My eyes are such that I can’t tell if the script on that cardboard container is Tamil, Thai, AI, or something else.

This is made more difficult by google search continuing to suck out loud and returning results that include nicknames for people and TikTok home recipe challenges instead of historical facts on international menu items.

Even “verbatim” barely works anymore.

Anyone know what other names the McTaco may have gone by in the past?

It’s also really bad for political optics.

It’s as bad as or worse than (according to the people treating it as a political issue) low birth rates. (From a human perspective it’s much worse).

So if you can suppress discussion of it, you don’t have to talk about solving the “problem” as frequently, you can downplay it, and you can shift blame to nebulous, faceless things like “social media” or “bullying” (both of which are real things and real concerns, but not things most places are willing to earnestly address politically, so in practically they function as a fits-all “evil” that allows redirection from the real problem, which includes things like lack of agency and security.)

If the U.S., for example, had a true grasp on the scope of this issue across all age groups, I think our political landscape would look a lot different. Despite being an issue across all age groups, each age group tends to stratify their discourse to be primarily amongst themselves, so online silencing becomes a ridiculously powerful tool in downplaying the issue, because there’s already a semi-natural cultural isolation in place for discourse in general.

We’ve seen the effectiveness of this silencing tactic when it comes to avoiding discussion of the problem for decades in one particular subset of humanity who, historically speaking, frequently seems to have regular horrible tragic mishaps while “cleaning their guns”.

Alambre

New kinds of water, you say? The marketing department is already on it and boy have I got news for you!

It is, to a degree.

She’s no billy strings.

I legit wasn’t sure if this was a real thing she did that started as a friendly joke or something.

Actually, I’m still not sure.

I think you mis-spelled “biased”.

:)

Me too!

I thought it said “Grimes” and it was making a joke about how ugly and comical the cybertruck looks.

Oops.

LOL

I think it was the original meaning when it was brand new and still very niche.

Part of me wonders if it made it onto one of those “Parents! Know these abbreviations!” memes where they purposely list the acronyms incorrectly (LOL–Lots of Love) and then got more popular that way.

Back twenty years ago when I first started seeing “SMH” it was “So. Much. Hate.”

As in “I really dislike that.”

As in “So, everybody unanimously said they want sheet cake for office birthdays and management decided to double down on the day old donuts again anyway? So Much Hate.”

Lotta key parties in your neck of the woods?

Okay, so what’s causing our costs to be higher?

Wow, it wasn’t that long ago when production was moved to the States because of Japan’s high labor costs.

I know Nissan US will likely try to BLAME it on things like unions or rising labor costs, but there’s NO WAY that amounts to a >20% rise in production costs even if you cite “hidden” costs behind the 6.6% or whatever they got. Keep in mind that costs were LOWER here and NOW they’re TWENTY PERCENT LOWER in japan. That means we rose a BUNCH more than where we were at because there’s no way they moved it here if we were 1% lower than japan.

Which part of the raw-materials-to-auto-parts chain is inflating the hell out of costs to declare record profits this time?

For most people, these are harmless and just a part of getting older. You’ll get used to them.

I’ve had these since I was in preschool.

They’re far less pronounced (almost entirely absent, really) now in my 40’s than they were throughout my single digit years, but I still see them once in a great while

That would be the SMART way to do things, yes.

One can hope.

I was actually impressed when I took a bus across state lines in the U.S. recently.

Someone was complaining about the charger on their seat not working.

Turns out that the driver has full control of the power to the USB ports on the bus and can turn them off and on at will… and they apparently they turn them off BY DEFAULT.

If someone WERE to figure out a way to get from the USB port in the seats to the CAN Bus on the vehicle itself, having a hard-wired physical switch that cuts power/signal to the ports is potentially a fairly effective security measure as long as there’s not a memory buffer you can compromise and run stuff from.

I’m working to overcome a particularly troublesome piece of technology right now and enjoying a cold, refreshing, Diet Dr. Pepper, so I guess the sentiment stands.

I was going to say, I saw the name “Lister” and wondered if there was any connection to “Listerine”.

the Laundry Files

Sweet, Thanks.

I just checked The Atrocity Archives (first book in the series) out of my local library’s e-book program.

I’m looking forward to reading this.

corwin does both…