Hrm. No one has mentioned the decline of middle class wages.

I remember in the … late 70s/early 80s my mother would drag us to the mall nearly every weekend. She was there to buy clothes. She always wanted something new and she wanted to try on at least a dozen items before buying one or two. I was thrilled when I was old enough to go off to the record store and/or hobby store while she did that. Earlier, I begged to go the the toy store, but was typically refused. Later, I was at the book store getting paperback scifi.

I don’t think people have as much disposable income as they did then. I don’t know many people who can buy as much frivolous stuff as my folks used to. I guess I could technically buy stuff all the time, but I want to save fore retirement. My folks had pensions. I have to put it away myself.

Sadly, the effect of not voting for one of the 2 candidates is to intensify the power of the most extreme views. Say 100 people can vote. 25 on each side are going to vote for their party no matter what. 20 want something crazy in one direction and 20 in the other direction, and both sides are likely to protest and/or not vote if their guy doesn’t pander to them. That leaves 10 persuadable people – mostly people who are busy with other stuff and not paying attention to the minutia of various policies and the likely after effects they will cause.

What is a candidate to do? They pander to the crazies. They can hardly bother to assuage the persuadables because those folks aren’t paying attention anyway. They have to go after the people who might bail if they aren’t appeased. I hate the system, but there it is.

Both tburkhol and I posted about Coon Chicken Inn – a place for white people BY white people with a denigrating caricature of a black man as their logo (on their delivery vehicles, menu, and even entrances).

spujb links to the chicken stereotype.

It is one thing for a group of people to choose what food to serve themselves, and something else when an oppressed group is mocked, denied rights, and then illustrated as liking foods that EVERYONE likes as if those foods are somehow a hilarious thing for them to eat. Side note: Sooo many places serve fried chicken that the only reason it is racist is associations like Coon Chicken Inn (and the racism leading to its creation). Lots of BBQ places in particular serve collards as well as Caribbean spots. Jollof is specifically African (not American). If I see Jollof or Fufu on the menu, I’m hoping for cassava leaves instead of collards, but I understand it isn’t as available in the U.S.

Came here to say that. Barring a few contrarians, EVERYONE likes both watermelon and fried chicken. I know vegetarians who will admit that fried chicken tastes fantastic, even if they no longer eat it.

I also wanted to link to some info about the “Coon Chicken Inn” chain – founded by a white guy, of course.

• http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/coon_chicken.htm
• https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/links/essays/chicken.htm

off topic piece on collectors’ racist items

Oops, I will edit the post to be more specific. I mean the Kirkland brand “Organic No-Salt Seasoning” in the 15.5 oz square plastic jar.

It depends on the weather and the cost. I remember when gas stations offered “full service” or “self service”. Full service cost more per gallon, but in addiction to pumping gas, they cleaned your windshield, checked your oil and wiper fluid levels, and might even put air in your tires if they were obviously low. If you wanted it done for you, you paid more. Seemed fair. These days, gas is cheaper in New Jersey than surrounding states, so you pay LESS to have someone else take care of you.

I’m one of the old people. I WAS a speed runner. About 40 years ago, I got a union job as a cashier. The customer put their items on the belt, the cashier scanned the items, and the bagger sorted the items and put them in paper or plastic bags. Cashiers were required to memorize the produce codes and process at MINIMUM 30 items per minute. The timer ran from the moment you unlocked your register to the moment you relocked it or opened the drawer. You would leave your register locked while the customer started putting things on the belt. You greet them and make a mental note of what sort of items are where while the belt brings the load to you. Once the belt is at least half full, you’d unlock the register and start grabbing and scanning items in a fluid motion that passed them over the scanner and on towards the bagger – sorting as best you could as you went. As soon as you were done, you’d hit ‘total’ and lock the register until the customer was ready to pay. You’d help the bagger and chat while this happened. Then the customer would hand over cash or check (they were just starting to do credit and debit in grocercy stores so those weren’t common), so you’d unlock the register, take their payment, open the register and get change. Your best speeds were always going to be for express checkout (10 items or less), but there is a cruel loop in that because managers schedule fast people for express, but you won’t be as fast unless you get scheduled there.

As I recall, we didn’t get to see our items-per-minute until the end of the day – not per-transaction, but it was still fun to see who had the best scores.

As a customer, I NEVER use self-checkout because: 1) I’m not working if you aren’t paying me, and 2) every time I’ve tried to use self-checkout, the machines could never, ever keep up with me. Sometimes the issue was the bagging area was trying to weigh things, sometimes the scanners themselves were bad/slow, and sometimes … I don’t know, the dang machines are just barely working? Anyway, it is never worth it for me. Additionally, I find it better to do my own bagging than to allow anyone else to do it.

Side note: The typical bagger can not bag as fast as a cashier can scan because they have to wait for: cans on the bottom/bread on the top, frozen in one bag/lettuce no where near frozen, detergents and chemicals by themselves/pet foods also by themselves.

“tell me something you accomplished or learned this year”

That’s gonna sound hostile to a good chunk of people. Rather than asking ‘what’, it demands ‘tell me’. Next, it supposes the other person be accomplished in act or learning. It is the difference between saying, “How you doin’?” and “Prove you are worth my attention.”

When asked for my favorite color or song, I figure the person wants to talk and is looking for a way to start (or continue) a conversation. Maybe the person is just bored and looking for something to talk about. Maybe they are hoping I wax rhapsodical about how how awesome my song is and my detailed evidence proving why all must acknowledge its true greatness. Okay, strike that last bit. No one wants me to go one that long.

Not new, but I use my electric blanket as a foot-warmer all winter long. It is more properly a ‘throw’ since it isn’t big enough to be a blanket. Using it now. I can keep the heat lower as long as my feet are toasty.

Good point.

Well, if you ARE in the US, here’s a sample 2.1 cable for $5

I generally agree except I try not to shop Amazon. For stuff like this, monoprice is my jam.

Whoooosh!

I love Amy Good, I love Democracy NOW! That said, Russian disinformation in the US is always going to be different from US disinformation in the US. At the very least, when the US does it, it’ll benefit a rich American rather than a rich Russian.

I think it is getting downvoted because most things you buy (like toasters and shoes) can be used once you buy them. Nothing keeps you from continuing to use them after purchase. Even with computers, you agree to the OS license on purchase/install, and then you get to keep using it. At least historically, if a new update has a new license, you could refuse the upgrade and keep using the old version. For recurring payment items like monthly subscriptions, it makes sense that you can’t keep the original terms, but for one-time purchases, you should not have to change what you bought unless they are willing to take it back for a full refund.

I do not remember seeing that option, so I don’t know if I missed it or if they added that later. It is good to know there is a way to see it, though.

Rather than a TV, I just have a Roku box that I plug into my TV, and it had the same issue. I started it up today and was met with a box that said something like, ‘By clicking this, you agree to the updated terms’ – and there’s no option to VIEW the terms, the users simply must agree to them or they can’t use the box. I wish I had a small child to click through this junk for me (without me knowing or seeing it) because it seems unreasonable pay good money for a ‘thing’ and then have the maker arbitrarily and unilaterally pull a Darth Vader, “I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.”

Maybe we should get congress to require companies to fully reimburse consumers for this tactic.

Uuhh, I do the same as Schmidt and leave the food out. It works fine NOW, but let me tell you about when it failed. I’ve had different cats for decades and never had a problem until my current cat, who was listed at the shelter as ‘shy’. They told me she’d escaped people multiple times and they’d only managed to get her out of the walls the previous day (after she’d been hiding in them for over a week). She was adult, but small and thin and harboring a deep hatred for being confined (she isn’t ‘shy’, she’s extremely willful). We brought her home and she immediately found a hiding spot behind the oven, near the food and water that was out for the finicky older cat. For the first week, the only way we knew the new cat was still in the house was because we’d wake up, find the cat bowl empty and a big pile of cat vomit on the floor. We’d clean up the vomit, fill the bowl, and generally leave the kitchen alone as much as possible. After that initial week, the cat figured out that there would always be food. She would not starve. She did not need to gorge, and gorging was not comfy. Eventually she came out and accepted her new ‘family’. She continued to over-eat a bit too much for several months, but she settled on a chunky weight and has stayed at it for several years now.

Now I have a theory: I suspect that cats who experience food insecurity are far more likely to gorge themselves, and may never stop as long as they suspect their food supply is limited. If you want to test that theory with your own cats, I would be interested in hearing the results.

1. People were fine buying actual-paper news even though it was filled with advertising.
2. When cable TV started, several channels (but not all) were ad-free, and you paid a price for the cable bundle.
3. Those ad-free channels quickly started airing ads because: why not? Also: there used to be a limit on how many ads could air on broadcast TV, but that regulation was lifted. Ads became inescapable.
4. With the advent of the internet, people suddenly had to pay a provider to get to a web page that also had ads. This mirrored buying the (still available) newspapers. When speeds surpassed early dial-up, they briefly started coming in with sound, too. That was too far.

Already burned by cable-TV’s massive surge in advertising, there was no way you were going to get the average consumer to put up with ads AND pay for an internet provider AND pay extra for content. Now that we’re also getting tracked everywhere by every marketer, it is increasingly hard to ask consumers to pay for content when the real money is selling eyeballs to marketers.

Who to blame? I’m going to blame legislators for reducing the upper tax brackets. In the 40s and 50s, the upper brackets were over 90%. That meant you could get rich, but not extravagantly filthy rich. As a basic philosophy, one could figure it as: someone making a massive excess in funds was probably exploiting something the government was either already providing or was going to have to pay for later, so… let’s just collect that revenue now. Note that during the same period, businesses were only taxed about 30-50% for the higher brackets, so if you owned the company, you might leave funds there, invest in the company itself (a write-off), and take a smaller salary since it would otherwise get eaten by taxes.

Anyway, if you have progressive taxes with extremely high rates on the upper end, then people (and companies) can’t amass the same power. They are less able to bribe and corrupt everything. The government has more funds for roads, schools, and enforcement agents for things like food-safety and port-controls. This does, of course, presume people have some reliable new sources that are reporting which government individuals are crooks and liars, and who has which of them in their back-pockets. Now that we’ve burned that all down, I’m not sure who is willing to give us a readable summary of what bills are being written, shelved, and voted on by whom – but we need that information to get in the hands of an educated populace who will vote for flawed-but-generally-honest people that will act on behalf of their constituents first rather than a handful of rich funders.

My memory is fuzzy. Didn’t he originally try to give the full, un-redacted docs to just newspapers, but got frustrated with the slowness/unresponsiveness or something and then everything went public? Or am I thinking of the earlier guy who worked on writing illegal software for the government, tried to blow the whistle and then got in trouble? Or am I thinking of a subsequent whistleblower who tried to use a secure dropbox for media, but it turned out to be insecure? There’s just been so many people trying to show proof of shady government stuff that I can’t keep track of which of the folks are supposed to be ‘bad’ for doing so.