this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Mildly Interesting

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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

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I didn't have a budget or anything so I found it mildly interesting that it turned out an even number.

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[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 59 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 31 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Thanks for making me spend like 30 seconds of my life reviewing someone's grocery receipt. We're really starting to stretch the mildy part of mildly interesting, but apparently I'm here for it.

[–] wgbirne@feddit.de 19 points 2 years ago

This right here is exactly the kind of content that was posted in r/mildlyinteresting when it was new. After the sub went popular the content was way too interesting for my liking.

[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sigh people will upvote anything here. I bet you’d upvote a picture of a can of beans…

[–] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 years ago

I mean ... if it was mildly interesting enough.

[–] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Good & Gather, one of Target's store brands, in case anyone was actually curious.

[–] Matticus@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago
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[–] shartworx@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 years ago

all this, four naught

[–] radix@lemm.ee 27 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Where do you live that there's no tax?

[–] colourlesspony@pawb.social 44 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Arizona, Groceries aren't taxed here.

[–] radix@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago

Got it. I thought this was a restaurant receipt for Panera, but groceries makes more sense not to tax.

[–] speaker_hat@lemmy.one 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Groceries aren't taxed? Wow

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Only 13 states tax groceries.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago
[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't know where OP is, but here in Massachusetts, we have no sales tax on groceries:

https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/massachusetts/sales-tax-exemptions

[–] radix@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Got it. I thought this was a restaurant receipt for Panera, but groceries makes more sense not to tax.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

No they don’t!

This creates a need for the law to distinguish between grocery stores and restaurants, leading to artificial barriers to innovation within the marketplace.

Laws should be simple, and create a level landscape on which people can make design choices motivated by utility, instead of adherence to the unnatural incentive landscape of a highly-varied legal system.

It only takes O(1) effort to adapt one’s brain to nature, and to the set of societal arrangements that naturally arise within nature. It takes O(N) effort to adapt one’s brain to new sets of rules that change the incentive landscape, where N is the number of times the rules change.

[–] JackLSauce@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

NE has the same no-grocery tax rule. A handful of states have no sales tax in general (I believe SD and either NH or VT for example) and many, if not all, won't tax groceries purchased with whatever food stamps are called in the respective state

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[–] THE_MASTERMIND@feddit.ch 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Really stretching that mildly part huh bud ?

[–] z500@startrek.website 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm on the edge of my seat here. I demand a refund.

[–] Gandarf@startrek.website 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Right? How am I supposed to judge someone's groceries (the real reason we're here) if it's G's all the way down?!

[–] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you're so desperate to find out what, exactly, OP bought, if you type the numbers on the left side of the receipt into the Target website search bar and pull up the exact products. That is way too much effort for me though.

[–] meliaesc@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I mean... it clearly says pasta, sauce, soup, salad, and cheese...

[–] root_beer@midwest.social 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 years ago

OP certainly hit this target.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

I was thinking OP lived in some libertarian utopia.

[–] Rubanski@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago
[–] Deepus@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Am i being stupid....how does 10 numbers ending in 9 end up ending in 0?

I know it works, ive added it up myself but it shouldn't work should it?! Am i going crazy?!

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] Deepus@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago

Ffs how did i not think about that!! Haha! Thanks!

[–] Skates@feddit.nl 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Can he stop?

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Literally any time you do anything like 10 × n it will end in a zero. All multiples of ten end in zero.

Same with 100 × n: it will always end with 00.

[–] Deepus@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah i was hung over and tierd and my brain just wasnt working. You wont believe me but i actually used to be pretty good at maths in school, but that was a while ago now.😅

[–] drengbarazi@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

if it makes you feel any better, I did a couple semesters on math college plus a couple years on computer engineering and recently went to a therapist... When they asked me how old I was, I couldn't calculate my age for the life of me

I stayed about 2 fucking minutes trying to calculate it... And in the end it wasn't even the right age lmao

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Ten number ending in 9 is essentially the same as those same ten numbers but ending in zero plus ten nines.

$1.19 = $1.10 + 0.09

$1.19 + $1.69 = $1.10 + $1.60 + (2 * 0.09)

Since there were 10 items, each ending in a 9, that's the same as 9 times 10, or in this case $0.09 * 10. Every time you multiply by 10 you end up with a zero on the end.

In a base 10 system multiplying by 10 basically shifts all the digits over by 1 and adds a zero to the end. Whatever was in the 10s spot goes in the 100s spot. Whatever was in the 100s spot goes in the 1000s spot, and so on.

So, if you buy 10 items with a 9 at the end of their price, you'll always end up with a zero in the cents spot. If you buy 100 items like that, your total will be in dollars with zero cents.

What's more impressive here is that so many of the other digits ended up as zero when there was no pattern. Ten items ending in '9' means that you carry over a '9' to the next column, but to get that to be zero means the sum of all the tens (of cents) digits needed to end up in a 1.

1 + 6 + 9 + 4 + 9 + 9 + 6 + 6 + 2 + 9 = 61

And to get to exactly 40, the dollars digits needed to match that 6 plus 1 carried over (1 + 9), so they needed to end in 3 (or to be 33 exactly for the total to be 40):

1 + 1 + 6 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 1 = 33

Ignoring the fact that grocery stores suck and price things ending in 9 all the time, it's a 1/10 shot to get the cents digit to end up as a zero, a 1/10 shot for the hundreds to end up as zero, and 1/10 for the dollars digit to end up as a zero. OP just used up a lifetime of luck for a 1/1000 occurrence.

To OP: GG Cheese!

[–] colourlesspony@pawb.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Dang, thanks for doing that math! That's super interesting.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

Thanks for your more than mildly interesting post.

[–] drengbarazi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Wait until you find out 0,99... (repeating nines forever) equals 1

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago

I had a $55.55 grocery run a few days ago.

If grocery bill totals were slot machines, we'd have way more fun buying groceries 😂

[–] ElCanut@jlai.lu 2 points 2 years ago

Finally an interesting subject

[–] KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Anything other than the numbers 5 or 10 in the last digits place should be illegal for things other than gas.