Loquat
8mo ago
My local grocery stores' self-checkout kiosks all have a special "reusable bag" button - you press it, put your bags on the bagging surface, and continue on with grocery scanning. My one issue with it is that my bags tend to collapse in on themselves when empty, and the scale freaks out when I correct that to put stuff in them.
Loquat
8mo ago
At the two major grocery chains near me, most fresh produce does NOT have a barcode to scan, just a four-digit code you have to type in yourself. So if you set an expensive steak on the checkout scale and type in the code for broccoli, it'll ring up as broccoli no problem. The self-checkout does have a voice announce out loud what fruit/vegetable you just rang up, but that's about it for enforcement.
Loquat
9mo ago
To engage in group negotiation over wages, benefits, and working conditions, because that's a stronger bargaining position than letting every employee bargain individually, and people on the left tend to think that's a positive good even if the employer is currently claiming to be benevolent?
Loquat
9mo ago
Things I did not have on my bingo card this year: the National Audubon Society, you know, the organization of wild bird enthusiasts, has decided to try and get the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional. Because apparently Audubon was having ongoing squabbles with their staff union and the NLRB was trying to slap them on the wrist for it.
So we have a few different questions here:
- Do you think the NLRB should be abolished?
- Do you think the Roberts court is likely to actually abolish it, due to this case or any similar case?
- If they do abolish it due to the Audubon case, or even just hear the case and this gets a lot of mainstream media attention and handwringing, how damaging is that likely to be to the Audubon Society, considering that most of their donors likely lean left?
https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/audubon-society-argues-nlrb-is-unconstitutional
Loquat
9mo ago
IT'S ABOUT ETHICS IN GAMING POLITICAL JOURNALISM
...
I mean, from what I've heard about JFK, I'm not at all surprised to hear another member of the Kennedy family was up to similar shenanigans. And now that RFK's endorsed Trump I don't think there's any salvaging his reputation among the anti-Trumpers regardless.
Loquat
9mo ago
Given that the media as a whole seems pretty anti-RFK as far as I've seen, I'm gonna say "meh" to this.
Loquat
9mo ago
Was she? My own recollection is that the Cheney family accepted her and her lesbian partner, and there were hints that Dick personally would have been fine with legalizing same-sex marriage, but as VP he wasn't willing to publicly disagree with his president or his party on the matter. I guess it depends on your definition of bus-under-throwing.
Loquat
9mo ago
Hmmm.... our freezer is pretty small, but that might be worth a try. Particularly the part about freezing small individual portions, as I've noticed in the past with the 6-ounce cans of tomato paste that it's hard for me to use up the whole 6 oz before it goes bad.
Loquat
9mo ago
We planted too many tomato plants this year (even our four-year-old has been remarking that Daddy needs to scale it back next year), and now we're canning massive amounts of strained tomato. Any tips for unusual flavor complements? We've already experimented with fresh ginger, and I'm considering picking up some fresh turmeric to try that next.
Loquat
9mo ago
Oh man, I was so shocked when I first saw the movie and Beetlejuice was the bad guy. Not at all what the cartoon led kid me to expect.
Loquat
9mo ago
We do indeed own a couple of booster seats since our kids are in that age range, but you might want to take a second look at the specs on the one you just linked - it's 17.5 inches wide, which means if you want to fit three across then your car's back seat needs to be at least 52.5 inches wide, but actually more because you have to be able to reach in between the booster seats to buckle/unbuckle the kids. I haven't taken a tape measure to my own car seats, but we bought average sized ones and our cars aren't tiny and there still really isn't room for a third seat there.
Loquat
9mo ago
Was your old local leftist lady old enough to remember the days when pellagra was a serious problem in the South? Wikipedia says it was widespread until World War 2 - and of course having meat in one's diet prevents the nutrient deficiency that causes it.
(And to return to the "we've recently become so much wealthier" theme, isn't it astounding that less than a century ago the southern states were so poor many people had to spend part/all of the year living on corn alone?)
Loquat
9mo ago
also in large part because of a worse crop package.
This makes me wonder how feasible it would be to reach the Americas with Roman-era ships. Of course, you'd have to make sure your Romans copy the nixtamal technique after bringing back maize, so your poorer citizens don't wind up with widespread pellagra like happened in real life.
Loquat
9mo ago
And you don't want to have a kid because of a car seat?!
Correction: people with two kids don't want a third, because car seat laws force you to buy a bigger car, which is still a substantial expense for most people.
See, car seats are usually so wide that you can't fit three in the back of a typical sedan or SUV, plus several states require kids to be in car seats or booster seats to a surprisingly high age - my home state of Pennsylvania doesn't allow kids to go without one until the age of 8!
And, y'know, we also have cheap and reliable contraceptives now, alongside all that cheap food.
Loquat
9mo ago
His oldest daughter is at an age where she constantly demands and monopolizes attention, such that any gathering which includes her inevitably requires at least one person to be fully attentive to entertaining and indulging her, lest she become a terror.
Let me guess, there aren't any other kids near her age in the family? I can tell you, my own four-year-old demands attention like that when she's the only kid present, but when there are other young children around for her to play with she'll happily run around with them and only occasionally require attention from the adults. (Yet another reason why parents socialize with their kids' friends parents - you actually get to socialize.)
Loquat
10mo ago
hateful and/or violent intent
It strikes me that these are two entirely different things here. I have read, in newspapers and magazines, respectable journalists express complete and utter disdain for certain public figures they disliked, including turns of phrase just as bad as your cockroach example, without fear that said public figures would have them arrested. And it wasn't just Trump, this was in the pre-2016 era.
But violent intent, the idea that you yourself wish to commit actual interpersonal harm to B, that's another matter. Are you, in fact, hoping to make this person believe that you're going to come over and beat the shit out of them, but in a way that's plausibly deniable enough that they won't be able to take any legal action against you?
Loquat
10mo ago
Oh neat, we just went to Pittsburgh recently and happened to stay at an AirBnB on the Slopes. Driving was indeed as terrible as you say, though luckily most of the places we wanted to see were reachable via walking/transit. And speaking of transit, is it normal for Pittsburgh transit to be oddly lax about fare enforcement? More than once, incline attendants told us to just pay $5 for our family, even though prominent signs indicated that we should be paying more like $7 for 2 adults plus an older child. A subway employee also told us to just buy 2 adult tickets and not bother buying the half-price child ticket. Were they just going easy on out-of-towners or do they do that all the time or what?
Loquat
10mo ago
A lot of people in this country are generally in favor of (some) abortion being legal but are really uncomfortable with the reality of killing a fetus. Blunt language drives some of those people away, while euphemisms help keep them comfortable voting D.
Loquat
10mo ago
Nothing prevents him from selling it to a rich friend who shared his ideology... except that the friend would have to have enough money available to buy it, and in cash so he can pay the tax. Plus every super-rich friend is likely to run into this same tax problem at the same time, if this new law goes into effect.
Loquat
10mo ago
The part about these "cuttlefish" is foreign to me - can you explain why they are called that, and what they do that's contributing to relationship instability?
Loquat
10mo ago
Logically they'd have to do something like the Obama-era first time homebuyer tax credit, where if you sold the house in less than 3 years (or converted it to a business property, etc) you had to pay the money back.
Loquat
10mo ago
I know people who live in 100-year-old rowhouses, in a city of sufficient age to have substantial numbers of them. The neighborhood's inconvenient if you have a car, since it wasn't designed to accommodate parking, but the houses themselves are perfectly liveable.
Loquat
10mo ago
I've been to China, too; I got pickpocketed once, but aside from that it was great.
An example: one time I was hanging out in a place with a lot of foreign students, when a Chinese lady came through asking if any native English speakers wanted to earn some money recording English-language instructional tapes. I got into her car, and she did indeed drive me to a recording studio where I read out a bunch of grade-school level stuff and then they paid me.
The main problem I see with that is that the VP doesn't really have any formal power except breaking ties in the Senate. If a hypothetical President Harris chooses to just ignore Vice President Trump, there's nothing the he can really do except run his mouth, which he would have done regardless.
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