Ladies and gentlemen… FROM the company that brought us “Cadillac CUE” (all-capacitive-buttons information controls)…

…Something nobody wants!

Grocery stores are always trying new things hoping it’ll be the next big thing, but usually it doesn’t catch on.

When I was a kid back in the 1980s and '90s, they would add a small digital calculator to the handle of the shopping cart to help people figure out how much they were spending. It wasn’t useful to people, so it disappeared.

Then they used to have the live lobster tank back in the deli. Turns out, most people don’t want to buy live lobster at a budget grocery store in a working class neighborhood.

Then around 2000, stores started expanding significantly to become a One-Stop shop. Bragging that you could buy a pair of shoes and fresh produce all in one place. It sounded kind of stupid, but it caught on in a huge way! Walmart have been the best at implementing this model, but others like Fred Meyer did it first.

Then they started to implement the curbside pickup. Which was totally dead and nobody used it in an absolute failure… Until the pandemic hit, and a bunch of people tried it, and realized they liked it.

So the next thing? Sounds like goofing around with AI in their app. Will it be useful? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

the smell of summer

Precious memories!

Unlimited venture capital money for 20 years have allowed social media companies to basically do whatever they want without listening to their user base. It was good when they were trying to grow the user base. But now that they are trying to squeeze every dollar out, we’re seeing the dark side.

Contrast this with old school media. They are mature and must turn a profit through their advertising. And they are absolutely terrified. Every TV show involves consultants who obsess over tiny details that could make the difference of half a ratings point. They know that if they scare the audience away, they go out of business.

Eventually the tech companies will reach the same level of maturity, but we’re not there yet.

That’s good to know. I almost thought of buying a couple (I always back up with pairs) to replace a couple of aging spinning disk portables.

Guess I will wait.

Allegorical Christianity

In that, yeah, western pluralism is derived from a “Rhode Island” interpretation of tolerance from Jesus Christ’s teachings in the New Testament. But waa the guy diety? Nah.

Was raised LDS/Mormon for the first three decades of my life. But gradually burned out of it as the church became more demanding and greedy – and slowly evolved away from “Rhode Island” tolerance Christianity into a near- LGBTQ hate group. The church decided to die on that hill, and I left. I believe Jesus teaches me to be kind, understanding, and tolerant.

The LDS/Mormon church is basically obsessed over anti-LGBTQ acceptance and tithing (money). If it were on the Nasdaq, the church would rival Lockheed Martin in market cap. Yet they are hella stingy helping the poor and still demand even the church’s poorest members to pay their “widow’s mite” of 10 percent. It’s downright immoral.

What is Reddit…

… Baby, don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! No more!

More adults are alive now than adults who died.

Most of humanity didn’t survive to adulthood.

Counterlogic: Act WAY too interested. Like a crazy person. Unbreakable eye contact. And start asking them very personal questions about themselves with a huge smile on their face.

I was an avid Firefox user back 15 years ago, when the Windows program would gobble up all the ram.

Chrome was so light and quick, like everybody else, I switched.

About 5 years ago, a new Firefox came out and I gave it a try and never looked back. So many neat plug ins! And uBlock on my phone!

I tend to lean toward OP’s original scenario never happening.

Back when signal jammers first came out, people used doom and gloom to say that autoritarian powers would jam our phones so we couldnt use them. It never happened.

Not because there weren’t people who didn’t try. But because the United States doesn’t have one “government.” We have governments. So if an out of control state legislature tries to do something, the FCC fights back. And if Congress gets too crazy, courts will strike it on Tenth Amendment grounds.

In the end, people are going to find a way to record cops. So we will. And – despite internet pessimism – most of the people in our governments will actually back us on it.