Not a family saying, but my grandad used this joke soooo often:

Q: What’s the difference between a snake in the grass and a goose?

A: A snake in the grass is an asp in the grass, but a grasp in the ass is a goose!

My folks liked to purposefully mix metaphors, so instead of saying “The worm has turned”, they’d say, “The shoe has turned” and “The worm is on the other foot”.

I’m sure there’s an origin somewhere, but since I don’t know it, the call-out for doing something particularly dumb was, “Why don’t you just ram your face into my fist?” (suggesting your stupidity was impressive, but not worth the actual bother of ‘punishing’ you for it, especially given you were probably stupid enough to punish yourself).

I blame the defunding of reliable curators. The good gets lost in the torrent of mediocre content. This isn’t just music, but videos, news, art, and so on. Most anything that both craftsmen and amateurs can produce is now easily accessible to everyone everywhere. In addition to the old method of producing albums where the band had to go to some location and work on it as a regular job, and with the label sending in extra musicians, equipment, professionals and such, there used to be trusted critics.

Historically, we had a short list of vetted reviewers who could point us towards the best stuff without the need to wade through the rest. Even if it turned out that your aesthetics did not match that of a given critic, you could probably see why such critics held their opinions and could quickly locate a critic whose tastes did align with yours. Now we have a billion fake review sites run by the companies and/or families of those being reviewed. They are not trustworthy. A person is left to try everything on their own and we often run out of time looking for ‘good’ and settle on ‘good enough’.

No. You plead the 5th once you are in court. This says that when Nixon wanted the FBI to stop investigating the Watergate break-in, we couldn’t ask why because the prez is supposed to talk to the FBI and we can’t question his motives. It says that when Trump asked Pence to hold the vote and bring in fake electors, it was official communication and therefore legal – because we can’t ask why. It says that when Trump wanted false charges of fraud brought up for elections, saying his lawyers would figure out the reasons later, that was OK because he’s officially supposed to investigate fraud. Prior to this, any potential overlap between the Office of President and potential Candidate for Presidency (and/or candidate for future jail term) could be investigated as if it was not Presidential until there was a solid defense as to why it was official. The ruling turns that on its head and says prosecution must first find proof that actions were unofficial – and do so without the ability to ask about motivations – before filing charges. We want the official/unofficial decision to be made with the weight of context and done in court rather than putting prosecutors in the position of ‘illegally’ investigating a President before they can figure out what actually went down.

This looks new to me. It becomes hard for prosecutors to prove anything when we can’t ask about motives and the witnesses are ‘privileged advisors’. From the officical court opinion – note it is in paper-format with hyphens. (page 18: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf):

In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. Such an inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of of- ficial conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose, thereby intruding on the Article II in- terests that immunity seeks to protect. Indeed, “[i]t would seriously cripple the proper and effective administration of public affairs as entrusted to the executive branch of the government” if “[i]n exercising the functions of his office,” the President was “under an apprehension that the motives that control his official conduct may, at any time, become the subject of inquiry.”

(page 31)

The indictment’s allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification pro- ceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presump- tively immune from prosecution for such conduct.

Not everywhere, but lots of county/state health clinics will vaccinate you for lots of things – just because they feel it is in their self-interest to keep the locals free from spreadable diseases where they can.

Hrm. No one has mentioned the decline of middle class wages.

I remember in the … late 70s/early 80s my mother would drag us to the mall nearly every weekend. She was there to buy clothes. She always wanted something new and she wanted to try on at least a dozen items before buying one or two. I was thrilled when I was old enough to go off to the record store and/or hobby store while she did that. Earlier, I begged to go the the toy store, but was typically refused. Later, I was at the book store getting paperback scifi.

I don’t think people have as much disposable income as they did then. I don’t know many people who can buy as much frivolous stuff as my folks used to. I guess I could technically buy stuff all the time, but I want to save fore retirement. My folks had pensions. I have to put it away myself.

Sadly, the effect of not voting for one of the 2 candidates is to intensify the power of the most extreme views. Say 100 people can vote. 25 on each side are going to vote for their party no matter what. 20 want something crazy in one direction and 20 in the other direction, and both sides are likely to protest and/or not vote if their guy doesn’t pander to them. That leaves 10 persuadable people – mostly people who are busy with other stuff and not paying attention to the minutia of various policies and the likely after effects they will cause.

What is a candidate to do? They pander to the crazies. They can hardly bother to assuage the persuadables because those folks aren’t paying attention anyway. They have to go after the people who might bail if they aren’t appeased. I hate the system, but there it is.

Yeah, I don’t know many people who end up with two guns and stop there. One gun? Maybe. After that, it gets like they need friends.

One of the silly ‘tests’ of what makes for a REAL Alaskan is to have more guns than mammals living in the house. My non-scientific casual survey concluded that to be fairly accurate, and would probably apply to several other of our more rural states as well (REAL Montanan, etc.). Side note: dog mushers keep their dogs outside, so the stat held for them, too.

You are confusing the stats. You can’t talk about the total U.S. population with any of these numbers.

Rather, if you look at the subset of 30 states that report who is a registered Republican/Democrat, you can get a count for those states: 35.7 million R/45 million D. Also 32.5 Independent, but no mention of non-partisan or unaffiliated. It also does not include alllll the people who aren’t registered. It also excludes all the folks who aren’t letting anyone know they have a gun.

It depends on the weather and the cost. I remember when gas stations offered “full service” or “self service”. Full service cost more per gallon, but in addiction to pumping gas, they cleaned your windshield, checked your oil and wiper fluid levels, and might even put air in your tires if they were obviously low. If you wanted it done for you, you paid more. Seemed fair. These days, gas is cheaper in New Jersey than surrounding states, so you pay LESS to have someone else take care of you.

I’m one of the old people. I WAS a speed runner. About 40 years ago, I got a union job as a cashier. The customer put their items on the belt, the cashier scanned the items, and the bagger sorted the items and put them in paper or plastic bags. Cashiers were required to memorize the produce codes and process at MINIMUM 30 items per minute. The timer ran from the moment you unlocked your register to the moment you relocked it or opened the drawer. You would leave your register locked while the customer started putting things on the belt. You greet them and make a mental note of what sort of items are where while the belt brings the load to you. Once the belt is at least half full, you’d unlock the register and start grabbing and scanning items in a fluid motion that passed them over the scanner and on towards the bagger – sorting as best you could as you went. As soon as you were done, you’d hit ‘total’ and lock the register until the customer was ready to pay. You’d help the bagger and chat while this happened. Then the customer would hand over cash or check (they were just starting to do credit and debit in grocercy stores so those weren’t common), so you’d unlock the register, take their payment, open the register and get change. Your best speeds were always going to be for express checkout (10 items or less), but there is a cruel loop in that because managers schedule fast people for express, but you won’t be as fast unless you get scheduled there.

As I recall, we didn’t get to see our items-per-minute until the end of the day – not per-transaction, but it was still fun to see who had the best scores.

As a customer, I NEVER use self-checkout because: 1) I’m not working if you aren’t paying me, and 2) every time I’ve tried to use self-checkout, the machines could never, ever keep up with me. Sometimes the issue was the bagging area was trying to weigh things, sometimes the scanners themselves were bad/slow, and sometimes … I don’t know, the dang machines are just barely working? Anyway, it is never worth it for me. Additionally, I find it better to do my own bagging than to allow anyone else to do it.

Side note: The typical bagger can not bag as fast as a cashier can scan because they have to wait for: cans on the bottom/bread on the top, frozen in one bag/lettuce no where near frozen, detergents and chemicals by themselves/pet foods also by themselves.

“tell me something you accomplished or learned this year”

That’s gonna sound hostile to a good chunk of people. Rather than asking ‘what’, it demands ‘tell me’. Next, it supposes the other person be accomplished in act or learning. It is the difference between saying, “How you doin’?” and “Prove you are worth my attention.”

When asked for my favorite color or song, I figure the person wants to talk and is looking for a way to start (or continue) a conversation. Maybe the person is just bored and looking for something to talk about. Maybe they are hoping I wax rhapsodical about how how awesome my song is and my detailed evidence proving why all must acknowledge its true greatness. Okay, strike that last bit. No one wants me to go one that long.

Not new, but I use my electric blanket as a foot-warmer all winter long. It is more properly a ‘throw’ since it isn’t big enough to be a blanket. Using it now. I can keep the heat lower as long as my feet are toasty.

Good point.

Well, if you ARE in the US, here’s a sample 2.1 cable for $5

I generally agree except I try not to shop Amazon. For stuff like this, monoprice is my jam.

Whoooosh!

I love Amy Good, I love Democracy NOW! That said, Russian disinformation in the US is always going to be different from US disinformation in the US. At the very least, when the US does it, it’ll benefit a rich American rather than a rich Russian.

If you trust this source, it turns out that it is pretty easy to see your camera feed even if your camera is off: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-02-camera-hackers-spy-cameras-walls.html

I read about it on lemmy, too. I guess I – or one of us – should have cross posted it here from its .world source: https://lemmy.world/post/12081766

Edit to add excerpts:

Results vary on how far away someone would have to be in order to eavesdrop on these different devices. For some, a peeping Tom would have to be less than 1 foot away; for others, they could be as far away as 16 feet.

For consumers, Fu says a plastic lens cover might not be guaranteed to protect you—infrared signals can still get through them––but it is a good first step to battling this kind of cyberthreat.

I think it is getting downvoted because most things you buy (like toasters and shoes) can be used once you buy them. Nothing keeps you from continuing to use them after purchase. Even with computers, you agree to the OS license on purchase/install, and then you get to keep using it. At least historically, if a new update has a new license, you could refuse the upgrade and keep using the old version. For recurring payment items like monthly subscriptions, it makes sense that you can’t keep the original terms, but for one-time purchases, you should not have to change what you bought unless they are willing to take it back for a full refund.