No, it is not true that these recommended items are things “other customers often buy again”. Honestly, once is probably enough:

In other news, it’s nice to see that the recommendation engine is back online. Nothing jumped out at me as particularly absurd this morning, but I thank you for pointing out that the new Doctor’s sonic is designed to stimulate the G-spot.

At least you aren’t blaming this one on the Post Office…

Status at 8:30 AM:

Status at 9:30 AM:

Update: Friday at 6pm…

I didn’t even need to make a fresh screenshot. Still promised for Sunday, still hasn’t shipped.

Update: Saturday at 2pm 8pm 11pm…

Still not shipped, still supposed to arrive tomorrow. Given that only USPS typically does Sunday deliveries (or at least marks it as delivered and drops it off on Monday), I’m dying to know how they’re planning to get it to me.

Update: Sunday at 8:30am…

At what point does Amazon just admit they don’t have it and send the driver to Best Buy to pick one up?

Fuck it

Found it at the local Walmart for $20 less and canceled the Amazon order from my phone. This is an inversion of the natural order.

Conceptually, it hurts my brain to see PC cases listed as external components.

Then again, at least it’s not the ongoing dumpster fire that is “religion & spirituality”…

Meanwhile, since Amazon can’t manage to get a two-day delivery to me in a week, I’ll be spending the day working with the product that did arrive. It took a year and a half to get here, but unlike Amazon, they made it themselves.

Wait, Amazon Prime Video was also streaming Interspecies Reviewers?!? And didn’t pull it until today?

Seriously, there is nothing subtle about the premise of this show, and even an extremely tame adaptation would have aroused… “controversy”. Anyone paying even the faintest attention to the pre-release marketing in Japan knew what was, um, coming.

Unrelated, here are my latest amusing Amazon recommendations:

It’s great that you’ve been reaching out to international customers by making amazon.co.jp more approachable to people who don’t speak the language.

But it kinda sucks that you auto-translate about half of the product titles into Machine Engrish with no way to view the actual title without switching site navigation back into Japanese.

And your latest “feature”, attempting to auto-translate search strings into Japanese and search for that instead fails spectacularly on the simple case where someone cuts and pastes actual Japanese text into the search box.

For instance, while I can read Japanese, I leave the UI in English because I read my mostly-native language faster. So you can imagine my surprise when I pasted in “異種族レビュアーズ” and got zero search results, despite it still claiming to have searched for “異種族レビュ アーズ”. I had to find the plaintext undo button to get it to search for Japanese text as Japanese text.

After that, all sorts of results showed up, including the fact that Amazon Video is still streaming Interspecies Reviewers in Japan, and that there are manga spinoffs “Ecstacy Days” and “Marionette Crisis”. Also that the Bluray releases have been pushed back; I imagine a lot of things are being deferred thanks to Corona-chan.

Well, of course it’s gluten-free; most plastics are.

In fairness, this one is a wrong-photo problem, not the usual categorization error:

While this would provide a cardio workout, I’m pretty sure it’s not a kettlebell, despite being categorized as such:

Likewise, I’m sure chicks dig this, but still, not a kettlebell:

(I was thinking of picking up a pair of nice sandbags for doing Farmer’s Walks, but shipment of exercise equipment has been indefinitely delayed pretty much everywhere; I’ll just have to make do for now by strapping 4-kilo ankle weights to my largest pair of bells)

(By the way, the “sand kettlebells” on Amazon are obvious crap; it’s telling that not a single one of them has any reviews at all. It looks like the best thing on the market is the Rogue Fitness Strongman Throw Bag, which costs more empty than a good 70-pound bell plus shipping)

Tell me more about your efforts to prevent price-gouging…

This is for one (1) 1-pound bag of yeast. For comparison, the best price right now is $53.99 for six bags with free shipping, a difference of 22x. The ordinary, non-panic price at King Arthur Flour would be $5.95.

The good news is that between these assholes and eBay, when legitimate suppliers restock, we’re going to have the freshest mail-order pantry goods ever. All the expiring stock will be rotting in their garages.

Unrelated, apparently Good Eats: Reloaded season two starts Monday.

Update

(now that I’ve placed my order…) King Arthur Flour has SAF Gold back in stock for $6.95/pound. Gold is a specialty yeast for high-sugar breads (because sugar sucks up the water that yeast needs), but it works fine for regular breads as well. My existing supply of Red is good for another ~25 loaves, but given the current shipping delays, if things don’t open up again by the end of April, I might need it, if only to share with deserving friends and neighbors.