There is a phone app, that pretty much allows you phone to work like the scanner gun. I’ve used it before and it works fine, but my phone’s camera is not as good as the guns at scanning barcodes.
Also, as much as I realize I am trading privacy for control, I figure there’s no need to have the grocery store’s app living on my phone, when it is just as easy for me to use the dedicated device they provide in-store.
In the produce section, they have scales that print out barcoded price stickers. I look up the item I’m weighing (or enter the PLU) and it gives me a sticker I can scan.
In the bakery section, where you can pick out individual muffins or donuts, they have barcodes printed on the self-service case above each item. I can just scan the barcode for whatever I take.
(I do also have the option of checking things out at the end, if I didn’t scan them with the gun.)
==
EDIT to Add:
Ironically, the only time I remember taking something from that store without paying for it was a time that my self-scanned order had been flagged for an audit. I was trying to buy a watermelon on sale, but the sale price didn’t come up when I scanned it, so I set it aside to figure out at checkout.
When I got to checkout, my order was flagged for an audit. (Maybe even precisely because I had scanned the watermelon but then removed it from my cart when it came up at the wrong price.)
The guy running the self-checkout saw the flashing light at my register. Without comment, he came over to perform the ritual of scanning the certain number of items in my cart to reset the transaction and allow me to pay and be on my way. He and I had both been through this procedure many times. He probably performed it several times each shift he worked there.
I was distracted by the audit, however, and I forgot about the watermelon. When he scanned enough items and punched in his code, the register came up with my total and asked me how I was going to pay. I stuck in my credit card, clicked “yes” to the transaction amount, and made my way out of the store with a pilfered watermelon.
The grocery store I shop at has handheld scanner guns for customer use. I check out a gun by scanning my loyalty card, then make my way around the store, scanning each item as I put it in my cart. When I’m done, the handheld scanner displays a barcode that I scan at the self-checkout scanner. My entire order shows up on the screen there, along with the total cost. I pay, take my receipt, and head out to the parking lot.
I like scanner-gun shopping a lot. I like it because it’s efficient, but also because it puts me in control. I can see the real price of everything I take off the shelf, in real-time. If something doesn’t ring up at the price it’s marked, I know instantly. The device keeps a running total as I shop.
Most days, my entire grocery experience involves no direct interaction with any store employee whatsoever, except maybe to exchange pleasantries with a stockperson. I do 100% of the work of checking myself out. I imagine the money the store saves on me in labor might make up for a lot of the money it loses in shrink.
But the store gets something else from my use of its scan-as-you-shop service. It gets to collect a huge amount of data on the way I shop. Not only does it record everything I buy, but it knows when and where I buy it. It knows the patterns of how I move through the store. It can compare my patterns to the patterns of all the other shoppers who use store scanner guns. It can analyze these patterns for useful information about everything from store layout to shoplifting mitigation.
One of the ways the store mitigates shrink from scanner gun shoppers who might accidentally “forget” to scan an item they put in their cart is point-of-sale audits. Not usually, but every so often and on a regular basis, my order will be flagged for an audit when I go to check out. When this happens, the cashier running the self-checkout area has to come over and scan a certain number of items in my cart, to make sure they were all included in my bill.
My main point in all of this was to offer a narrative that runs counter to the narrative I picked up from the article. I prefer to have more control over my checkout experience, and I will willingly choose to surrender personal information about my shopping habits and check-out procedures in order to gain that control, every chance I get.
How can Tuberville hold up all these nominations, all by himself? I had to look it up. The way Senate rules work, they figure out nomination approvals in committee and then pass them on the floor with votes of “unanimous consent.” By withholding his consent, Tuberville forces all the committee work to be done on the floor of the Senate.
That is to say, he is hijacking the nomination approval process. This process has developed and become institutionalized in the Senate over many decades. Tuberville is hijacking this process for a largely unpopular, far-right political purpose that is, at best, only tangentially related to the services with vacant leadership positions, and that is in no way related to the actual nominations in question.
Ironically, perhaps, the reason this glitch in the Senate rules allows one person to hold up all the nominations for everyone is itself just another institution. Senate “holds” have been around for decades as well. It wasn’t until 2011 the that a bi-partisan group of Senators voted to change the rules to disallow “secret holds.”
So Tuberville is exploiting one Senate institution in order to shut down another Senate institution, just to generate propaganda for his federally mandated forced-birth agenda.
It’s like an echo of Gingrich in the '90s: It’s like he’s saying, “The interests of the people who elected me are more righteous than the interests of the people who elected all the rest of you all, so there will be no compromise from me on anything. We will run things my way or I’ll use my position to shut it all down.”
The only difference is that Gingrich shut down all the post offices for a few weeks. This asshole Tuberville is trying to shut down our military.
EDIT:
Maybe this could be McConnell’s saving-grace swan song, before he gives up his GOP leadership position in the Senate. As the leader of Tuberville’s party, I’m pretty sure rules allow him to end the hold that Tuberville requested.
Doing so would go against precedent and it would go against the spirit of the institution. But Mitch McConnell is no stranger to going against precedent and disregarding institutions when he thinks it serves his purpose.
It wouldn’t earn him much forgiveness from people like me, but it would make him look a little better on his way out.
Michael Steele used to be Republican Lt. Gov in Maryland, then was the chair of the GOP campaign in 2008 when John McCain and Sarah Palin were on the ticket.
After he lost his reelection bid for party chair, he went to work for MSNBC as a commentator, and he’s been on there all the time ever since.
EDIT to clarify: Steele was not a fan of the proto-MAGA movement represented by Palin on the 2008 ticket and he has been a never-Trumper Republican from the start
Since the rise of Trump in the party, not sure if Steele still a registered Republican.
There are many reasons that George H.W. Bush chose to nominate Thomas, but one of them is almost surely that Thomas is black. The seat Thomas was nominated to fill was the one left by Thurgood Marshall, who retired in declining health.
Justice Thurgood Marshall was a consistent liberal vote and a strong proponent of civil rights protections. Before becoming a Justice himself, Marshall argued dozens of civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall’s “sliding-scale” situation-informed style would seem to be in direct conflict with Thomas’s unyielding “textual originalism.”
I was in my early 20s that summer when the Clarence Thomas confirmation, and Anita Hill’s testimony, were everywhere on the news. I even remember it in an episode of the sitcom Designing Women, albeit in a plausibly deniable “bothsides” kind of way. The story raged because of its high stakes and titillating content, but it also prompted some frank. worthwhile discussion about some uncomfortable topics.
And then Thomas publicly complained that the sexual harassment complaints against him amounted to a “high-tech lynching.” And then, slowly but surely, we all came to understand it was pretty much over.
“He played the race card,” his detractors complained. But his supporters answered, weren’t those detractors playing the race card too? What if the real racist is the person who automatically assumes the word “lynching” was intended to be taken in a race-related context in the first place?
It went back and forth like that for a while, as the public spotlight on the story faded out. But we weren’t talking about Anita Hill’s testimony anymore. We weren’t even talking about Thomas’s suitability as a Supreme Court Justice anymore. It was pretty much all “race card” stuff from there on out.
There are many, many reasons that GHWB nominated Thomas. At least one of them is that Thomas is black, and that it would have been a bad look (politically and otherwise) to nominate someone who was not black to replace Marshall.
Thomas is black. That gives him the right to “play the race card,” as far as I’m concerned. But fair play calls for laying your cards on the table, for everyone to see. Thomas has always cared more about the cards he keeps up his sleeve.
I agree with others here who point out that merely having a PoA in place is not a reason that Feinstein should resign. As to whether she should resign for other reasons, I tend think she probably should. But then I think about all the reasons that she shouldn’t.
Feinstein is a high-ranking member of the senatorial judiciary committee. Back in April, she asked to be temporarily replaced in that position, but the Republicans blocked that from happening.
The judiciary committee slot is important, because those are the guys who confirm all the federal judges. After sandbagging Obama’s appointees for eight six years, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed a flurry of judges under Trump.
To try to catch up now, the currently Democrat-controlled (by the thinnest possible margin) Senate Judiciary Committee wants to confirm as many Biden-appointed judges as it can while it still can. A year-and-a-half from now, who knows who will control what?
Sure, Feinstein should step down, and I think even she probably knows that, but she also knows that when she does so, the Democrats lose their razor-thin Senate majority, at least until Newsom can appoint a replacement.
No matter how quickly Feinstein could be replaced, the transition would offer Republicans easy opportunities to further delay nominations and block legislation of the very sort that Feinstein was elected by the people of California to pass. Nominations and legislation we have every reason to believe that she fully comprehends, regardless of any PoAs in place, and even despite her recent display of other age-related lapses in focus.
Anyway though, maybe her tragic act of hubris in all this was running for another term way back in 2018. If she had resigned back then, instead of next year, we wouldn’t be here now. But now that we’re here, I don’t blame her for recognizing the no-win nature of the situation.
Yes, that sounds right, except that I think it really is relevant that one party was a U.S. citizen.
There are strict laws against the U.S. government surveilling U.S. citizens without a warrant. By using FISA information gathered through warrantless foreign surveillance, the FBI appeared to be taking a backdoor around those laws.
FISA stands for “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” By definition, it’s only supposed to be used in the surveillance of people foreign to the U.S.A. The FBI’s job is domestic law enforcement. It’s the FBI’s job to investigate crime involving U.S. citizens.
Officially, the NSA does not spy on U.S. citizens. You can believe whatever you want about whether it actually “unofficially” does, but unless you do a lot of business overseas, chances are high that Google and Amazon and Facebook all have collected way more personal information about you than the NSA has.
Even if the NSA does surveil U.S. citizens, it can’t use any information it obtains in any legal or political way, or in any otherwise public manner.
If a U.S. citizen has communications with a foreigner, however, it is possible that those communications will be surveilled. The NSA does spy on foreign citizens, just like foreign intelligence agencies spy on U.S. citizens. If you’re a U.S. citizen communicating with a foreigner who’s being surveilled, then your communications with that person are going to be surveilled as well.
But again, it’s not the FBI’s job to police international crime – that’s the job of the CIA. As the article describes, this is why it is a bad idea for the FBI to be using FISA intelligence. This is why “it’s a problem when they do it to Americans.”
I think what they want is as many big-money donors as they can get, for which they require as many reliable Republican votes as they can get, for which they require Trump, for which they are required to give prima facia credence to whatever misinformation Trump is pushing on any given day.
It didn’t always used to be like this, but that was a long time ago.
Trump didn’t create his voter base – he stole it, from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Reilly, Glen Beck, Alex Jones, and all those other millionaires who spent decades feeding working-class conservatives daily servings hate for huge profit.
And in all of history, who has been the conservative pundits’ all-time number-one biggest and best favorite target for this hate? It has to be Barack Obama. (Our first Black president. Coincidence?)
Trump didn’t create his voter base, but he has owned it outright for going on a decade now, starting way back with his entirely bogus claims against President Obama’s citizenship. It didn’t matter that the claims were bogus – all that mattered is that they were against Obama, in an outright demeaning (and overtly racist) way. Dittoheads and O’Reilly fans ate that shit up.
Now here we are, eight or nine years later, and Trump still owns it. Only now, instead of feeding that voter base, and growing it with strongman posturing and punitive policy, he’s using it exclusively to try to save his own skin. And at this point, the only way Trump saves himself is in an alternate reality, with alternate facts.
Now Trump lies to save himself, and half of congress has to play along or risk losing their own reelections. Thanks Obama.
Yes, yes, and yes. Seeing a movie in a theater offers a distinct experience in two main ways:
The first concerns the experience of losing some self-awareness as you “get into” a movie and devote your focus to what’s happening on the screen. This experience different when it happens in unfamiliar surroundings than when it happens on your living room couch. Losing yourself to a film’s narrative in a public place feels different than doing so at home.
Second, the experience of watching a movie together with strangers is different from watching it alone. You’ll hear people who you don’t know laugh when you laugh, and sometimes when you don’t. You’ll also hear people who you don’t know cough, slurp sodas and crunch popcorn, and sometimes even comment or heckle. A full theater adds a communal aspect, as the mood of the audience as-a-whole affects the experience for each individual audience member.
I’m so old I remember when going to the movie theater was literally the only way to see the movie. I’ve been in all circumstances: alone, on a date, with a group; in empty theaters and in packed ones. Going to see a movie by yourself and ending up the only person in the theater can also be a good experience, and is still very different from watching alone at home.
After you’ve tried going to the cinema a few times, you might look for a (now rare) opportunity to see a movie at a drive-in. It’s a weird juxtaposition of the theater experience with the private home experience that also becomes something more all its own.
I agree they’ll do their best, but how? With what? Are they going to try to refute Trump’s crazy tweets with other crazy Trump tweets?
Among the most damning aspects of Trump’s public statements is their lack of consistency – the OP meme we’re discussing is an example. I don’t think this aspect will be refuted by his lawyer demonstrating even more inconsistency.
The only thing Trump has been consistent about on social media is lying about the 2020 election and personally attacking anyone who says anything against him. I don’t see how either of those behaviors are going to help his lawyers refute anything either.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
As a fellow fan of syndicated daytime television, I’m sure that Mr. Trump is as familiar as I am with this above quote by Detective Lenny Briscoe, N.Y.P.D. So a re-post from him like this is puzzling to me….
Trump will testify under oath or take the Fifth – he’ll be forced to do one or the other. My guess is that he will “exercise his right against self-incrimination” in all pending and yet-to-be-announced cases against him.
Without any live testimony given by the defendant, prosecutors will be free to present any part of any of Trump’s public statements and social media posts as testimony.
Prosecutors will be free to pick-and-choose whatever public comments they want, to show Trump in whatever light they want to show him in. Trump won’t be able say anything back about it, because he’ll’ve already invoked his constitutional right to not say anything at all.
Public comments (including endorsement by "re-truth"ing like this) are not made under oath, so they’re not legally binding, but they are still things that Trump said out loud and on purpose.
However much they gin up support from his base of voters, they also add to the threat of Trump’s own words being used against him later in a court of law. Used against him in the general election, too, if he somehow manages to make it that far.
Trump is all too familiar with the millions of Americans who love him for what he says, but I don’t think he has any true notion about the millions more American voters who have come to despise him for what he has done. I’m not sure he ever will.
Fuck the fascists? For sure. I fucking hate all those motherfuckers.
Except that, just about the worst thing of all about fascism is the way that it goes out of its way to dehumanize other people, just so as to make it easier to hate them.
So how about, “Fuck fascism” then? I could get behind that. But maybe still try to save some small modicum of love, as well, for all the poor souls who’ve been weak or gullible enough to have fallen for it?
Maybe give them one more chance to come out of their holes, if they’re brave enough? When I can, I always try give them one more chance to do that. In any small way whatsoever.
I don’t mean to purposefully give them “one more chance” to troll, or spew their rhetoric, or stoke hate – even though we all know that’s what they’ll do again, 99 times out of 100.
I don’t mean supporting some reddit echo chamber I am ideologically opposed to just to feed my own ego and provide them all fodder for more echo-chamber bullying and false validation. I mean using a forum for good-faith communication among honest strangers. The way forums have always been intended to be used (but never always have) since the beginning of the internet 30 years ago.
I just mean that, when thinking of another person instead of another person’s ideology, I always want to give them just one more chance to listen to me, and one more chance to talk to me, as a fellow person
One more chance to hear another point of view, one more chance to come to understand and communicate and cooperate from a place of their own standing, as opposed to just snapping back defensively from the place that their fascism has conditioned them to react from.
One more one-in-a-hundred chance that my purposeful efforts to humanize my adversary may somehow lead him to humanize me as well.
Fuck fascism, for sure. But I try not to hate a person for their good intentions. It’s said the road to hell is paved with them, but they’re still usually a whole lot more respectable than bad intentions.
What does that mean though, “anti-war party,” “anti-war politician”?
Did your “anti-war party” stop being so because they’d ended the war we were in? And if so, wasn’t that a good thing, for those with an “anti-war” outlook?
Back in the late 1930s, I’m pretty sure America’s “anti-war party” was mostly isolationists and some Nazi sympathizers. It was FDR, one of the most progressive Democrats ever elected to the office, who led the country to war back then.
If your entire political belief system is based on avoiding war at all costs, you deny yourself any real-world context in exchange for that purist ideology.
Those who are anti-war above all else lose everything they have and everything they stand for, the first time someone (anyone!) else decides to threaten them with war. The first time that someone sneak-attacks their Pearl Harbor, or crashes planes into their Twin Towers, or whatever else.
Maybe war is like abortion (in this singularly metaphorical political sense). Nobody ever really wants it to happen, and most people do their best to try to avoid it for themselves and others. Yet sometimes, despite everyone’s best efforts, it ends up being the safest and healthiest way, sometimes the only way, out of an untenable situation not completely of our own making.
I’m not arguing that World War II was a “good” war and that W. Bush’s Iraq was a “bad” war. That may comport with my personal beliefs, but my real point is that everyone has their own personal beliefs. Everyone has something that is most important to them.
If you say that war is never justified for any reason, then you are also saying that your call for pacifism is more important than whatever the reason for the war may be. Not just more important for you, but for everyone else too.