ArtieShaw
- 2 Posts
- 149 Comments
Under cabinet manual jar opener. It’s flat and mounts under your cabinet of choice. Easy to use, but also easy to forget it’s there! I sometime find myself jar in hand and half-way to wherever my husband is before I remember that I no longer need his skills.
Electric candle lighter. Rechargeable lighter with long neck. Eliminates the need for matches or standard lighters. The noise it makes does scare one of the cats, though. I haven’t tried it on campfires yet, but I think that was something the ad said it could do.
2·10 months agoFor me, it was an accident. I had a degree in a hard science, but realized that academia would drive me mad. My first job was in a relatively small industry and I just kept on with it until I knew the requirements to making a safe and quality product.
The fear of being fired exists, but you have to know when and where to ask those questions. I ask our vendors whether their employees have a right to form a union if they want one, for example. I also know that our plant managers are deeply opposed to our own employees having that option.
Eventually that question is going to come up. It’ll probably come from a consultant that we hire to evaluate us. It won’t be me unless there’s a situation where it would be awkward not to ask about it. For example, if an HR rep is dumb enough to tell us we’re perfectly free in that regard, I’d be sorely tempted to ask when that policy changed.
ES&G (Environmental, Social, & Governance) policies are starting to become a common thing. They seem to have started at large corporations and they, in turn, drive their smaller partners to adopt similar policies. They want to present a face of sustainable and accountable practices, free from corruption, blah blah blah.
I work for a medium to small company and it has become part of my job to ask awkward questions of our vendors. Our corporate customers are pressing us on our practices, and we press our vendors as part of a “sustainable and ethical supply chain”. Not all companies are well prepared to answer these questions, but some are. In general, the US lags behind Asia and Europe when it comes to this. At least in my industry. So that’s a big caveat.
How do we know they’re not lying? One tool is that independent third party auditors can assess a company and gauge its strengths and weaknesses. (Ecovadis is a name I’ve seen many times during these discussions, but there are others.) These auditors live or die by their reputations, so they have an interest in staying honest.
In the case of these nitrogen vendors (one of which is used by my employer), this is an easy ES&G win. The amount of nitrogen sold to executioners is vanishingly small, whereas we buy it by the tanker. It’s definitely on the short list of awkward questions I would ask them.
The term ‘greenwashing’ will come up. And trust me, because I’m a cynical bitch with a hair-trigger bullshit meter, I’ve used it myself. But I’m cautiously optimistic that questions like this can move companies in a better direction. Part of that has to do with the look of confusion and horror when I visit vendors in deep red states and start asking questions about labor, safety, and the environmental impact of their operations. They don’t want to do waste or emissions remediation, but they also don’t want to lose our business. (I’m honestly enjoying this new direction my work is taking.)
12·10 months agoChicago suburbs. It’s sort of an interconnected area, so this takes place over two adjoining towns.
There was a very public and stupid feud that took place between two middle aged men. Some of it played out in real life and some was documented on that now defunct website, Topix. One of them had been close friends with the the police officer who was convicted of killing at least one wife. I think he was also a cop. In any case, he was very vocal in defending Drew and anything the other guy said about the murder trial really seemed to get his goat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Peterson
The other guy claimed to be connected with the Chicago outfit. Or the cop claimed he was. I don’t remember.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Outfit
Basically, it was two vaguely mobbed up guys in their 50s engaging in a very public and embarrassing battle of fists and wits in an otherwise unassuming suburb. They would trade insults on Topix, get into slap fights with each other at the local supermarket, and generally just behave like leaded gasoline sniffing idiots. Neither could just walk away from it. Both used their real full names.
Good guess. The golf course isn’t doing any irrigation in February.
He was truly a Superb Owl.
$70k USD - 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 1400sq ft., 0.3 acre lot, two stories and a detached garage. The interior needs plenty of non-cosmetic work (e.g. - new flooring)
$75k USD - 2 bed, 1 bath, 800sq ft., 0.15 acre lot; newly redone floors, electric and paint.
After that, there’s about 10 more in the 125-150K range.
I watched the Gormenghast miniseries on the Space Channel many many years ago and eventually read the books. They were interesting. Not something I’d want to revisit, but definitely weird.
It’s time to pay the price.
In the US I’d count action by the national guard. We had one of those in 1970, but the kids didn’t put up much of a resistance so it wasn’t a prolonged battle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
There may be others, but this springs to mind.
I fly a lot for work and I also do a fair bit of failure point and risk analysis as part of my job, so this is interesting to me in a couple of ways. Airports and airlines honestly do a decent job of checking that the people on the plane are the ones who are supposed to be there. A failure like this is reasonably unusual.
- she got through physical security (baggage and carry-on checks)
- to accomplish that, all she had to do was dodge the ID and boarding pass check.
That seems pretty feasible. If she was dressed vaguely like an employee it might have helped, but that’s just speculation. We’ve all seen the gorilla walk through the ball game - after we were told to look for him - so it’s not strictly necessary.
I have a harder time understanding how she could have boarded through the passenger line where they scan the passes.
I also have a slightly harder time understanding how she could have found a plane with open seats. I can view a seat map 12 hours ahead of boarding and see a plane with 10 open seats. When it comes time to board they’re completely full. But - part of this is because the airline shuttles regional pilots to their main hub via any available seat and they do it at the last minute. And here’s my further speculation: a flight from Nashville to LA is a long haul so this shuttling probably wouldn’t come into play. If she checked seat availability in advance, it probably would have been accurate and she could probably help herself to a seat that appeared open.
The final hurdle seems to be the one that caught her. The article doesn’t say exactly, but it says that authorities were waiting on the ground. Stewards have a flight manifest that lists every passenger by name and by seat. On rare occasions I’ve seen them checking the manifest as passengers board - for example, on overbooked flights where they’ve sold steward seats for take off and landing to passengers and they expect stewards to squat in the aisle. I’ve also heard anecdotally that if you’re acting like a weirdo they’ll look up who you are.
tldr: I could (and do!) give zero fucks about who won Sunday’s sports match, but can conceive of why it might be news, of of interest, to some people.
3·10 months agoProbably should have added a spoiler, but didn’t think about it because of the good outcome.
I love how she puffs to show she means business and then just launches herself into the attack. Even though that eagle was huge, they were not going to get an easy meal!
Superb Owl material for sure.
What made the difference for me was buying a really nice reusable bag. There’s a brand called Flip and Tumble. They’ll hold an absurd amount of stuff (something like 35lbs, if I remember correctly) and fold down into something smaller than a tennis ball. I keep two in the bottom of my purse and never need a bag. They are expensive (about $18 US), but I’ve had mine for almost 15 years.
This happened during street festivities for lunar new year, so a lot of people are connecting the dots. They don’t mention that the car was aggressively trying to drive through a crowd, but it seems like it was trying to make its way through a crowd.
Multiple witnesses said Waymo’s navigation technology became confused by festivities and fireworks that were lit to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Witness Anirudh Koul said the driverless car “got stuck immediately in front.”
Another witness said the car’s presence in the middle of Chinatown’s celebrations triggered frustrations in the crowd. “You could feel the frustration when people were just trying to celebrate,” she told KRON4.
That live feed is great.
I saw her earlier today, ripping up dead prey and feeding it to her two babies! They were covered in gore, but still adorable. And hungry! I had no idea baby owls could eat pieces as large as they did.
Thanks for digging into this a little further. It seems like small town news stories that get national attention don’t always paint a full picture, particularly when there’s an obvious moral high ground and an obvious victim or villain. I had several questions, because the story wasn’t adding up.
What sort of monster would object to sheltering homeless in a cold snap? The entire city government, including the fire department?
There’s an established shelter next door. Why did no one object to that? <thanks for answering this one, btw>
Since when did small towns in northwest Ohio start persecuting churches for no apparent reason? (for anyone out of the US, this population tends to be deep red GOP, very devout churchgoers, etc.)
This isn’t the first time there has been a cold spell. It happens at least once a year in January or February. Do the homeless in this tiny town just freeze to death every year?
There’s clearly a lot more to the story, but with national coverage like this I’d guess they were able to take in enough donations to cover basic repairs to the property.
Far as I know it’s just the one song by Vincent E.L. And it’s, uh, not serious. But kinda fun.