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.
memfree
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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 21st, 2023
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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.
4·4 months ago“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.
14·4 months agoWhoooosh!
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.
If you trust this source, it turns out that it is pretty easy to see your camera feed even if your camera is off: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-02-camera-hackers-spy-cameras-walls.html
I read about it on lemmy, too. I guess I – or one of us – should have cross posted it here from its .world source: https://lemmy.world/post/12081766
Edit to add excerpts:
Results vary on how far away someone would have to be in order to eavesdrop on these different devices. For some, a peeping Tom would have to be less than 1 foot away; for others, they could be as far away as 16 feet.
For consumers, Fu says a plastic lens cover might not be guaranteed to protect you—infrared signals can still get through them––but it is a good first step to battling this kind of cyberthreat.
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.
In addition to the delay, the court asked for arguments to an over-broad question:
“Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
Note that they COULD have asked something more like, “Were Donald Trump’s actions on and surrounding the January 6th incidents official acts of a President and is Trump therefore immune from criminal prosecution because the conduct was both within his tenure in office and within the scope of his duties?” Of course, that is not what was asked. The actual question asks for long and careful considered speculation on all possible contingencies where the relevant case is about a specific set of actions that could be quickly assessed.
see also: https://www.salon.com/2024/02/28/the-is-indulging-immunity-claim-further-delaying-his-trial/
@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me a steampunk train with the skin of a crab.
style: animal
- People were fine buying actual-paper news even though it was filled with advertising.
- When cable TV started, several channels (but not all) were ad-free, and you paid a price for the cable bundle.
- 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.
- 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.
I’m not old enough to remember him personally, but I do remember the 80s when FM Rock stations still played The Doors and Led Zeppelin incessantly. Back then, there was a syndicated radio show that – for one episode – broadcast interviews with the surviving band members. I distinctly remember the tone of voice (though not the exact words or quantity) of one of them saying, “I saw him take threee huuundred micrograms of acid” (at some location). Sounded angry and astounded just on the retelling. I think that’s also where I heard bandmates talking about Jim pleading out to a possession charge and being required to do public service announcements instead of going to jail. He was a jerk about it. The PSAs were grouped as “Speed Kills” and he was supposed to hammer that home, but was ruining each take, saying things like (but not exactly cuz I don’t remember), “Speed kills. Smoke pot, instead!”
From my personal view of his music, we had all The Doors albums in my house when I was growing up, so I’d heard them all. For reference, we also had Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, some Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other stuff like that.
I think Jim Morrison had a tight band behind him and wrote some decent lyrics. I think ‘Light my Fire’ was over-played and other songs should have gotten more attention. I do, however, appreciate that each band member got to solo on that, and the song’s greatest weakness is that those solos get cut for airplay. It isn’t even that the solos deserve special attention, but the song is too short and repetitive without it.
That is the exact problem.
As a society, we don’t want to teach people that it is EVER acceptable for the authorities to break rules/laws. They already have power. Why should they go free after breaking the rules meant to control their reach? At the least, they should get charged and go to trial by jury. Ideally, those juries should then convict in all but the most benign cases.
I remember at least a couple old shows had the good old ‘sheriff’ or whatever break some rule and then had to pay for it. And they did, and good guys accept that despite meaning well, they had done wrong and should have followed the law.
If you ask society at large to accept that breaking the rules is ok THIS time because this time is special and our guy is working for Team Good, then our society starts to allow that in all kinds of stupid real-life situations and you end up with criminal cops, politicians, and all manner of officials. Worse, you might end up with random citizens who think it is ok to break the law just because their leader tells them to.
Tsunami? What about the freakin QUAKE?!? It was a 9.2! Yeah, there was some water action after a 9.2.
He’ll say it, but only newsy Democrats will hear him. The Republicans will say the bill didn’t go far enough, cost too much, and blah, blah, blah, glossing over the crazy powers it would have allowed. This isn’t any special ‘5d chess’, this is standard politics. Biden knows Congress won’t do ANY border deal now that Trump told them not to, so it doesn’t matter what concessions it has.
Yeah, that’s not caving, that’s DARING Congress to refuse to pass the bill.
See, they were going to pass a budget bill that has some border funding in it, and Mitch McConnell was telling the Republicans to pass the darned thing – but then Trump said it might be nice to use the border mess in his campaign, and Poof! McConnell spun around so fast, his heels were smoking! (no, not literally) Here’s a link: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-thrown-wrench-mitch-mcconnell-214452142.html
The statement from Biden is a double-dog dare to not pass the bill. Every time Republicans cry, “Waaahh! Border scary! Biden’s fault!”, Biden is going to hold up that statement and point out that he was ready, but they refused to sign it.
I used to visit communities like you did, then I took an arrow in the knee.
But no, seriously, if you don’t like the how people are talking, don’t bother going there. I don’t know people who use Steam’s community hubs for actual community. I see them getting used for info/joke sharing about their given games, but not for social bonding. Personally, I like the guides. Sometimes I search the discussions for a piece of information on an issue that I’m hoping someone else has already encountered and worked around. That’s about it.
That said, I generally don’t mind that people make memes. If it makes them happy, then good for them! If other people get a chuckle, that’s even better. For me – and like my opening line – any amusement quickly turns to eye rolls as the same things get repeated over and over and were never very funny from the start.