…hell of a festive season we’re having
American and Israeli officials appear to see an inflection point approaching in the Gaza war. The next stage will likely include a revived hostage-release negotiation with Hamas and an accompanying cease-fire possibly lasting as long as several weeks, perhaps followed by a gradual pullback by Israeli troops, especially in northern Gaza.
[…]
The sense of diplomatic momentum increased Wednesday as Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh journeyed to Cairo from Qatar to talk with Egyptian officials, who with the Qataris have acted as intermediaries with Hamas since soon after the war began in October.
[…]
Think of what’s ahead as the day before “the day after.” Fighting will continue, especially in southern Gaza. But as Hamas’s power is broken, U.S. and Israeli officials expect that Palestinians will step into new governance and security roles — with support from moderate Arab governments that hate Hamas almost as much as Israel does, even though they don’t say so out loud.
[…]
Killing Sinwar and Deif is one of Israel’s primary war aims. But that task is complicated by the likelihood that the two leaders have surrounded themselves with some of the remaining Israeli hostages. This presents the same dilemma — between pulverizing Hamas and saving hostage lives — that has complicated Israeli military planning since the start of the war.
[…]
U.S. and Israeli officials agree that urgent steps to relieve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza are essential — not least to reduce the scorching international criticism of Israel and its superpower patron for a Palestinian civilian death toll that’s nearing 20,000. Israeli officials fear that disease could spread in Gaza, though officials believe that a cholera outbreak has been checked.Israeli officials hoped several weeks ago that a huge camp at Al-Mawasi, just north of the Egyptian border, could accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the north. But now that southern Gaza has become the hottest battle zone in the war, this plan might be untenable. Israeli officials are now thinking of creating what one calls “humanitarian islands” in northern Gaza to draw Palestinians fleeing the violence.
…hard to believe that story about the football match in no man’s land could make people nostalgic for a time of trenches…but…time marches on
Israel’s initial insistence that it would eliminate Hamas probably is at an inflection point, too. After more than 70 days of hard fighting, Israel estimates that it has killed about 8,500 Hamas fighters. That’s out of an initial force the CIA estimated at 20,000 to 25,000. Whatever the precise numbers, a battered Hamas will likely survive, perhaps in hiding.
Over the longer term, when “the day after” finally arrives, U.S. and Israeli officials are both hoping that Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, can play a key role — providing money, leadership and legitimacy for the Gaza reconstruction effort.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/19/israel-war-hamas-gaza-new-phase-cease-fire/
…not altogether confident about its sense of direction, though
Our rules-based world is the triumph of peace over war. At least, that’s how the story has been told for the past eight decades. The promise of “never again” has been the raison d’etre for global institutions such as the United Nations and the international criminal court (ICC), which all like to trace their history to the moment when nations emerged from the ruins of the second world war and forged a lasting peace. Rising freedom and prosperity was understood to be the byproduct.
Yet increasing numbers of people around the world no longer believe in that story. Its promise has been broken with the return of full-scale aggression by Russia, along with deteriorating violence and instability around the world. We are witnessing the horrors that this system was supposed to have long ago eliminated.
International institutions now too often seem powerless, at best, to deal with the most serious challenges of our time. At worst, they are complicit in enabling them. With confidence rapidly fading, the entire system risks collapse. That would mean the return to an age of empires in which “might makes right”, and everyone suffers.
I now hear people around the world ask, with ever-increasing urgency, about how we can save our rules-based international system. I also hear frustrations that not everyone seems to be equally invested in saving it. But we cannot merely hope to save the existing rules-based international system from the crises that this system led us to, nor expect everyone to be passionate about something they do not feel is working for them. If it can fail once, it will fail again. It needs fundamental change.
[…]
We need to forge an international system far more resilient to aggressors, but also far better equipped to deal with poverty, disease, and the climate crisis. That’s why Estonia is calling for a new global conversation about how to make the world fit for freedom. First, we must strengthen the international rules-based order by admitting its flaws and ensuring it better reflects the realities of the 21st century. That includes reform of the UN.
[…]
But we need to be even more creative and ambitious. That’s why, to get started, we propose forming a core group to analyse the course of action to be taken by the general assembly when a permanent member of the security council tramples on the UN charter.Just as seriously, the ICC has been left without jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, even though it was established as the supreme crime of international law at the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis, and finally defined by all nations in 2010. This is the most striking example of a broken international system that allows the open violation of its most basic of international principles with impunity. The Rome statute of the ICC needs to be reviewed to ensure accountability for this crime without legal restrictions.
[…]
Second, we need to recognise that the countries that most seriously violate international commitments to other countries are also more likely to have already violated their own domestic commitments to their citizenry. The promotion of human rights and basic freedoms needs to become a natural part of global security policy.
[…]
Third, we must expand the inclusivity of international policymaking to make a world fit for freedom. That includes enabling the world’s small states and civil society to have a greater say in international matters that are traditionally decided by big states and blocs.We are at a pivotal moment in world history. The only certainty is that the existing international system cannot survive unchanged much longer. However challenging the world becomes, remember that it was during the very darkest days of the second world war that the rules-based world was developed in its current iteration. In the spring of 1941, almost all of Europe had fallen to the totalitarian powers. While victory for the allies was far from certain, representatives of occupied and allied nations met in bombed-out London to – in their words – “define some purpose more creative than military victory”.
The conversation they started gathered momentum globally and led to the creation of the UN, whose charter they began drafting even prior to D-day, as well as the Nuremberg trials, which laid the foundation for modern international law and the ICC.
That conversation should never have been considered finished. We must not wait for a repeat of the devastation that they endured. We can and must continue the momentum that they started and inspire a new global conversation on making the world fit for freedom.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/20/big-power-politics-world-order-un-icc
…not to mention who might be paying attention to what along the way
Rite Aid used facial recognition systems to identify shoppers that were previously deemed “likely to engage” in shoplifting without customer consent and misidentified people – particularly women and Black, Latino or Asian people – on “numerous” occasions, according to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. As part of the settlement, Rite Aid has been forbidden from deploying facial recognition technology in its stores for five years.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/20/rite-aid-shoplifting-facial-recognition-ftc-settlement
…uh huh
TechScape: ‘Are you kidding, carjacking?’ – The problem with facial recognition in policing [Guardian]
…old news?
The police will be able to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of Britain’s 50 million driving licence holders under a law change being quietly introduced by the government.
[…]
The move, contained in a single clause in a new criminal justice bill, could put every driver in the country in a permanent police lineup, according to privacy campaigners.
[…]
The intention to allow the police or the National Crime Agency (NCA) to exploit the UK’s driving licence records is not explicitly referenced in the bill or in its explanatory notes, raising criticism from leading academics that the government is “sneaking it under the radar”.Once the criminal justice bill is enacted, the home secretary, James Cleverly, must establish “driver information regulations” to enable the searches, but he will need only to consult police bodies, according to the bill.
Critics claim facial recognition technology poses a threat to the rights of individuals to privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination and freedom of assembly and association.
Police are increasingly using live facial recognition, which compares a live camera feed of faces against a database of known identities, at major public events such as protests.
Prof Peter Fussey, a former independent reviewer of the Met’s use of facial recognition, said there was insufficient oversight of the use of facial recognition systems, with ministers worryingly silent over studies that showed the technology was prone to falsely identifying black and Asian faces.
He said: “This constitutes another example of how facial recognition surveillance is becoming extended without clear limits or independent oversight of its use. The minister highlights how such technologies are useful and convenient. That police find such technologies useful or convenient is not sufficient justification to override the legal human rights protections they are also obliged to uphold.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/20/police-to-be-able-to-run-face-recognition-searches-on-50m-driving-licence-holders
Surveillance technology is advancing at pace – with what consequences? [Guardian]
…all the same…paying too much attention is an odd fit with the hit parade of problems we got
Flowers are “giving up on” pollinators and evolving to be less attractive to them as insect numbers decline, researchers have said.
[…]
“Our study shows that pansies are evolving to give up on their pollinators,” said Pierre-Olivier Cheptou, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. “They are evolving towards self-pollination, where each plant reproduces with itself, which works in the short term but may well limit their capacity to adapt to future environmental changes.”Plants produce nectar for insects, and in return insects transport pollen between plants. This mutually beneficial relationship has formed over millions of years of coevolution. But pansies and pollinators may now be stuck in a vicious cycle: plants are producing less nectar and this means there will be less food available to insects, which will in turn accelerate declines.
“Our results show that the ancient interactions linking pansies to their pollinators are disappearing fast,” said lead author Samson Acoca-Pidolle, a doctoral researcher at the University of Montpellier. “We were surprised to find that these plants are evolving so quickly.”
Insect declines have been reported by studies across Europe. One study on German nature reserves found that from 1989 to 2016 the overall weight of insects caught in traps fell by 75%. Acoca-Pidolle added: “Our results show that the effects of pollinator declines are not easily reversible, because plants have already started to change. Conservation measures are therefore urgently needed to halt and reverse pollinator declines.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/20/flowers-giving-up-on-scarce-insects-and-evolving-to-self-pollinate-say-scientists
…even in the realm of #1stworldproblems
Report: California leads nation in street homelessness and youth living outside [Guardian]
Would you drink toilet water? California wastewater approved for recycling [Guardian]
It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation (2022), it would rank in terms of nominal GDP as the world’s fifth largest economy, behind Japan and ahead of India.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California
…good to know we’re on top of that whole “keeping it in perspective” thing
Is the US going to approve the single biggest fossil-fuel expansion on earth? [Guardian]
…sorry…it’s early…I probably misread that
Human-driven extinction of bird species twice as high as thought, study says [Guardian]
Gas pipeline expansion could fuel Pacific north-west climate emergencies [Guardian]
Printable DNA to bird-bashing towers: 15 looming issues for biodiversity in 2024 [Guardian]
…ok…well…then maybe it’s just over-reliance on a single source…yeah…that sounds promising
TikTok users including Russell Brand given special status, messages show [Guardian]
A day at the baby bank: ‘I feel at ease here, because I’m not the only one struggling’ [Guardian]
…no, dumbass…come on…change the record
It’s easy to lose hope after a year like the last one, which saw Amazonian drought, rampant deforestation, coral reef die-offs and the hottest recorded year on Earth. But reversing this will not be the job of a single generation. It will take many decades, if not centuries, of what Leiserowitz called “cathedral projects.”
“The climate needs big, public, audacious goals that everyone can contribute to,” he argues. “Cathedrals were not completed in the lifetime of anyone starting them, but communities bought into these projects.”
Everything from rebuilding coral reefs and reforesting the Amazon to repowering the world’s energy system and capturing gigatons of carbon dioxide could be the cathedrals of our time. We should portray them as bold, transcendent projects for the collective good that encompass generations — not only in the dry, dense language of technical climate reports.
Here’s what it would take to build the cathedrals of our climate future.
It’s time to start planning for the next thousand years [WaPo]
…barely counts…that’s another well you already went back to…c’mon…make an effort
Read the Colorado Supreme Court’s Decision Disqualifying Trump From the Ballot [NYT]
…now you’re just taking the piss
Trump judge dismantles fraud trial expert witness: ‘Lost all credibility’ [Independent]
The legal case for seizing Russia’s assets [FT]
Trump Is Scrambling to Block One Particular Expert Witness in His New E. Jean Carroll Case [Daily Beast]
The West’s only licensed small reactor project is dead. It’s a blow for green energy [Telegraph]
Nuclear fusion enters ‘new era’ after major breakthrough for near-limitless clean energy [Independent]
China’s debt isn’t the problem [FT]
Largest Dataset Powering AI Images Removed After Discovery of Child Sexual Abuse Material [404 Media]
Trump breaks unbreakable internet rule with Hitler rhetoric: man who made the rule [Raw Story]
The Colorado Court’s Ruling Banning Trump From the Ballot Is Sharp as Hell [The Nation]
…you know what?
Colorado’s ruling to disqualify Trump sets up a showdown at supreme court [Guardian]
…I see what’s going on here
Boom, bang! Tales from a cell below the ‘crazy unit’ of a US prison [Guardian]
…maybe you’re hard of hearing
US child poverty doubled in 2022, thanks to Joe Manchin. We must reverse course [Guardian]
…back up
Trump Has Always Wanted to Be King. The Supreme Court Should Rid Him of That Delusion. [NYT]
…let’s try this again
Americans are hoping the courts will spare them an electoral reckoning with Trump [Guardian]
Trump lashes out after Colorado ruling removing him from ballot [Guardian]
‘Obviously Putin has his number’: why Russia wants a Trump presidency again [Guardian]
…c’mon now
Biden says it’s ‘self-evident’ that Trump is an insurrectionist [Guardian]
…you know one of them things is not like the other
EU reaches asylum deal that rights groups say will create ‘cruel system’ [Guardian]
Political crisis brewing in France after minister resigns over immigration bill [Guardian]
…something something “forest for the trees”
Root and branch reform: if carbon markets aren’t working, how do we save our forests? [Guardian]
…sure…sounds good
Don’t blame the trees! Saving forests is still the best way to save the planet [Guardian]
…so…we’re all over that…right?
Then as now, America was in the throes of a housing crisis. There weren’t enough places to live. Mass production provided Americans with abundant and cheap food, clothing, cars and other staples of material life. But houses were still hammered together by hand, on site. The federal initiative, Operation Breakthrough, aimed to drive up the production of housing — and to drive down the cost — by dragging the building industry into the 20th century.
It didn’t work. Big companies, including Alcoa and General Electric, designed new kinds of houses, and roughly 25,000 rolled out of factories over the following decade. But none of the new home builders long survived the end of federal subsidies in the mid-1970s.
Last year, only 2 percent of new single-family homes in the United States were built in factories. Two decades into the 21st century, nearly all U.S. homes are still built the old-fashioned way: one at a time, by hand. Completing a house took an average of 8.3 months in 2022, a month longer than it took to build a house of the same size back in 1971.
Federal housing policy in the decades since the failure of Operation Breakthrough has focused myopically on providing financial aid to renters and homeowners. The government needs to return its attention to the supply side. Opening land for development, for example by easing zoning restrictions, is part of the answer, but reducing building costs could be even more constructive. Land accounts for roughly 20 percent of the price of a new house; building costs account for 60 percent. (The price of land is a larger factor in coastal cities like New York, but a vast majority of new housing in the United States is built on cheap land outside cities.)
Why Do We Build Houses in the Same Way That We Did 125 Years Ago? [NYT]
…you know…I don’t think you’re taking this seriously…I didn’t ask for a piece of [your] mind…I asked for a little peace of mind…& this is what you give me?
Teaching … particularly in the 1990s, teaching what is far and away the dumbest generation in American history, is the same as walking up Broadway in Manhattan talking to yourself, except instead of eighteen people who hear you in the street talking to yourself, they’re all in the room. They know, like, nothing.
Philip Roth
…no wonder they say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness…y’all see the shit I got to put up with?
All that we don’t know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.
Philip Roth
…I know, I know
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense.
Philip Roth
…tell me about it?
Britain has 50 million residents with driver’s licenses? [googles] Oh wait, the UK is up to over 67 million? I thought, and I’m living in the past of course, that it would have been more like 55 million. Well. It looks like Britain won’t be suffering from much of a depopulation problem anytime soon.
Well done. Italy has a very low birth rate, I think one of the lowest in the EU (despite being a nominally Catholic country) and if it weren’t for the immigrants you’d get this kind of nightmare scenario where, first of all, the country would be bankrupt from paying out social benefits, but second of all everyone between the ages of 20 and 40 would have to take up careers in health care.
Spend some time in an NYC rehab facility. So many women from the Caribbean. Who else would do those jobs? I always liked chatting with them (except for a couple of them, to whom I wanted to say, “Don’t look at me like that. You do know what your job is, don’t you?” Their job, unfortunately, was to “toilet”me, in phys rehab parlance.) Chatting with them. Yes. So I never did the “Where are you from? Queens? No, where are you really from?” which got that Lady-in-Waiting and the widow of a former Chairman of the BBC in so much hot water. And BY THE WAY the episode of The Crown which deals with Martin Bashir’s bombshell but duplicitously arranged interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, features actors playing both these roles.
…so…a while back I told a story about a little old lady who lived down the road from my folks when I were a lad…had jimmy saville looking like a dick for a punchline & kind of hung on her having grown up knowing a lot of “colorful characters” in the era of life on mars…& would have been only a small sliver of one of the ways she could be a striking example of a product of her times…either way…from time to time she could be relied upon to off-handedly say something wildly not-okay…one way or another…ranging from musings about how handy a working knowledge of yiddish could be for a gentile lass looking to make her way in a world where a lot of folks baked a lot of assumptions into who she might appear to be while expecting her to know her place in it…to “of course you know *those* people…” followed by some sweeping generalization of breathtakingly racist implications
…but…her heart was in the right place, I guess you could say…you’d still be trying to think of how to say “you can’t say that” & she’d correct herself…”mind you, when I…” followed by a purely personal bit of anecdata that directly contradicted the generalization…mostly, as she got older & had to deal with the NHS more & more…about how utterly wonderful all the lovely people who helped her out with this or that had been…& all sorts of stuff about their families & trials & tribulations that you’d never have found out if you didn’t interact with them like they were people & not just a resource you were entitled to or otherwise actually embodied the preceding bout of casual racism
…she was a mass of contradictions that way…but…& I could be biased because to be honest I had a lot of time for her & she was…one way or another…never dull…so it was time that kept you on your toes…whether it was the long-suffering immigrant element of the workforce…or the council…or the biggest of surgical or functionary cheeses…her ability to navigate the system as if by some sort of parallel track in which the rules operated to her satisfaction is a gift I would that I might bestow upon you when it comes to your own trials & tribulations…force of nature would be one way of putting it…in more than one sense, even
…pretty sure she never made it to the big apple but I have a sneaking suspicion you & she would have gotten along like a house on fire
First of all, HAPPY SOLSTICE, and ONE MORE DAY!!! (until Daylight starts becoming incrementally longer!) to everyone living in the Northern Hemisphere😉😁💖
I’m no help, on the broader world news, because it feels like EVERYTHING sucks… I would just like to remind *everyone* once again, as they see the stories mentioning that Trump has had a copy of Mein Kamp, that the ACTUAL book he was reported to have owned was “My New Order”, the book on the speeches & propaganda… NOT Mein Kampf.
The part of this old Vanity Fair article that gets into it (which I’ve had bookmarked since 2015 or 16🙃), is about halfway through–there was also a Nazi verbal solute & heel-click in there somewhere….
In MUCH brighter news–although infinitesimal on the worldwide scale…
I finally heard back, from the Animal shelter Up Near Home, about my application…
Annnnd I get to make an appointment to go meet Dale, as soon as I’d like!!!😃🤗🥰🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
If he’s the fit I thiiiiink he might be, his name will begin to switch over to Ducky Dale, and eventually Ducky Mallard😉
Because while my Girl Dogs are named after flowers, I realized that Ducky would fit him *perfectly* for allllll the linguistic reasons, especially because all the *boy* pet names I’ve picked, have been animal or “critter” names.
If it had been *MY* selection, Rocket the current boy-cat would’ve been Junebug, and Piglet was the previous Orngboi of my former roommate.
So Ducky–for ALLLLLLL the reasons, of a loved one being called “Ducky”, PLUS two of the best characters, annnnnd the fact that he’s from Up Home (and a Water Dog), where there are LOTS of ducks & waterfowl around), just fits.
It’s allllll dependent, of course, on if he IS *the dog*!
But I get to call the shelter back today/tomorrow, and make the appointment to find out🤗😃😁
The ADHD-brain is STRONG lately–here is that VF article;
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1990/9/after-the-gold-rush
…will cross as many fingers & toes for you as I can without tripping up every time I try to get down the street
…may you have the luck you deserve
It sounds like you’re really having to jump through hoops to get your shelter hound. We’ve always just kind of showed up. And it’s amazing the dogs you’ll find. One of ours was an AKC-registered King Charles spaniel. Do you know how rare those are? But there he was.
Not that I’m a canine snob. All our other dogs have been a certain breed, but not quite. So the Black Lab Faithful Hound must have had a great-grandparent who was not a Black Lab, you can see it in his face if you know what you’re looking for. But he is my little Schatzi just the same. Well, not little at all. For in our bed is his kingdom, and power, and glory. And he’ll push us off the bed.
@MatthewCrawley, it’s not quiiiiite as much “jumping through hoops” as it is that he’s two hours northwest of here, annnnnd we don’t currently have the apartment dog-proofed yet with the baby gates we’ll need in this place.
Also, being a small-town shelter, they’re only *open* certain days of the week/hours of the day.😉
If he was at Minneapolis Animal control? It’d be TONS faster! Buuuut I’ve gotta plan a day that THEY are open, annnnd that I don’t have work–which is why the planning and the “hoops” part😉
@emmerdoesnotrepresentme Dale will be a Lucky Duck to be with you – please report back when you know!!!
Good luck, I’m sure your experience as an owner will be a big help.
I always feel for shelter employees this time of year — they have to sort through a lot of applications from clueless people with no experience who think a puppy on Christmas morning will be the perfect gift. And of course they need to work all through the holidays to keep everybody fed and clean.
I need to go back to bed after reading the above doomfest! How about some good news?
https://www.rawstory.com/andrew-taake-jan-6/
and at least when the civil war does happen, we will have cease fires each day…
Weirdly, the NY Post is practically alone in getting a headline right:
Trump leads Biden, but likely voters prefer the Democrat: poll
https://nypost.com/2023/12/19/news/trump-leads-biden-likely-voters-prefer-the-democrat-poll/
The real point, of course, as Brian keeps making, is that polls are a mess. They have been deteriorating as a source of information for reporters and they are probably even worse this time.
I think it’s a mistake to assume how they are skewing now, but it’s even dumber to assume how they will relate to November. That was certainly the case in 2022.
There is a lot of dissatisfaction with Biden now, but the political press has had a pattern for at least a decade now in pretending that the roots of dissatisfaction are the same for everyday Americans and liberals as they are for Fox News viewers.
The GOP PR consultants who overwhelmingly feed the political press narratives are trying to push the Democrats toward addressing the Fox News audience’s dissatisfaction, which of course is an impossible task.
They want Biden to completely shy away from Trump’s fascism and try to be a “unity” candidate who goes to Idaho to woo ranchers with more giveaways of public lands.
Biden’s path to reelection comes from convincing liberals and independents that he has been and will continue to fight for their rights, against corporations, and specifically against the GOP. His electability goes up the more he takes on Trump and the GOP, not down.
There’s a belated but growing unease in the political press corps about Trump’s fascism, and the GOP’s consultants are trying hard to block that from turning into a broader acknowledgement that Biden is the only path toward a normal America. We’ll see if the press can keep up the cognitive dissonance, or if they can finally admit to reality.
…indications
US economist predicts 2024 will bring ‘biggest crash of our lifetime’ [Fox Business Network]
…would appear to be
Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years [ProPublica]
…uhhh…checks notes
…”from a certain point of view”…addressing that audience’s dissatisfaction is all too easy…more’s the pity…but there might be cracks showing other than the whole “you’d have to be cracked in the head to…” of it all?
Rite Aid used facial recognition systems to identify shoppers that were previously deemed “likely to engage” in shoplifting without customer consent and misidentified people – particularly women and Black, Latino or Asian people – on “numerous” occasions, according to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. As part of the settlement, Rite Aid has been forbidden from deploying facial recognition technology in its stores for five years.
sooo… their facial recognition systems are exactly as accurate as regular shop staff?
the amount of times ive been stuck in a line where every backpack wielder in front of me gets their backpack checked coz its store policy sir or ma’am but mine gets waved on is frankly offensive
whats wrong with my backpack i ask you?…i mean…sure its a little older now…maybe not as pretty as it once was….but thats coz its a quality backpack…its clean…and still perfectly good for shoplifting
show it the respect it deserves goddamnit
The grocery store I use the self checkouts at flagged me for “staff needed” when I went to pay and the dude came over and pulled up the overhead security cam footage of me checking out. Apparently the machines didn’t like how I scanned the 3 bottles of soda I bought. I shit you not. I assume black people probably are tagged more often than me because racism.
Anyways, I’ve never shoplifted from a grocery store and my first thought during that was “fuck me now I want to steal shit in my purse out of spite.”
it tags me whenever i scan only 1 item
yeah….if im using the self scan for 1 item…its coz i thought i was going to be quicker this way….not coz im stealthily stealing a cart full of shit…..stupid machine
everyone knows you hide your stolen stuff in with paid for stuff….. preferably near the bottom coz shop staff is lazy…
and never so much that the oh! my! i must have missed that one! silly me excuse stops working if you are accidentally caught….. oh wait…thats probably a white thing
The self checkout at mine is getting much more relaxed, because every time they do an audit it takes a register and the employee out of the mix, which means anyone else who needs help due to an error code or price missmatch has to sit around, and backups multiply.
So they need people on self checkout duty, which defeats the purpose, and they’re driving shoppers away from the store.
I think what’s happened is the financial analysis has kicked in that paranoia about shoplifting isn’t worth chasing the marginal returns of extreme enforcement.
Nothing you do at self checkout will stop the guy with a steak stuffed down his pants, and the big profits for grocery stores are from things like the salad bar and deli for impulse meal purchases, and the pharmacy. People will go elsewhere if they feel hassled because some store exec is freaking that someone entered organic peaches at the scanner as regular ones.
Ours has a camera right at the scanner so if you don’t scan something & put it in the bag you trigger a checker to have to come. It has the most sensitive scale to the point where I just move the bag to put an item in I get a warning message. It usually takes at least a few visits from the self checkout helper due to errors, coupons, checking id for alcohol, or having to many items. The checkers could careless, they don’t get paid enough to care and just come and override everything. They even will give me the coupon price if I don’t have the right item. I love the people at the store but it is all just a Kroger money grab that may cost them in the end.
…I went to a supermarket in rome a while back & that had unstaffed self-checkouts…but also a system that put a barcode on your receipt that you needed to scan to open the exit… otherwise you needed a staff member to let you out…there might have been more to it but I wasn’t buying booze or cigarettes or anything with an age requirement so that’s all I ran into…so I lean towards the idea that it’s mostly a question of the customers being used to how the things work that makes the difference…& decades back the hypermarché places like carrefour had handheld scanners you could take with you to tally up the contents of your trolley as you went & stations to look up prices…well before any of that was tied to the actual checkout process…so it was less of a learning curve in some places, I think
…meanwhile the first time someone started bagging my groceries in a store in the US I nearly had a row about how they were doing it wrong & could they just get out of my way & let me pack my own shit…horses for courses & all that?
Amazon has a few grocery stores like this in WA & I thought they were going to make all Whole Foods like that when bought them but so far no.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-fresh-grocery-store-meet-just-walk-out-shopping
…yeah…I don’t know about the rest of the world but I found that whole idea to be creepy AF, myself?
I’m with you, my grocery store already has too much info on me. Amazon has way too much data on me without giving away all my eating and drinking habits to them too!
At some point back when I smoked there was some kind of city crackdown involving tobacco sales to minors. Let us ignore the fact that when I was a preteen my friends and I used to load up on cartons of cigarettes at our parents’ requests, partly for their convenience, partly to give us something to do. So there was the crackdown and signs wherever ciggies were sold saying “You MUST show ID to purchase tobacco products.” I’d get up to the counter, ID at the ready, and the cashier would just kind of look at me. “Here is my ID! Take it! Take it!”
For an insight into the Washington Post’s rightward turn, this is an excellent read:
New Washington Post CEO accused of Murdoch tabloid hacking cover-up
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/20/1219570870/washington-post-will-lewis-tabloid-hacking-prince-harry
What adds to David Folkenflick’s piece is that he’s not simply recounting allegations, but looking at the actual evidence filed. Beware of people who try to portray this as a simple one guy says/the other guy says story.
The former Murdochite, Will Lewis, isn’t on the job yet, but his hiring represents the mindset of the Post’s owner, board and publisher. Lewis is where they want to go.
…the possible repercussions of hazza getting the best of that case are legion…but the shady side of the UK press could give anyplace a run for its cash-stuffed envelope, really…so it wouldn’t surprise me much if that was still the shallow end of some deep waters for WaPo’s new hire
…& now farage is back from the jungle he sadly did get out of…& promising to run his UKIP remix party hell for leather into making the UK treat another general election as a referendum on immigration as a single-issue…it’s probably right in line with the prevailing market forces, to boot
Meanwhile Katharine Graham rolls over in her grave. Quietly, and graciously, but rolling over she is.
Fuck you Texas! Have you not met our AG? He will fuck you up! We passed laws just to make sure you would NEVER get this kind of info.
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/seattle-hospital-sues-after-texas-attorney-general-asks-for-handover-of-patient-records/
They should send Tejas the bill for all the paperwork/manpower/general annoyance for such wrongheaded requests.
Since this is an Open Thread and there’s a musical codicil (not exactly the true meaning of the word), can I offer another example of what a Luddite I am?
At some point overnight I was kind of haunted by songs I listen to. I woke up but didn’t know where the music was coming from. I thought it was from outside, that’s not uncommon, so I got up at 2 am or something. In the office, in front of my computer, Iwas also hearing, very faintly, other of my usual songs.
So I googled “auditory hallucinations.” Mostly it occurs in people with “schizophrenia.” I think that is now more appropriately called “bipolar disorder.” I was really upset. I had an aunt who was treated for schizophrenia in the 1950s, before I was alive, but the horror stories…Is that the next step on my rollater journey into 2024?
I don’t know how I realized this, but it was pushed, unwanted Apple Music. No notice. No consent. They just did it.
The way to get rid of this pestilence if you’re on a desktop, is you go the Apple Music icon and click on that. Then, you’re in the Music scenario, so go up to the Apple icon at upper left. Then you have to select “Force Quit.”
Who thought this was a good idea? When did Elon Musk take over Apple’s user experience division? I was so furious. As if I don’t have enough to do right now.
…I’ve messed about with iTunes over the years but steered clear of Apple Music so far
…if they have some sort of autoplay bullshit going I don’t imagine that’ll change any time soon but if you had to force it to quit instead of just the normal sort of quit it sounds like it might have been more by way of a glitch than a deliberate thing…not that the whole crazy-making side of it would count for any less if so…but…if it were me Id probably try firing it up on purpose tomorrow just to sift through the settings & preferences to see if there was anything it looked like they’d let you switch off…& seriously considering uninstalling the whole thing…which, last I checked, just requires opening the applications folder in “Finder” & dragging the icon to the trash?
No, believe me, I tried just dragging the Music icon into the trash (from the System folder) and you get a popup saying something like, “Your Mac O/S cannot function without this feature.”
What I had to do was call the Apple help line. The online chatbot is even worse than mandatory Apple Music. To get anywhere you have to enter all kinds of personal information. I was screaming at my computer screen, “Just answer a simple question, and I can’t be the only one asking it!!!”
So I called and got through pretty quickly, I’ll give them that, but the customer service tech was so condescending. When she told me about this trick I thanked her and said, “You know, I’ve been using Apple products for 35 years because I used to work in an Art Department…” Silence. “Well,” I continued, because I’m a jolly old elf, “Happy Holidays!”
…I know back in the day iTunes was a bit like Internet Explorer was for Windows in that a bunch of stuff the system relied on was baked into it so you couldn’t just ditch it…but I thought they’d unpicked a lot of that these days…like you don’t need it to back up an iPad/iPhone any more…& most iCloud/AppleID/App Store stuff is independent of it…but I can believe they don’t make removing their apps easy
…never tried it for one that called itself Apple Music…but I bet if you really wanted to someone out there has posted in a forum what you’d need to paste into a command line prompt to get the job done…underneath all the MacOS stuff it’s still a sort of Linux system so it’s pretty hard to stop you if you’re determined…& comfortable with judicious use of the sudo command
…they might not be lying about breaking things in the process…in which case that forum post probably has a bunch of ancillary geek-age to resolve that…or at least an explanation about why maybe that doesn’t matter to some people
…mind you…this is the Apple that went into the open source stack for the bluetooth modules in iPads without a SIM slot to disable the functionality that let you tether it to a mobile phone for a data connection…& did something even more technologically opaque to try to prevent their OS installing on what used to be called “netbooks”…at a point when those were super popular in the “hackintosh” community…which didn’t quite line up with steve jobs’ certainty that netbooks sucked bad enough to invent the iPad to save the world from them…so…they definitely don’t mind going way out of their way to deny their users options that might be reasonable to expect?
I tried that first, the online community. I googled for all my specs (and I really should update my OS but…) and it wasn’t right. Or at least my experience didn’t match the screenshots. And it really is so simple, once you know how to disable Apple Music, but I think these amateur online tech geeks are trying to make it seem like you need an advanced degree in computer science to even begin to understand this. No, you don’t. It’s just one of many idiotic features buried in the pulldown menus.