at any time SEARS could have jumped into the ring with the business they originally were instead of sticking to the clearly dying department store model.

It's not even that, they could've easily kept their store locations. They just needed to move their catalog online and it would've been a done deal.

Database Updated

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/04/28/why-president-biden-cant-fire-the-postmaster-general-of-u-s-postal/73443709007/

Basically due to the way the USPS is structured, Biden can't fire him outright or directly, the decision has to come from the USPS board of governors.

Damn, who pissed in your Cheerios? Let people have their fun.

I remember seeing that on tv and though it was pretty weird lol. I dunno what the bigger nightmare is, the commercial itself or the fact that that was 17 years ago

I mean, public state universities could fulfill this role if they could get past their admin rot

Dough looks alright, but I ain't having corn on my pizza

Probably depends on the developer. Friendly independent neighborhood developer? Well behaved. Corporate app developer? Get fucked pleb.

Well that's why people choose city living vs suburban vs rural. I live in the mountains because I absolutely do not want to be around that many people even going about my day to day. That said, the noise problem can be mitigated with extra insulation, but then you get into the luxury segment I was talking about.

It seems like there are a number of solutions out there, but no one cares enough to do anything. So that's why I live in my sky top island.

Sure, but they were still proportionally cheaper the SFHs, as were condos, but the overall median price is through the roof. I also seem to remember some statistic that upwards of 20% of housing stock sits vacant for some ass backwards tax purpose, though I couldn't quote that article right now. I dunno, perhaps we need more at the legislative level.

And per your shed comment, the price of those skyrocketed when building materials went bananas and demand during covid outpaced supply as everyone was stuck at home and had nothing better to do than house renovation projects. They never came back down because retail outlets and suppliers are greedy dicks. But I don't think demand for them as a living accomodations was a catalyst, though I could be wrong.

They won't go away until people stop using them, and good luck with that.

We really need more high density housing closer to urban centers, but Americans seem to be allergic to it. Everyone wants their single family house. Also too, without subsidies they're is no profit incentive for developers to build the necessary housing stock, they all shoot for "luxury" housing because it's the most profitable.

Ah makes sense, I forget how old a lot of that infrastructure is. I do a lot of work for our local ski resort, they have a 12mw generation plant for their snowmaking system that can backfeed the utility if needed, and they're sync setup was basically two blinking lights that you had to visually time just right to close the switch and pray you didn't screw up lol.

It trips me out that many of these plants don't have APUs for starting themselves up, or that they were designed in such a way that they require utility power to boot up. Like I understand that black starts could have problems with frequency sync with no point of reference, but I can't imagine that their control system circuits don't have any form of self-powering redundancy built in to their design. Is there any reason for this?

Nothing like fomenting trust in a global financial transaction system by threatening potential user nations.

It's the same old problem, politicians get their wheels greased in a certain direction by rich bribers donors. Unfortunately, there is a massive surplus of rich folk to do the greasing here, and politicians have been cut from the same cloth for a while now.

I've been in construction for many years, and the norm is working straight through till lunch then straight till the end of the day. Usually no one bats an eye if you take a few minutes to catch your breath or smoke if you bust ass, but yeah there typically isn't a designated 10-15 all stop. That and most guys usually take 20 min to take a shit, so I guess it tends to balance out.

Most jobs I've had will schedule 8-430/9-530/etc, so that you work a full 8 hours but you have a 30min mandatory unpaid lunch break. The two 15 min breaks are paid, but they were also "discouraged."

Not sure what carrier you're on, but I pay $35/mo per line with Verizon and have 2 SIM cards for my phone. Granted we have a family plan, and my wife pays $60/mo cause she wants her latest iPhone, but it usually works out cheaper to buy a phone online outright a year or two after release and then I'm not paying the recurring finance charges.