of a charity are paid at a drastically reduced rate, so of course they push HARD for customers to bring donations directly to the store.
The shit cherry on top was the stores lying to charities about the quality of received goods to avoid paying. If clothes, for example, were soiled, they’d refuse to pay for the entire batch. Stores would find a few dirty shirts, claim the entire cart was crap, claw the money back, and sell the rest of the cart.
The company makes a HUGE profit but pays their employees peanuts. Our head cashier had worked for the company for eight years and capped out at $7.25/hour in 2003, about $14 today. One year, they announced no raises, no reason given. My then girlfriend and I discovered the owners had purchased a cabin in Northern California for use by the c-suite douches. The store manager was pulling in $60k a year, plus bonus, in a very low cost of living area. Me? $8.25 per hour.
What else? They incentivize under staffing by making a supervisor’s paltry bonuses tied to their staffing budget. Staying at budget meant no bonus. They had to come in under budget for any bonus, and the more “savings” the higher the bonus. I got chewed out when I first started scheduling because I used all the hours allotted in the budget. The store went from a shit hole to being fairly respectable but it would eat into my boss’s bonus. Her maximum annual bonus? $2.5k.
So they may not be owned by Walmart, but they’re the Walmart of thrift stores. Fuck those guys.
Yikes! I’ve never thought they were a charity. It’s always been pretty clear to me that they’re a for-profit business, but I wasn’t aware of all those shitty policies. As a shopper, they have a lot of great stuff for dirt cheap. I got a $1000 amp there once for $45. Similar deals all over my house. Oh, we got a $4500 high quality 6 person dining table for 40 bucks, and four chairs worth $600 each for 12 bucks a pop.
That’s great, I’m glad you got some deals!
The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!
I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.
Oh I forgot all about that. My wife got a Hermes leather wallet that cost $2,600 for like $5. It’s awesome when the employees don’t know what they’re pricing. Haha. We used to sell stuff from yard sales on eBay back when the 08 crash happened, and after we moved here we both noted how we could have been doing really well for ourselves if we had access to VV back then. We lived in a city where the thrift store was basically just a garbage dump though, so that didn’t happen.
It’s unfortunate that they have such shitty employee policies, because we really love what the store itself has to offer. Heck, it’s so good that Macklemore wrote a hit song about it!
Thanks for straightening that up, my bad.
No no, you really weren’t off base. Even if they were owned by Walmart, I doubt they could do worse.
Here in Australian even, tried to donate stuff, and was loading things up, then was told they only accepted clothing that weekend. So had to reload it all back into my car.
Then they said they didn’t want my pots and such.
At least here in Australia, they don’t care about any donations unless they can sell it (they don’t seem to care about actually giving anything less sellable to the poor for free).
They’re not even selling the stuff for cheap either (so its bad for the poor too)
Started giving away a lot of it on Facebook for free… Was extremely painless. And the savers nearby also had no issues accepting a lot of it too.
Never going back there. They suck for donations, for buying they’re too expensive too.
Ah the starvation army.
Are you familiar with that old tune?
Oh the starvation army they pray / they sing and they clap and they play/'till they get all your coin on the drum / then they’ll tell you that you’re on the bum.
Only Seeger’s version but it rings in my head every time they come up
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Oh the starvation army they pray / they sing and they clap and they play/'till they get all your coin on the drum / then they’ll tell you that you’re on the bum.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The individuals who work with us are amazing ppl, it absolutely sucks that the group as a whole is pisswater
Yeah. It feels like bad actors at the top use the needy as human shields to deflect from their horrible behavior.
Damn it, it’s so hard to find reputable good charities. So many of them are are either religious freaks or straight up scams.
Can we share lists of actual good charities?
I usually give to doctors without borders… Fingers crossed somone doesn’t reply to me they kill puppies or something…
That’s my go-to, personally. MSF (Doctors Without Borders) could nearly get away with puppy murder and still be “good”. The amount of risk that they take on to help those in need is remarkable.
In college I had support to do something very similar to engineers without borders just under a different name but in conjunction with the program. They required a certain donation level to ensure that the work we did had the needed materials paid for and could compensate the local workers involved. That’s what I was told. I wasn’t auditing anything but it seemed above board. I was able to engage with doctors without borders members while there. All were committed to the cause. Many were from the same part of the world if not “state/province” and giving back after they were able to make more money elsewhere. Just about all were hardcore. We have 5000 to treat in 7 days type of hardcore. Bedside manner wasn’t what you’d expect in the US, but it was about helping as many people as you could as effectively as you could. Truly eye opening though. I can’t say anything about the organization, but the people who were first hand there either gathered the donations or donated themselves and went there to make a difference. I respect the hell out of those people.
Child’s Play is my go-to. They provide video games and consoles to hospitalized and often terminally ill children who literally can’t go out and play. It was founded by the creators of Penny Arcade back in the early 2000s and so far to my knowledge hasn’t had a single controversy or hint of anything nefarious. It’s just nerds helping other, young, sick nerds/would-be-nerds get their nerd on.
I mean Doctors Without Borders definitely does more important work on the balance, but giving pediatric terminal cancer patients countless hours of joy isn’t a trivial thing either.
There’s always Charity Navigator, they rate charities based on financial health and accountability, at least. I’ve not heard any controversy with it, for what it’s worth
When charities are written in law as a way to get tax discounts, it’s no wonder the majority becomes scams. Charities are also a great example of the govt failing to do it’s own damn job
Another great charity evaluator is https://www.givewell.org/. Their mission is to find charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar spent, and their findings are research-backed and evidence-based. 100% of your donation goes to the charity you support. They also evaluate the lowest cost to save a human life, which is currently about $3k-$5k. Their top rated charities are involved in malaria prevention:
Oh the starvation army they pray / they sing and they clap and they play/'till they get all your coin on the drum / then they’ll tell you that you’re on the bum.
Good as that is, I gotta endorse the Utah Philips version. It comes with context and a story, and also he’s hilarious.
Utah Philips is fantastic, thanks for reminding me this exists!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
the Utah Philips version
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Oh the starvation army they pray / they sing and they clap and they play/'till they get all your coin on the drum / then they’ll tell you that you’re on the bum.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Can you back that up ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Salvation_Army#Biased_History
Of course any article can be biased, but this one has cited sources, at least. It would take further digging to determine if those sources are credible.
https://libcom.org/article/starvation-army-twelve-reasons-reject-salvation-army
In my opinion and based on my past reading on the subject, the simple fact that it’s a religious organization is enough to dissuade me from giving them anything. It is no small statistic that religious organizations are corrupt, hypocritical, expect obedience over tolerance, anti-union, anti-LGBTQ, ultra-conservative, and generally support the notion that people must be submissive to their authority.
I’ll continue to donate to secular organizations that do genuine good.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of primary sources. Would need to dive into some academic tools to find sufficient sources for Wikipedia’s requirements. I’ll make a note to do so, when I get the time to do so.
Not OP, but I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave
Ah that makes sense, they were competing for the same demographic for their recruitment efforts.
Denisoff, R. S. (1970). The Religious Roots of the American Song of Persuasion. Western Folklore, 29(3), 175. doi:10.2307/1498356
Thank you for making this effort, by the way. The community on Lemmy versus the other platform we all know about is night and day because of people like you.
And I absolutely agree. I went to read a bit about the Salvation Army and I had no idea about their stance. I’m glad I came across this post. Truly appalling.
Thank you too for that bit of positivity. I found myself being negatively impacted, psychologically and emotionally on corporate social media. Life is just too short to engage in that sort of unhealthy behavior. And I know that I’m not the only one who has experienced such - it’s pretty well established in research data.
So, while it certainly makes me feel a bit better, more important to me is the fact that engaging positively with people and encouraging them gives them more opportunities to feel better about themselves (we all need that sometimes, some more than others), grow, and, I hope, be more inclined to spread it about (and make quality shitposts and *nix porn). The world is fucked up enough as it is; lashing out, belittling, and the like only contributes the the problem.
I’ve been through a lot in life so far and close to those which been through even more and know first-hand how dark the depths of despair can get. If I can manage to put even the idea of a smile into the mind of someone that needs one I’ve won more than is possible in getting someone to rage-quit a “debate” thread that’s 50 comments deep.
Do you have any advice for burning media to discs? I’ve plenty of media, and have Linux based media servers it sits on. Servers even have disc drives. Not sure if burn capable but just looking for general advice and best practices here
The slower the burn speed, the better. Less chances of error. Aside from that discs are kind of pointless in 2024 when you can have much cheaper, smaller and easier to use flash storage.
Unless maybe you’re archiving something on special, heavy duty DVDs, otherwise why bother?
Burning DVDs I’m not sure I get, CDs though? There’s still people driving cars that lack Bluetooth, and some people like listening to a whole album uninterrupted by phone distractions and there’s something nice about physical media - it makes sense for most of the reasons vinyl makes sense, it doesn’t, but it’s fun anyway.
Most people with old car stereos these days use Bluetooth FM transcievers, I can’t imagine having to burn CDs and then fiddle with them while driving in 2024. It makes more sense to use physical media at home but in the car? I really don’t see the point.
Almost all FM transceivers that aren’t put inline with the actual car antenna are crap. FCC rules limit their broadcast strength severely and even crosstalk from an adjacent FM frequency can be enough to overpower them, or at least seriously disrupt them. Inline transmitters don’t have that problem, but at that point you have to pull the radio anyway so you may as well replace it with something that has bluetooth or at least an aux input.
The only time an FM transmitter is a good solution is when you’re dealing with things like early 2000s Chevy vehicles, where part of the cruise control module is in the stereo. The best practice for replacing one of those stereos is “add a long wiring harness so you can keep the original stereo hooked up and stashed in the back, then wire the new stereo in to the actual speakers and nothing else.”
Good for them for not throwing them away, but if you assumed they would, why “donate” (more like dump) them to charity in the first place? They’re not there to provide guilt free disposal for your garbage…
Yeah, I interned at a second hand (can’t remember if charify or not but probably) store for 4 weeks or so when I was in primary school (internships are part of the curriculum), and fucking hell.
People really like dumping a shit ton of clothes and random stuff. I recall testing like 10 pairs of in-ear headphones some of which were pretty disgusting and covered in makeup and often earwax. For some reason, they were apparently sellable. Some pairs looked brand new, but most didn’t. Somehow they even sold quite a few.
And no, I didn’t stick the headphones in my ears, fuck no.
I know that old media/tech platforms have a use that can be helpful. Where should I donate unused/functional tech that can be more than e-waste that isn’t something I want to make money from? If I’m sitting on floppy discs and know they are going to help someone, who do I give them to?
Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out it wasn’t.
The spindles weren’t the only thing I donated, just so we’re clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.
I honestly thought you were meaning to give them trash. I never feel bad about dropping off old furniture and junk at chain thrift stores making profit run by wackadoos. Dropping off after hours saves me a trip to the dump. Much cheap for me too.
Fuck the salvation army and also that attitude soz
So if someone buys them, are they pirating? Lol
Pirating is a morally correct action in a world where no company wants you to own anything.
Could salvation army be held liable for selling pirated media? 🤔
I said the same thing - donate pirated warez then call one of those piracy snitch lines that pays supposedly pays you. Lmao. Fuck the Salvation Army.
Exactly lmao
I love how this thread turned into hate for religion.
They’re a religious organization that supports causes that hurt marginalized groups of people. Awareness should be spread about it.
I’d rather rally around the real enemy of this group. Greedy mega corps that have been screwing over people for decades with media.
When religion is shitty it deserves the hate.
Oh no, won’t someone please think about the religious LGBT-hate organisation 😭😭
okay correct me if I’m wrong but this is definitely illegal, right?
Yup. I’ve volunteered at a couple thrift stores, and we’d just toss stuff like this.
SA isn’t a thrift store, it’s a for-profit corporation. Look at what the CEO was paid.
What thrift store isn’t nowadays.
There are three in my town of <9,000 people. One benefits the homeless shelter, one helps fund things for people living in the old folks home, and the other is for disabled veterans. I know the employees make money (one of them is 100% volunteers) but no one is getting rich from them.
“Thrift” doesn’t mean it’s a charity either, take for example Value Village. There are also a ton of “consignment stores” that are for profit businesses and will get real mad if you call them a thrift store.
Well yeah, consignment stores and thrift stores are inherently different business models. A thrift store owns the donated items they’re selling. A consignment store offers a storefront for items that people want to sell. Sort of like Facebook marketplace or eBay. The consignment skims off the top for operating costs and service fees, and then sends the rest of the money to the actual seller.
Say you have an item that you know is worth $250 on the market, but you don’t have an easy way of selling it yourself. You take it to a consignment store, and they add it to their shelf listed at $250. It sells. The consignment store takes $25 from the sale, and sends you the remaining $225. You made less than if you would have sold it yourself, but you were willing to pay $25 for the convenience and foot traffic of a storefront. Because again, you didn’t have the means to list it yourself, so you found a place that was willing to list it for you.
Pretty unenforceable/unlikely to ever even get caught though.
I know, I just think it’s funny. if I set up a table and started selling them they’d shut me down pretty quick though
In the UK back in the earish DVD days I remember this dud would turn up at my uncles work and sell a fuck a ton of discs, he got arrested in a sting.
police have way too much free time
A pub owner near me also got arrested due to a sting where she was buying “stolen” meat from a police officer
Holy fuck🤣🤣🤣 I thought stings were reserved for violent criminals
Its due to increasing budgets and lazy policing.
The stolen meat one really annoyed me as its targeting the working class while inflation is in full effect
i agree that it shouldn’t be a police priority; but i would still not visit a pub using black market meat… i like cheap food, but i love my intestines more lol
No I wouldn’t either and the place was a dive but the meat wasn’t being sold for the pub to serve, police went in there trying to sell to anyone that would buy, the land lady just happened to be the one interested in buying the stollen meat
Yeah. We’re just so far away from the point that cracking down on illegal food should be a priority that I find that idea completely insane
A friend of mine did that with VHS, beta, cassettes, and 8tracks back in the day and got busted by the FBI.
so they want the stolen meat to go in the trash?
Lol plot twist
But really its crazy how many sting operations take place where I live and for real mediocre shit, like police undercover selling weed.
So pathetic…
Who would? You think reps from the music and film industries would shut you down for selling stacks of CDs from a table? Lol. Would they roll up in front of your table in black vans?
the cops man. probably charge me with loitering
Ah yes the cops, always shutting down those pesky garage and yard sales. Bastards.
I’m talking about those rappers who sell their CDs on the street corner.
Oh right. Cuz they’re always getting busted, aren’t they? Lol
Rapper on the street corner: hey man, you want to get some of this?
I didn’t mean on my own property jesus
Maybe not? Libraries can lend out pirated media for reasons. Maybe charities can sell it.
Edit: I’m getting downvoted and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was just my library that did this?
wait really. that’s cool
Its not everywhere, and I’m sure the corps are trying to chip away at it but yeah.
I haven’t seen a library with software to lend since I was a kid, I used to go and get a ton of games n random software and rip them all lmao. But there was a lawsuit from software companies (ofc, can’t have any fun in this world) at some point in the mid 2000s against a library district and it all got pulled. The lawsuit was based on the fact they had to share non-transferable, non-shareable license keys to make it work, which is why we still have movies and console games at libraries, because there’s no license key involved.
Yep, loaning physical media with software isn’t a thing anymore for that exact reason. Any software or digital platform we offer (ancestry, language learning, ebooks, etc) we either have a ‘one copy one user’ licence which essentially functions like a physical copy, we’re directly paying for each time something is accessed, or we have a subscription specifically made for libraries. We can loan out things like Kindles loaded with ebooks that we’ve purchased, but there’s still a grey area with loaning out a tablet that has the major streaming services installed (with accounts paid for by the library), so we haven’t gone down that route yet
I’ve never heard of this.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/copyrightarticle/librariescreatures
Dude never donate to SA. They’re profit driven religious wackadoos who have no idea how to run anything. The charity angle is just another religious scam.
Goodwill isn’t much better. They’re a non-profit that acts like a for profit.
I wonder if there are any thrift shops that are actually good.
This they actually fund against Queer peoples rights
For religious people they’re sure eager to sell used “personal massagers” for $10.
Also, frankly, here in the Reno area it’s basically impossible to find a thrift store that’s not run by incredibly religious wackadoos. Best you can do is Goodwill, which is far from irreligious. Salvation Army is one of the few that isn’t blasting Jesus Rock on the speakers when you’re in there.
Lol, my friend is always on the lookout for “pro-life” thrift stores, apparently they have the best deals. (BC)
They often have no damn clue what they’re selling and clearly just make up prices on the spot. I’ve flipped a few things for a 500%+ profit from the super-ultra-Jesus-ey thrift stores. Computer hardware in particular is something they just don’t grasp the value of. If you ever need a managed switch or a spare monitor, check the thrift stores.
Got Wii Sports for $1 at a thrift store like that, whereas their glassware was usually significantly above comparable eBay listings (despite the labels sometimes claiming otherwise). Unfortunately, at least where I live, the odds of computer stuff showing up are few and far between.
They have stickers which tell you they’re cheaper than eBay when that’s actually not the case? Isn’t that illegal?
It’s only false advertising if they can’t find a single ebay listing with a higher price.
At least, if they worded it carefully like, “cheaper than ebay!”
ehhh, just a bit illegal
Here in my country every op shop is overpriced and you never find a bargain.
Germany?
Makes sense. Nevada’s got a certain reputation because of Vegas, but folks forget about how it’s also next to/inside the Mormon belt.
Latter-day Saints were some of the earliest white settlers of Las Vegas, if you can believe it.
With the amount of Mormon churches in Vegas I believe it.
I love how when Christians aren’t charitable they are called hypocrites and when they are people complain that they are “religious wackadoos”, lol.
You can act according to your faith and still be a nice and accepting human being. Doing charity only as a promotional device would be a negative for conscience at least.
It’s not “only as a promotional device”, though.
I mean I guess they’re using the “charity” to generate personal cash as well
You guys don’t have Value Village/Savers?
Is that the deseret industries thing?
Nah Deseret anything is usually a Mormon thing. The Salvation Army was a different weirdo sex cult.
Isn’t the Salvation Army not Methodist?
Yes, it’s not Methodist!
Oops. I must be thinking of a different organisation, then
Nah, it’s reasonable enough, dude left the Methodist Church to do his thing.
Theyre the only people to help during actual disasters though. Good luck getting the fucking Red Cross out short of anything but a federally declared disaster.
SA is anti-LGBTQ. They will deny them services.
Give them disks of gay and trans porn, got it.
Don’t forget to label them as “Bible cartoons and movies.”
Don’t trick kids into watching porn.
I’m about to blow $9.99 on some custom vinyl stickers
deleted by creator
You can just send those directly to my DMs, thanks.
This is false and dangerous misinformation to spread. The Salvation Army will absolutely not deny services to LGBTQ people. They even run initiatives to help rescue trans people from sex trafficking, and run a trans dorm in Nevada.
The problematic part of the SA is that they lobby against gay rights in politics. So you should vote with your wallet and not support them. But if you are homeless and need help, they WILL help you.
Thrift stores are getting in on the piracy game I guess. Can’t say I’m disappointed.
Look, I might have better copies now, but if someone wants to spend $3 and get the first 150+ episodes of Bleach and Naruto burned to KDVD I’d say they’re gonna walk away happy with the deal they got.
This is hilarious. If I had some spare cash (and a lot of spare time), I’d absolutely love to do something like this. I’d love to do some modern blockbuster movies.
My man.
The thought of burning some BD5s filled with a bunch of new series and/or movies fills me with a joy that’s hard to describe. Getting stuff for myself is one thing. Making it easily accessible for others is just a different level entirely. I’d love to know that I’ve given someone down on their luck countless hours of entertainment for a $3 investment.
Wait a minute, you’re the New Vegas guy! Based.
That’s me. Nevadan to the bone, even if it’s the opposite end of the state.
Your work has been used by me for about a decade now, thank you for your effort!
Thanks, though I am honor-bound to point out that Sandbox6 has been maintaining YUP for the last several years now. Doing a great job, too.
AFAIK they’re not on Lemmy or I’d tell you to thank them more directly. Still!
Oh I know, but they’re not here right now, and I just got the chance to say thanks, so I did!
TIL the one dollar crap pile is now worth 3 bucks
Classic crapflation
That’s terrible! Where?
Sparks, Nevada. Reno’s parasitic conjoined twin.
New Reno?
We’re not yet at the point where people are huffing drugs made from fermented cow poop, but I feel like that’s not as far away as polite society would like us to believe.
Surely you mean Brahmin poop!
Makes for the best jenkem.
I bet the bit-rot on them is high enough to affect usability.
I didn’t check literally every one, but I did a few spot checks and none of them had problems.
Copy/pasting information/matter infinitely for the benefit of everybody? Where have I seen that before?