If you like fruit and haven’t tried a pluot, you should. I think they’re a hybrid plum/apricot. It’s a little tricky to tell when they’re ripe, but when the area around the stem gets just a tiny bit soft and it smells good, it’s ready.

I’ve eaten 10 in the last few days, lol.

Saw my partner have a seizure last night. They’ve had a few in the time we’ve been together, but this was the first time I’d been there to see the whole thing.

It feels kind of stupid to say this, but it was a bit traumatic to see. I felt really helpless and scared. I think I did a good job of hiding it and comforting them, but I was losing it inside.

Hopefully they can get into the neurologist soon. They’ve been slowly reducing some of the seizure meds over the last 10 years, so I’m hoping it’s just a matter of going back up a bit.

Spotify tries to get it’s users to listen to songs that aren’t part of their normal revenue split with the major record labels.

There was an article a while back about how their auto-playlists were dominated by a handful of tiny labels. These record labels make deals with a smaller revenue split, but with the promise of being forced on to users. For the label it makes sense since nobody was listening to these songs anyway, so some money is better than no money. And it makes sense for Spotify since they make more money as well.

There was a website that used to test the actual protein content of powder and they found that most of the cheap brands of protein powder were contaminated with nickel. The theory was that the companies supplying the protein to the powder manufacturers were intentionally putting the nickel in to fool the less sophisticated protein tests usually used by the manufacturers.

My guess is the manufacturers started testing for nickel, so the suppliers moved to another heavy metal.

A guy running for state Congress here had a scandal where someone on his parade float had a confederate flag. He tried to do the “I’m not racist, I have black friends”, but he didn’t even have a token black friend. His line to the paper was something like, “I’m not racist, I had a lot of black people serve under me in the army”

There’s a guy in my town who works at a federal prison who is doing gig work on the weekends because the government cut the retention bonuses they had been getting for years due to staffing shortages.

The prison jobs are some of the highest paying in this area with solid benefits, but some people will always live at the edge of their means. Dude probably has a mortgage, a boat payment, an RV payment, an ATV payment and child support. I guess he just thought he’d get an $38k/yr for forever.

I just read about this thing called Amazon Hub. It’s a program where local businesses can receive Amazon packages and send their employees out to deliver them for an hour or 2 a day and collect a fee.

I can’t put my finger on why this bothers me so much, since labor value is captured by all business owners. I guess its just how transparent this is, since it’s basically renting your employees out to Amazon like prison labor. It’s also another way for the business owners to squeeze more productivity out of workers when business is slow

Anyone know any strategy to get it for cheap without insurance?

I brought my partner to the yearly clinic to get flu and COVID shots under their insurance. I asked them how much it would cost for me without insurance. They seemed annoyed that I was even asking and finally came back with a price of $190 for just the flu vaccine and told me to call someone billing for the COVID shot price. I’m assuming the COVID shot is even more expensive.

Zero tolerance policies are so dumb.

I bought a knife from a kid in highschool and left it in my shop locker. A teacher who hated me was snooping around my stuff and found it. Because of a zero tolerance policy I got suspended and got charged criminally. Later when I got in other trouble they ended up expelling me because I had already had a 1 month suspension from the knife.

Trump is really funny sometimes

Section 230 is a pretty strong immunity shield for internet sites:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Edit: Actually I’m not sure about it now. They don’t allow automatic online submissions, so it’s really not an interactive website, just a place to post dox.

My father-in-law has been saying he can’t retire despite being in old and in rough physical condition. He’s been paying into a 401k for 40 years, has a paid-off house, and they’d collect over $6000/mo in combined Social security payments. He also has a good job as a draftsmen at a military contractor.

Turns out that they’ve been racking up credit card debt until they can’t afford the payment then withdrawing from the 401k to pay it off.

I still can’t fathom what those credit card charges could be. They don’t have any flashy stuff, their house is small and in disrepair, they have cheap cars. He’s an alcoholic and they go out to eat a lot, but it still doesn’t add up to me. Only thing that makes sense to me is that he got scammed somehow.

What happened to cherry tomatoes? Every grocery store used to have them, now it’s all grape tomatoes or those new bland things. Cherubs/angel sweet/etc stay fresh longer but they don’t taste the same as real cherry tomatoes. Even when a store does have them, they seem different, less acidic, less flavorful.

There’s a cap that limits most of the shenanigans. Plus gig workers still have to pay self-employement tax and ss/Medicare tax on the tips. It’s just an income tax deduction

Goods delivery people is for gig workers, the companies lobbied for it. Doordash, Spark, Amazon flex, etc.

This thing has been rolled out pretty sloppily. It seems like things only count as tips if they’re given in cash or are accounted for in the new 1099s as tips. So it leaves some of the decision making to company lawyers to decide if it meets the law.

I suspect they will not count subs as tips even though they basically are. Many channels give you something in return, even if it’s just emotes or dodging ads

You still have to pay state and local income tax on tips.

The only thing more American than killing kids over a prank is doing it with a car

There was a vid about a young person who was hitting a nitrous canister basically non-stop.

My house had a ventilated basement room that the previous owner used as a dark room, I used it as a grow room for a while, and then as a place to smoke when it was cold outside.

Once I quit smoking that room was basically lost to me. It smells so terrible it’s unbelievable.

I’m trying to clean it, but everything is coated in a thick sticky cigarette residue. I threw everything inside away, including the carpet, but cleaning the walls and ceiling is sucking.