“Would you like to round up your purchase, we promise that we’ll give it to somebody who needs it.”

Large, well known companies that just advertise that they still exist. Like, yeah, I know McDonaldsBurgerTacoBellWendySonic’s exist. I pass them on every street corner. Show me an advertisement for something I don’t know exists.

Resetting/moving the products on the store’s shelves en masse, not because there’s holes from discontinued products but because “people will stop paying attention to the shelves if everything stays the same.” I’m old and in a hurry and I was here to give you my fucking money. Don’t make it hard for me to give you my fucking money.

Pricing to the 9’s.

Filling the shelves with a bunch of things that don’t seem to sell all that well, taking up space that could have been used to keep more of the fast moving products on the retail floor, just to have the appearance of diversity on the shelves.

Cant use a thing if you can’t get permission to use the thing while also not often being allowed to cash in the vacation hours for pay to get a fat bonus.

Good thread.

So president Biden could have cut more checks to the USAians to the tune of something like 4~5 billion dollars and still would have approved less debt that Trump, got cha’.

So, first, the invasion has already happened. So “not invading” isn’t an option any more.

Second, the USA by way of NATO has been antagonizing the “East” for… longer than I’ve been alive. Usually we just start one sided military conflicts in third world countries with such a lack of air power and anti-armor capability that our military just rolls through the country where the biggest loss of life and equipment on the USA’s side are after the occupation begins and the troops are just sitting around waiting to get sniped or drive near an IED.

It just so happened that antagonizing the second world country of Russia, thinking it was a third world country, finally wound up biting the ass of USA/NATO when Russia decided to invade Ukraine. You rattle your saber long enough and loud enough at a right wing government and eventually they’re going to pull out their sabre.

So, since nobody can unfuck this sheep, best course of action is probably to allow the Ukraine government to admit defeat and sue for peace instead of forcing them to keep trying to fight a war they can’t win (but military contractors will make mad money off of). They’ve lost a chunk of territory that will either stay Russian directly through open occupation or be Russian aligned autonomous states that will absolutely NEED to keep the Russian military around to help fight off the terrorist attacks either from Ukrainian actors or carried out by non-Ukrainian actors using Ukraine as the safe highway to get to Russia aligned states or Russia itself.

That Feeling When: You talk about butt plugs to a naked mole rat and it looks at you in total confusion.

Good to hear you’re getting on alright.

Late last week, while sitting on the toilet the light in the bathroom went out. Lights in the the other bathroom were also out. Anything plugged into the electrical outlets also did not work… with one exception, a very tiny and very dim LED night light. Nothing else in the house is affected, other rooms on the same circuit were not affected. Biggest bummer was that the air conditioner for the bedroom was now not working and it was going to be at least 100 degrees F for the next few days.

Crawl around in the attic, slowly boiling my brain. Two different sections of electrical wire, on two different circuits, had a total of 18 inches of insulation stripped from the neutral and ground wires. One section had the ground wire completely chewed through.

Kinda got all panicky about needing to hire an electrician.

We said, “fuck it”, and did a lightening run to Lowes and spent about 100 bucks on stuff to splice in a new section of wire to replace the stripped out section.

Two days later and only one accident of cutting a live wire later (didn’t die, go me) everything is good to go and we’ve got A/C in the bedroom again.

Guess lots of folks are taking vacation days and I’ve got quite a few opportunities to get some extra hours of pay over the last few weeks.

Two good things so far… now I’m just waiting for the bad thing to balance everything out.

As everybody knows, the average American’s excess savings are stored in the balls. And it now looks like, the balls have run dry.

nods

Its like, “Oh… okay. I’m mildly uncomfortable now because I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that information. Are you warning me of some future weirdness or are you low key trying to let me know that I’m doing something in ways that I should change or…”

I kinda get all inside my own head for a bit.

Instagram. I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016. I’m just fully lazy to take photos of stuff. This is a real issue when I’m single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things.

The stories you might get from using those photos might be worth it.

(1) Cops can now (or can go back to) assume(ing) that you are up to no good if you are wearing a mask and harass you, you may or may not be able to defend yourself if you happen to have a doctor’s note and the cop gives a shit. But fuck you if you’re preemptively masking for any personal or social health reason.

(2) Private places (businesses, hospitals, etc) can call the cops on you if they see you wearing a mask because, you know, if you’re wearing a mask you are up to no good. loop back to (1)

If you’ve done a crime (everything from speeding, missing a red light to murder) and are wearing a mask, it can increase the penalties.

This is a de facto ban.

At one point they go to planet that recreates a 1800s England and there a scene about how unions ruin everything…

That sounds like what the “baddies” of this series were doing with their undead soul powers.

Ukraine Plans Privatization to Help Fund War Effort… (archive link)

scratches chin

Keep the NATO funding just high enough to keep the war going but not so high that Ukraine stops trying to sell state assets to private enterprises but managing the spread and escalation of the conflict in such a way that private interests don’t instantly value the auctioned items as “worthless” so nobody bids.

That’s a lot of plates to spin.

Emotes… emotes for miles and miles…

It took me way too long to get the “surprise mechanics” bit from a years ago.

@CarsAndComrades@hexbear.net, any advice?

Our very own CarsandComrades has done a few podcasts with Zac from the Automotive Free Clinic. Been a while since I’ve listened to the few episodes and I can’t remember how much they went into the “business incorporation” side of things. Unsure of the all specific differences between a for-profit worker coop and a non-profit. There will be some different accounting, book keeping and tax stuff for sure but I’m pretty ignorant of the owner/manager/board of directors (or its equivalent) differences. But it might not be a bad idea to call/email the Automotive Free Clinic and chat them up.

I think the below link is the first episode where they talk to Zac of the Automotive Free Clinic.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-automotive-free-clinic-with-zac-the-mad-redneck-hyden/id1555784243?i=1000622128623

It wouldn’t surprise me that, assuming its just going to be the three of you, it would be easier to modify the LLC to just have another owner. Then its probably going to be a matter of figuring out how to account for them “buying in” and getting their name updated on the official documents, planning ahead for if/when an owner wants to sell their shares of the business when they don’t want to be a part of the LLC anymore.

It seems like coops tend to be required to have Boards of Directors and elections, it would make sense that the Directors can’t be the workers, but if the local community is pretty tight knit and all cool with each other this probably won’t cause problems though.

Reach out to that restaurant that’s a worker coop probably is a good idea. Maybe go visit the place a few times when its not super busy and try to chat up the front of house workers to get a feel for the place before trying to contact the “business manager” side of things.

You should be able to contact local chamber of commerce or local government types to see if they can give you some direction in organizing the business as a coop. If there’s a university nearby or a agricultural extension agency (may or may not be associated with the university) they might have some community outreach orgs/programs that can try to help guide you and assist in research. For the university, you’re probably going to be looking for resources under the umbrella of “Business School” or “Business Law.” If there’s a local Farmer’s Coop, you might be able to find somebody to talk about organizing a coop as well.

If I ever get back into trying the first book and rereading the series, I’ll be sure pay attention.

My memory is foggy but I thought the Edenists were the collectivist branch of humanity and the Adamists had the monarchy. (I’m also very lazy and am not going to look this up right now.)

But yeah, “too rich to bribe” is kinda juvenile thinking.

Less horny *from memory) that SA… I started reading the series at the second book probably over 10 years ago. I don’t remember how horny the rest of the series was, but I recently found and tried to read the first book and there’s was too much graphic descriptions of sexual assault that I had to stop reading it.

Like… I get that SA is a way to identify the “bad guys”, but I really don’t need it described.

Politically? I don’t remember. There were some really nifty things that were described at how humanity had split itself into two factions but I don’t remember it being anything that stood out as “oh shit this is bad”.

(No worries, I tend to only open my reply box every 2 ~ 7 days)

Oh yeah, I can see the potential in it. There’s always the “we forgot the reasons for why we fight” that can lead to a big reveal. Closest thing that pops into my head is a shorter anime series called Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet.

It starts out with le epic space battle between humans in giant fighting robots against space crustaceans. The battles goes poorly for the humans and one of the soldiers gets separated from the rest of the fighting force when they retreat, crash lands on a planet with humans living on big boats (if you’ve ever seen the movie Water World, that sets the scene pretty well). Then its just a story about a young man who is kinda weird as he’s been nothing but a soldier from the moment he was born becoming more socialized and slowly revealing the backstory of the cause of the war between the humans and the space crustaceans.