Hope everyone is having a good week and looking forward to the weekend. It’s getting to be party time, anything exciting going on this weekend? I’m making buckeyes and getting the house ready for a cookie exchange (next Sunday). As I sent out the invitation, I noted that it was the 25th year in a row that I’ve thrown this party. Does someone want to take over for me next year?
Updates here:
US vetoes UN resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-12-08-23/index.html
Ken Paxton is just the most gigantic POS
Texas attorney general says he will sue doctor who gives abortion to Kate Cox
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/08/ken-paxton-texas-abortion-kate-cox
Grifters be griftin’!
Trump expert witness paid nearly $900,000 for testimony in fraud case
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/08/trump-expert-witness-paid-fraud-trial
Stonks! Read the room people!
FabFitFun faces backlash for crude promo code in support of Elon Musk — and its pledge to run ads on X
https://www.businessinsider.com/fabfitfun-customers-revolt-crude-promo-code-elon-musk-x-twitter-2023-12
Sprots!
They watched their husbands win the Heisman – then lost them to CTE
https://wapo.st/3t1mLvd
As of my writing this post, no news yet for our friends in the north
TIL I have friends who have never heard Fairytale of New York. #shocked!
On that note, have a great weekend!
We’re going to a party this afternoon down the street. I’m making baklava.
Toronto is the only east coast team that is in the running for Shotani… at least no Yankees or Red Sox this year.
It will be a big bummer now if the Jays don’t sign him.
@hannibal as you asked…
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/89579/twas-time-for-operation-christmas-tree
Love this! Thanks 🙂
These motherfuckers will not stop. This is the most horrific disregard for a person’s life I’ve ever seen except for despots and serial killers.
Texas Supreme Court temporarily halts order that allowed pregnant woman to have abortion
They won’t stop. Ever. They don’t care how many people they kill.
…they want to kill people
“no, but, see they’re pro-life so that makes no sense – they’re the ones who are for more people being alive”
…it’s looking more than a little possible there’s an entirely irresponsible number of people already alive & actually that’s kind of a problem but I don’t think taking a biblical approach to solving that would be most people’s idea of a future to look forward to…leaving aside the tiresome business of plagues & the troubling implications of a weapon capable of murdering first-borns on a gender-specific basis…read the wandering the wilderness rules part again & apply it to modern architecture…are you really telling me that failure to keep to more stringent rules of social distancing from your ass than you managed in a pandemic for several days of any given month forever & always ought to potentially open up your wives/daughters/sisters/mothers/&c to death by stoning…because that’s not even one of the harder things in there to abide by & your back doesn’t look to be in good shape with the rods you already made for it?
“how dare you insult me for being a person of faith it’s filthy heathens like you that are why we live in a fallen world”
…you certainly do appear to have fallen on your head a lot as a small child…which, by the way, is a lot less likely to be the product of that pregnancy than a dead potential mother…your thinking about this is quite literally backwards in a number of ways I’d be happy to explain to you
[insert inapplicable spittle-flecked bible quote]
…are you familiar at all with the story of the levite & his concubine?
…yeah…there may be a reason those sorts of people stop knocking on doors I’ve lived behind…but damn if I wouldn’t probably have been done for assault by now if I lived in texas
…unless that’s legal once they set foot on your doorstep…which seems more than likely one way or another?
Good article in the NY Times about bad PR:
Retail Group Retracts Startling Claim About ‘Organized’ Shoplifting
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html
The National Retail Federation claimed in a report that half of its reported $94.5 billion in losses in 2021 from “shrinkage” was due to organized shoplifting, but the real number is vastly smaller, around maybe 5%.
Shrinkage, it should be clear, covers an incredibly broad category. If an employee in a warehouse fails to scan the barcodes on a bunch of pallets as they leave a warehouse, that’s shrinkage. If a truck crashes, that’s shrinkage. If the AC in a store fails and chocolate melts, that’s shrinkage. If there is a database error and goods are unaccounted for, that’s shrinkage.
Shoplifting happens, but the narrative around it is just hysteria. And the response of retailers has been idiotic.
…it’s become a bit of a staple for a certain sort of news though…so I can see how that claim didn’t get walked back before it got made…which you’d expect it to if they thought about how it would play in the court of public opinion?
…which is to say I’ve read enough stories that follow a formula of “store policy is that we not put ourselves or our colleagues in harm’s way” being something serial shoplifters have taken as license to brazenly rip open locked display cases & haul off bag-loads of merchandise unmolested…repeatedly…that I’m prepared to believe it’s a phenomenon that exists to which multiple branches of multiple chains have been victim…even if I’ve never seen it
…much like I believe organized shoplifting of higher value items to order is a real thing…which I suspect dents those brands’ bottom line less than they think selling off their dead stock at a discount the way others do allegedly would
…you’d think exaggeration by an order of magnitude would be obvious to the people who pay attention to those figures for a living…but after all…what is truth in advertising?
Yeah I heard this on Marketplace the other day. I won’t hold my breath for Fox to report this, much less stop scaring the shit out of their gullible viewers with more videos of smash and grab robberies.
Shoplifting happens, but it’s just nowhere near on the scale of the horror story reporting.
Emmer has told about some of the huge issues behind the scenes when employees aren’t trained or motivated to handle inventory, and that involves a scale of multiple pallets of goods getting temporarily or permanently lost.
Someone going to a store to steal razors is getting about 1% of the volume of just one of those inventory screwups.
There is definitely organized largescale theft from big retailers. But the reality is that it’s vastly more efficient to pay off a warehouse security guard earning $14/hour to tell you where the broken security cameras are so you can get an entire truckload than it is to steal a shelf of stuff at a time.
The little stuff happens, but it’s only on the margins. Fences vastly prefer dealing with a few largescale thieves, not large networks of little thieves.
And one of the dumb things is stores could effectively shrink the smallscale theft by just putting less on shelves at a time and hiring a few more people to restock inventory on an as-needed basis, but they hate the idea of running their stores that way.
When I worked at ye olde makeup store about 12 years ago, out of the blue the FBI contacted the corporate HQ because they were doing an organized crime bust in Chicago and found dozens of unopened shipping boxes of our company’s merchandise.
As in it “fell off a truck” while still in the store-branded shipping boxes that our pallets of shipments.
But yeah, sure, blame the rando idiots who shoplift onesie twosie items.
Next time some asshole tells you inflation and grocery prices are because of Biden…
and to go along with that…
https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-everything-904b28425120
The most recent Beige Book report had a quote that went something like this:
“People will complain about the price of eggs…but they’ll still buy a car.”
I had a fabfitfun membership a few years ago for a while, it was fine but nothing great.
However, whomever approved that ad on twitter? WOW no fucking concept of the company’s branding. Really makes me wonder how their corporate work environment is if someone thought oh yeah that’s a good idea.