Northern Weird, Quixotic TRPG Vorthos

some more lil rotomikus they make me happy ⚡️💙⚡️🧡

play like a white onion

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.

Visual positioning systems now guide autonomous weapons where satellites can't reach.

Niantic's spin-off company, Niantic Spatial, transformed those gaming clips into a Visual Positioning System (VPS). Think GPS, but using camera vision instead of satellites. The system matches live video feeds against pre-built 3D maps to determine precise location—critical when enemies jam satellite signals.

In December 2025, Niantic Spatial partnered with defense contractor Vantor to integrate this ground-level navigation with aerial drone systems. The goal: unified air-to-ground positioning for military operations in "GPS-denied environments." Translation—your Squirtle hunt helped map terrain for autonomous weapons.

I was being facetious with the trick part lol but you know the joke "I might be racist, but you're mean and that's worse?" It's the root of that. We discussed it back when we read White Fragility. You can see it in Trump, Elon Musk, and your average Tumblr racist:

They really, REALLY want to be liked. Not just liked, no that's not the right word, but validated.

Think about it this way. Racism is the status quo; the default, right? Part of maintaining that default is through normalization, and that includes the solidarity necessary to reinforce that (DiAngelo called it white solidarity).

So, if being covertly racist is the status quo, then that means you will be socially rewarded for being so. When you get rewarded, people are nice, friendly, relatable, they keke and haha right alongside you. But when you confront someone's racism, you're not socially rewarding them anymore- the spigot of validation has been paused! Instead of taking it as a valid critique, you are seen as socially punishing a person. You're being MEAN, because the validation I got from everyone else's also-racism was NICE!

That's why when you confront racism, you HAVE to stand firm on it. You cannot feed into the desire for the validation of their behavior. That's what makes a lot of people snap. The blowup is meant to stop you, to force you back into compliance! The only one being punished really is you for bringing it up.

And hell, if not socially validating a bigot is punishment... 😐 Why would that be... A bad thing? We're not hitting you with rocks, we're just saying we don't fuck with you and your behavior. (But that's also a part of really all of the books we've read in #cbc book club so far; that antiracism is seen as violence.)