If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.

I think the point is, it would be nice to know which books are being put back up (seems like a pretty basic thing if you’re going to make a post like this) but OP made it about as hard as possible to see any but 1-2

And here we are, not on TikTok or Instagram, and still seeing it

Yeah, that Franch dipping sauce in Breaking Bad was crazy!

I’m not an avid reader, but I’m a huge fan of a book called Over the Edge of the World by Lawrence Bergreen. That detailed Magellan’s voyage around the world. A few takeaways:

• Spices really were the thing everyone in Europe wanted. If a sailor managed to smuggle a backpack full of cloves, it would be enough to buy a modest house. Only one of 5 ships made it back, but it was filled with top quality cloves and that was enough that the trip was STILL a financial gain.

• Nobody really knew where the spices came from. India was a nebulous semi-mythical place, and some believed there were a few "India"s

• Magellan, while Portuguese by birth, basically moved to Spain when Portugal wouldn’t pay for him to try to find the spice Islands

• The treaty of Tordesillas roughly divided the new world between Spain and Portugal. The land east of whatever meridian was Portugal’s, and west was Spain’s. But there were still issues, like longitude not really being measurable at the time and no clear idea who had claim 180° past that meridian. But it would have been to Spain’s benefit to find the spice islands past that meridian

Bonus fact: the first human to sail around the world was Magellan’s slave, Enrique (last name escapes me). He was brought from Indonesia(?) to Europe, then set sail on this round-the world journey, eventually going near his native homeland. Magellan had it in his will that Enrique be freed upon his death, but when he was killed on that voyage (basically by his own who) nobody was aware of that.

I live near Aurora. One of those city councilperson’s background is in owning a restaurant of all things. Totes an expert in international gang activity.

I love how new Teams doesn’t even have a contacts list for chat anymore, it’s just your most recent chats. And if you search for someone, any recent group chats with that person show up first so you may still have to scroll to find that person’s chat. Oh, and we store documents on Teams so if I want to switch between looking through the document repository and chat I still have to do a whole bunch of clicks between the two.

I don’t fault them for when my project manager tags @everyone on the group chat with an important message saying “good morning and happy Monday” though. I wish I were kidding.

Depending on what exactly they’re doing, that could be practicing without a license

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) won the general in a write-in campaign after an unexpected primary loss. But I guess I’m not sure if they have an open primary in Alaska, nor if that would really be the critical qualifier.

If I won’t convince you otherwise there’s not much point in discussing anything. I’ll throw out one point I mentioned in another comment nonetheless…

From what I remember of this school district’s case, the laptops were assigned the laptops for free to use at school. If they wanted to take the laptops home, they needed to pay an additional fee for extra insurance costs. This student did not. There is a reasonable argument that the school was tracking down its missing property. Maybe you won’t be convinced otherwise, but a jury (really, a single jury member) very well could.

It seems like it to you and me. At a trial, we’d hear their side of the story. Maybe there’s some explanation that could make it somewhat reasonable, and you would have a hard time convincing a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

If I remember correctly, students had to pay extra to take their laptops home, I believe an insurance fee of some kind. The student whose family filed a lawsuit did not pay that. The laptop was supposed to be at school, but was not. In that case, there may have been reasonable doubt that the school was trying to track down its missing property that should not be outside of school grounds.

It’s not intent to break the law, it’s intent to do what you did. If I walk out of a store with a can of tuna I didn’t pay for, that’s shoplifting, right? Well, not necessarily.

If I walk into a store, pick it up off the shelf, hide it in my jacket, and dart for the exit, probably.

If my toddler slipped it into my jacket pocket, and I didn’t notice, probably not.

If I put it in my jacket pocket because my toddler started to run away, I forgot about it, and paid for a cart of groceries… Maybe? But unlikely to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that it wasn’t an accident.

That’s for me, the buyer to decide. A pickup truck is also the incorrect product for me, because I don’t want one. Someone else may not want a black car. We don’t want stickers or badging on our cars. Others may want a black pickup truck and doesn’t really care if it has a sticker on the back for whatever reason. All that is totally fine - it’s our choice to buy something or not.

But it’s certainly not vandalism for the dealer to do that to their own car any more than it is for me to put an “I love puppies” bumper sticker on my car and then sell it a week later.

If they do it after you pay for the car, sure. Before you give them any money, it’s their car to do as they see fit.

I usually consider myself frugal, but try to get decent quality (a major part of the difference between frugal and cheap) and occasionally I splurge. Yesterday I bought 4 shirts. They came from a medium-high end store (Dillard’s, for those who have one nearby and know what I’m talking about). This is the time of year when lighter summer shirts are getting marked down. I’ve needed some more of them for a bit but waited for this moment.

Also, I’m a sucker for fancy cheeses and desserts from our Kroger variant. But it’s rare that I buy something that isn’t on manager’s special.

I browse Facebook Marketplace all the time for stuff.

Sometimes I want something and dream about it, and it takes an excellent sale to get me to actually buy it. Like the shades I got for my house last year (50% off at Home Depot)

I also brought a brand new car in 2022 when the market was bonkers. Not the fanciest car in the world (Chevy Bolt EUV) but it was a hell of a value, gas prices were going nuts with Russia having invaded Ukraine, and my 2005 Ford Focus wasn’t going to last forever (still serving my wife’s cousin’s stepdaughter well though)

I’ve also gotten furniture and stuff over the years. Maybe I’ll smile at the idea of a sale, but realistically so many things are “on sale” more often than not (even if that sale rotates between 25% off and BOGO half off)

I once saw a meme saying that being a Midwesterner means that if someone compliments something you bought, you need to explain that it was a good deal. That resonates with me.

Anyway, I’m procrastinating my nightly chores before bed. Thanks, but I need to work on that 🙂

The average person has approximately one boob and one testicle

If you’ve got an open area like a department store, that’s a lot of square footage that can be divided out. Walls can be built too, not uncommon at all in commercial construction I’m sure. And there are raised floor setups in data centers to make it easy to run cabling and stuff. If they can handle giant server racks, I’m sure a couch would be easy peasy.

Load bearing as in, structural? Isn’t that the existing floor? Something built over the top wouldn’t be load-bearing unless you’re talking about any walls that would go up as well. It certainly wouldn’t be holding up the ceiling or anything higher.

($93k vs $9300 for those who prefer USD)

This was the same company that refused to ship to Rhode Island, suggesting you had their product shipped to a friend on “the mainland” who could then forward it