Forever Winter

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

No. Capitalism creates new avenues to extract wealth. If the new innovation doesn't make the company more money, they won't implement it.

Example: I worked in a family owned grocery store many years ago. Our closes competitor was a regional chain that switched to digital tags. This was really before the Internet of Things was in full swing. They had endless headaches with the tags dying and stuff but that isn't what I'm on about.

What I'm saying is, it has been possible to create digital tags for decades.

In theory, if used for good and not for evil these tags could be brilliant. My most recent retail gig had automated ordering based on inventory levels. Price changes were routinely sent down to the store level by corporate. In a perfect morning, the opening manager prints all the price changes. Some days, it is fully 90 minutes to two hours of labor that the company allots the same 30 minutes for (no surprises there).

If the morning manager doesn't check the price changes, they just don't get printed and replaced. You can already see the problem. Shelf tags are often wrong. Especially since the prices in the industry fluctuate a lot and our buys were not the same size all the time so the company would adjust the prices a lot. More than more retail stores.

Having digital tags would be brilliant. They could be hard wired, even, so no worrying about the tags dying like in that old grocery store. With full coverage wi-fi, the system could just update the prices at midnight every day.

It would probably take many years to break even on the saved labor and loss of revenue from price matching the tags if the company ever did break even.

Now suddenly, though, there is some huge value add to rush to digital tags because now companies can use device recognition to gouge customers.

Just…the sheer size of such a creature.

It actually got me wondering about something. Assuming for a moment, that all space and caloric needs are met, what is the theoretical size limit an animal could reach before physics start getting in the way? Like “nope, too big to pump blood efficiently or send nerve signals”.

They call me lazy, tell me that I don’t know what real work is, even though I push myself almost to a breaking point. That I don’t do anything. They guilt trip me and bully me all the time, and nothing I do is ever good enough.

Hello guys i'm uploading this just in case before they take it down. I really loved this song so if you want please go on yt and download it asap.

#BRINGBACKVALKO

They are an Assistant Professor of Media Industries at New York University and literally just finished writing The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal, a book on the history of the computer industry in the 70s.

And you're helping them clean

I'm not gonna ask. You have to be kind to them. You HAVE to be. They already know this is bad, they're already ashamed, they probably waited so long to ask for help because they were embarrassed, you do not have to scold or guilt or yell at them about it, they fucking KNOW. You can talk shit about the conditions out of earshot but if they're present you HAVE TO BE KIND. Do NOT punish them for reaching out to you by being condescending or mean.

Imagine, after decades of your world becoming colder and colder, you are saved. A single Eridian, the only one of twenty three to survive, arrives in an alien ship, accompanied by a creature you can barely conceive.

Everything about the alien is so loud, hinges formed from tissue thumping and stretching in constant movement, even while unconscious. Completely organic, reliant of oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of a protective carapace, it regrows its damaged tissues. It has senses you do not, and technology so unlike your own, both able to utilise a force you have never heard of. The same force that killed almost your entire mission team. Highly adaptable, able to teach itself how to fly its ship in under a week, able to become fluent in the engineer's dialect in less than four years.

And if Erid's best engineer is correct (and there's no reason it wouldn't be), this creature not only managed to breed a predator of the warmth-taker to survive in various atmospheres, including Threeworld's, but also turned around to provide aid when it discovered that the predator could escape xenonite.

And you think: Surely, this creature which protects itself without a carapace, which sleeps so lightly and knows so much and learns so quickly, which saved two planets at the cost of ever returning to its thrum, surely, a creature so extraordinary must have a name to match

And you think: Perhaps it is strength, Mountain-Base or Lonsdaleite-Carapace. Perhaps it is intellect, Diamond-Claw or Lockpick-Mind. Perhaps it is courage, Song-Through-Silence or Path-Carver

And you think: None of these names hold the true weight of what this creature is to them. How do you describe something like that, which aids without expectation of anything in return, which risks its own life for the sake of a species it cannot touch, which performs miracles simply because it was asked.