Good for him. And good for golf.
Tiger played pretty well. So did a bunch of other guys. Jordan Spieth was not one of them. Homeboy got the yips again. Baseball opening day was yesterday as well. The Reds got off to a great start by beating the Braves. And Houston won. So all in all, it was a great day. And that’s sports.
Shanghai is a prison.
Yes, definitely to the economy. Nevermind the threat to freedom though, right? Just ignore that, CNN.
Excellent. Excellent!!!!!! I hope they all back out and I hope they all win their cases. This bullshit political prisoner shit has gone on way too long already.
Speaking of political prisoners…. I’m not sure how this ends up playing out, but four days of deliberations is a long time. May end up in a hung jury.
What kind of fucked up legal argument is this? No, he’s not anything remotely close to a CEO. This judge needs to be run out of town on a rail.
This is the most important thing you’ll read today. It’s also the truest. This shit is completely out of hand and needs to stop.
This is a pleasant surprise. It doesn’t shore up the union pension schemes that will ultimately bankrupt the state, but it’s still nice to see taxpayers getting some of their stolen money back.
Far from egg-cellent.
So…people couldn’t have gone elsewhere? Or bought another type of egg at that store? Or simply bought something else? This is bullshit.
Fine by me. In fact, build a wall and keep everybody from the state inside it. Also, enjoy your drought.
Here’s a great song to end the week on. Enjoy it. And then enjoy this absolute masterpiece. I want to play it 20 times in a row to take me back to middle school when Mark Sebastian of Q102 played it that many times until they “removed” him from the booth. Good times.
Anyway, on that bit of nostalgia, go have a great Friday and an even better weekend, dear friends.
i’m alive! (true stroy)
Keep it in CA
or story
How do you know it’s the same Yusef?
Maybe you’re a ghost.
the way I feel, it’s possible
Nofefe!
Time to get back to work, Yusef. All play and no work…
Hope you’re feeling better
‘Ghost of Yusef’
Is a pretty sweet handle.
You ran a good show last night, even if I’m not in your audience. Just not enough time these days.
Thanks!
Does it matter? We’re all Tulpa, after all… 😉
(More seriously, nice to see you Yusef — hope you’re keeping it real on the UP and all.)
And since you mentioned CA — no wall around the state unless I can get out by noting my GA roots and that I still have a house there and all. Yes, yes… get out while I still can and all — but “100% remote” still equals “We’ll cut your salary 40% if you move away from having your base of operations in the Bay Area”.
On the tipping article — this is one I struggle with. I tip the local pizza place on delivery mainly because I want them to stay in business (small town, not a lot of even vaguely decent delivery here). But I also tip picking up to go orders from places often — and have to wonder to myself what the hell I’m doing *that* for… besides the obvious “Please don’t spit in my food” tax, I suppose. But one thing I’m sure about — growing up in a time when 10% was the norm and 15% was generous — I’m never going above 20%. The article with the 25, 35 and even flipping 40%? Get bent, restaurants. If you need to raise your prices, just do it already.
CA has “handed back” money before and I’m sure will again. Whenever Newsome thinks there’s a risk of an election not going his way he finds some way to directly bribe the voters. Wonder if the Dems will float another “Get your $3500 check if you elect us!” like in 2020, now that I think of it.
And of course — morning, Sloopy. Morning to the rest of y’all as well.
I know it’s just the point of sale system, but I do get a mild twinge of irritation when I’m buying a to-go six-pack from a brewery, and there’s a tip line on there. I may be willing to throw a buck or two for a growler fill (especially if the bar is busy, since it takes time), but you have to go to the cooler and grab a carrier to hand it to me. In a couple of places, they don’t even have to do that (coolers are near the bar, but on the customer side).
I have started to shift my tipping back down to pre-2020 levels as more places have been getting (and staying) busier.
This – my tipping is reverting back as well.
A “service charge” plus a suggested 18%,20%, 25% tip line just pisses me off.
Remember the big jars of (mostly) change that seemed to be in every convenience store? With a card, collecting donations for ‘Donnie’.
Then the jars got filled with water to prevent the Snatch and Run guys. Now with the steel money those jars would be rusty color, I don’t see them any more but I don’t get out much either.
Never saw them filled with water here, just about a quarter full of pennies at the bottom.
You can get more money through GoFundMe.
whaddup doh’
My dick?
Music was fantastic today, Sloopy. Thank you.
The playing it 20 times in a row reminds me of when a radio station here changed format back in the 90’s. The played It’s the End of the World as We Know It for 24 hours straight. There was much discussion about it in the high school hallways that day.
When a rival station changed formats a year or two after that, the started playing the song, got about 15 seconds in, record scratch sound, and then said something along the lines of, “No. We’re not the other guys.”
Booger!
Some San Diego (or TJ) station was changing format and went off the air playing To All the Girls I Loved Before for at least 24 hours, maybe longer.
In Memphis, TN, when the radio station “The Memphis Pig” went belly-up, they changed it to playing all the hits from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Mozart was followed by Elvis was followed by Scott Joplin.
Well, not really. That’s how *I* would have done it. From what I remember, they played some classical piece followed by…some other era and genre of music, interspersed with the claim that they were playing the hits from the 17th century, etc.
WLRS in Louisville played “I am the Walrus” for a week straight when they were changing formats.
This was late 80s.
KMET in LA changed formats in the late ’80s, and while the musical play-out was actually pretty good, they fired all the DJs before they announced.
The DJs were the real strength of that station, Jim Ladd, “the burner” Mary Turner, Patrick “paraquat” Kelly, and was where Dr. Demento got his start.
KLOS, the other AOR station, hosted many of those DJs shortly afterwards and hired Jim Ladd, letting them say goodbye.
Yes
Story of my life, Billy
Every time I listen to “The Stroke” I’m transported back to the Wanamingo roller skating rink.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69fPof-ZTnU
Indeed – I remember loving this album when it was released and splurging on the 8-track so I could play it in my car. That did not happen often – an album had to be good from start to finish before I would plunk out any cash for it.
I have NEVER tipped electronically. I only tip in cash. Also, I NEVER tip, it’s a gift unrelated to any transaction and is therefore not subject to tax.
This is why we need social credit scores, so only the people who deserve eggs will get eggs. And they will be fairly priced.
Chicken wings were $4.99 per pound at the supermarket yesterday. The biggest slap in the face from shopping last night though were the burger buns. Store brand were still $1.99, but they went from a 6 pack to a 4 pack.
When did burger buns stop being 8 packs?
but they went from a 6 pack to a 4 pack.
The regional grocery store brand bagels went from a 6 pack to a 4 pack. Didn’t notice until I got home. Still seeing six packs at Trader Joes and Costco.
For now…
Stewart’s still sells ice cream by the half gallon!
Well, they are a dairy that branched out into convenience stores.
Next time you’re within a state of Oklahoma, stop at Braum’s. Same concept, but instead of a dairy turning into a 7-11, they’re a dairy turned into a McDonalds. Excellent limeades also.
I think you recommended them before but they were closed during the time frame I was in Tulsa.
Probably, I’m kind of evangelistic about things I like.
Speaking of, how’s the PCC coming so you can start shooting USPSA?
I have to find out how much my roof is going to cost me.
I was soo close to being debt free, I hope I can cover most of it from cash on hand.
Shrinkflation! It’s gripping the nation!
At least shrinkflation has reduced packaging to half a bun.
$4.99/lb for wings. Oof.
Whole chicken is still $1.29/lb for now…so my wings are that.
Someone needs to genetically engineer a chicken to have 6 or 8 wings and four legs….
I bought some thighs the other day and they were like freakshow huge. Four boneless thighs in one 1.75 pound package – and one of them was much smaller than the rest.
I don’t know what they’re feeding these things.
I bet team blue would like that to be the Jan 6th insurrectionists!
They obviously learned from Warty to squat more.
They were turkeys who identified as chickens.
Polybeasts!
/Sword of the Spirits
I work in the meat department for a grocery store and our wing prices actually came down a few dimes the same time that chicken breasts went from 1.99/lb to 2.19/lb (first increase of that item in twenty years I’m told).
Pork butts are almost twice what they were 3 years ago, and whole chickens are up 30%. Sucks to see the economical food that I buy when I’m on a budget getting fucked with.
Yeah who’s laughing now at my 10 whole chickens in the freezer and the other 10 I butchered.
Just to clarify, the “other 10” you butchered are chickens……right???
He’s not a serial killer.
You heard about the cereal killer, right?
They locked him up for going against the grain….
SDF-7:
You mean Toucan Son of Sam?
But they raised the price over 10% during a massive shortage. Yes, they added almost twenty cents to the price of eggs, the bastards. That’s like 2 cents an egg. Gouging!
The article could have been clearer, but I got the impression that the state considered 10% to be the limit of what you could increase prices by in an emergency without it being gouging. For all we know, the grocery store could have raised prices by 11% or 100%. I’m still not seeing where anyone was holding a gun to these peoples’ heads forcing them to buy eggs.
“Not giving is stealing”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that the grocery store allegedly marked up certain cage-free and organic eggs by more than 10%, which is prohibited during a state of emergency. Smart & Final sold more than 100,000 cartons of price-gouged eggs during the first few months of the pandemic in California, the Attorney General’s Office found.
The state of emergency, which was enacted by Governor Gavin Newson, ran until August 2020.
So much stupid in a few sentences.
Putin’s Price Gouges
” Yeah, we used to have eggs but then everyone started buying them up by the dozens and now we can’t get them anymore”
It’s better that some people go without having eggs than having people pay an extra quarter for them.
Because it’s one of my favorite anecdotes about inflation and politics:
Note the stolen base about “fighting inflation” when it was obviously about controlling public perception and the political ramifications.
“Price gouging” is a lot like (objective) “property value”. There. Is. No. Such. Thing.
They’re a lot like unicorns – people like to believe they exist, but they just don’t. My only response if somebody brings it up is to say that, and (nicely) try to convince them that anybody who believes otherwise is an idiot.
I’ve gotten into that a few times on the Open Carry Forum.
I can never convince anyone that just because you don’t want to pay the asking price, that is not gouging when someone else pays it.
These are allegedly freedom loving people, but this concept eludes them.
I got into it with Dave Parker on Tony Macrini’s radio show about this years ago. Unsurprisingly, Parker believes that businesses that speculate on product shouldn’t be able to raise prices in an “emergency.”
I told him he didn’t have to buy it and I wasn’t under any obligation to sell it either.
There are only two qualifications that must be met by both parties in any transaction for it to be ethical.
a) Willing
b) Able
My taxes do not meet this standard.
Hey, wait a minute! You mean the county doesn’t know what my house is worth? Is says right on the paper,
“Assessed property value”. They know. They’ve also declared they know how much “I owe” for property tax. See, they have smart people that work for the county.
You owe whatever they tell you you owe.. And you will accept that if you know what’s good for you…
And if you want to change it, you can’t be silly enough to try logic, or comparing other values or sites, etc.
See, they’re the ones that picked the number anyway. And they didn’t start with logic. They started with how much money they wanted and just divvied it up.
You have to go look like a respectable citizen and catch the Tax Commissioner (or the right clerk) in the hallway, turn on the good ol’ boy, and make it their idea so they feel like they’re buying your vote. The numbers don’t matter.
How dare you. You missed the biggest sports news: The Cubs are undefeated.
This will last forever. I convinced Harris to suck & fuck everyone needed for this to remain true. Unlike everything else, she’s obviously quite good at that. It took some fuck & suckin’ on my end to get the Magic flowin’, but I know I’ll get my money’ worth. I only had to vomit a few times afterwards.
*Looks at schedule. Triumphant smile swiftly turns to frown. Walks away towards VD clinic, hands in pockets, head down. Kicks pebble.*
https://frinkiac.com/caption/S09E24/422154
Evan, has your writing style changed much since your accident?
What, am I getting too close to SugarFree territory? He *IS* an inspiration…
Short(ish) answer: If you think my writing has improved, then yes. It has changed. If you think it has gone south, then no. It hasn’t. I’m about to go out to one of our local ex-pat bars to get some food…Lady just distracted me and I’ve got to get a h̶a̶r̶d̶-̶o̶n̶ move-on.
Looks like I’ll be in Purgatory here for a bit longer. Not sure yet. I should focus on another contribution. I’m thinking Cambodia is going to be my next entry. I also have the apartment to myself over the weekend…so that will be distracting.
Well, not quite Agile Cyborg. I remember your travelogues.
The Chinese must have their own version of a Fauci. Surprisingly enough forcing people not to work may be harmful to an economy.
The old guy, Mao, would not have stood for that, he made people go to work, even without their breakfast, lunch or dinner. That guy knew how to destroy any economy too, or even prevent one from developing.
Yeah but this is all about “we will force you to publicly act like you believe what we say”.
The alleged price gouging took place when people were stocking up on supplies during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shelves were emptied out and shoppers were left with little choice but to pay for the premium eggs. The Attorney General’s Office said it received multiple reports of price hikes in different grocery stores across the state of California — but a large portion of the reports came from Smart & Final.
“Today’s settlement should serve as a warning to grocers and other sellers of essential supplies: Follow state price gouging laws or you will pay the price and be held to account,” Bonta said in a statement.
The government should own all the stores and issue ration cards to the plebs.
?♂️
Ol’ Fourscore remembers the days of rations cards (and the black market).
For every pound of used fat you turn in, your butcher will give you two red ration points.
“No pig, Mother.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089838/
We’re getting there.
Picking the winners and losers, so they can make sure nobody challenges them for being inept, corrupt, and evil and they can pass on their legacy of crime to their offspring while the rest knows whom holds the scythe of power in their hands…
It’s not price gouging if the money winds up in the hands of the government.
Boneless ribeyes went from $19.99 per pound last week to $23.99 per pound yesterday. Luckily, now that Brandon has signed the anti-lynching law, I assume I can now rustle cattle without fear. Feeling cute, might go to Long Island later and shoot a cow.
How many cattle are on Long Island? Or are you speaking euphemistically?
There are quite a few dairies, although I don’t think they raise beef cattle. But hey, beef is beef.
Parts is parts!
That’s a classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTzLVIc-O5E
Dairy cows eventually become beef cattle. That’s where McDonald’s gets it’s beef.
Ee-ai-ee-ai-oh?
I bought a mail-order computer once, and discovered a farmer inside it.
Grew up on a dairy farm.
We raise Holsteins and every year would auction some of the female calves and all of the male calves except one.
That one we would raise and take to the butcher.
Not a lot of meat on them like an Angus or Hereford, but it is good eating.
Then my stepdad bought a Hereford bull and we would get more meat off of them.
Babies would be black with white faces.
So that bull was “servicing” the cows the way government entities “service” the serfs?
If that bull was born from the herd, after a few generations, you get inbred cows. You want outside bulls for that service.
No, I think he actually liked the cows.
The bull was a Hereford
The cows were Holsteins, so I don’t think they were related.
I was thinking of this bull:
Not the second one.
But they did have relations….
They did make cute calves.
That one would get castrated at a very early age.
After that, he had a very pampered life.
I would teach it how to walk with a halter, and would walk it onto the truck, walk it off the truck and hand the rope to the butcher.
The Fresh Market is showing porterhouses at $12.99 this week (for my store/area).
Plot twist – that’s the price to look. It costs more to buy after you’ve had your look.
Quick, you are.
per lb
Oof, that’s expensive.
My benchmark family pack at Wegman’s is still $14.99/lb.
Wegmans isn’t cheap. Don’t ask me how I know. *scurries off*
From the tipping article:
‘“I was somewhere spending $23 on just coffee and pastries…’
There’s your first problem.
Is it the coffee that the civet cats poop out? If not, you’re getting robbed.
It’s the gold leaf cinnamon-saffron pastries.
If it is Starbucks, there is only a dash of coffee in the cream.
Anecdote about Austin life:
One night we were interested in trying kopi lowak, and went to the original Whole Foods @ 6th and Lamar. We couldn’t remember what it was called. When we found some worker we asked him “do you guys sell that monkey shit coffee?” The guy turned and yelled “hey Bob, so we sell that monkey shit coffee?” and a voice yelled back “It’s not a monkey, it’s a civet. And we don’t.”
/misses the Austin-that-was
Yep. That’s a lot. Cook at home.
I rarely eat out and when I do it tends to be nice places where you get an experience as well as good food. Coffee and pastries? Not worth it.
In Boston, Mike’s Pastry is worth it.
But places like that are definitely the exception.
Mike’s vs. Modern Pastry is like a Bostonian version of the Glib pizza wars.
Not from Boston, my buddy recommended Mike’s and it was very good.
Never heard of Modern Pastry.
Mike’s is solid but Modern gets the nod from my pastry-eating friends.
The original locations are just a block from each other on the main drag of the North End.
The cafeteria here at works makes excellent meatballs. They had meatball subs yesterday and I was going to buy one until I saw that the price was $8.99 for a 6″. Fuuuuck that.
Interestingly enough, while they will sell meatball subs and meatball pizzas, in the ten+ years they’ve been here, they have NEVER served spaghetti and meatballs. Not even by weight.
No colanders?
Oh, they have those, and they’ll sell spaghetti Bolognese. It must be too much work to make enough meatballs to sell in quantity.
When I returned to the office for a couple weeks last summer, all the inexpensive restaurants in the area had gone out of business and the only food for sale was a sort of food hall set up in my building with mostly food-truck fare, or would have been except only one or two had opened by that time. Fifteen dollars for an amazing ramen soup was just not sustainable over the long run. Another reason I stopped going into the office.
Wait, are you telling me that, instead of asking government agents to investigate the cafeteria in hopes of driving the price of the meatball subs down to an appropriate and fair price, you simply declined to purchase one?
Do you think that will work?
“But I want a meatball sub NOW!!!”
*I climb onto the giant scale, the sign flashes “bad meatball”, and I drop into the dungeon-y depths*
“We want our valued customers to know that price gouging has no place in our stores,” the company added. “We will continue to review our pricing to ensure it remains compliant.”
Was he wearing a dunce cap when he made his public confession and plea for absolution?
This judge needs to be run out of town on a rail.
While annoying, this isn’t the necessarily the end of for this case. The party who originated the lawsuit can request an re-hearing before the entire court, or ask SCOTUS to hear it.
The split was, predictably, two Clinton appointees voting to overturn the original trial judge’s order invalidating the vaccine mandate. The dissenter was appointed by Bush the greater.
Most federal appeals court cases are heard by three-judge panels, chosen at random.
It no longer matters what the facts of any case are.
If it is even slightly a “political” issue, the only thing that matters is the affiliation of the judge.
administrative remedies under Civil Service law
Hmm, squints at Constitution, Articles I, II and especially III. Nope not there. Hey where is that FYTW clause anyway?
From what I can tell, the whole Constitution is a FYTW document. When the FedGov can define the limits that the Constitution supposedly sets on it, are there any real limits?
“I cannot lay down my pen without recurring to one of the subjects of my former letter, for in truth there is no danger I apprehend so much as the consolidation of our government by the noiseless, and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme court.”
…Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Johnson
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3373
Oh fun. The only good is the parties suing have now 6 months of data that show vaccination or not, does not matter
The administration argued that the Constitution gives the president, as the head of the federal workforce, the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.
Great White Father care very much for his people. Want them healthy and happy. Be grateful.
Can this new precedent be used to overturn the Civil Service Act and bring back the Plum Book? Or, if Trump comes back (shudder) will he, at least, be able to fire all the dead wood?
BWAHAHAHAHAaaaaaa
You want to see a real insurrection?
No, he’s not anything remotely close to a CEO.
Even if, CEOs shouldn’t be able to mandate medical procedures for employees.
Mandatory vasectomies.
That reminds me of the parable of the guy that dies and finds himself in hell.
A guy that just died realizes he is in hell, and ends up crying and bummed with that revelation. Suddenly the devil rolls up on him to check in. He expects a beatdown from the get go but is flabbergasted when the devil asks him why he is so sad. So he tells the devil he is in hell and, well, hell is hell. The devil shakes his head and tells the dude it is all disinformation. The dude says you are the lord of lies and you have to be lying to me. That’s when the devil speaks up and says that’s a horrible slight to my character. I never tell direct lies, and I will prove it to you.
So the devil tells the dude, you have been lied to about hell being a bad place, and asks him if he likes to eat expensive and good food. The guys says who doesn’t like a good lobster, king crab, or filet mignon, but there was no way that was happening in hell. The devil responds with a “Pesha!” and tells him that Monday’s are all you can eat smorgasbords of decadent and awesome food. And then mentions that it isn’t just all you can eat, but there is absolutely no consequences to gorging. You won’t gain an ounce in weight and there is no food poisoning or any other sickness. It’s just full scale decadent eat till you are bloated and then eat some more.
The guy still is looking a bit like he doesn’t trust the whole thing, so the devil tells him that Tuesdays are all you can drink. Whatever beverage you want, you can drink until you can’t anymore, and there are no health consequences or hangovers the day after. The guy then says it has to be rotgut shit, but the devil tells him that all the stuff they have is top shelf, no joke, and goes into Wednesdays. The devil tells him Wednesdays are indulgence days. Name your addiction poison, and you can do it. From cigarettes or the ganja all the way to shooting heroin or snorting coke off hookers backs. And you can never overdose. It is all a high high all the time. And the devil then says that on Thursdays its all about fun entertainments. Whatever you do to pass time – hiking, weightlifting, binge watching TeeVee, console gaming, table top gaming, hobby games, you name it – all the time, no limits. All fun & games, brah!
The guy at this point starts thinking that hell can’t be that bad if you can do all these things and have no ill effects, but notices that the devil’s demeanor suddenly changed a bit, so he asks what’s gong on. After a little hesitation the devil sighs and asks “Are you gay?” (replace with straight sex for people that are gay) and the guy says no he is not, at which point the devil shakes his head and tells him he is gonna hate the long weekend…
Shanghai residents protest the latest lockdowns by singing on their balconies. A drone shows up and tells them to ‘Control your soul’s desire for freedom’.
*CDC furiously takes notes*
Our government bureaucrats applaud too…
But there was a lengthy dissent by Judge Stephen Higginson, a nominee of President Barack Obama, who said a single district judge ‘lacking public health expertise and made unaccountable through life tenure,’ should not be able to block the president from ordering the same type of COVID-19 safety measures many private sector CEOs have ordered.
Public health expertise is irrelevant and unnecessary. It’s a question of law and the legal limits on government diktat.
Rule of law is dead.
Rule of law has been dead, at this point the corpse has been beaten into horseburgers.
Does the judge have a biology degree?
He is an expert in the law, which says that all experts in the govt must be obeyed in their fields of expertise.
I noticed this a long time back, and probably dates at least to the progressive era. Why do judges think they can defer to ‘experts’ when it comes to the law and rights of citizens?
Beyond passing the rational basis test I don’t see how it matters.
Daily Quordle 74
7️⃣6️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
Daily Quordle 74
6️⃣7️⃣
5️⃣4️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
3️⃣5️⃣
6 7
8 9
*sigh*
5 9
8 6
4️⃣ 8️⃣
5️⃣ 6️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
Daily Quordle 74
4️⃣6️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
Almost had a 3 4 5 6, almost…
Daily Quordle 74
4️⃣6️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com
?⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜?
??⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
⬜??⬜? ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
????? ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜??⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬜?⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
????? ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
Daily Quordle 74
3️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜??⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜?⬜? ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
????? ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜??⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ???⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬜?⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
????? ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
7️⃣9️⃣
6️⃣8️⃣
Whew!
5 9
7 8
Daily Quordle 74
3️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
Boom?
8 5
7 6
Daily Quordle 74
7️⃣5️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
22 again.
6️⃣7️⃣
3️⃣4️⃣
Mandatory vasectomies.
Lobotomies.
Same thing.
It is unclear how many federal employees – if any – were fired for refusing vaccinations.
Nobody got fired. They just quit. It’s their god given right.
*meekly raises hand*
I do think no one got fired, but only because they kept delaying it and then it got quashed. No supervisor actually wants to fire someone, then they’d have to go through all the effort of hiring another person.
Or people do what I did, not being 100% against it at the time.
When my company said they would let me go if I didn’t, I got the shot.
Still angry at myself for doing that so easily.
For me it was the writing on the wall for both my job and the whole state I was in. I decided that I ought to be living up to my own standards. If I am not willing to make sacrifices for what I believe in, how can I expect anyone else to take my alleged desires seriously.
Quit my job, moved states and started over in a freer place.
My boss has been steadfast, but he is retirement eligible.
If the feds ever actually try to force anyone, his packet is ready to go.
I wonder what the NLRB would have to say about a private company whose chief executive pressured all his employees to conform to his ideological framework or be fired.
I guess that’s a silly question, unless the CEO in question is a Nazi or something similar.
More antediluvian Beatles
A risky business.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-germany-europe-document-forgery-120b2c4db8aa71ffeadf766a9829910b
This is the most important thing you’ll read today. It’s also the truest. This shit is completely out of hand and needs to stop.
I’ve never understood tipping for minimum viable effort (deli counters, etc.) or to reward good service on top of paying for said service (haircuts, etc.)
I comply in the latter situation, but I don’t understand.
I’ll throw my change in the tip jar at a counter, but that’s it.
I tip instead of hand a fiver to the sign holder at the stoplight. At least the person I tipped did *something* for the money, and I get a short-term boost to my feelings of being a morally upright person.
In Cedar Rapids, there is an excellent sandwich shop called “Cappriotti’s”. When you tip, the cashier yells “Beer money!” and the other employees shout “Thank you!”
I think it depends. In some deli’s they’ll give you a few slices of the meat beyond what you’re buying to taste on the spot. There? Yeah, I’m throwing them a couple of bucks.
Of course, one of the funnier lines from a movie I recall was from “My Blue Heaven”, where Steve Martin’s (mob) character explains “I don’t believe in tipping. I believe in overtipping.” Because there is a certain level of truth to it. If you’re known as a guy who leaves a really good tip, you’re going to get service above and beyond what the norm is.
reward good service on top of paying for said service (haircuts, etc.)
Look at it this way: the server’s pay consists of base pay (the hourly rate paid by the employer) and incentive pay (the tips, paid by you). You could just pay higher prices to cover the incentive pay coming from the employer, or you could remain in control of who gets incentive pay, and how much.
And, for those of us who boil everything down to a transaction based on what we, personally, gain, if you are a regular, you will get better service if you tip well.
Tips have long ceased to be incentive pay.
Has not been the experience in my case. People remember me at bars, restaurants, barbers, and so on because when I get good service I tip and when I don’t the get none. I guess if you go to a place where you haven’t been before or won’t return to, you might think it doesn’t matter, but I tell my server up front they are starting at 40% tip and it will go down based on things they do wrong. I once even tipped a waiter 100% on a $500 bill because the service was worth it (they cooked things not on the menu for us).
Why are tips a percentage of the bill anyway?
If I go to a fancy place and get mediocre service should I really be tipping more than the fantastic service I just got at the local greasy spoon?
Like you I prefer to have that incentive power, however the expectations are getting it of control. But I might just be a cheap bastard too.
In cities with a strong restaurant culture, waiting tables can be a career. More expensive restaurants recruit experienced waitstaff from less expensive restaurants. I’ve never found poor service at a high-end restaurant in Houston, there are too many waiters wanting those gigs for ones that have them to endanger them.
“So…people couldn’t have gone elsewhere? Or bought another type of egg at that store? Or simply bought something else? This is bullshit.”
The story did say that the regular cheap eggs were sold out so the only option was the premium eggs that were marked up. Kind of shitty to put all the blame on the grocer though. His costs went up so he had to raise prices.
Reminds me of that Sowell quote about first rule of economics being supply and demand, and the first rule of politics is to ignore the first economic rule. Or something.
Do we get to find out how transitory inflation is again today.
I noticed this a long time back, and probably dates at least to the progressive era. Why do judges think they can defer to ‘experts’ when it comes to the law and rights of citizens?
The judge is ostensibly an expert on what the law is, and what it does or does not permit. The public health (or whatever flavor) expert is not.
It’s the judge’s job to consider the letter of the law, not what he or somebody else thinks is the “right thing to do”. Weird, right?
Sounds like an awful lot of responsibility.
I’d think the courts would need to Refer to experts in certain cases, like in a situation where an employee got hurt on the job and there was a need to determine whether the employer or the employee was negligent. From what source would the judge get the information to know if the employer had done what is proper to have prevented the accident versus the employee doing something stupid? Currently, the judge could refer to OSHA standards, where applicable, to determine if the employer had followed them or not. I’m not in favor of OSHA’s existence on principle, but a judge might not otherwise have a source of collected best practices (assuming OSHA’s standards are such).
The judge shouldn’t allow OSHA to make the legal determination, but could refer to them for some facts regarding the generally accepted procedures the employee and employer would be expected to follow.
That’s exactly the problem though.
They’re writing up new laws and they suck at it anyway. They’re not impartial experts they’re state functionaries fulfilling political desires of their masters.
Our local bagel shop has big posters apologizing for this morning’s price hike. Bagels went from $1.00 to $1.25 overnight.
Fun Fact – In NYC, a sliced bagel is prepared food and subject to sales tax, while an unsliced bagel is grocery, therefore not subject to the levy.
Do they have the slicing machine on the customer side of the counter because of that?
I am sure they tried that, but got tired of throwing away customers’ thumbs.
Lol, I think I’d trust the average customer to keep their hand out of the slicy part over the average disinterested bagel shop teenaged worker.
You might, but your liability insurance carrier would not.
What? Your employees haven’t gone through the mandatory OSHA “Don’t Self-Amputate” training?
A lot of states tax groceries – that came as a surprise to me.
Ohio doesn’t tax groceries, nor prepared food to go. However, if you eat the food in house, then it’s taxed. If you’re buying a sweetened beverage, those are taxed (unsweetened iced tea, coffee, and water are not). I’ve heard many a person yell at the poor teenager at turnpike rest stops for asking if the food was “for here or to go?”
It does seem weird at first that they always ask.
Safe and effective
https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx
I am almost angrier at the slobs who repeat the “safe and effective” nonsense than the devils who invented the things.
Dolores Umbridge was far more despicable than Voldemort.
So crazy that because of who the president is that nobody gives a shit about all of these healthy people dropping dead.
Yeah, but if they hadn’t been vaxxed they might have gotten the equivalent of a bad cold!
NBA 2K22, now including designing a fashion line and recording a rap album.
1) why haven’t you hooligans told me this was a thing?
2) why is this a thing?!?
The only sports game I am looking forward to at the moment is Mario Strikers Battle League.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/04/08/russians-increasingly-casual-in-talking-about-use-of-nuclear-weapons/
That correlates pretty well with polls in the US where people think direct military involvement in Ukraine is worth the risk of nuclear war.
I don’t like where any of this is going.
Me neither.
So crazy conspiracy thinking here.
Could a nuclear war resolve the deficit?
It would make it irrelevant.
I work for the DOD, everyone in my office seems to be all in for helping Ukraine, happy that we may have forces in Ukraine fighting Russians.
No one seems upset that we are not brokering talks to stop the fighting.
Nobody seems worried that we are becoming legitimate military targets.
no one things nuclear war is possible.
The US has become far too accustomed to military conflict without any real consequences to the civilian population. We’re deluded into thinking that war is just some thing that happens over there and with no costs to us.
Besides being wholly amoral, it’s incredibly dangerous.
Yes. When’s the last time the US civilian population was directly affected? Civil War? Indian wars, Mexican incursion, Pearl Harbor only affected a few at the fringes.
I would say WWII. There was a certain level of economic hardship – rationing, etc.
“Mmmmeh, you know how it is with these A cards.”
Korea too for rationing.
Rationing for Korea?
I don’t remember that, Guns AND Butter. Cars were still being produced every year, unlike WW2.
My employer is sending food aid (we package staple foods) and the employees are really happy about that. This was brought up in our annual ESOP meetings over the past couple of days and it was the only subject that drew applause from the audience groups. The increased stock price news didn’t elicit any response.
During Nam conflict, or Desert Storm, etc. you could say “If you dig the war, then you go.” None of those adversaries could do much to hurt those of us who didn’t dig the war. But nuclear war will involve us all if these morons get their way starting a war with Russia and/or China. It’s no longer acceptable to simply say “we’ll hold your coat while you fight.” How do we make Americans see that a non-interventionist foreign policy provides the most safety?
First, get $700 billion dollars a year from the government.
second, spend 1% of it on propaganda.
The other option is for people to have their own moral compass that also points true. You tell me which is more likely.
“Russians increasingly casual in talking about nuclear weapons”
Once again, projection. I can turn on any of the news channels now and find similar proponents right here.
Before I go and get a potentially humorously bad machien translation, can any glib now present give me the french translation of ‘Wolfshead Manor’?
Le Manoir au Tête de Loup? du Loup?
bah: à la tête? Wut masheen say?
I haven’t asked the machine yet, I was going to ask if Manoir was a term for a house or an estate because I realized the english ‘manor’ is overloaded in terms of definitions.
Machine says “manoir tête de loup”
I don’t think you can get away with dropping the article there, but I could be wrong.
I have no clue, and I don’t trust the machine to know.
Don’t drop the article. C’est tres mal.
Don’t know French, so I’m going to guess what you said.
Uhh… Chest, three, mail.
Three Breastplates?
UCS, it translates to “It’s no good”, but literally it says “That’s triple/really bad”. The French talk funny.
If it’s anything like German, yeah, when in doubt add the article.
de la = de la.
de le = du.
du
Du
Du hast
Du hast mich
Du hast mich
Du hast mich gefragt
Du hast mich gefragt
Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5HAEzEk8QM
The DVD of that concert in Paris is amazing.
They Blow. Shit. Up.
Chez Hitler?
Trying to remember from French in Action whether Tante Georgette insisted on tête de veau or du veau. De, I think.
Was it Beam who has relatives in France?
All I really want to do is name the fictional house a fictional king gave a fictional favorite who is uncomfortable with the attention but is pressured by family to not discourage the king because of the financial windfall.
Call it, “Glibber Hall” and say that it had been built by the English during the Hundred Years’ War.
1: This is in the fictitious kingdom of Valay, not France, so there were no English to invade them
2: The English Castle Class spoke French during the Hundred Years War.
Well, the only other thing I can think of is to send a list of actual French manor houses (according to Wikipedia), although I suspect you already tried that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manor_houses
Le Chateau du Mal Voisin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX0HO55lskY
That security blanket is tres useful. Why didn’t they try to catch Linus in it, after the girl?
Vous êtes drôle!
Le M à la T du L, je crois (at the head of the wolf); like le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons.
emailing a French prof, because why not?
<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/08/1091435312/idaho-primary-republican-party-politics Extremism
At the University of Montana, political scientist Rob Saldin is tracking moderate groups like Take Back Idaho, which so far are rare.
“Where are the current high-profile Republicans who are endorsing and supporting this effort?” Saldin asks. “I don’t see many. And the ones you do, it’s like, Liz Cheney, who’s in big trouble.”
Saldin says the populist rhetoric stoked by the former president and his followers continues to appeal to the party base, and particularly people who have never voted or been politically active before. He figures that may be why some current GOP lawmakers are reluctant to speak out.
The former governor of Saldin’s state, Marc Racicot, has been writing editorials in mainstream outlets like The Washington Post lately similar in tone to Take Back Idaho. Racicot, who also chaired the Republican National Committee during the George W. Bush administration, says the party’s far-right leaders are a threat to democracy.
“There is a huge, great middle of America that is concerned about us as a republic falling apart,” Racicot told NPR.
particularly people who have never voted or been politically active before
Eventually, hoping they’ll just leave you the fuck alone becomes obviously futile.
Listen. People doing what they want isn’t DEMOCRACY! it’s anarchy, or worse. They must be stopped.
You’re kind of behind the curve there, Marc.
The republic is dead and has been. It’s just that more people are noticing the corpse now.
Weekend at Bernie’s III is not as funny as the second one.
Eventually the smell gets to you.
“There is a huge, great middle of America that is concerned about us as a republic falling apart,” Racicot told NPR.
Exactly right, except, as usual, exactly wrong about who is making the Republic fall.
Do they discount the meatball subs at the end of the day, or do they toss them in the trash?
No idea. Wouldn’t surprise me if the employees took the leftover meatballs home.
Also, I have no idea when “end of day” is for them since we’re 24/7.
End of day is most likely industry standard for a cooked food to sit in that case.
Neither, they just put the crockpot on low and leave them overnight to make the sauce for next day’s spaghetti.
Like Costco – unsold whole chickens go into the rotisserie, unsold rotisserie chickens get made into chicken salad.
Mmmmm! Sam’s Club rotisserie chicken salad! ::discreetly wipes drool from corner of mouth::
When I was in the steakhouse biz, unsold rib roll went into the next day’s soup.
I have noticed they are using their cheaper chickens and selling their ‘organic’ ones. Pisses me off cause they were selling their chickens for $.88/lb before this recent practice at my local Costco
Could a nuclear war resolve the deficit?
It would certainly break a lot of windows.
Well let me expound….
Assume as part of a first strike, high altitude EMP’s blow out all the computers that record all the bonds/bond payments that occur overseas.
No record of a bond, no deficit.
Extreme conspiracy i know. But it would sort of….work.
Follow-on strikes kill everyone who owns any government debt and incinerates all the paper bonds…
This could work.
If they don’t have backup tapes in Faraday cage vaults for critical financial data like that, they’re idiots. So I wouldn’t expect just a EMP strike to wipe that data (now, that it would cripple the US as a whole and its economy is a different story — and already written).
A full on nuclear war would wipe out the deficit, sure. I doubt there’d be enough of civilization left who gave a rat’s butt about the debts of the prior governments any more than we really care about Julius Caesar’s household expenses and all.
Do you have their ledgers? I would love to know the nature and details of Julius Caesar’s household finances.
I guess you bring up a great point.
Do “We” keep backups in faraday cage vaults? I honestly have no idea, and have not thought of that.
Do Faraday cages still work after the initial EMP? Where would they get their electricity from when the grid and electrical circuits are all fried?
Faraday cages are a passive defense. They don’t need power.
I’ve pondered a small solar panel setup that is stowed in a Faraday bag for emergencies.
They also make bags for small generators.
I have a duffel sized Faraday bag that I’m outfitting with a shortwave radio, laptop, backup phone, geiger counter (bought on impulse a while ago), a couple of Baofengs, etc…
For some reason I am now fascinated by the meatball subs. They should do a Dutch Auction. If you are starving, or absolutely positively have to eat your lunch at “lunchtime” you pay fill tilt. If you can wait, the price drifts downward as the sub ages. If you wait too long… you’re stuck with peanut butter and jelly.
I suppose there’s something to be said for online training in which I don’t have to pay attention to the video to score 100% on the quiz.
It’s too easy?
Waaaaaay too easy. You can’t jump straight to the quiz, so on some modules, I start the video, then pause it and skip to the next one until the site thinks I’ve watched them all. (All of these are on “customer service.”)
Don’t swear at the customer.
Be polite.
Don’t make promises.
Don’t swear at the customer.
Maintain an even tone of voice.
Don’t swear at the customer.
BITCH PLEAUZE!
Fuck you customer!
…
Was that wrong?
You need more coaching. Watch the videos again.
This video? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445
This one? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063100
This one.
This one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348333/
Didn’t say anything about not touching the customers, w00t!
We all had to undergo online training a few months ago before being allowed to drive (or continue driving) university vehicles–including golf carts. I swear the training was the standard defensive driving course they make you go through when you get a ticket. The videos, though, wouldn’t let you skip ahead. It was sort of like the commercials on free hulu. I actually had to sit through and pretend to watch 4 hours of high school driver’s ed video and pass all the quizzes, which I could have passed at the start. Not one single mention of golf carts the whole time.
The “training” isn’t about you getting better at anything as much as it is a means for the employer to tell insurance companies and armies of lawyers suing them after something goes wrong to take it up with you….
Sure, we all know that. The annoying part was not being able to skip or fast forward any of the videos.
And now this is running through my head – https://youtu.be/aub54mjKfJI
Daily Ray of Sunshine
That was fantastic! The little guy’s laugh at the end made it.
Clever, and fun
Fifteen dollars for an amazing ramen soup was just not sustainable over the long run. Another reason I stopped going into the office.
I hate saying this, because I know that it’s not how things are supposed to work, but I can’t help but wonder if the biggest reason so many execs are so eager to go back to “in-office” is simply bragging rights. Making the big bucks to go to expensive lunches doesn’t carry that much cache if there’s no worker bees to flaunt it to. Being the big cheese isn’t all that satisfying if the only ones who get to see your new Rolex or your embossed business card are your wife and your dog. Because I see the industries where remote work is most doable, say finance or tech, and the execs in those fields seem the most eager to go to an “in-office” approach. Yet, these tend to be fields where the workers are some of the more educated and motivated. It’s not like you need to hover around guys and ladies who regularly voluntarily put in 50 or 60 hour (or a lot more) work weeks to make sure they aren’t goofing off.
This upper middle management cheese is taking my people for pizza and bowling at noon. I’m wearing a polyester shirt with flames on it and dice for buttons, it’s not a Rolex, but it does make a statement.
Mainly that statement is that I own a 20 year old shirt I bought at a record store in the 2001.
Funny you mention that, Bill. Because my employer was experiencing such negative feedback from making people come into work 3 days a week (they are doing this IMO to justify the countless millions they spent redoing office space, the cafeteria, and general sprucing up of our buildings, and can’t just say those millions were pissed away to the stock holders) that they started asking managers to ask people one on one. My manager was surprised to hear that my problem with coming back in had to do with finances and nothing else. I pointed out that I now have to pay for parking, for gas – and it is not going down as long as the environmental lobby controls the WH/congress – for lunches, and that the 5% merit raise I got gave me a minimum of a 2% pay cut because of inflation. And I pointed out I felt for those that didn’t get more than a 2% raise cause they really took it in the ass. I really made him go into convulsions when I pointed out that I would not be working extra time at home because being in the office dropped my productivity to about 50% of what I have working from home because of the constant distractions (like the stupid meeting to quiz me about why people would not want to come back to the office).
He told me he would have actually preferred I had bitched about just wanting to be a home body or being lazy, cause he was unprepared to argue my point with any sort of logic of our work contract and that I should keep my mouth shut about that so others didn’t pick up on the fact they got hosed. Yeah., my company has a lot of seriously stupid team blue policies, and they really hate when people see this shit sucks.
If I get a hotel, my employers pays per diem on both sides of the stay and I don’t have to pay for commuting for a day. Guess who has been turning day trips into overnights? Plus it’s a lot more relaxing to drive half the distance on a single day.
You sound popular with your boss. >.>
My boss used to be a techie back when and worked as a peer before he realized he was not as technical as the others there and went into management. He is a decent manager – at least better than he was a techie – and uses me to keep him grounded when the management stupid rears its ugly head, so we have a good relationship. But even so, I have a reputation that I will not beat around the bush, because I can always go find a job elsewhere because my skillset is in high demand and my experience and problem solving abilities are way above normal. My coworkers all joke that they never will get an HR problem, because I can set the bar so low that HR would never be able to give them shit.
I just think it’s because they’re the most likely to want to get away from the ball and chain for ten hours a day.
Oh, I had several of the senior people complain around me that they wanted to be back in the office to avoid their annoying wife/kids, but more importantly, to not have to argue with the ball & chain when they said they needed to go meet counterparts in the bar for after work work.
*raises hand*
I go into the office every day because a) it is only a mile from my house, b) quiet (the rest of my team works remote) and c) gets me away from my wife who has a hard time understanding that just because I am home that doesn’t mean I am available to do whatever it is that she thinks needs to be done.
In the olden days, I worked from home back when no one else did. I had a basement with two racks of development servers to support. So I am not against work from home stuff, but I sort of like the office.
The number 1 factor though is that the commute is ridiculously close. If I had to drive downtown or across town, I’d be working from home.
Why don’t you want to talk to me?
It isn’t even that. She is very much a FIFO person. Whatever pops into her brain becomes an immediate priority and something has to be done NOW!
I’ve mostly made my peace with it. She has enough other good qualities that she is still a keeper.
I realize that I’m just jealous because she got to marry someone who is perfect and has no flaws and here I am coping with a regular person who has a few annoying habits.
So when did she leave him and hook up with you? Or did he die and leave her no remaining options?
ZING!
My commute is a minimum one hour – two trains and a lot of walking. And that’s just one of three or four big reasons I vastly prefer WFH.
“If I have to come into the office, I will require a 25% raise to cover the extra two hours per day I spend commuting. This is not negotiable. I have on my computer screen three job openings that are 100% work from home. Your call.”
Chez Hitler?
What do you suppose the specialty of the house might be?
Something vegetarian.
Something from the oven?
Not sure, but I bet it’s not sea food.
not sea food
-.-
Come on, man! I should win the internet with that.
But you repeated it and pointed at the punchline.
Because it was so subtle that none of you got it. And the thread was minutes from going dead.
I don’t get it.
It’s playing off the sound of the words being similar to the name of a political party.
I love these kinds of tickets.
“Make [useless change] to [user]’s account – [user] can’t log in” Where [useless change] won’t fix the actual issue of not being able to log in.
Do you prefer: thing broke, no details provided?
“To diagnose your issue we need some information:
What is the thing that broke?
What is it doing that it should not be doing?
What is it not doing that it should be doing?
What are you trying to do with it?
What messages do you get?”
Copy. Paste. Send.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
That’s Teir 1. We don’t handle Teir 1 calls.
It’s better then the ones that showcase a lack of understanding. Agents are having issues answering calls through a web client, they need to pick up the handset.
Yes… that’s how physical phones work.
I could do that, or I could push one of two buttons to either get a speakerphone, or activate the headset.
True. They weren’t doing any of that, just clicking in the web application that notified them they had a call coming in.
“Make it go!”
REBOOT!
Surveillance video: https://youtu.be/nn2FB1P_Mn8?t=12
Back to NPR and political extremism:
This was rancher Jennifer Ellis’ take as the Idaho legislature recently wrapped up its session. Lawmakers made national headlines for going after librarians for exposing kids to “harmful” books. One sponsor of a self-described election integrity bill even pushed a false notion that Canadians were crossing over the border to vote in elections here.
“I just have to wonder where the grown-ups in the room are on some of these things,” Ellis says. “We have got infrastructure that is really in peril. We have got schools that have not been funded like they should.”
Aaaand done.
Anybody who makes this claim has zero credibility, and can go jump off the big bridge in Twin Falls with an anvil hung around her neck.
“. We have got schools that have not been funded like they should.””
Technically correct. They should be funded by the end user, like any other product.
We have got schools that have not been funded like they should.
A lot of funding has been diverted for DEI and other non-educational uses.
Everyone hates Bill Nye now:
Bill Nye, the Sellout Guy
Is there such a thing as a mask recycling program? No? Maybe we should be talking about that.
They will when tons of marine life turns up dead, suffocated, from the massive floating garbage islands made out of disposable masks they ran into….
At least the masks will keep the straws out of turtles’ noses.
Bill Nye Cringe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtJFb_P2j48
maybe NSFW. I dunno, I’m not your supervisor
Humanity needs an extinction level event..
Thanks for reminding me of that, not.
Only corporations have agency.
That’s what stuck out to me.
‘what it does in actuality is place the burden of responsibility on the consumer’
God forbid we take responsibility for our own actions. It’s too much to bear.
Soda is disgusting, so easy for me to avoid.
What does a powder have to do with pop bottles?
A pop is a quick punch, not something you can bottle.
^ this guy gets it ^
Leaks in the bubble
As President Joe Biden sat at a signing desk in a crowded room at the White House on Wednesday, he was flanked by lawmakers who stood shoulder to shoulder to celebrate a rare bipartisan win: a new law that will modernize the US Postal Service.
Had it taken place at nearly any other time, the perfunctory event in Washington might have come and gone. But in the age of a pandemic, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s close proximity to the President during the signing — just a day before she would announce that she had tested positive for Covid-19 — has triggered alarm.
And elsewhere in Washington, a slew of cases among political partygoers illustrates the push and pull between returning back to “normal” life and continuing efforts to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
How will we have room to display all the corpses in the Capitol?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/06/politics/biden-postal-service-reform-law-signing/index.html
I did it wrong.
Anyway, the “new law will require retired postal employees to enroll in Medicare when eligible and repeals a previous mandate for the agency that forced it to cover health care costs up front and years in advance. Those two measures would save the USPS nearly $50 billion over the next decade, according to the House Oversight Committee.”
“Unlike other government institutions, the US Postal Service must rely on revenue it collects from deliveries, not taxpayer funding, to support itself. This means that the agency, established in 1775, must operate without the usual financial benefits of being a federal agency while still having to bear those costs.”
“Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said that USPS’ “dire financial condition” has inhibited the service from modernizing, including from replacing the vast majority of its aging vehicle fleet with electric trucks.”
No kidding, about the aging vehicles. “LLVs”. “Long-life vehicles”. The last one rolled off the assembly line in 1992. They were going to replace them with newer Mercedes vehicles, but the ones they got had the warranty voided because the Post Office insisted that carriers only use the lowest grade fuel, instead of the highest grade, per the terms of the warranty.
No mention of the astounding level of financial malfeasance, corruption, and incompetence that caused Congress to take USPS off budget and mandate the health plan payment in the first place?
Never seen Metris around here, just the rare Chrysler Caravans. This is the slated replacement for LLVs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Delivery_Vehicle
The manufacturing company:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_Corporation
“ Oshkosh Corporation is headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It has manufacturing operations in eight U.S. states and in Australia, Canada, China, France and Romania and through investments in joint ventures in Mexico and Brazil. The Access Equipment division is headquartered in McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania; the Defense division in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; the Fire & Emergency division in Appleton, Wisconsin; and the Commercial division in Dodge Center, Minnesota.
Oshkosh products and services are sold in more than 150 countries around the globe. The company also maintains a global service network.”
I have it on good authority that “we don’t make anything in the US, anymore”, so this Wikipedia entry is wrong.
The company I work for is 100% US manufacturing. We ship to Canada and are beginning to get into the Mexico market, so I could see us opening a plant north or south of the border someday. But for now, we are entirely domestic. Ten plants, I think. Mostly we buy plants within our industry that are on the verge of closing, and revive them. Get them for pennies on the dollar and get them back up. Almost all our plants have stories like, “When we bought in 2018, there were 150 employees, now there are 500.”
Mostly in small towns where 500 jobs is a big frickin deal too.
What do you make?
I don’t want to see so as not to identify the company. We are privately held, so you probably havent heard of us, but I prefer to keep my employment private.
I never mentioned I worked for Fruit of the Loom until about a year after I left the company. And by left, I mean Warren Buffet laying me off. If anyone notices my posting history from TOS and here, I was critical of Buffet prior to Oct 20
accidentally posted.
Between oct 2015 and sept 2019, I didnt mention Buffett ever.
Fair enough, I’m just surprised anything is still made in this country. I’d thought we’d offshored all of that in a fit of shortsightedness.
“I’d thought we’d offshored all of that in a fit of shortsightedness.”
That is what Fruit did to IT. Kept management level, the rest of IT went overseas. I am sure the financial numbers look good, but I know the business side probably hates it. We could work with them in a way that couldn’t be represented in a ticket.
My conspiracy-theory speculation is that US companies didn’t move operations overseas to take advantage of cheap labor, but because the US FedGov artificially increased the costs of operating within the US through regulation while at the same time compensated companies in some way for moving operations out of the country.
So ugly and also lacks aerodynamic features. Perfect!
Not the Bee.
https://airlineweekly.com/2022/04/american-airlines-restarts-philadelphia-regional-routes-with-landline-buses/
Whycome that plane has no wings?
For years United had a codeshare agreement with Amtrak for trains from Newark.
Do they have indrive beverage service?
Not a terrible idea. I love flying out of Allentown / Leigh Valley, but it’s silly when they want me to change planes in Philly. A bus route is probably as fast as all the bs involved in the short flight.
So, if you do it in the bathroom, do you joint the meter high club?
So does the fact that everyone in DC has the Rona prove that there really are orgies?
At this point the only conspiracy theory that has kept on being crazy talk seems to be “This is the LIBERTARIAN MOMENT!!!!”
Meanwhile, NATO is apparently saying they would welcome Finland and Sweden with open arms. Because that’s what de-escalation looks like.
Why limit NATO to just the North Atlantic?
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/NATO-Asia-Pacific-partners-agree-to-bolster-cooperation
Formally sign them up for the economic war we are in the process of losing.
Fuuuuck. NATO has become the new Axis Powers.
Joining an alliance decades after it’s reason for existing is gone because… They think they’ll get freebies from the Americans?
The Peloponnesian League isn’t looking for new members?
Given the stance of the Turks, a Peloponnesian league probably still makes sense.
Well, you gotta show the Rooskies who’s boss.
Good morning, Sloop!
And good morning, friends!
The plague has descended upon the Tundra household. Tuesday and Wednesday I felt like hammered shit. Yesterday I started feeling better and now Mrs. T is down for the count. It’s spring, goddammit! You are only supposed to sick in the winter!
Don’t Say No is a fantastic album. I was 12 or 13 when it came out – I had to ride my bike to the record store – and literally wore the grooves off that thing.
Good memories!
Hope your family recovers Tundra.
My wife is concerned that I’m going to get the Rona playing basketball with 7 other guys, but has no qualms about me going into an office every day. Sigh. I’m not looking forward to our first dose of the flu/rona/whatevs because I’m pretty sure I’m going to be blamed.
I don’t think it’s the ‘vid. Lots of snot, head feels like it weighs a million pounds, no fever, etc. I pounded the musinex and got a bunch of sleep.
Remember when we just got colds? And moved on with life?
My dad is fxin to drive over the Charlotte to look at an RV on my behalf this weekend! If I end up going this route, I have 3 choices: a) use my dad’s mailing address as my “domicile” for tax purposes, but I will have to pay state income tax, b) find a friend in an income-tax-free state that would let me use their address as my domicile, or c) sign up for a mail service ($115/year, plus cost of sending mail) with an address in TX, which means I will need to go to TX and register my vehicles & get a license, etc.
WTF.
I thought that was some kind of insider Texan talk.
There are some New Hampshire Glibs. And Florida-men.
Looks like I’d be paying SC ~$1000/year in income tax, which is not bad. It would be essentially a convenience fee for using my dad’s address until I can find a permanent tax-free solution.
Check with your accountant. My SIL lives in Florida, summers in MN. Somehow the state is starting to crack down and she has to actually be in FL for a certain amount of time every year.
Or some such fuckery.
I’m stoked for you. Sounds like a great adventure!
I’d only have one address – in SC. I would “live” there 12 months of the year. I think the issue is if you own properties in more than one state.
The SC legislature is debating two different bills to cut the income tax. The Governor has said he’ll sign either.
Jelly!
Here’s what he’s looking at. Bluebook says the price is good for the mileage, but hoping the seller would be willing to haggle a bit.
https://www.rvtrader.com/listing/2011-Jayco-GREYHAWK-31SS-5020519419
Formally sign them up for the economic war we are in the process of losing.
Wait, what? I have been repeatedly assured by all the most reliable sources Russia is in the process of complete economic collapse.
Sigh. I have been working with an overseas dev team for about 3 months. I had them sort of whipped into shape. They realized that they had to fill out tickets completely and they couldn’t weasel out of testing and other things.
In the last two weeks we have entered a new phase and now I am including a couple people from my company. Both of them are 10 times worse than the devs and I’m cringing anytime that they open their mouths. FUCK!
The new guys are creating new tickets that are full of worthless crap. For example, they will claim that ALL the links on a page are broken, but when you go look, it turns out that only one link is broken. And of course it goes to some obscure function that no one really cares about. So now the devs have gone back into “the user is a moron and we don’t need to take these tickets seriously anymore”.
FUCK. Never a good time when you want to be on Team Outsider instead of Team Your Business.
Come on, you know any time there’s an issue it immediately becomes “ALL %item% IS BROKEN!” And it’s not until you get into the details that it didn’t work because they had just spilled a glass of water on their keyboard while streaming the latest show.
“Unable to replicate error. Closing ticket.”
Don’t you have some kind of script that can check a web page’s URLs to see if they’re broken and give you a list? My ebook creation software has that.
For the Billy Squier fans:
1981 in Santa Monica.
Underrated.
There is a bill for supporting ‘diverse’ stem students, including direct payments, and ‘comprehensive wraparound services’.
Stem classes are probably the most diverse already, we had people from everywhere. Fuck this bill and fuck everyone who likes it.
I remember back in 1986 or so, when I was getting all the recruitment stuff from schools, looking thru one of the books sent to me and noticing that amongst the schools in the book, GT, where I ended up going, had one of the highest minority populations. It was almost all hispanic and asian, a pretty low black percentage, but overall, it was diverse (ignoring the lack of women).
Turks, Chinese, Australians, Pakistanis Indians… It was like the UN.
I think both women were Asian.
There were strangely few Asian women, a relatively large number of white women (10%?).. Almost none of the foreigners were female. Maybe the Asian gals got into more prestigious schools.
There were two when you were there?
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLAvhE4a_hI
“There’s only one girl”
Thanks drug warriors!
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-phenylephrine
I have to bite my tongue every time my wife forgets and buys that useless shit.
That explains why the drugs we bought had no effect on our congestion during our household wuflu pandemic.
Luckily we have the FDA to shut down alleged medicines that don’t do anything and encourage the use of effective treatments during disease outbreaks.
Yeah, it’s a ridiculous situation. It doesn’t work, and it’s actually worse than all the homeopathic garbage the pharmacies sell, because at least those can’t hurt you since they’re just water. I know I was told to stay away from it because of my high blood pressure, which makes me wonder how many people with undiagnosed high blood pressure have been unknowingly harming themselves by taking these useless pills.
Music for everyone
Nom.
Indian fish and chips. Which is just fish and chips with a brown curry sauce. It kindly does the needful.