Home for Random Thoughts

Members own writings, photography, music, art, poetry, prose.
Show off your own stuff, share the pleasure, suffer the critics.
User avatar
Scooter
Posts: 16540
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 6:04 pm
Location: Toronto, ON

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Scooter »

The Hallmark Channel has started its Countdown to Christmas movies. It's too fucking early!!!
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."

-- Author unknown

User avatar
Crackpot
Posts: 11266
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2010 2:59 am
Location: Michigan

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Crackpot »

Yep
Attachments
94F5AED5-59CA-44D9-A0AC-A8B853900482.jpeg
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

User avatar
Bicycle Bill
Posts: 9015
Joined: Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:10 pm
Location: Surrounded by Trumptards in Rockland, WI – a small rural village in La Crosse County

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Obviously Trump supporters.  They must think the zombies are the Wise Men.
Image
-"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

User avatar
TPFKA@W
Posts: 4833
Joined: Wed Oct 10, 2012 4:50 am

stolen from another site original author unknown

Post by TPFKA@W »

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.

User avatar
Econoline
Posts: 9555
Joined: Sun Apr 18, 2010 6:25 pm
Location: DeKalb, Illinois...out amidst the corn, soybeans, and Republicans

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Econoline »

According to this site (which contains a slightly longer version of the quote, plus some discussion of it) the original author is Glenn Danzig.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
God @The Tweet of God

User avatar
TPFKA@W
Posts: 4833
Joined: Wed Oct 10, 2012 4:50 am

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by TPFKA@W »

What the hector?

Big RR
Posts: 14050
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:47 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Big RR »

The problem with the Shopping Cart test is the assumption that return of the cart is easy and convenient. The parking lot in my Costco is bigger than most car rental lots, and all of the return areas are near the store, which can be a good quarter of a mile away from your car unless you score a space near the store; add to that the fact that the lots are crowded with people searching for spaces and cars backing out without looking, and it can be seen that this half mile roundtrip is neither easy nor convenient. Add to that the fact that the return areas are usually full and rarely empty, and the difficulty and inconvenience of the return is multiplied.

As for consequences, the real consequence of not returning the carts is that the store will have to employ people to go through the parking lot and pick up the carts, and that this is one of the few jobs that is fairly unskilled and can even be done by the mentally challenged (who are losing most of the jobs they can perform). The immediate consequence is that they have to employ a person to retrieve the carts and charge a bit more to cover that/those person's (or persons') wages, but this is countered by making jobs available to those who would otherwise not be employed.

So it's not really a fair comparison to, say, not portaging your trash out of the woods (as it would be nearly impossible to employ people to patrol the woods and pick up trash other than for small areas) or not bringing reusable bags to the grocery store.

User avatar
Long Run
Posts: 6717
Joined: Sat Apr 17, 2010 2:47 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Long Run »

Big RR wrote:
Sat Nov 28, 2020 4:56 pm
The problem with the Shopping Cart test is the assumption that return of the cart is easy and convenient.
In the vast majority of stores, that is the case. I find the shopping cart litmus test to be a valid insight into use/misuse of what economists call the problem of the commons. I read the article that @w posted from since it was on the Firefox feed a few days ago. They used local stores where returning the cart is in fact convenient, so to the extent their comparison is reasonable, their conclusions are as well.

Of course, people being people, a single person can be inconsistent about their approach to various commons-like behaviors -- they might not return a shopping cart, but will leave their camp site cleaner than they found it, and see a neighbor's car lights on and knock at the door to let them know. The point of the study, though, was to show that if it becomes more normal to not "do your part" for activity A, then activities B, C and D are less likely to be taken care of as well.

User avatar
Long Run
Posts: 6717
Joined: Sat Apr 17, 2010 2:47 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Long Run »

There were also questions of how bad a person's shopping cart etiquette is. On the one hand, there is the thoughtless person who leaves the cart in the middle of a parking space, effectively blocking that space. There is the person who at least gets the cart off to the side so it doesn't block cars. The one who does a half-assed job of bringing it to a carrel and then putting it in crooked so it won't stack. Or the person who puts it neatly back into the stack. I think we've all seen examples of each of these, probably every time at the store.

User avatar
Guinevere
Posts: 8989
Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2010 3:01 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Guinevere »

Walk the damn cart back. It’s just not that difficult.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké

User avatar
BoSoxGal
Posts: 18299
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:36 pm
Location: The Heart of Red Sox Nation

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by BoSoxGal »

The only time I don’t return the cart is when someone walking in takes it from me - but that’s no longer common in pandemic times.

eta: Sometimes I leave my cart at the top of a disabled parking spot if there isn’t one there; most stores instruct the cart herders to leave carts at the top of handicapped spaces (between the signs, so entirely out of the way of parking) because a great many disabled folks like to use the cart for support walking into the store. I haven’t done this in pandemic times because I can’t wipe down the handlebar.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

User avatar
datsunaholic
Posts: 1790
Joined: Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:53 am
Location: The Wet Coast

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by datsunaholic »

I wonder what the test says about those that zip-tie the loose carts to the door handles of cars parked across multiple spaces...
Death is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.

Big RR
Posts: 14050
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:47 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Big RR »

Along these lines, I recall a store I worked in during high school that had a machine that dispensed shopping bags for a dime (a long time ago); however, it was common knowledge that if you pulled the bags a certain way you could get a bag for free. The manger said between a third and half of the bags were pilfered this way. The store tried another to distribute the bags leaving them on an open rack with a little cash box next to it saying the bags we a dime and having some sort of statement that they were relying on your conscience to get the payment as the bags cost the store money... Apparently the loss rate (people not paying for the bags) dropped to less than 5% and stayed there.

I kind of took it as people will be willing to take advantage of another person or business if they had to do something earn the reward (like trick the machine) but not if only their honesty (in their own mind) was at stake. Likewise, I'd bet that many who would never shoplift would take advantage of mispriced items (admittedly, difficult to do now with UPC codes).

Burning Petard
Posts: 4050
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:35 pm
Location: Near Bear, Delaware

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Burning Petard »

Datsun, glad to see you here. Seems like it has been too long. I have never seen the zips ties.doorhandle.cart connection, but I love it at least as a fantasy. Part of the problem is that some of us Old geezers use the cart as a walker. If I bring the cart back to the sidewalk at the store, I have a walk to the car unsupported. I suppose the proper answer involves my choice to not get a handicapped parking sticker, or why do I have a walking stick in the car if I never use it? My Costo store is less than 5 miles from my dwelling and part of probably the busiest and largest shopping center in Delaware. Delaware has no sales tax, and the shopping center is right off I-95; in light traffic only 15 minutes from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland. For obvious reasons I make an annual vow to never go near the place between Black Friday and Return day in January.

snailgate

User avatar
Guinevere
Posts: 8989
Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2010 3:01 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Guinevere »

You can get a pass on returning SG. Or you can try what my Mom did - use the cart as a walker, then when time to return, put her cane in the cart, return, and use the cane to get back to the car.

Understand that’s easier said than done, of course, and if you feel unsafe, then please don’t return the cart.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké

Burning Petard
Posts: 4050
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:35 pm
Location: Near Bear, Delaware

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Burning Petard »

I usually park as close as I can get to a cart corral. Prefer to be right up next to it. That offers pretty good assurance that my car, at least on one side, is not gonna get parking lot dings. The local Costco has those corrals in the middle of every parking block. Not close to the door? My physicians both nag me to get out and walk more. Have you noticed the careful engineering that goes into those carts now? Slick design means not all of the cart wheels are touching the ground when they are all nested together. That makes it easier to steer a big line of carts. 'Course the cost is that those fewer wheels are supporting a bigger individual load. And I never have a cane. That is for old people. I use a walking stick.

snailgate.

ex-khobar Andy
Posts: 5419
Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:16 am
Location: Louisville KY as of July 2018

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

I broke a hip and elbow in 1991 when my car (Renault/AMC Encore, made of aluminum foil) and a Buffalo blizzard and a utility pole intersected in time and space. Much surgical steel implanted, some of which is still there. I progressed from wheelchair to crutches to a walking stick over about three months. I did not want the eminently practical but soulless steel thing the hospital offered me. For the same $40 the hospital wanted, I found at an antique store a beautiful bent bamboo stick with a silver band, Briggs of London with a 1912 hallmark letter. So I could limp in style.

(PS I just looked it up on line and found a 1922 version of my stick for sale at £220 ($300) so I'm good.)

MGMcAnick
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:01 pm
Location: 12 NM from ICT @ 010º

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by MGMcAnick »

My former barber, who retired last December, had a 12" circular container in his shop that was always full of walking sticks. They were fashioned, some stained, some only varnished, from small oak branches by a legally blind friend of his. Suffice it to say they were unique. Need a walking stick? All you had to do was ask. I'd bet he still has some in his garage if I ever need one.

Don is an interesting guy in his own right. I met him because he is a car guy, years before he cut my hair. He was a young barber who was ticketed by a Wichita cop for exuberant driving (trying to get "air time" going over a railroad hump). He told the cop he cut hair at a nearby shop. A couple of weeks later the cop came into the shop where Don worked. He took a chair next to Don's. In the conversation with his barber he spoke of ticketing some idiot for reckless driving. For some reason they became friends. The cop encouraged Don to apply to become a cop. He spent 20 years and one day on the Wichita police force, and retired. Two weeks later he opened his planned barber shop. He cut my hair for 22 years. I miss him. It's getting awfully long.

To make a long story nauseous, the cop who ticketed Don went to work for Boeing, and was in my immediate group. He quit very shortly after being one of the first cops on the scene of the first BTK murder. Four members of the Otero family were Bound, Tortured, and Killed. He told me things that the public probably shouldn't have heard. It really bothered him.
A friend of Doc's, one of only two B-29 bombers still flying.

Burning Petard
Posts: 4050
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:35 pm
Location: Near Bear, Delaware

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Burning Petard »

PTSD appears in many places. I too have lots of walking sticks I made my self. Prefer blue beech for the strength and individual character. I see Sumac sold in stores for hiking staffs. It is light and straight but not very strong or tough. Oak I have tried but it seems pretty heavy, compared to beech or hickory. Hickory is traditional, but hard to find in my local area. All generalities are false, including this one. My favorite walking staff is a piece of oak I found broken by wind and on the ground and naturally straight.

snailgate

Big RR
Posts: 14050
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:47 pm

Re: Home for Random Thoughts

Post by Big RR »

I have an oak walking stick I got in Lake Placid a few years back when I tore my knee up on the first day of skiing (the only time I ever went down the mountain on a sled, but that's another story). I wanted something to get around with in town, and found a store that sold the sticks; I used it for the remainder of the week and got along well (I have also used it hiking, and plan to bring it with me when I go skiing this year to ward off the evil spirits that might make me fall). It's a bit heavy, but in some ways a heavier stick is easier to maneuver with.

Post Reply